Lamar Smith: what kind of scientist?

**VOX.COM recently published a troubling article about the current chair of the House science committee, Lamar Smith (R-TX) .

"Are you now or have you ever been a climate scientist?"

The headline proclaimed:

The House science committee is worse than the Benghazi committee

The article claims the committee's "open-ended, Orwellian attempts to intimidate some of the nation's leading scientists and scientific institutions" has more dire consequences for the nation than Gowdy & Co's brazenly partisan attack on just one politician, Hillary Clinton. That's because recently Republicans granted chairman Smith vastly more subpoena powers than previous chairs, which Vox points out has much wider and more devastating implications than the Clinton witch hunt. Think of all the critical issues the science committee can affect – climate, NASA, stem cell research, etc – and think of the damage it can do if its aim is to discredit and halt the work of the scientists and institutions that focus on them.

But it's even worse than that

It would be bad enough for any clueless politician with only a secular ideological agenda to head up such an important committee. But it's even worse when you consider this individual's religious beliefs, which few seem to have noticed. I wrote a response to Vox, and this post is an expansion on it:

Thanks for a well-written article on the abuses of Lamar Smith as chair of the science committee. I think the problem is even worse than you detail when one considers that Smith is a long-time Christian Scientist. No, not a scientist who happens to be a Christian, but a card-carrying believer in the religion of Christian Science. I am a former believer and teacher of Christian Science doctrine and can verify that the ideas that his religion espouses are diametrically opposed to what the rest of the world knows as “science.” And the mission of the House science committee. A fundamental concept of the religion is that “matter,” the stuff that normal science investigates, is “unreal.” Yes, the very substance of science is an illusion, and those who profess to be normal scientists are deluded and therefore erroneous from the get-go. The first premise of Christian Science is that only “spiritual” things are real. His hidden agenda, then, is to destroy or at least weaken the credibility of the whole field of all normal science. Republicans in general tout the idea that it’s good for a government official to let religion influence his or her governance. It’s pretty obvious that Lamar Smith, whom I’ve met, intends to shape government policy by his religious beliefs and agenda. Most Christian denominations are not this radical, and have a long history of opposing Christian Science. Do Republicans think that the religious tenets of this politician are acceptable? 

How many of his colleagues understand the nature of Lamar Smith's religious convictions? Could it be that current Republican reasoning is as simplistic as to conclude that if he's a Christian Scientist, well, that's close enough to head the science committee? It's not really that far-fetched. And as the visibility and influence of Christian Science has waned almost to invisibility, he might even seem innocuous, maybe like Ben Carson's Seventh-day Adventism. But he's not.

I met Smith in 2004 while I was working at the headquarters of the Christian Science church in Boston. We exchanged mere pleasantries at a church event, but his attendance attests his commitment to its teachings. Unless he has become a worse Christian Scientist since then, people need to consider the implications if he still believes what his religion teaches. And fundamental to that teaching is the specious nature of the material world – the same material world that most scientists study and work in. If you personally know some Christian Scientists you probably don't think of them being as crazy as that. And perhaps the reason is that in order to appear less fanatical, Christian Scientists tend to practice an unstated dualism, holding privately to the primacy of absolute spiritual reality while going along with the "seeming reality" of the physical world. This sustains a subtle hypocrisy whereby many, if not most, believers indulge in all sorts of materiality, including medical treatment, rationalizing that they and the rest of the world haven't advanced to the wisdom of their teachings. What suits this dualism is a characteristic velveteen veneer, a terminal niceness that hesitates to get all absolute on people – and having to put up with all that push-back. Smith exhibits this veneer, even while wearing the brass knuckles of his newly amped subpoena powers.

Who am I to criticize?

Though I am hostile, for what this blog chronicles are good reasons, I am not an ignorant sniper at Christian Science, as many of its opponents are. My knowledge is deep and extensive: I was a believer and church member for over thirty-five years; wrote for its publications, lectured about and taught its precepts and practice. For twenty of those years I was a professional practitioner of what I ultimately came to realize is the sham of "Christian Science healing." It eventually didn't seem right taking money from people in order to convince them of the unreality of their problems, especially when there was never any discernible, verifiable physical healing as a result. I even pressed those precepts on a mother who let her child die of diabetes even while he screamed for medical attention. That horrendous event and its legal consequences plus five years snarled in the gears of Christian Science church politics led to the end of my faith.

Playing the religion card?

Let's remember that what Republicans mean when they blow the dog whistle of "religious liberty" is that government officials (like Kim Davis) should be free to institute, change or overrule public laws according to their personal religious beliefs. The world is a lot scarier place when legislators like Lamar Smith have extraordinary legal power to frustrate, harass and squelch real scientists and their work. The whacko fringe of the party (arguably not just a fringe) may have found a velveteen-clad wrecking ball in this mild-mannered "scientist."

Government officials like Smith frequently allow their religious beliefs and power to infiltrate the legal realm to generate religious exemptions* that include practices like Christian Science "healing." Though fortunately many of those exemptions, especially for children, have been overturned in recent years, it would not be surprising that a believer like this newly-superempowered chair of the House science committee would try to influence public policy based on his religious convictions. He is and will be as anti-normal-science as his religion, in its purest form, teaches.

Yes, I'm playing the religion card. But not in the way it was played against Romney, whose religion had little to do with government and more to do with its (and his) weirdness. It's more akin to JFK, whose opponents suggested that as a Catholic president he would be more loyal to the Vatican than to the US. But Kennedy stated publicly and firmly that in a conflict between his religion and his country his loyalties would always be with his country. How likely is it that Lamar Smith will publicly proclaim his allegiance to normal science versus that other kind?