The US Attorney General, William Barr, made an appearance at the University of Notre Dame’s law school last Friday to deliver an oddly pointed speech given his role as America’s chief law enforcement officer. He was there to talk about religion or, specifically, the “failure” of secularism to provide the things that he claimed only religion can provide. It was offered as a speech in defence of religious freedom but it read like a defence of theocracy, which nobody seemed to have reminded Barr is precluded by the First Amendment of the US Constitution. Not that the old piece of parchment is doing too well at the moment…

“Among the militant secularists are many so-called progressives, but where is the progress?” he asked, though he shamefully received no reply. It was an opportunity lost given that one could reasonably have offered statistics that do indeed show progress across the globe, not least in the rate of violent crime which has been in decline in the U.S. since colonial times. In Barr’s defence, he would probably argue that he wasn’t talking about mortality rates, rates of immunisation, poverty, standards of living, or any of those inconvenient measures that exist in the secular realm he was there to dismiss.

“We’re told we’re living in a post-Christian age,” he slowly rumbled on, “but what has replaced the Judeo-Christian moral system? What is it that can fill the spiritual void in the hearts of the individual person? And what is the system of values that can sustain human social life? The fact is that no secular creed has emerged capable of performing the role of religion.”

The striking phrase is “no secular creed” which he seemed to offer up as a challenge. If only there was as answer in the form of a system of accepted rules, based on empirical evidence and adapting to change through judicial review, and by which all people are bound at the risk of some kind of prosecution and punishment…

“Judeo-Christian standards are the ultimate utilitarian rules for human conduct” he insisted, though, again, one might question how utilitarian they are. Common law, on the other hand, is far closer to that definition than a system that still includes, in its broadest sense, the advocacy of an “eye for an eye”.

That, however, wouldn’t serve Barr’s purpose. That would get to the heart of an argument that’s often made and rarely countered. This is the “If God does not exist, everything is permitted” argument, confusingly (but rightly) attributed to Dostoyevsky and designed to discredit every secularist. It has the virtue of being pithy if nothing else. Sound science exists which explains the pragmatic reasons why we have everything from table etiquette to a higher morality. You don’t need to get into the deeper weeds of either moral philosophy or theology to understand right from wrong and most people live good, honest, and largely moral lives without some transcendental arbitrator determining their actions.

One suspects, however, there is more to Barr’s sudden detour into theology than his own religious convictions. Barr’s argument is about the origins of law, and that is surely no co-incidence given that a theme of the Trump presidency has been the problem of a written constitution which too strictly defines the ambiguities of their system of government. This is partly down to the way the Constitution is treated as scripture, and scripture like a constitution. (Indeed, read Barr’s words again and it does seem like he is arguing for the latter). Yet it is a weakness of Barr’s argument that those vestigial theocratic underpinnings of the American system are the very reactionary forces that routinely prohibit progress.

One might wonder, instead, if “progress” is what Barr is setting out to advocate rather than stasis. In the Trumpian system, it is quite advantageous to have some ambiguity that can be interpreted by “textual authorities” appointed by the President. It is why the battle to get Brett Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court was so important to the American right. The more the court is pushed towards originalism, the less likely it is to change the law based on exceptional circumstances such as the presence of an erratic President in the White House. This might even be the looming battle given that every misstep of this president has been covered by legally questionable opinions coming from the Justice Department that might yet have to be decided in the highest court.

If Barr’s speech did little to advocate the law, and was a rather weak defence of religion (there are much better out there), it was, nonetheless, an interesting positional statement about modern American politics. Barr’s performance came as a separate controversy hit the Trump administration in the form of the State Department’s website which, over the weekend, briefly turned into an advertisement for the Secretary of State’s religion. Under the headline, “Being a Christian”, it reported Mike Pompeo’s speech, also on Friday, to the America Association of Christian Counselors in Nashville, Tennessee. “We should all remember that we are imperfect servants serving a perfect God who constantly forgives us each and every day,” said Pompeo, who perhaps has had plenty of reasons to ask for forgiveness recently.

The retreat towards the religious begins to look like an obvious calculation by the Trump administration, especially after the rare (and significant) condemnation of Trump by televangelist Pat Robertson, who said, last Tuesday, the President had “lost the mandate of heaven” after his decision to abandon the Kurds. The great irony of this presidency remains that the most secular president owes much of his power from his unabashed manipulation of America’s religious right. Trumpism is built on this tacit acceptance that there is no division between the church and state, which to phrase more vulgarly, amounts to Trump needing the Christian right to win re-election. “I love my evangelicals” he routinely boasts to crowds, while those crowds rarely seem to intuit the crude ways they are being reduced to an unthinking demographic.

More nuanced, however, is what the religious sentiment brings to the execution of government. It might not sound logical to more (militant) secular ears but Trump is empowered if arguments turn into questions of “constitutionality” and what was originally meant by the framers. It goes to the very heart of his victory in 2016: a loss by the cold numbers but a big victory through the electoral college. If the Constitution means different things depending on how you read it, then nothing is settled or, rather, anything can be argued – even possible defeat in 2020.