Among the many reasons to give the book Scalia Speaks for Christmas are its collected speeches on religion. And of these speeches, my favorite is “Being Different,” which the justice gave in 1992 to the Judicial Prayer Breakfast Group, an informal gathering of judicial officers in the Washington, D.C., area., men and women of diverse faiths. Scalia, of course, was a Catholic, and he discussed how in growing up he had the consciousness of “being different” on account of his being a Christian.
Scalia had advice for young Christians—“to learn early and remember long” that [quality] of ‘differentness’; to recognize that what is perfectly lawful, and perfectly permissible, for everyone else—even our very close non-Christian friends—is not necessarily lawful and permissible for us.” Further, “that the ways of Christ and the ways of the world—even the world of Main Street America—are not the same, and we should not expect them to be.” Scalia emphasized that “it is only if one has that sense of differentness … that one has a chance of being strong enough to obey the teachings of Christ.”
For the justice, being different is not just another “lifestyle” choice. He quoted from the high priestly prayer of Jesus: “If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before you. If you were of the world, the world would love what is its own. But because you are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hates you.”
Scalia was so bold as to touch on what are called the “two kingdoms” in theological circles. He quoted what Jesus said to Pilate: “My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my followers would have fought that I might not be delivered to the Jews. But, as it is, my kingdom is not from here.” This thought, said the justice, pervades the Gospels and is in the early church. He recalled the famous observation of a second century church father writing to one Diognetus:
“Though residents at home in their own countries, their behavior is more like that of transients. They take their full part as citizens, but they also submit to everything as if they were aliens. For them, any foreign country is a homeland, any homeland is a foreign country.”
That same notion, said Scalia, “has come down faithfully in modern Christianity,” i.e., Protestant Christianity, in “the most influential work in English,” The Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan. Bunyan’s book preserved “the image of the Christian as an alien citizen, a traveler just passing through these parts on the way to the promised land.” Scalia summed up his speech this way: “The serious Christian must be a pilgrim, an alien citizen, a bit ‘different’ from the world around him.”
Scalia happened to give this speech shortly before Christmas. The calendar led him to conclude: “The world will celebrate [Christmas] with us. The world likes to celebrate … but … our only lasting pleasure and satisfaction is not here, where we are alien citizens, but hereafter.”
