State Rep. E. Werner Reschke didn't break any legislative rules, according to an Oregon House committee

Jun 05, 2024

Months after an Oregon lawmaker said that atheists and Muslims shouldn’t hold public office, he’s been absolved of any wrongdoing by a State House committee. It’s an absurd decision that rewards bigotry in the name of Jesus.

State Rep. E. Werner Reschke made the comments in February during an interview with Jason Rapert, the Christian Nationalist who now runs a group called the “National Association of Christian Lawmakers.” Reschke serves as the Oregon “chair” for NACL.

(Follow above article link to view photos/PDFs/video that accompany the original article.)

Rapert asked a softball question about why Christians needed to get involved in government, and Reschke’s response was telling for all the wrong reasons. Instead of saying Christians had a spiritual duty to shape society (or some garbage like that), he argued that certain non-Christians were unfit for public life and didn’t deserve to be in positions of power.

He said he admired the supposed Christian faith of the Founding Fathers before segueing into the people who shouldn’t be in government:

… “Those are the type of people that you want in government making tough decisions during tough times,” Reschke continued. “You don’t want a materialist. You don’t want an atheist. You don’t want a Muslim. You want somebody who understands what truth is and understands the nature of man, the nature of government, and the nature of God.”

“If you don’t understand those things, you’re gonna get things wrong,” he concluded. “In Oregon … we have a lot of people who are godless, unfortunately, leading the way and it’s the blind leading the blind.”

He wasn’t subtle about his feelings. He doesn’t believe atheists or Muslims are fit to hold public office—the former because they have no religion and the latter because they’re the wrong religion.

He also felt perfectly at ease saying that—out loud!—to someone like Rapert, probably believing that the only people listening would be Christians who fully agree with them.

Obviously, the Founders felt otherwise, which is why the Constitution explicitly says there can be no religious test for public office. Even if you make the argument that Reschke wasn’t banning anyone from running for office but rather saying he just didn’t think non-Christians had the right sensibility for the job, it’s still disturbing coming from a sitting politician. If a Muslim or atheist said Christians shouldn’t be in government because they were too gullible, there would be an outcry in the media.

The Freedom From Religion Foundation’s political arm, the FFRF Action Fund, sent a letter to Reschke at the time condemning his comments. They also pointed out that the former presidents he cited by name—George Washington, James Madison, Abraham Lincoln—didn’t share his faith or at least the practice of it.

As a state representative, your duty is to support the state and federal Constitutions and to protect the rights of conscience of your constituents, not to promote your personal religious views, much less a Christian theocracy. Your oath of office has charged you with great responsibility over citizens, including those citizens who may not or do not share your personal religious viewpoints. You have shown that you are unfit for this responsibility. You should either apologize to all non–Christian and nonreligious citizens of your district, or you should resign.

It didn’t take long before Reschke backtracked… or at least pretended that he never said the thing everyone heard him say.

In a statement to Oregon Public Broadcasting, Reschke claimed his words were “grossly taken out of context.” But he didn’t bother clarifying what he actually meant to say.

That didn’t stop one Muslim colleague from chiming in:

“I am disheartened to see one of my legislative colleagues express views contrary to American values, the U.S. Constitution, and our collective aspiration of building a more perfect union,” [Sen. Kayse Jama] said in a statement Monday after OPB asked about Reschke’s remarks. “Our ability to live and work with our fellow Oregonians who speak different languages, pray or vote different ways, celebrate different cultures is our strength.”

To that, Reschke responded with all the sincerity of a child who got caught stealing cookies from the cookie jar:

“I believe Senator Jama is qualified to be a Senator, as well as any other currently serving legislator duly elected by the people or appointed by County Commissioners,” he said.

Well then, which is it? Was he lying to Jason Rapert or was he lying now? (If you want to make an outlandishly insane statement, at least have the courage to stand by your bigotry!)

Sarah Levin, founder and principal at Secular Strategies, was appalled by his language, telling me in February that his remarks “demonstrate how dangerous Christian nationalists are to our democracy” by treating atheists and Muslims as “inferior, second class citizens.”

Oregon State Rep. Farrah Chaichi was more blunt, saying this in a statement to Friendly Atheist:

I'm concerned for the people in my district, and across Oregon, who identify as members of the communities targeted by those remarks. We serve in the People's House, and the People need to feel welcome to come to their house to advocate for the needs of their communities. A statement like this sets back trust and goodwill that's been built with communities who have been historically marginalized.

Kristiana de Leon, a candidate for the Washington state legislature and a board member of the Association of Secular Elected Officials, also told me that Reschke’s comments were only the tip of the iceberg:

Rep. Werner Reschke's statements said the increasingly-less quiet part out loud. Not only is he poisoning the discourse on what it means to have democratically elected representation, and not only is he the tip of the iceberg of anti-Muslim and anti-Atheist bias, but actions like his are why atheists, Muslims, and essentially anyone who isn't a white Christian Nationalist have been sounding the alarm for years on how this kind of hostile language seeps into policy with serious consequences. 

Given all that, I was hopeful that the Oregon House Committee on Conduct would at least make an example of Reschke to send a message that his bigoted rhetoric would not be tolerated.

That committee met on Monday. The question was whether he violated Legislative Rule 27, a rule that concerns harassment in the workplace: Was Reschke creating a “hostile” work environment? According to the (mostly procedural) conversation, there was no proof he had treated anyone differently regardless of his beliefs... therefore three of the four committee members agreed not to pursue this any further, voting that there was no violation of a legislative rule.

Only State Rep. Thuy Tran (a non-theistic Buddhist) said Reschke violated the rule; another Democrat, State Rep. Jason Kropf, voted with the two Republicans to say the opposite.

“Most of the people that I interviewed were at least initially offended by the comments that were made by Representative Reschke,” [attorney Sarah] Ryan said. “Some had one-on-one conversations with the representative and were satisfied with his explanation, but there were only two people who indicated that the comments had an impact on their work at the Capitol.”

Tran, who is Buddhist, said she absolutely sees an effect from Reschke’s words. 

“Rep. Reschke’s comment was offensive, and it will impact my working environment and it will affect my interactions with him,” she said. 

…

“​​I hope that he has been—I think he has been—reflective and appreciative of the impact those words have had and the work that he has to do to continue to restore trust,” Kropf said. “There’s lessons for all of us to learn in this. To me, what this reinforces is that we can be guided by our faith, we can be guided by our beliefs, but we can also be respectful of the faith and the beliefs of others and how that they guide them in our governance for our state.”

There’s no way in hell Reschke learned anything from this. He didn’t respond to the investigative reports about his behavior; he didn’t even show up at the committee meeting to defend himself. He’ll make bigoted comments in the future because that’s what his religion teaches him. Just because his comments weren’t directed at anyone in particular, and just because he made them before the legislative session began, doesn’t make them any less damning.

Another troubling aspect about this story, beyond just the comments themselves, was the lack of interest in what Reschke said. It didn’t get a ton of media coverage, suggesting that slandering atheists and Muslims has just become a normal part of our political discourse.

The hypocrisy was obvious. It’s not that atheists deserve to be in government or that devout Christians can’t be; it’s that the arguments suggesting atheists can’t hold office because they reject a higher power implies that religious believers are inherently responsible and obedient.

If we’ve learned anything from politics over the past several years, it’s that the politicians who wear their Christian faith on their sleeves are also, often, the most immoral, law-despising people in the country. They love making public proclamations about their faith, then turning around and defending corruption and cruelty at every turn. (See: Johnson, Mike.)

In a more just world, these remarks would hover over Reschke’s head for the rest of his political life. Unfortunately, it’s far more likely they’ll just be forgotten because trashing atheists always seems to be fair game for lawmakers who bring nothing of value to the table.

For now, neither Reschke nor Rapert have publicly commented on this situation.

(Portions of this article were published earlier)