Religion and Freedom

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”  First Amendment of the United States Constitution (emphasis mine)[i]

“re·li·gion  [ri-lij-uhn] 

noun

1. a set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature, and purpose of the universe, especially when considered as the creation of a superhuman agency or agencies, usually involving devotional and ritual observances, and often containing a moral code governing the conduct of human affairs.

2. a specific fundamental set of beliefs and practices generally agreed upon by a number of persons or sects: the Christian religion; the Buddhist religion.

3. the body of persons adhering to a particular set of beliefs and practices: a world council of religions.

4. the life or state of a monk, nun, etc.: to enter religion.

5. the practice of religious beliefs; ritual observance of faith.

6. something one believes in and follows devotedly; a point or matter of ethics or conscience: to make a religion of fighting prejudice.

7. religions, Archaic. religious rites: painted priests performing religions deep into the night.

8. Archaic. strict faithfulness; devotion: a religion to one's vow.”[ii]

“If young people continue to be more interested in how we treat others and what we do to make the world a better place, rather than equating morality with religion, then we will finally realize an America that values freedom of and freedom from religion.”[iii]

Let me begin this essay with a direct refutation of the last quotation above.  Simply put, America never has and never should have a value of a “freedom from religion”; such a value runs directly contrary to the free exercise clause of the first amendment.  In stating this assertion and thesis for this exploration, let me be clear also in saying that no American should ever be forced to follow a particular religion, nor should it be an American value to do so.

In the last several weeks, the Washington Post has put forward numerous articles on the relationship of religion and the public sphere.  This is not solely to report the news, but also has been featured prominently over several months in its weekly column/section “On Faith”.  I, for one, am happy for the exchange of ideas and forthright positions put out by the authors of these articles, even though I question the apparent truncation of the spectrum of ideas that the Post has included in the weekly column in the past several months.

Two very recent articles are the catalyst for my writing at this juncture.  The first, “Is atheism winning the culture war?” written on 23 October 2013, is the source of final quote above and the second is “Supreme Court to hear new case on religion in public life”[iv], written on 1 November 2013, is certainly also a catalyst for this flurry of discussion on religion’s place in our public life.  It might be good for you to first read those two articles prior to continuing with this discussion.

Now that you are back from reading these articles and the case before the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS, and perhaps taking off on a bit of a Wikipedia/web self-discovery based on the themes expressed in each), I come back to my above two statements about religion in American public life (or any freedom loving society).  As is done in a very concise way, the first amendment makes two very critical and poignant clauses about the place of religion in public life.  First it defines an “Establishment Clause” forbidding the establishment of “religion”, second it puts forward a “Free Exercise” clause regarding “religion” (actually using the phrase “thereof” but clearly the object is “religion” and clearly means “of religion”).  Now this seems rather elementary, one phrase, two clauses, and off we go.  But these two clauses have, from the time of their passing, been at utter odds with one another.  How is it that you can never make a law establishing “religion” without restraining one religions “free exercise”?  Likewise, how is it possible to stop any kind of law that protects religious expression (if you will, ensuring “free exercise”) without “establishing religion”?  Nowhere, however, is offered a “freedom from religion” as defined value in American public life.

I think much of this comes down to how one defines “religion”.  I offer one set of definitions in the above set of quotations, from Dictionary.com.  Note that for the noun “religion” there are 8 definitions offered, some of which are shades of difference from each other, others are altogether unrelated.  The question at the core of this discussion turns on what was the intended meaning of this term and what is the meaning now that applies to how we look at this today.  So, we thus need to explore two understandings, the one in context in which it was written and the one in the context of where things have evolved to our modern day.

When looking at the historical context, we must understand the religious landscape of the day.  From the early 17^th century through to the Revolution, people, as one of the primary reasons, had been making there way to the American colonies for religious freedom.  And this religious freedom that they sought was not to be free from religion (to escape or remove religion from their lives), but to believe in the manner that moved their conscious (to be able to practice or freely and openly express their faith without persecution).  The tale of the pilgrim’s Mayflower journey and the establishment of the Massachusetts Bay colony alone bespeaks this factual situation, never minding we have a state called “Maryland” originally as a refuge for Catholics and large enclaves of “Pennsylvania Dutch” which come from German extraction to this day.  The crux of the issue was that Europe, the ancestral home of the American Founding generation, had been ravaged by wars of religion since time immemorial, and especially since 1517 when the Protestant Reformation caused a tectonic shift in the religious landscape unleashing hellish pogroms and retributions that made all past strife seem passive in comparison.  Simply put, and to move forward apace, the Founder’s did not want to have the same strife characterize their new nation.  Thus, they didn’t want the foundation for public life centered on one creed, one way of believing, and knew that the already pluralistic society in the colonies wouldn’t tolerate such religious conformity in any event.  But they also recognized there needed to be a basis from which morality could derive and that a just society could exist; meaning they had to allow for each person to find that through their own manner.

So in looking at a late 18^th century definition of religion, in the context of a founding document for a new nation in their context, it is clear that the best definition of “religion” in the first amendment most closely hews to “a specific fundamental set of beliefs and practices generally agreed upon by a number of persons or sects: the Christian religion; the Buddhist religion” and “the body of persons adhering to a particular set of beliefs and practices: a world council of religions.”[v]  If you will, this is talking about “established religion”.  Thus, as it is classically understood, the Free Exercise and Establishment Clauses pertain to enabling groups and individuals to practice their commonly held beliefs openly in society without government endorsement or hindrance in doing so.  It recognizes as its core underlying principle, that people have beliefs (and such beliefs certainly included a belief that there is nothing to believe in), and these should be fully allowed to be broadcast in the public square.  It also says that the public square, being a place that government is in charge of maintaining and regulating, cannot become a camp site for one sect or another nor can government play referee on what group can or can’t be able to make an expression and exercise of its beliefs.  With this said, we must now turn to the fact that it has been a long time since we all gathered at a public square to hear the hourly update from the town crier.

If nothing else, it is clear that our phraseology and language has changed in the over two centuries of time since the ratification of the First Amendment.  So a word like “religion” has been reshaped by time and our context.  As seen in the spectrum of the definitions above (and beyond from other sources and references), this term, this word has expanded and often developed idioms of its own.[vi]  And, as we look to the First Amendment, its meaning has also been morphed and changed for how we think of “religion” in our public life.  None was or is more striking to me, in this discussion, than the change in understanding of “religion” than the SCOTUS decision in Engel v. Vitale where Justice Black wrote that “it is no part of the official business of government to compose official prayers for any group of American people to recite as part of a religious program carried out by the Government.”[vii]  This strongly held decision (6-1) by the SCOTUS shows that the word “religion” no longer was simply defined as one sect or group but a body of expression made.  And no longer was the anti-establishment provision being used to protect from having the Catholic faith (or any other you can name) adopted as the creed all American’s were obligated to follow, but instead any measure that the state might take to define or otherwise introduce an expression or practice of religion was seen as an establishment of “religion”.  Now I must admit that I don’t disagree with the SCOTUS decision that teachers (agents of the state) leading a prayer or compelling the recitation of a prayer that was drawn up (even as innocuous as the prayer was in the case that is cited) is not appropriate, and while not “establishing religion”, in my mind, does create a state sponsorship of belief.  That said, what has now come to the fore as a meaning for “religion” is closer to “a set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature, and purpose of the universe, especially when considered as the creation of a superhuman agency or agencies, usually involving devotional and ritual observances, and often containing a moral code governing the conduct of human affairs.”[viii]  This much wider definition of religion, is partially why I reject the notion of a “freedom from religion”.

While I must applaud the author of the article “Is atheism winning the culture war?” for his apologetics of atheism (and largely support his discussion of how atheism needs to get its message out freely), I can’t subscribe to a core belief that we as American’s have a right to push out of the public square any ideas, any discourse, because we don’t like it.  For my part, it is not about “winning” or “losing” a “culture war”.  What the core of our American freedoms are about, is that the battle of ideas about who we are, where we go, and how our society is shaped needs to be a raw, open, and frankly resolved debate that leaves out nothing in our deliberations.  I actually think that atheism (and its related isms of rationalism, humanism, and so forth) is getting quite a bit of its due in society today (in schools, the open willingness to hear such voices, and not to mention their place in a column like “On Faith” in a major media outlet).  I am glad for it, as those voices must be heard.  But so too with those that profess faith and religious based beliefs.  At its core, however, it matters not if Mr. Silverman wishes that young people divorce morality from “religion”, because if one asks “from where do morals derive?”, one circles back historically and philosophically that morals have their derivation in a sense of belief, the core of what the definition of religion is (and we don't get to choose the commonly held definitions of the words we choose).  And what concerns me with the notion of creating a “freedom from religion” is that what is being created is accepted ignorance of a whole body of thought that has much to say about morals, ethics, and social norms that have been at the foundation of societies and social structures since civilization began.

And going back to definitions for a moment, this concern comes rightly out of the fact that the understanding of the amendment at its beginning to now has changed.  No longer is it about avoiding the establishment of one creed on the part of the government, it is avoiding having to hear about or exposure to any belief in “personal, judging gods.”[ix]  We have to accept that our language has changed and been shaped by our present context, and as such arguing for a “freedom from religion” no longer means simply avoiding compulsion into becoming Episcopalian, it means expunging religion from our public life.  To me, such a premise goes well beyond the Establishment Clause and simply searches to undermine the Free Exercise clause (e.g. “its fine to practice your religion so long as you: never speak of it publicly, don’t have my children get exposed to it in any part of their education or public places, and you do it only in your own space, at your own time, and hide it from all of us through your own expense (even though you pay taxes into a government just like everyone else)).  At its core this takes aim to remove from us as a people any centering morality, any centering ethic for how our society is to run and operate.  I am clearly taking this a bit to an extreme, and I am not certain that this author is trying to achieve this total end.  That said, this is the inevitable conclusion of this line of thinking and goal of having a “freedom from religion”.  As a student of history I take the following words of Edward Gibbon as operative to this point as a word of warning in regards to morality, civic virtue and moderation:

"[T]he decline of Rome was the natural and inevitable effect of immoderate greatness. Prosperity ripened the principle of decay; the causes of destruction multiplied with the extent of conquest; and as soon as time or accident had removed the artificial supports, the stupendous fabric yielded to the pressure of its own weight.”[x]

To conclude, I am not trying to say that I want atheism to be blocked from its pulpit in the public space, rather the opposite.  My thesis is that America never has and never should have a value of a “freedom from religion”.  Theists and Atheists alike should be and are entitled to their beliefs and the expression of them without endorsement or hindrance from the government.  Weakness is shown in either side’s intent and character when they choose to focus on eradicating the other’s right to speak and express themselves instead of enabling their counterpart the right to present their case nakedness of the public square and public criticism, writ large.  This means that we have to tolerate and accept that we cannot have freedom from religion, especially as we now define and understand religion, any more than we can have freedom from speech or from the press or from any positive right we have been given, not merely in the constitution, but in natural law.  Denial of the right of free expression, or free exercise that does not derive from the need to protect said exercise or expression for all/others, is against the core of our societal fabric.  Further, it is an American value that we honor and respect not only each other and our beliefs, but also the underlying construct of how we are able to work together as a society to protect these same freedoms for ourselves and our progeny.

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[i] US Constitution, adopted 15 December 1791, retrieved from http://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/first_amendment, on 2 November 2013

[ii] Definition as found on Dictionary.com, http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/religion?s=t retrieved on 2 November 2013

[iii] Silverman, Herb, “Is atheism winning the culture war?” Washington Post, On Faith, 23 October 2013

[iv] Barnes, Robert, “Supreme Court to hear new case on religion in public life”, Washington Post, 1 November 2013

[v] Definition number 2 as found on Dictionary.com, http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/religion?s=t retrieved on 2 November 2013

[vi] See the Dictionary.com website, “get religion” being one of many such idioms.

[vii] “Establishment Clause”, under the section called “School-sanctioned prayer in public schools”, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Establishment_Clause, retrieved on 2 November 2013

[viii] Definition number 1 as found on Dictionary.com, http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/religion?s=t retrieved on 2 November 2013

[ix] Silverman, Herb, “Is atheism winning the culture war?” Washington Post, On Faith, 23 October 2013

[x] Gibbon, Edward, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Chapter 38.