I haven’t heard anything about the lack of religious diversity on the Supreme Court, and how Neil Gorsuch would fit in. Most recently, there were six Catholics and three Jews. When John Paul Stevens stepped down in 2010, it was the first time in US history that no Protestant served on the Supreme Court. (Merrick Garland, for the record, would have made it five Catholics and four Jews.)

Catholics have really come on strong in recent years. The first Catholic justice was appointed in 1836, but during the next 120 years, only six more Catholics were appointed. But since 1988, six Catholics have been appointed, all of them serving at the same time. What’s up with that?

Within Protestantism you have the mainline denominations, which tend to be socially liberal, and the more conservative evangelical and fundamentalist denominations–the ones that got Trump elected. The mainline denominations have been over-represented in relation to the population, and evangelicals have been greatly under-represented. During my lifetime, every Protestant justice has been from a mainline denomination–Episcopal, Presbyterian, Methodist, Lutheran.

So, President Trump, how about putting an evangelical on the Court? Maybe a good ol’ Southern Baptist, the country’s second-largest denomination? The last Baptist Justice was Hugo Black of Alabama, appointed in 1937 (and there were only two Baptist justices before him).

Neil Gorsuch is Episcopalian, so a Protestant would replace the Catholic Scalia. We sometimes view Episcopalians as the closest thing to Catholics. But Episcopalians support abortion rights (with some limits), support same-sex marriage, and ordain gays, lesbians, and transgenders. Not exactly evangelical-friendly.