Very few talk about that. What has the history of the court’s justices been in regards to faith?
“What has the history of the court’s justices been in regards to faith?”
There is a whole wiki on the SCOTUS that covers a range of subjects including religion., but here’s the operative comment:
“Most Supreme Court justices have been Protestant Christians. These have included 33 Episcopalians, 18 Presbyterians, nine Unitarians, five Methodists, three Baptists, and lone representatives of various other denominations. William Rehnquist was the Court’s only Lutheran. Noah Swayne was a Quaker. Some 15 Protestant justices did not adhere to a particular denomination. Baptist denominations and other evangelical churches have been underrepresented on the Court, relative to the population of the United States. Conversely, mainline Protestant churches historically were overrepresented.”
Also, there have been only eight Jewish Justices, but three of them sit on the court today.
“Following the retirement of John Paul Stevens in June 2010, the Court had an entirely non-Protestant composition for the first time in its history. Although Neil Gorsuch, appointed in 2017, attends an Episcopalian church, he was raised Catholic and it is unclear if he considers himself a Catholic or a Protestant.”
So from a historical perspective, today’s SCOTUS, from a religious viewpoint, is about as far out of it’s “mainstream” today as it has ever been. I posted a comment earlier to the effect that today with Three Jews ( who represent only 2% of our population and essentially six Catholics ( who represent 25% of our population) that the entire court represents only 27% of our population on the basis of their religious beliefs.