December 21, 2006
Virgil Be Good(e) Posted by Joshua Zeitz at 02:15 PM EST I’m always on the lookout for the rare issue on which John Steele Gordon and I are likely to find agreement. I can’t say for sure, but I’m guessing that Mr. Gordon won’t object too strenuously if I nominate Virginia Congressman Virgil H. Goode, Jr., for Moron of the Month.
As readers are likely aware, Rep. Goode is offended by the stated intention of incoming Congressman Keith Ellison (Dem., Minn.), a Muslim, to use a Koran, rather than a Christian Bible, when he takes the oath of office in January. In a letter to constituents, Goode warned, “The Muslim Representative from Minnesota was elected by the voters of that district and if American citizens don’t wake up and adopt the Virgil Goode position on immigration, there will likely be many more Muslims elected to office and demanding the use of the Koran. . . . We need to stop illegal immigration totally and reduce legal immigration and end the diversity visas policy . . . allowing many persons from the Middle East to come to this country.”
There are so many problems with Goode’s xenophobic rant that it’s difficult to know where to begin. For starters, Ellison isn’t an immigrant. He’s an African-American who converted many years ago to Islam. Moreover, having already served five terms in the House of Representatives, Goode should know that when members take the oath of office in January, they do not swear on a Bible or religious text of any sort. They simply raise their right hands—all 435 members in unison—and repeat the official oath. Ellison plans to use the Koran at a private, unofficial ceremony later in the day. All new members, Democrats and Republicans alike, will enjoy the same opportunity to pose with Nancy Pelosi at similar, unofficial swearing-in ceremonies. It’s just a photo op. It means absolutely nothing.
Of course, the real problem with Goode’s letter is that it betrays a shocking degree of ignorance and bigotry, something better suited to the nineteenth century than to the twenty-first.
As late as the 1840s, England’s small Jewish community found itself barred from government service. Unless a Jew was willing to swear “on the true faith of a Christian,” he could not sit in Parliament or on municipal councils and was ineligible for any Crown office. Though Parliament had granted Catholics and nonconformists the right to sit in the Commons, Jews were still denied this opportunity unless they were willing to take a Christian oath.
In 1847 the City of London elected Lionel Rothschild, a scion of the famous Jewish banking family, to the House of Commons on the Whig line. When he refused to swear a Christian oath, the Tory majority refused to seat him. In turn, Rothschild’s constituents reelected him to Parliament. In a ritual that lasted the better part of a decade, Rothschild was regularly elected to the Commons and was regularly denied his seat. An agitated Tory complained that “the rabble of London, partly out of love of mischief, partly from contempt of the House of Commons, and partly from a desire to give a slap in the face to Christianity, elected a Jew.” After 11 years of this routine, Tory Prime Minister Edward Stanley persuaded his party to loosen the rules a bit, thus allowing Rothschild to take his seat in 1858. In 1860 Parliament determined that Jewish members-elect could devise an oath of office that did not violate their faith. A short while later, in 1871, Parliament voted to allow Oxford and Cambridge to award degrees to Jews, effectively ending the long history of official religious discrimination that once governed gentile-Jewish relations in Great Britain.
The United States Congress never placed religious disabilities on its members. This fact seems lost on Virgil Goode, who would probably be hard-pressed to spell the word “Parliament,” let alone demonstrate even passing familiarity with the history of Anglo-American democracy.
Rep. Goode appears to empathize with those Tories of the mid-nineteenth century who feared that diversity in Parliament might undermine the organic nature of their Christian nation. If that’s indeed the case, I’ve got bad news for Congressman Goode. America isn’t a Christian nation. It’s not a Jewish nation or a Muslim nation either. It’s a secular democratic republic. If he doesn’t like that, then, if I might paraphrase an oft-repeated invitation levied by nativists of his ilk, he should go back where he came from.
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