For one of my writing
projects, I found myself needing to learn more about religious liberty and its
consequences. Researching on the
internet, I found there was a treasure trove of excellent thinking on the topic
and I started to collect quotes that I found particularly edifying. I wanted to share the quotes because I
feel they give clearer understanding of the foundations of religious liberty,
its privileges and limits—yes, it has limits—and the wide variety of benefits
that come out of it (some of which are enjoyed by agnostics and atheists as
free-riders!) I think it will give
us a better grasp of what’s at stake in conflicts over religious freedom in our
own culture and in other cultures so that we will able to articulate logically and civilly
our principles and defend our rights if/when we find ourselves involved in those conflicts. This isn’t meant to be fear-mongering
or alarming, just rational from a faithful perspective.
At the end, I will list some
scripture references from the Book of Mormon that have bearing on religious
liberty, both of good instances and misuses of it.
Quotations
“Religious freedom only makes
entire sense as a social and constitutional arrangement on the supposition that
God exists (or very likely exists); that God makes claims on the loyalty and
conduct of human beings; and that such claims, rightly perceived and
understood, are prior to, and superior to, the claims of any human authority.
Simply put: God’s commands – God’s will, God’s purposes– rightfully trump
man’s. Freedom of religion, understood as a human legal right, is government’s
recognition of the priority and superiority of God’s true commands over
anything the State requires or forbids.
That is the essence of
religious liberty, understood as a natural law right. So understood, it is not
a right that human authorities confer on those whom they rule – a
dispensation. That would be, subtly and ironically, inconsistent with the very
liberty the State purports to confer. It would be an assertion, at some level,
of the priority and supremacy of the State and not God: the
State, in its beneficence, grants the exercise of religion – the strivings of
individuals and groups to discern and fulfill their duties to God, in good
faith, as they understand them – a certain amount of leeway. But the nature and
extent of such freedom is, on such a view, ultimately for the State to judge.
The
state-conferred-dispensation view, which I think is the dominant view today, is
not really religious liberty, in the sense of freedom of religious
exercise from ultimate State control. It is a cipher, or shadow, or parody of
religious liberty. At bottom, what justifies religious liberty – the only thing
that makes it at all sensible as a liberty distinct from other liberties – is
some shared sense that true religious obligation is more important than
civil obligation and that, consequently, civil society must recognize this
truth. Religious liberty is the legal duty of civil society to defer to the
plausibly true free exercise of genuine religious faith.
That is the only conception
that can fully justify the idea of constitutional protection of “free exercise”
of religion – protection of freedom of religious conduct in opposition to the
State’s typical commands. The same premises support a related aspect of
religious freedom (embodied in the Establishment Clause of the First
Amendment): Because God’s commands, rightly perceived, trump the State’s commands,
it makes no sense to say that the State can determine what God’s commands are
and whether an individual or group has rightly perceived them. The State may
not in this respect, or any other, set itself up as the arbiter of religious
truth and enforce its determinations as law. The State is presumptively
incompetent authoritatively to determine what God does or does not command. At
least, that must be the operating premise if the right of religious freedom is
not to be a chimera. And even if that premise must give way in clear, or
extreme, cases – because surely there are some claims individuals make about
God’s commands that are simply intolerably and irredeemably false – a strong
presumption of state incompetence needs to be the starting point for any coherent
system of religious freedom from state control or interference. Thus, it is
incompatible with religious liberty for the state to “establish” an official
religion or in any fashion prescribe, and then coerce, religious exercise.
Significantly, this is not
because we deny the possibility that religious truth exists. Rather, the
underlying theory of why we protect religious liberty is that such a thing as
religious truth does exist. We value freedom for religion because
we rightly prioritize true religion over the State’s commands. We simply
recognize the possibility of human error, and especially of governmental error,
in matters of religion and so we do not trust the State to tell us the proper
way to know, worship, and serve God. We value freedom for religion
precisely because, if society gets these things wrong (as experience tells us
it is quite likely to do) such errors, where backed by the power of the State,
will tend to endanger religious truth. Error likes to stamp out truth if it has
power to do so. And error is probable. Moreover, even if it were the case that
society or the State did know religious truth, we would rightly
question, on theological as well as practical grounds, the value and propriety
of coercion in matters of religious conviction. True faith does not result from
coercion, or so we are inclined to believe, often as a matter of religious
faith.
Thus we protect the free
exercise of religion for all (or as many as possible) and prohibit the
establishment of any, not because of skepticism about the possibility of
religious truth but because of the conviction that there is such a possibility
as religious truth and because of agreement that religious truth is more
important than anything else. We are skeptical not about truth, but about human
perceptions of it and especially about State authority to discern or prescribe
it.
My thesis is that this is, in
its essence, the theory underlying and justifying the Religion Clauses of the
First Amendment and that they should be read, understood, and applied in this
light. The First Amendment’s religious liberty provisions make no sense except
on the supposition that God exists – that such a thing as religious truth
exists and that the commands of true religious faith are real and superior
to the commands of civil society. The framing generation, I submit,
generally shared the supposition that God exists and generally shared this
understanding of what religious liberty is for. (They disagreed, widely
and not always cheerfully, about the nature and character of God, the manner
and content of his revelation, and resulting human obligations and right
conduct; but that is part of why that generation came to agree on the idea of
religious freedom.)
The language of the Religion
Clauses appears to reflect such an understanding – that is, the First
Amendment’s terms seem to reflect quite well the essentially religious premises
underlying any serious commitment to the idea of religious liberty. The Free
Exercise Clause is properly understood as conferring broad substantive immunity
from government laws or regulations that would operate so as to prohibit
sincere religious belief and exercise. As long as a claimed religious practice
is truly religious, not pretextual, and has any plausible claim to
religious truth – that is, as long as the claimed religious right is not
contrary to the clear, universal moral command of God, resulting in serious
harms outside the truly consenting, sincerely confessing community of faith –
the State’s rule must yield in the specific instance. The Establishment Clause
is properly understood as barring government from compelling religious belief
or exercise or punishing failure to adhere to a state-prescribed religious
orthodoxy. It protects the free non-exercise of religion, just as the
Free Exercise Clause protects its free exercise. The two clauses protect the
same central liberty, from two slightly different directions: the Establishment
Clause forbids government prescription of religious exercise; the Free Exercise
Clause forbids government proscription of religious exercise.1
I began by saying that religious liberty only makes entire sense
on the basis of these essentially religious premises about the existence of God
and the priority of God’s commands. It is possible to craft a narrower, more
crabbed conception of religious liberty on different, more-or-less “secular”
premises. But such conceptions, while in some respects more intuitively
appealing to the modern liberal mind, have less explanatory power both in terms
of why we would have – why the framing generation would have insisted
upon – a specific First Amendment protection for the free exercise of religion
and in terms of what that provision actually says. Secular theories of
religious liberty are weaker theories and harder to defend on principle.”
(See more of the above PDF
for a fabulous set of arguments, of which the above quote is only an
introduction)
“Some religious acts, by
individuals or communities, represent a public pursuit of religious obligation,
or witness of truth claims, in civil society: for example, the establishment of
religious hospitals, schools and colleges, homes for the aged, soup kitchens,
or immigration services. Some carry religious actors into political discourse
and competition, forming religion-based political parties, or making
religion-based political arguments for or against laws and policies. Religious
freedom is the civil right of both individuals and communities to perform these
acts on the basis of full equality under the law….
First, note that religious
freedom as here defined includes other fundamental freedoms. They are integral
elements of religious freedom. In pursuing the religious quest, religious
actors exercise freedom of belief or non-belief, expression, assembly, and
association. They must enjoy full equality under the law, and freedom from
persecution and unjust violence….
America's founding
generation identified religious freedom as "the first freedom"
because they saw it, in effect, as a precondition for the other freedoms. James
Madison wrote that each of us has rights that flow from the duty we owe God.
“This duty is precedent, both in order of time and degree of obligation, to the
claims of Civil Society. Before any man can be considered as a member of Civil
Society, he must be considered as a subject of the Governour of the
Universe."
Further, Madison insisted
that if men were to fulfill their obligation to God they must have freedom --
especially freedom from the coercive powers of the state. “The Duty which we
owe our Creator, and the manner of our discharging it, can be governed only by
Reason and Conviction, not by Compulsion or Violence; and therefore all men are
equally entitled to the full and free exercise of it according to the dictates
of conscience, unpunished and unrestrained by the Magistrate. . . .”
….
As George Washington
expressed the point in his final farewell address: "Of all the
dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and
morality are the indispensable supports."
A second example from
contemporary history: political scientist Samuel Huntington wrote that the third wave of
democratization, which began in the 1970s and extended into the 1990s, was
dominated by Catholic nations, and a key element of their transition to
democracy was the Church’s embrace -- during the Second Vatican Council -- of religious liberty for all.
It appears that religious
freedom may have had a galvanizing effect. In nations like Poland, Spain, Chile,
and the Philippines, other freedoms had existed to one degree or another – a
relatively free press, some economic freedoms, or limited forms of
associational freedom. But until religious liberty became part of an
interlocking web of key freedoms, the others seem to have been insufficient to
trigger either a transition to democracy or its consolidation.
Why might this be the case?
Because any state that protects religious liberty thereby limits itself.
Religious liberty empowers religious actors both to perform services that might
otherwise be carried out by the state, and to adhere to an authority beyond the
state. For this very reason, authoritarian governments might understandably
permit some secular assembly and speech, while banning or restricting religious
assembly and speech. Such has been a pattern throughout history - from Stalin,
Mao and Hitler, to Mexico's Plutarco Calles and Syria's Bashar Assad.
By the same token, empirical studies are confirming a
strong relationship between religious freedom and the other freedoms that
contribute to the longevity of democracy. The work of sociologists Brian Grim
and Roger Finke, for example, shows high statistical correlations between
religious liberty and the presence of the other fundamental freedoms that
ensure the longevity of democracy, including civil and political liberty,
freedom of the press, and economic freedom. Religious freedom is also highly associated
with overall human development, and the absence of violent religious extremism.
As Grim notes, correlation does not prove causation. He concludes however, that "advanced
statistical tests suggest that there is indeed a critical independent
contribution that religious freedom is making" to the other freedoms….
But there appears to be
something distinctive about religious freedom, something close to what the
American Founders meant when they declared it the "first freedom."
Religion bears on the most fundamental and powerful questions that most human
beings feel compelled to answer, such as, "why do I exist and what is my
destiny? Given my understanding of transcendent reality, what must I do to live
a good life?” The religious questions, in other words, are not instrumental.
They arise naturally and address ultimate things, with an inherent power that
seems universal and timeless. The religious questions, in short, beckon us all.
It is unsurprising then,
that the answers we derive from the religious questions shape thought and
compel action, both individually and in association with others. As such, the
questions and the answers inevitably bear on the institutions of civil society
and the norms of political life….
Religious freedom is the sine qua non of living freely. You may
allow me to vote, own property, and associate freely in the public square in
every other way. But if you do not permit me to speak and to act on those
beliefs about ultimate reality that define who I am and why I am on this earth,
then the other freedoms mean little. In a very real sense, then, all human
freedoms depend on the freedom of religion."
“The state has a certain
stake in individuals’ consciences: this is part of the point of legislation,
which should be both a reflection and a guide for public conscience.
These first two points
intersect in religion’s vital role of speaking truth to power.
Religion should not hold
temporal power; that’s a relationship that always goes to seed. Religion does
its best public policy work by standing in tension with the state, and
likewise, the state does its best work in tension with religion. The state
needs a contrary voice to keep it in good conscience. Of all possible such
voices, religion has the greatest potential to stand in an independent
position, not beholden to government, and not dependent on government for its
ethics, principles, and values.
The state will not always
appreciate a contrary voice. Conscience can be quite a bother to individuals;
why not also to the government? And so the state will often be tempted to still
that voice by limiting religious expression, mandating that it remain private,
dismissing it as “belief,” and otherwise sweeping it aside. To allow the state
to succeed in that, however, would be to promote the state’s governing with a
seared conscience. It would be disastrous to more freedoms than just religion.
Other freedoms work
hand-in-hand with religious liberty, including freedom of speech, assembly,
voting, and others. These all work together to help ensure limits on the state’s power. Still there is
no other liberty, no freedom-of-something-or-other, that can accomplish the
same public good that freedom of religion can.”
(Tom Gilson, “Three Reasons
Freedom of Religion Matters” Thinking Christian. July 1, 2013.
“Moreover, we can draw on an
experience unavailable to the authors of our religious liberty, namely 200
years of American history. The bold experiment in separation has, on the whole,
succeeded remarkably well. It has kept America free of religious wars,
persecution and established intolerance. It has enabled us, with spasms of
regression, to overcome prejudices entrenched for centuries and to be increasingly
humane to those whose faiths seem to us odd or even offensive. It has fostered
an ethos according to which most Americans see religion as a beneficent
contributor to our nation’s social welfare. And it has largely benefited the
life of the faiths themselves.
Forced to rely on persuasion
and example rather than on government support, American religions exhibit a
vitality and personal significance unmatched in most other societies. American
religion, in my estimation, has weathered Western civilization’s turn to
secularity comparatively well, and that, I think, is largely because it has
needed to stand on its own.
Liberals have already
valuably explored the spiritual virtues of human freedom and creativity. They
now need to make plain why their demythologization of sin and commandment does
not eventually lead to a destructive anarchy. In a time when freedom is
regularly abused, what limits do they place on the exercise of the individual
will? What do they consider an irresponsible, irreligious exercise of personal
autonomy, and how do they propose to teach and exemplify their doctrine of
religious constraint?
Conservatives have tellingly
demonstrated the spiritual fruits of faithfulness to God’s expressed will. They
now need to explain, why a doctrine of inerrancy is not likely to lead to the
sinfulness and profanation of fanaticism. What value does their understanding
of God’s revelation place upon democracy? What sort of freedom is appropriate
in their midst and how able are they to grant full dignity to people who hold
different beliefs?
Few theological tasks could
be as critical for our time as these: teaching us how, while loving freedom, to
mandate high standards of behavior; and how, while maintaining God’s truth, to
accommodate variety and dissent. Freedom of religion is not a condition
achieved once and for all by a statute composed in Virginia, or by-statements
recorded in the Constitution. It is today what it has always been: an
incomparable American adventure, a courageous effort to solve in life what
cannot be reconciled in theory."
(Eugene B. Borowitz, “Between
Anarchy and Fanaticism: Religious Freedom’s Challenge”
"The problems are not simple,
and over the years the United States Supreme Court, which has the ultimate
responsibility of interpreting the meaning of the lofty and general provisions
of the Constitution, has struggled to identify principles that can guide its
decisions when government action is claimed to violate someone’s free exercise
of religion. As would be expected, most of the battles over the extent of
religious freedom have involved government efforts to impose upon the practices
of small groups like Mormons. Not surprisingly, government officials sometimes
seem more tolerant toward the religious practices of large groups of voters….
Religious belief is obviously protected against
government action. The practice of
that belief must have some limits, as I suggested earlier. But unless the
guarantee of free exercise of religion gives a religious actor greater
protection against government prohibitions than are already guaranteed to all
actors by other provisions of the constitution (like freedom of speech), what
is the special value of religious
freedom? Surely the First Amendment guarantee of free exercise of religion was intended to grant more
freedom to religious action than to other kinds of action. Treating actions
based on religious belief the same as actions based on other systems of belief
should not be enough to satisfy the special place of religion in the United
States Constitution….
Even today, leaders in all
too many nations use state power to repress religious believers.
The greatest infringements
of religious freedom occur when the exercise of religion collides with other
powerful forces in society. Among the most threatening collisions in the United
States today are (1) the rising strength of those who seek to silence religious
voices in public debates, and (2) perceived conflicts between religious freedom
and the popular appeal of newly alleged civil rights….
[A]theism’s spokesmen are aggressive, as recent publications
show.[ix]
As noted by John A. Howard of the Howard Center for Family, Religion, and
Society, these voices “have developed great skills in demonizing those who
disagree with them, turning their opponents into objects of fear, hatred and
scorn.”[x]….
As Richard John Neuhaus said
many years ago, “In a democracy that is free and robust, an opinion is no more
disqualified for being ‘religious’ than for being atheistic, or psychoanalytic,
or Marxist, or just plain dumb.”[xiii]….
We must also insist on this
companion condition of democratic government: when churches and their members
or any other group act or speak out on public issues, win or lose, they have a
right to expect freedom from retaliation.
Along with many others, we
were disappointed with what we experienced in the aftermath of California’s adoption
of Proposition 8, including vandalism of church facilities and harassment of
church members by firings and boycotts of member businesses and by retaliation
against donors. Mormons were the targets of most of this, but it also hit other
churches in the pro-8 coalition and other persons who could be identified as
supporters. Fortunately, some recognized such retaliation for what it was. A
full-page ad in the New York Times
branded this “violence and intimidation” against religious organizations and
individual believers “simply because they supported Proposition 8 [as] an
outrage that must stop.” [xv]….
religious persons will often
be most persuasive in political discourse by framing arguments and positions in
ways that are respectful of those who do not share their religious beliefs and
that contribute to the reasoned discussion and compromise that is essential in
a pluralistic society….
“The attempt to ground respect
for equality on a purely secular basis ignores the vital contribution by
Christianity to its spread. It is folly to believe that it could survive
without the continuing aid of religious belief.”
(“Transcript of Elder Dallin
H.. Oaks Speech on Religious Freedom” 13 Oct 2009, Newsroom of The Church of
Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
“No government can exist in peace,
except such laws are framed and held inviolate as will secure to each
individual the free exercise of conscience” (D&C 134:2). Religious conscience is
grounded in one’s belief in being accountable to God for conduct. The effort of
secularists and governments to coerce conduct in conflict with religious
conscience leads to social disunity and is a primary reason that religious
liberty is essential for civil peace.
The role of religion in
blessing a secular society was set forth succinctly by Alexis De Tocqueville in
his classic Democracy in America. He stated, “The greatest advantage of
religion is to inspire … principles. There is no religion which does not place the
object of man’s desires above and beyond the treasure of earth, and which does
not naturally raise his soul to regions far above those of the senses. Nor is
there any which does not impose on man some duties toward his kind, and thus
draw him at times from the contemplation of himself.”
(Quentin L. Cook. “Restoring
Morality and Religious Freedom” Ensight, Sept 2012
"The right to freedom of
religion is under renewed and, in some cases, increasing assault in many
countries around the world. More than one-half of the world's population lives
under regimes that severely restrict or prohibit the freedom of their citizens
to study, believe, observe, and freely practice the religious faith of their
choice. Religious believers and communities suffer both government-sponsored
and government-tolerated violations of their rights to religious freedom. Among
the many forms of such violations are state-sponsored slander campaigns,
confiscations of property, surveillance by security police, including by
special divisions of ``religious police'', severe prohibitions against
construction and repair of places of worship, denial of the right to assemble
and relegation of religious communities to illegal status through arbitrary
registration laws, prohibitions against the pursuit of education or public
office, and prohibitions against publishing, distributing, or possessing
religious literature and materials.
(5) Even more abhorrent,
religious believers in many countries face such severe and violent forms of
religious persecution as detention, torture, beatings, forced marriage, rape,
imprisonment, enslavement, mass resettlement, and death merely for the peaceful
belief in, change of or practice of their faith. In many countries, religious
believers are forced to meet secretly, and religious leaders are targeted by
national security forces and hostile mobs."
"Religious
freedom can be a bulwark against violent extremism. According to research by
the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, there is a correlation between
countries that impose more severe and inappropriate government restrictions on
religious freedom and those more prone to sectarian violence. Governments that
repress freedom of religion and freedom of expression typically create a
climate of intolerance and impunity that emboldens those who foment hatred and
violence within society. Government policy that denies citizens the freedom to
discuss, debate, practice, and pass on their faith as they see fit also
undercuts society’s ability to counter and combat the biased and warped
interpretations of religion that violent extremists propagate. Societal
intolerance increased in many regions during 2012….
In
many parts of the world, government officials, no matter how serious the
offense, often acted with impunity, abusing individuals for holding or
expressing their beliefs without being called to account by courts or
government authorities. Governments exacerbated religious tensions within
society through discriminatory laws and rhetoric, fomenting violence, fostering
a climate of impunity, and failing to ensure the rule of law. In several
instances of communal attacks on members of religious minorities and their
property, police reportedly arrested the victims of such attacks, and NGOs
alleged that there were instances in which police protected the attackers
rather than the victims. As a result, government officials were not the only
ones to commit abuses with impunity. Impunity for actions committed by
individuals and groups within society was often a corollary of government
impunity."
“Where you find that
religious freedoms are being abused, you find people are being persecuted for
lots of other things, as well.”
"Regimes
that fear religion as an alternate source of authority imprison members of
religious communities they view as unwelcome competitors. These authoritarian
governments crack down on members of civil society that dare to
challenge the status quo, including members of religious minority and majority
communities, through repressive legal systems and laws and also brute force.
The challenges raised by the relative ease of communication in the Internet age
further threaten their grip on power.
Government
inaction to prevent or punish religious freedom violations coupled with efforts
to sponsor violent ideologies is a proven recipe for human rights abuses.
Instead of enforcing the law and protecting vulnerable populations, an
increasing number of countries are turning a blind eye to repression, thereby
creating climates of impunity. Just look at Nigeria and Pakistan to see what
happens when authorities do not enforce the law: violence and death result.
Hate-filled ideologies add fuel to this fire. For example, there continue to be
reports that funding originating in Saudi Arabia is used globally to finance
religious schools, mosques, hate literature, and other activities that support
religious intolerance and, in some cases, violence toward non-Muslims and
disfavored Muslims."
(“Testimony of Dr. Robert P.
George before the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission
on
Defending Freedoms :Highlighting the
Plight of Prisoners of Conscience around the World”
http://www.uscirf.gov/sites/default/files/resources/Testimony%20--%20FINAL%20Defending%20Freedoms%20Projectrev2%20Hearing%20Jan%2016%20Testimony.pdf)
"Countries designated by the
U.S. State Department as “countries of particular concern” because they
restrict religious freedom (such as North Korea, Iran, and Burma) suffer in
other ways as well. They also tend to have the least economic liberty—and some
of the worst economic outcomes.
On the other hand,
governments that respect religious liberty tend to respect other freedoms as
well. Religious freedom is strongly related to political liberty, economic
freedom, and prosperity. As one researcher of international religious liberty
notes, “[W]herever religious freedom is high, there tends to be fewer incidents
of armed conflict, better health outcomes, higher levels of earned income, and
better educational opportunities for women.”
(Jennifer A. Marshall. “Why
Does Religious Freedom Matter?” The Heritage Foundation. Dec 20, 2010.
"Europe, with its history of
warfare and fratricide among religions since the time of the Reformation,
continues to struggle with the question of how to treat new sects and minority
religions. Solutions range from laws allowing the “liquidation” of sects in France, to banning religious leaders from entering several
countries, to government commissions finding that the new groups do not, after
all, pose a real threat. The question of dealing with the “sects” is liable to
play a significant role in the evolution of a unified European identity, as
will the question of favoring certain churches over others—-such as the
Catholic and Lutheran churches in Germany or the Orthodox Church in eastern
Europe….
Muslim countries continue to take exception to international
standards regarding religious freedom. Imprisonment, confiscation of property,
and even executions still take place for the crimes of blasphemy and apostasy in several Muslim nations. The genocide of Christian and
native-religious tribal groups in southern Sudan resulted at least partly from a government policy to
Islamize the region. In some countries, minority religions are left unprotected
from Muslim fanatics who take literally the teaching that “infidels” may be
killed and their daughters forced to became second or third wives of Muslim
men. Fundamentalist movements such as the Taliban and al Qaeda threaten to
impose even stricter Islamic regimes with harsh punishments against infidels
and apostates."
“Freedom of Religion”, New
World Encyclopedia.
"In all areas of liberty,
including religious liberty, our fundamental freedoms are not without limits.
Perversely, such limits may be an essential element in the maintenance of the
freedom itself. Freedom of speech is limited by our laws against libel and
slander, by the responsibility not to incite to violence or do public harm,
and by limits on the publication and dissemination of material that offends
the public decency. The children of the 1960s--I'm one of them--perhaps didn't
learn the lessons of these limits very well, but they are there nonetheless,
and absolutely essential to the maintenance of our society. Similarly, we have
not learned very well the limits of religious liberty, but there are, and must
be, such limits.
We need to rearticulate what
they are, and reinforce them both domestically and in our foreign relations.
I'll suggest just a few:
I've already mentioned
murder and violence. We cannot accept invocation or incitement to violence, in
the name of religion or any other factor.
We cannot support forced
conversion, or external sanctions for apostasy.
We need to oppose establishmentarianism,
as our Constitution insists. We must promote religious freedom.
We must insist on religious
freedom as a freedom to be enjoyed by individuals rather than, or in addition
to, groups.
These concepts are not easy.
I've called them limits on freedom, and they are, but each of them in reality
is a limit on the ability of a religion to impose itself on others as an
orthodoxy. So although they are limits on freedom, they are at the same time
vital underpinnings and necessary conditions of a system in which freedom can
be maintained.
Every one of the principles
is going to put us in conflict as a society with at least parts of Islam or
Islamic thinking. We need the vocabulary and the courage to prevail in that
conflict as a war of ideas. The alternative is a war of bullets….
It allows every religious
group to make its truth claims in the public square and to compete with others
within the kinds of limits that Terry was talking about.
I think the primary limit is
no coercion: no private or government coercion that privileges membership in
your religious tradition, no coercion to prevent exit or deny entry, no use of
coercion to require people to accept revealed truths that are not subject to
public reason, using the Rawlsian phrase there. In other words, you can't have
a law that requires people to believe in the Trinity, like South Carolina did
in its constitution at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries. But you can
have people who openly talk about the Trinity or the Qur'an. I hope that's getting
to the issue you were talking about.
….
But there is something
missing here, and it involves religious freedom for majority Muslim
communities. Afghanistan, which is an American-brokered democracy, has a
magnificent constitution, for the most part, and a functioning democratic
government. But it doesn't have religious freedom for majority Muslims, let
alone the minorities, because they cannot speak out about Islam. They cannot
write articles or give speeches and say that the Qur'an doesn't really require
us to execute people for apostasy. People who do that get charged with
blasphemy. This is the absence of religious freedom, but we don't think of it
in that way.
When somebody gets charged
with blasphemy in Afghanistan, we work behind the scenes to get them sprung.
Two years ago Abdul Rahman was charged with apostasy. He was certainly guilty;
he had apostasized from Islam and had become a Christian. Now he was going to
be executed in this Islamic democracy with a constitution that talks about human
dignity. We responded by putting pressure on the government to let this guy go.
He fled for his life, and we declared a victory for religious freedom. But it
wasn't a victory, it was a defeat for the long-term goal of advancing religious
freedom as a basis for stable democracy.
We need to work to give
majority Muslims the opportunity to discuss their own religion. So that, I
think, is a critical issue concerning religious violence and the defeat of
Islamist extremism. There are Muslims who write about this, there are Muslims
who want to express themselves on this subject, but they're afraid to do so
and we're not giving them enough help."
(Thomas Farr, Terry Miller. “Diplomacy in an Age of Faith: How Failing
to Understand the Role of Religion Hinders America's Purposes in the World” .
The Heritage Foundation. Dec 8, 2010
This habit of reconciling
civil and religious authorities as well as the process of harmonizing the
interests of competing religious groups helped to fortify the discipline of
self-government. Meanwhile, the moral authority exercised by religious
congregations, family, and other private associations helps to maintain limited
government. The American Founders frequently stated that virtue and religion
are essential to maintaining a free society because they preserve "the
moral conditions of freedom."
Faith-Based Diplomacy. The U.S. should encourage and build on
"faith-based diplomacy." This is a type of Track II diplomacy
conducted by non-officials. It combines insights from religious faith with the
practice of international relations.[16]
Pope John Paul II is the preeminent example of a "faith-based
diplomat," but many other religious believers would also qualify. This
sort of unofficial diplomat has moral authority and engages in conflict
resolution by appealing to transcendent spiritual resources, including sacred
texts and prayer. Such diplomacy appeals to a religious tradition's own tenets,
rather than trying to minimize deep and irreconcilable differences among faith
traditions.
For example, the
International Center for Religion and Diplomacy is helping to reform Pakistani
madrasas.[17]
The Institute for American Values is sponsoring an Islam-West series of
conversations between scholars and religious figures from both parts of the
world.[18]
"While most American
and European foreign-policy elites may hold a secular worldview, much of the
rest of the world lives in one of the great religious traditions," writes
Andrew Natsios, former director of the U.S. Agency for International
Development (USAID). By contrast, faith-based organizations "have much
more in common with the rest of the world and thus may understand ethnic and
religious conflicts, political movements driven by religious devotion, and the
way in which the religious mind functions, better than secularized
foreign-policy practitioners."
(Jennifer A. Marshall.
“Religious Liberty in America: An Idea Worth Sharing Through Public Diplomacy”
The Heritage Foundation. Jan 15, 2009.
“When and how might
religious freedom shape wider economic and social development? The scholarly
literature suggests that religious freedom may promote economic development
under some conditions through at least five causal pathways. In some of the
pathways, which are enumerated below, there is a fairly direct relationship
between religious freedom, on one hand, and economic freedom and
prosperity, on the other. In others, there is an indirect relationship, which
runs through a number of intervening variables, mechanisms, and processes.
(a)The Ideas Pathway: One way religious freedom fosters societal
flourishing in its economic dimensions is the mechanism of religious ideas.
Religious freedom makes it possible for religious ideas that promote economic
development (as well as social and political development) to take hold and
shape society for the better.
One form of this mechanism
is relatively direct. Religious liberty allows various religious ideas to be
propagated in society. To the extent that religious liberty permits certain
religious ideas, values, or norms conducive to economic growth and political
freedom to flourish, economic development and political democracy are likely to
ensue. No work in the social science canon better represents the link between
religious ideas and economic outcomes than Max Weber’s The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of
Capitalism (1992 [1904/1905]). A Calvinist ethical code that downplays
consumption in favor of self-discipline and thrift allowed financial capital to
pool in places heavily influenced by this theology, most notably northern
Europe. A variant of the Calvinist doctrine of predestination argued that those
favored by God would be favored in the present time with worldly success, thus
providing people an incentive to work hard as a means of demonstrating they
were among the elect. Moreover, according to eminent British historian H. R.
Trevor Roper, a Calvinist ethos was most able to flourish in areas of northern
Europe such as the Dutch Republic and England, which enjoyed higher levels of
religious toleration (Trevor-Roper 1967). Environments of relative religious
openness allowed the economically beneficial ideas of Calvinism to spread and
exercise a significant societal influence.
However, does not religious
liberty make it possible for all kinds of ideas to persist and spread and
therefore potentially undermine societal flourishing? In one sense, yes. But
the point is that it is only an environment of full religious security or full
religious liberty that creates the kind of context in which a wide variety of
religious ideas can be tried and tested for their societal consequences. Over
the long run, the open and competitive social environment created by religious
freedom enables ideas that are growth promoting and freedom promoting to be
recognized and accepted as conducive to societal flourishing. For example, according to
Robert Woodberry’s research on religious competition between Protestant
missionaries and other religious communities over the last two hundred years in
Asia, Africa, and Latin America, many non-Protestant groups over time learned
to recognize some Protestant beliefs and practices as conducive to societal
flourishing. These ideas included voluntarism (Woodberry 2012). Environments of
relative religious liberty made it possible for Protestant ideas such as this
to be introduced and to spread to many societies, and made it possible for
non-Protestant groups to absorb and replicate them. The result of such freedom
and inter-religious competition, over time, was that socially beneficial
religious ideas became more and more widely accepted and practiced. The spread
of these ideas, in turn, had a measurable impact on economic development, not
to mention political democratization.
One way to describe this
mechanism is that religious liberty fosters a variety of “natural experiments”
or “social laboratories” that reveal the social effects of different religious
ideas. Given enough time, this disclosure effect also serves to help some
religious ideas win more adherents and social influence than others. Through a
kind of sociological natural selection in which pro-developmental religious
ideas gain acceptance and exercise widening social influence, while less socially
beneficial ideas decline, religious liberty may enhance long-term economic
prosperity and political freedom.
(b)The Skills Pathway: Religious groups often promote organizational and
other economically and politically useful human capital skills among their
members. The freer those religious groups are to pursue their activities,
therefore, the more they will enhance the overall pool of human capital
conducive to economic prosperity and political freedom.
Being religious is not
solely a matter of holding religious ideas. Most religious traditions encourage
communal activities that derive from religious ideas and doctrines (such as
obedience to God, charity, virtue) but also require organization. People must
hone leadership skills, find ways to coordinate their activities, develop
interpersonal skills, and acquire self-discipline. Add to this a whole host of
organizationally specific tasks such as bookkeeping, providing childcare, and
even janitorial or landscaping services, and one quickly recognizes that
religious organizations often serve as low-cost schools for individuals to
develop economically and politically useful habits and skills.
To the extent that religious
organizations rely on and train volunteers to perform these organizational
tasks, religious adherents gain skills that are transferable to the secular
economy and polity, possibly stimulating entrepreneurial activity, enhancing
productivity, or fostering civic skills. For example, proselytizing religions
often require a cadre of trained volunteers who are capable of “selling”
(preaching) a “product” (a set of theological beliefs) to potential “consumers”
(adherents). These interpersonal skills are potentially transferable to the
secular worlds of commerce and politics. To the extent that religious liberty
permits proselytizing, more missionaries will be trained and provided with
essential human capital that will benefit the entire economy.
More importantly, attracting
new believers requires making the proposed faith credible and attractive. Given
that missionaries are trying to convince unaffiliated individuals to seek
intangible spiritual goods, they often use tangible benefits to enhance their
credibility. While the proffering of benefits can be exploitative, it can also
generate positive economic results. Missionaries teach people a variety of
skills —from reading to better farming techniques —as a means of building
trust. To the extent that such skills develop human capital (or even physical
capital) and are useful in promoting other economic activities, missionaries
create important conditions for economic growth.
Woodberry’s (2012) landmark
thesis on the relationship between “conversionary Protestants” and democratic
development also demonstrates the logic and importance of causal pathways
linking religious liberty, portable skills, and economic and political
development (see also Gallego and Woodberry 2010). Woodberry calls attention to
the vigorous efforts of Protestant missionaries to spread a variety of concrete
skills, such as literacy, because reading the Bible was a main component of
their theology of personal salvation. This also required the skills and
technologies associated with mass printing. Gill (1998) noted a similar pattern
in Latin America. As Protestants entered the region in the early to mid 1900s,
they attracted members of the lower classes by offering a variety of
educational opportunities (e.g., literacy training, communication skills) that
were soon replicated by the Catholic Church in an attempt to retain the allegiance
of a previously neglected population (another form of peaceful religious competition). Elizabeth Brusco (1995)
also found that the skills imparted to men by evangelical churches led to an
almost immediate improvement in the financial situation of households. In a
similar vein, Willems (1955) demonstrated how Protestants encouraged many Latin
Americans to abandon counter-productive habits, while Shah and Shah (2010,
2013) more recently showed how evangelical values led to self-empowering
economic behavior among the poor in India. Likewise Becker & Woessmann
(2009) and Blum and Dudley (2001) argue that Weber’s “Protestant ethic” was
based not so much on a shift in economic ethos or values as on
the promotion of certain skills —literacy again being crucial —that built human
capital and economic prosperity (cf. Woodberry 2012 and Woodberry and Shah
2004).
This relationship between
religion and the development of civic and economic skills is closely connected
to religious freedom. The more religious groups enjoy freedom to perform
organizational and recruiting functions independently of control or financing
by other institutions, particularly the state, the more they will depend on
their own organizational capacity and a wide range of individual volunteers,
who will in turn need to develop skills that are readily transferable to the
economic and political realms.
(c)The Charity/NGO Pathway: Markets often misallocate resources and promote
inequities that lead to social conflict and hence diminish the possibility for
growth. When they enjoy religious freedom and security, private religious
charities and NGOs can ameliorate these problems and alleviate poverty in a way
that is more practical and efficient than government action alone. Religious
charities may also serve as a more effective —if not the only effective —means
of dealing with other social ills that diminish the possibility of economic
development and societal flourishing (e.g. alcohol and drug abuse). Important
among economically relevant social ills are those pertaining to the family. For
example, in the U.S., there is significant evidence that children of single
parents are far more likely to be poor than are children in married families
(Haskins and Sawhill 2003).
Hunger, poverty, disease,
crime, drug abuse, out of wedlock births, family breakdown, poor educational systems, and other social
maladies prevent numerous societies and billions of people from flourishing. In
modern times, there have been two major means of dealing with these and other
social problems: private organizations or government-organized social welfare.
Historically, religious organizations have been instrumental in mobilizing and
delivering private charity and other goods. Nearly every major religious
tradition has some commandment to help those in need, usually through some form
of charitable giving to the poor (Malloch 2009). The early Christians organized
medical care for the needy, and orphanages and elder care were activities
managed by churches or monasteries during the Middle Ages (Stark 1996). Today,
religious groups and faith-centered NGOs provide an array of social services to
those in need.
The links between religious
liberty and economic development are straightforward. Private religious communities
compete in a “charitable market” for donations and volunteers. Sometimes they
mobilize their donations and volunteers to organize social services in a way
that is more efficient than other entities, such as the state, or they provide
services other institutions are unable or unwilling to provide. They also
compete with secular ideas and organizations to define common moral and social
norms. If greater religious liberty enhances the capacity of religious
communities to organize and maintain private organizations and promote positive
moral and social norms by reducing the political and social costs imposed on
faith-based activity, society will benefit
economically.
Furthermore, to the extent
that governments are less efficient or effective in meeting all or some social needs,
affording the religious sector the freedom to meet these needs can lower the
burden on government finances and promote economic development and overall
societal flourishing. For example, to the extent that religious communities
enjoy the cultural and political freedom to promote strong and stable marriages
as well as remedy social ills such as alcoholism, this kind of exercise of
religious liberty can have the effect of fostering the economic well-being of
families as well as overall societal flourishing (Brusco 1995, Shah and Shah
2010).
Is there significant
evidence that private religious organizations often address social and economic
needs that would otherwise be unmet, or that they often address them more
efficiently than do non-religious institutions? The literature on religious
organizations and social welfare is extensive, with the bulk of it appearing in
the late 1980s and early 1990s. It demonstrates that religious charities
provide an array of social services, including food banks, homeless shelters,
education, emergency relief, financial assistance, and even banking services
(cf. National Federation of Community Development Credit Unions 1997). Printz
(1998) reports on a survey of 266 congregations in the greater Washington, D.C.
area, which accounted for over 1,000 types of social services amounting to over
$19 million in value.
Ample research demonstrating
the magnitude and efficiency of faith-based social services can be found in
Cnann, Wineburg, and Boddie (1999), Faver (1986), Johnson (2012), Mapes (2004),
Hodgkinson, et al. (1993), Jackson et al. (1997), Monsma (2004), Monsma and
Soper (2006), Netting (1984), Reese (2001), and Wineburg (1993). Recently,
Davis and Robinson (2012) offered a global perspective on how religious groups
provide social welfare by looking at cases within four faith traditions,
including the Muslim Brotherhood, the Sephardi Torah Guardians, Communion and
Liberation, and the Salvation Army. Some of the literature suggests that
religious NGOs sometimes address poverty, disease, and social inequality more
effectively and efficiently than government entities (cf. Gugerty and Prakash
2001).
In order to demonstrate that
there is a “charity/NGO pathway” linking religious freedom and economic
development, however, it is not enough to demonstrate that faith-inspired
charities and social services are effective. The second step is to point to
evidence that religious freedom strengthens the ability of religious
individuals and organizations to provide social services. That is, the less a
society imposes restrictions on such activity, the more it will experience this
activity and its beneficial consequences.
It turns out that this
claim, too, finds widespread support in the literature. For example, Stephen
Monsma (2012) has argued that hiring criteria that violate the principles of
conscience of religious charities can dampen their effectiveness or compel them
to stop offering certain services. Restricting what services religious
charities can offer and where they can offer them also potentially limits their
effectiveness.
(d)The Migration Pathway: Individuals with productive skills are attracted to
regions that are marked by high levels of religious security or religious
freedom. When they migrate, as they have throughout history and often do today,
they bring human capital that is crucial for economic prosperity.
Human capital is the
knowledge, training, and ingenuity that human beings possess, and it is a key
ingredient in economic development (Becker 1994 [1964]). A society can build
its human capital in two ways: it can invest in education, or it can attract
individuals with desirable skills from elsewhere. Religious freedom contributes
to the first route by making it possible for religious communities to organize
educational programs and institutions, as we noted above in the “charity/NGO
pathway.” But religious freedom also contributes to the second route by adding
to the qualities that potential immigrants are likely to find attractive in a
host country.
In other words, an
environment of religious security or religious freedom can add to the
incentives that draw people to one society rather than another. Such incentives
may include higher living standards, greater economic opportunity, stability,
and general conditions of political freedom, and the freedom to express one’s
religious beliefs in private and public life. To the extent that intelligent,
entrepreneurial, and hard-working individuals are drawn to a society and expand
its productivity by making more efficient use of its resources, they will
enhance economic development and growth. This is true not only in terms of
attracting migrants to settle in a territory but also in attracting merchants
with whom to trade.
William Penn and other
advocates of religious freedom understood this logic as far back as the 17th
century. Penn appealed to the King of England to allow religious freedom in
Pennsylvania on economic grounds. Around the same time, the Netherlands
increasingly realized that toleration of various sects, including Huguenots
fleeing France, helped to generate a boom in trade, productivity, ingenuity,
and overall economic prosperity (Owen 2010). Those who uproot themselves from
their traditional homes and flee to a new region are often risk-taking
individuals with significant material and intellectual resources —attributes
useful for innovation and entrepreneurship. When the Dutch sailed to the New
World, they brought with them the realization that religious liberty,
migration, and trade were interconnected. The settlement of New Amsterdam in
the American colonies was above all a commercial venture that came with it the
explicit instruction that colonists not restrict the freedom of those with
different faiths to practice their religion because it was understood that
religious persecution would be bad for business and bad for settlement (Haefeli
2012; Smith 1973; Zwierlei 1910).
In fact, the empirical
patterns underlying the best-known argument linking religion and economic
development —Max Weber’s “Protestant Ethic” thesis noted above
—probably had more to do
with the magnetic attraction of relative religious security or religious
freedom than Calvinism. Based on a comparative analysis of numerous regions in
early modern Europe, H. R. Trevor-Roper argued in a classic article on the
Weber thesis that greater religious toleration was the core reason some
Protestant regions of northern Europe surged ahead in terms of economic growth
and trade. Why? It was because of their higher levels of religious security or
greater religious toleration that these regions were able to welcome
religiously diverse merchants and entrepreneurs —Calvinist, Jewish, Lutheran,
and Catholic —fleeing Catholic areas such as Spain and Flanders that had become
less tolerant and more socially rigid after the Counter-Reformation. According
to Trevor-Roper, what was new in this era “lay not in the entrepreneurs
themselves, but in the circumstances which drove them to emigrate”
(Trevor-Roper 1967).
The connection between
religious liberty and immigration was re-emphasized in later centuries as the
need to attract labor in the latter half of the 19th century prompted greater
toleration for both Catholics and Jews. As Chiswick (2008) notes, the religious
freedom provided by America provided an attractive environment for many Jewish
immigrants who subsequently went on to achieve great economic success. Gill
(2008) demonstrates that a number of Latin American countries began to make the
connection between religious tolerance, migration, and economic commerce,
including the highly trade-dependent nation of Chile (Collier 1997). While not
technically dealing with cross-border immigration, Koesel (2012) has observed
that Chinese entrepreneurs are driven to opportunities affiliated with greater
freedom of spiritual conscience.
In sum, the literature shows
that the connection between religious liberty and economic development through
the pathway of immigration is strong. Most societies that seek to be economically prosperous need skilled immigrants and brisk commerce.
But the evidence suggests that societies lacking religious freedom will find it
more difficult to attract either.
(e)The Networks Pathway: The freedom of religious groups encourages the
formation of independent associations, networks, and social capital, which
contributes to economic activity, an engaged citizenry, and autonomous organizations
that can check the state and promote freedom.
In terms of political
freedom and democracy, the freedom of religious association contributes to
social capital and a higher density of groups in civil society, which
reinforces both the functioning of democratic institutions and their
legitimacy. Freely operating religious communities also often draw otherwise
disenfranchised or voiceless groups into the political process, making the
political system
more inclusive and
responsive. As Verba, Schlozman, and Brady showed, involvement in certain kinds
of churches plays a crucial role in giving Americans of low socio-economic
status a sense of political efficacy and a strong impetus to civic
participation (1995). Furthermore, religious individuals and communities
operating freely in civil society limit the powers of government. Conversely,
restrictions on freedom of religious association atomize and weaken civil society,
leave state power unchecked, and weaken political legitimacy.
There is abundant historical
and contemporary evidence that the freedom of religious communities to operate
independently of civil authority gives them the capacity to challenge regimes that
are lacking in freedom and to serve as the "leading edge" of
historical change that brings about liberal democracy. Looking at the
historical long haul, one could argue that the Church's demand for its
institutional and associational autonomy —i.e., its freedom —under the Roman
Empire created an independent sphere of civil society that paved the way for
the separation of powers and for government authority to be accountable to a
higher law, both essential features to modern liberal democracy (Garnett 2010).
The emergence of religious freedom in Christian circles following the religious
wars, especially in England and America, can also be seen as the "leading
edge" of progress towards democratization that followed —in England in the
1688 Glorious Revolution and in the American Revolution, culminating in the
Constitution of 1789. Following Emile Perreau-Saussine, the French Catholic
Church's assertion of autonomy vis-Ã -vis the pope and its influence in creating
a differentiated civil authority helped to further the evolution of a
separation of powers (Perreau-Saussine 2012). Finally, in the third wave of
democratization, religious actors who enjoyed a modicum of religious freedom
under dictators and demanded expanded religious freedom were often pivotal in bringing
down dictatorships and ushering in democracies (Philpott 2004, 2007).
In other words, there is
evidence that beachheads of religious security and diversity laid the
foundations for the development of other fundamental freedoms at a later point
in time. And the key mechanism whereby this often occurs is through the
formation of autonomous and sustainable religious networks and associations. As
several different strands of research have suggested, there have been cases in
which the autonomy, independence, and freedom of religious institutions at one
point in time proved a beachhead from which these religious institutions
successfully advocated for an expansion of other freedoms at a later point in
time. Philpott and Shah (2006) and Toft, Philpott, and Shah(2011) analyze
numerous Western and non-Western cases that suggest that where religious actors
enjoy at least some institutional independence from political authorities and
to that extent some measure of institutional religious freedom, these religious
actors are more able and willing to undertake pro-democracy activism and work
for wider fundamental political and economic freedoms in their national
contexts, as well as political reconciliation, making the consolidation of
stable democracy more likely.
In terms of economic
development, the presence of vibrant religious communities in economic and
civic life can limit the expansion of government and guard economic freedom.
The freedom of religious association contributes to social capital in terms of social
networks and social trust, which can facilitate economic exchange and reduce
corruption, and, in turn, promote economic growth”
Timothy Samuel Shah, “In
God’s Name: Politics, Religion, and Economic Development”, July 2013, Religious
Freedom Project,
(http://repository.berkleycenter.georgetown.edu/130701ShahInGodsNamePoliticsReligionEconomicDevelopment.pdf)
“Perhaps the most
sophisticated of the various attempts to define toleration is due to Andrew
Cohen. According to him: an act of toleration is an agent’s intentional and
principled refraining from interfering with an opposed other (or their
behaviour, etc.) in situations of diversity, where the agent believes she has
the power to interfere. (Cohen 2004, p. 69)7
If the agent has not
considered refraining from interference, or has considered it and does not
intend to refrain from interference, then that agent’s action cannot be
described as tolerant. Only inaction that is intended can count as toleration. The stipulation that a lack of
interference must also be principled is included to rule out unprincipled
non-interference, or interference that is explained by some motive that one did
not endorse as a value. I might disapprove of an action and believe that it
ought not to take place, but if I fail to act to try to stop it because I am
merely lazy, then we would not describe my attitude as one of toleration
(unless, perhaps, I endorse laziness as a value). My non-interference must be
grounded on some sort of principle, although not necessarily a moral one, to
count as tolerance.8
Non-interference is central
to tolerance, but this should not be understood too broadly. The
non-interference involved in toleration is direct
non-interference in acts and practices. It need not imply indirect
non-interference in acts and practices. A devout Catholic may decide to
tolerate Protestant religious practices in her community and to not interfere
in the conduct of Protestant religious services, despite her disapproval of
these. However, she may feel that the attitude of tolerance that she displays
does not extend to refraining from proselytizing on behalf of the Catholic
Church to Protestants. She hopes to achieve the end of converting Protestants
to Catholicism, causing inter alia, the cessation of Protestant religious
practices, but takes the view that it would be wrong to do so by means other
than by rational persuasion. The clause “situations of diversity” is included
in the above definition of tolerance on the grounds that if there were no
diversity between peoples, then there would be no differences between them to
object to.9 Cohen includes the final clause
“where the agent believes she has the power to interfere” to distinguish
toleration from resignation.10 If we believe that we have no
power to stop the objectionable practice or activity, then our attitude toward
that activity is not one of tolerance but of resignation.”
(Russell Powell, Steve
Clark, “Religion, Tolerance, and Intolerance: Views from Across the Disciplines”
Religion, Tolerance, and Conflict: A
Scientific and Conceptual Investigation, 2013. http://www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199640911.001.0001/acprof-9780199640911-chapter-1)
Thomas Jefferson Quotes on
religious freedom
"We have solved, by fair experiment, the great
and interesting question whether freedom of religion is compatible with order
in government and obedience to the laws. And we have experienced the quiet as
well as the comfort which results from leaving every one to profess freely and
openly those principles of religion which are the inductions of his own reason
and the serious convictions of his own inquiries." --Thomas Jefferson:
Reply to Virginia Baptists, 1808. ME 16:320
"Among the most
inestimable of our blessings, also, is that... of liberty to worship our
Creator in the way we think most agreeable to His will; a liberty deemed in
other countries incompatible with good government and yet proved by our
experience to be its best support." --Thomas Jefferson: Reply to John
Thomas et al., 1807. ME 16:291
"From the dissensions
among Sects themselves arise necessarily a right of choosing and necessity of
deliberating to which we will conform. But if we choose for ourselves, we must
allow others to choose also, and so reciprocally, this establishes religious
liberty." --Thomas Jefferson: Notes on Religion, 1776. Papers 1:545
"I do not believe it is
for the interest of religion to invite the civil magistrate to direct its
exercises, its discipline, or its doctrines; nor of the religious societies,
that the General Government should be invested with the power of effecting any
uniformity of time or matter among them. Fasting and prayer are religious
exercises. The enjoining them, an act of discipline. Every religious society
has a right to determine for itself the times for these exercises and the
objects proper for them according to their own particular tenets; and this
right can never be safer than in their own hands where the Constitution has
deposited it... Everyone must act according to the dictates of his own reason,
and mine tells me that civil powers alone have been given to the President of
the United States, and no authority to direct the religious exercises of his
constituents." --Thomas Jefferson to Samuel Miller, 1808. ME 11:429
"The declaration that
religious faith shall be unpunished does not give immunity to criminal acts
dictated by religious error." --Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1788.
ME 7:98
"If a sect arises whose
tenets would subvert morals, good sense has fair play and reasons and laughs it
out of doors without suffering the State to be troubled with it." --Thomas
Jefferson: Notes on Virginia Q.XVII, 1782. ME 2:224
"If anything pass in a
religious meeting seditiously and contrary to the public peace, let it be
punished in the same manner and no otherwise than as if it had happened in a
fair or market." --Thomas Jefferson: Notes on Religion, 1776. Papers 1:548
"Whatsoever is lawful
in the Commonwealth or permitted to the subject in the ordinary way cannot be
forbidden to him for religious uses; and whatsoever is prejudicial to the
Commonwealth in their ordinary uses and, therefore, prohibited by the laws,
ought not to be permitted to churches in their sacred rites. For instance, it
is unlawful in the ordinary course of things or in a private house to murder a
child; it should not be permitted any sect then to sacrifice children. It is
ordinarily lawful (or temporarily lawful) to kill calves or lambs; they may,
therefore, be religiously sacrificed. But if the good of the State required a
temporary suspension of killing lambs, as during a siege, sacrifices of them
may then be rightfully suspended also. This is the true extent of
toleration." --Thomas Jefferson: Notes on Religion, 1776. Papers 1:547
9 We do not believe it just to mingle religious
influence with civil government, whereby one religious society is fostered and
another proscribed in its spiritual privileges, and the individual rights of
its members, as citizens, denied.
10 We believe that all religious societies have a right
to deal with their members for disorderly conduct, according to the rules and
regulations of such societies; provided that such dealings be for fellowship
and good standing; but we do not believe that any religious society has
authority to try men on the right of property or life, to take from them this world’s
goods, or to put them in jeopardy of either life or limb, or to inflict any
physical punishment upon them. They can only excommunicate them from their
society, and withdraw from them their fellowship.
11 We believe that men should appeal to the civil law
for redress of all wrongs and grievances, where personal abuse is inflicted or
the right of property or character infringed, where such laws exist as will
protect the same; but we believe that all men are justified in defending
themselves, their friends, and property, and the government, from the unlawful
assaults and encroachments of all persons in times of exigency, where immediate
appeal cannot be made to the laws, and relief afforded.
(D&C 134:9-11)
Book of Mormon scriptures about religious
freedom (or lack thereof)
Alma 1:17 The law could have
no power on any man for his belief
Alma 1:16-17 People punished for crimes they commit
Alma 1:32 Nehor followers
indulge themselves, but the law is put into force on those who transgressed it
Alma 1:33 Exercising the law
on every transgressor made the people “more still” so that “they durst not
commit any wickedness if it were known; therefore, there was much peace among
the people of Nephi”
Alma 2:4 People of the
church were concerned that Amlici would take away the rights and privileges of
the church
Alma 4:8-11 People of the church begin to persecute
those who do not believe according to their own will and pleasure
Alma 8:11-12 Ammonihah declines to be persuaded by
Alma’s spiritual authority
Alma 14:7-8 People of Ammonihah cast out some
believers, burn others, and burn holy books, and imprison Alma and Amulek,
abusing them for many days.
Alma 21:22 Lamoni declares religious liberty to
worship God according to desire in his land.
Alma 23:1-3 Lamoni’s father makes proclamation to
allow preachers to have free access to homes and synagogues to preach. Also makes laws prohibiting physical
restraint or abuse of preachers.
Alma 25:5-8 Descendants of Amulon cause many
Lamanites to perish by fire because of their belief
Alma 30:9-11 Law only had power over a person to
punish them for their crimes, not for their belief.
Alma 30:21 Korihor carried
out of the lands of those who did not want to listen to him.
Alma 31:5 The preaching of
the word had more powerful effect on the minds of the people than the sword or
anything else that happened to them
Alma 35:6-10 Zoramite leaders cast out those who
believe in Alma’s words. Ammonites
take in poor Zoramites, which makes rich Zoramites angry. Rich Zoramites want Ammonites to cast
out poor Zoramites too. Ammonites
refuse and help poor Zoramites.
Helaman 3:33-34 Those who profess church membership are
lifted up to pride and persecute many of their brethren
Helaman 7:4-5 Secret combinations destroy religious
liberty by condemning the righteous because of their righteousness and letting
the wicked go free for a price.
Helaman 13:2 Samuel the
Lamanite preaches and is cast out of the land
Helama 16:1-7 Samuel the Lamanite’s preaching on the
wall meets a varied reception.
Some are convinced, some shoot projectiles at him, some ask authority
figures to bind him and “away with him”
3 Nephi 1:9 Unbelievers set apart a day to kill
believers if the sign of Christ’s birth isn’t manifest by then.
3 Nephi 6:20-24 Prophets executed in secret by
elites. Complaint made to the
chief judge about executions being against the law.
3 Nephi 7:14 prophets stoned and cast out from the
tribes of the people
4 Nephi 1:29-34 A church denies Christ, persecutes true
church because of their humility and belief. Despises them for miracles. They exercise authority over the disciples of Christ, cast
them into prison.
Mormon 1:16-17 Mormon
forbidden to preach to the people
Mormon 3:2-3 Mormon
commanded by God to preach to the people.
The people refuse to listen, yet Mormon is not punished by the
people. (Perhaps because of his
high status?)
Moroni 8:28 Mormon wrote to his son how people in
his part of the land were seeking to put down all power and authority that
comes from God
Moroni 9:5 Mormon wrote his
preaching wasn’t having any effect.
Preaching with sharpness brought anger, and preaching without sharpness
had no effect, as they hardened their hearts.
