President Donald Trump’s nomination of Amy Coney Barrett continues the GOP’s remarkable streak of selecting Catholic jurists for the Supreme Court and underscores the enduring impact of the alliance between conservative Catholics and evangelical Protestants, which has transformed the Republican coalition.
If the Senate confirms Barrett to replace the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg, that would mean all six Supreme Court justices appointed by Republican presidents were raised Catholic. Two of them — Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch, Trump’s first nominee — later attended Protestant churches as adults, although Thomas subsequently reverted to Catholicism. …
“You have a situation where the evangelicals have been outsourcing their judicial appointments to conservative Catholics,” says Randall Balmer, a professor of religion at Dartmouth University, who has written extensively on the history of evangelical political activism. CONT.
Ronald Brownstein, CNN