Jim Schultz - Minn Post photo
Steve Timmer
by Steve Timmer
Oct 16, 2022, 12:00 PM

Jim Schultz: holy warrior – with an update

Update: I thought it was worthwhile to abstract and highlight part of the alumni profile for Jim Schultz reproduced in the story.

The big questions that occupy lawyers’ minds – the proper goals of punishment, the merits of economic regulation, the just treatment of the child in the womb – are of course questions that the Christian intellectual tradition can be a great help in answering. On many occasions, I have been able to put forward a more complete explanation of the Christian vision on a subject because I explored seriously within Catholic Studies the intellectual foundations up which the Christian vision rests.

Schultz said he got into the AG’s race because of crime. I think it was really because he fetishizes punishment. I think he would have made a great Dominican.

He also worries about economic regulation, which makes sense, because he apparently doesn’t want any.

There is also his grand obsession: abortion. But Christianity informs the abortion debate poorly and inferrentially at best. And abortion was known in Biblical times; Jesus never mentioned it. But it’s almost beside the point; we aren’t a Christian nation, as much as Schultz would probably like to believe it. Moreover, there are faith tradtions — including some Christian ones — who make the faith-based case for reproductive freedom.

Here’s the original story:

– o O o –

Jim Schultz, Republican candidate for attorney general, posted this tweet recently:

A tweet by Jim Schultz

Last Friday, he spent his closing statement in his debate with Attorney General Keith Ellison expressing the same sentiment.

Before getting into it here, you might want to read the earlier LeftMN story on Schultz: Jim the Naif.

The language of the tweet and the closing statement may be designed to feign a lack of racial animus, but it’s really intended as a dog whistle to the “personhood” crowd. From the 2020 Republican state platform:

Republican platform on abortion

According to a story in the Star Tribune, Jim Schultz spent two years in a Catholic seminary before choosing a path to be a lawyer. Will Stancil, on the faculty at the University of Minnesota Law School, observed that there was little beyond this St. Thomas alumni profile to show that Jim Schultz existed prior to running for attorney general.

Jim Schultz alumni profile – St. Thomas

Jim Schultz alumni profile – St. Thomas (con’t)

As a lawyer — and a citizen — in a thoroughly positive law (as opposed to theocratic or natural law) country and state, I’ll confess this little biography gives me the willies. Regardless of your religious persuasion — or lack of one — you ought not to want a theocrat in the attorney general’s office.

It is clear to me that Jim Schultz is a Catholic theocrat. The views of the Catholic church on abortion and LGBTQ rights are well known. Jim Schultz contributed money to pass the gay marriage ban amendment in Minnesota in 2012. (It didn’t pass.)

Schultz says that he is “personally” pro-life (an odious term for the set of attitudes that usually goes along with being anti-reproductive freedom), but that he wouldn’t bring the issue into the AG’s office.

Asked about his view on abortion, Schultz said he continues to support additional restrictions as a personal matter, but he wouldn’t advocate for policy changes or use the office as a platform on the issue.

Based on his alumni bio, do you really think he would be able to do that? And consider this:

Did he mean what he said when he said he wouldn’t bring his religious freedom views into the AG’s office? Obviously not:

Schultz would seek to expand impediments to reproductive rights. That’s part of his theocratic DNA.

If you are at all like me, though, you don’t want to be the child of a God as understood by Jim Schultz.

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