Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
If We Want to Defend Religious Freedom, We Have to Define It First
“Hey Siri, define ‘religious freedom.’” Of the dozens of results you’d find by posing that simple question, one of the clearest is set forth by the American Civil Liberties Union.
“The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution says that everyone in the United States has the right to practice his or her own religion, or no religion at all,” the ACLU’s site reads. So far so good—a definition clear enough to cover those on the right, left, and everywhere in between.
Yet, as two recent pieces from CNN.com and NBCNews.com make clear, we’ve now reached a place in public discourse where some activists reject that simple definition. Ironically, those activists now include the ACLU itself.
Published within a week of each other, the two articles both draw upon assertions from a white paper produced by the ACLU and the Center for American Progress to claim that “religious freedom”—scarequotes and all—is being “distorted” and dangerously “expanded” to “codify discrimination against marginalized groups.”
As evidence to back up their claims, both authors point to high-profile cases like Little Sisters of the Poor, Masterpiece Cakeshop, and Fulton v. City of Philadelphia—all instances where the government has sought to punish religious Americans for freely living according to their faith on important issues like the sanctity of life, the meaning of marriage, and the importance of placing children in a home with a mother and father.
But herein lies a glaring omission. At CNN and NBC News, the authors worry aloud that “religious freedom” is being hijacked and misused. Yet in their haste to condemn the alleged “misuse” of religious freedom, neither author bothers to define what proper religious freedom is or even should be.
Perhaps a look at the way religious freedom has been threatened during the current coronavirus moment would provide those on both sides of the “culture wars” with a bit more common ground. Governors, mayors, and county commissioners have created such a trend of unseemly overreach that Attorney General Bill Barr has publicly reprimanded state and local officials for clear violations of constitutionally protected freedom.
In Mississippi, a city deployed its police department to bust up drive-in church services, issuing $500 tickets to attendees who were sitting in their own cars with the windows rolled up. The Mayor of Chattanooga threatened to do the same. And in Kansas, the governor’s executive order carved out 26 distinct exemptions from a ban on in-person gatherings, none of which included church gatherings.
In Massachusetts, a town sent a cease-and-desist letter to a church that had planned to hold in-person meetings on a Sunday, even though that church—like so many others—had also announced plans to go above and beyond the statewide orders to protect its congregants. Similar scenarios are playing out in Nevada, Indianapolis, Oregon, and Washington state.
In New York City, Mayor Bill de Blasio threatened churches with permanent closure if they failed to comply with his COVID-19 requirements—a warning that was followed up by his public rebuke of Orthodox Jews who had turned out to mourn the death of a beloved rabbi.
In states like California, New York, and Nevada, reopening plans treat religious assemblies like fuzzy dice hanging from a rearview mirror. An oddity that may appeal to some, but which functions as more of an unnecessary distraction than essential good.
Against this backdrop, it’s easy to see that churches and religious groups aren’t asking for special treatment—just equal treatment. It’s true that religious freedom plays a central role in American society, but the common thread in these cases is that many governments are treating churches worse than secular groups, including movie theaters, shopping malls, and even casinos.
Religious freedom isn’t being “expanded.” If anything, it’s taking untold resources just to defend it. If the combined brain trust of the ACLU or the Center for American Progress is truly interested in investigating and calling out breaches of constitutional freedom, they won’t have to look far to find them.
And perhaps in the process of finding them, they’ll rediscover the meaning and value of religious freedom itself.
Published in Law, Religion & Philosophy
Yet, how many fines have been handed out to protestors who refused to “socially distance.”
Freedom of religion is mentioned among speech, assembly, petition, and the press because they are all elements of one freedom: public expression. It needn’t be defined apart from those. To emphasize it as a separate liberty only endangers it by isolating it from the rest.
Unfortunately, many on the left think we have “freedom to worship” rather than free exercise of religion. Obama said “the freedom to worship as we choose” & it is a chilling phrase- it means you can say/do what you want inside those four walls of that quaint building you meet in on Sunday mornings but after that your derriere is under our rules. Religion is much more than a private hour of worship on Sundays
I think this is exactly what has been happening for many years now. Thanks for expressing it so clearly.
Yep, the Babylon Bee once again captures far more than mere words.
100 percent true.