Supreme Silliness

The notable lack of religious diversity on the Supreme court is a pretty old and tired topic. If you didn't already know, there are now, with the retirement of John Paul Stevens, only Catholics and Jews on the court.Stevens was the only Protestant, as this article in the New York Times points out.
But I found one part of this article utterly ridiculous, and haven't been able to get it out of my head. Here goes:

'The practical reality of life in America is that religion plays much less of a role in everyday life than it did 50 or 100 years ago,'' said Geoffrey R. Stone, a law professor at the University of Chicago. Adding a Protestant to the court, he said, would not bring an important element to its discussions.

''These days,'' said Lee Epstein, a law professor at Northwestern and an authority on the court, ''we've moved to other sources of diversity,'' including race, gender and ethnicity.'

With due respect to folks who have far greater expertise than I on the Supreme Court, I think this is silliness. To say that we live in a post-religious society is as unrealistic as to say that President Obama's election solved racism. Not that there aren't people saying that too.

I say this because I can already imagine the round the clock paranoid coverage were a Supreme Court nominee, say, Muslim. Heck, while we're at it, let's speculate on the combination of paranoia, curiosity, and hate that would be generated by a Sikh, Buddhist, Hindu, or other religious minority.

Furthermore I would argue something about this:

"religion, which once mattered deeply, has fallen out of the conversation. And it seems to make people uncomfortable on the rare occasions it is raised."

It seems, simply, to be a contradiction in terms. What makes us most uncomfortable perhaps matters the most deeply.