Faith & Spirit Quote by Ernest Istook

Framed as a defense of faith, Istook's line is really an indictment of a particular kind of neutrality: the idea that the state can keep religion at arm's length without injuring it. The verb choice is the tell. "Attack" turns court decisions into an aggressive campaign, not a balancing act between competing rights. It casts believers as a besieged minority even when the underlying cases often involve majoritarian religious expression bumping into public institutions: school prayer, government displays, taxpayer funding, or workplace accommodations.

The rhetorical move is to treat the First Amendment as if it has a single job - "protect religion" - rather than two clauses in tension: free exercise and non-establishment. Istook collapses that tension by implying that enforcing the Establishment Clause is hostility to religion, not hostility to government endorsement of it. The subtext isn't just "courts are wrong"; it's "the playing field itself is biased". That sets up a political demand for corrective action: constitutional amendments, judicial appointments, or legislation that redefines "religious freedom" as maximal public visibility and institutional support.

Context matters. Istook was a Republican congressman associated with the religious right in an era when conservative activists argued that secular liberalism had captured the courts. So the quote doubles as movement messaging: it simplifies complex jurisprudence into a moral storyline and recruits outrage. The genius, and the danger, is how it swaps constitutional restraint for cultural grievance, making any limit on state-sponsored religion feel like persecution rather than pluralism.