Tensions in the Freedom of Religion

For those just tuning in, I've been ruminating over the debate amongst evangelicals (and amongst people of faith more generally) about the paradox of religious expression in the US. On the one hand, the first amendment forbids the government from making any law that prohibits the free exercise of religion, just as it forbids abridgments of the freedom of speech. On the other hand, however, the first amendment also forbids the government from making any law respecting an establishment of religion, a clause that has mainly been interpreted in terms of setting up a separation between church and state.

The argument I'm thinking about here orbits this question: does a segregation of church (religion) and state (government) itself constitute a religious stance, a de facto establishment of a particular religious understanding? Certainly it would be a stretch to scribe to the establishment clause alone the status of a total religious belief system. Nevertheless, as a working worldview about the proper practice of religion, the clause exerts normative force upon the religions who would operate under its purview. In other words, you may believe your religion should permeate all aspects of your life, public and private. Fine.

But under the establishment clause, your faith-saturated self must submit to the expectation that any acts you may perform as an official representative of the government (e.g., as a police officer, as a judge, as a member of a jury) should be faith-neutral. You may not, as a police officer, arrest people for not following your faith's precepts even if the Bible demands that you define justice using God's standards, not humans'. You may not, as a solider serving in Afghanistan, hand out Bibles or evangelical tracts to Afghan villagers while on duty even though the Great Commission demands that Christians make disciples of all the world. And--as I've been discussing--you may not, as a public school valedictorian, take it upon yourself to proselytize a captive audience at graduation.

Conservative evangelicals do themselves no favors--indeed, I would argue they embarrass Christians in general--when they cite such examples as evidence that the government is singling out and harassing Christians in violation of the first amendment. In those instances it is instead the Christians--the officer, the soldier, the valedictorian--who act in violation of the first amendment. As agents of the state, their acts appear to establish state preference for a single religion (theirs). They've placed their personal religious practice above the general good of the government's ensuring religious liberty for all.

But are there not times in which personal faith convictions should override government's faith-neutral stance? Let us concede that the government does not oppress faith when it operates in a faith-neutral manner, that the first amendment is fulfilled by the imperfect schema of faith-neutral governments and faith-protected citizens. That concession does not erase the tension, the paradox, contained in the first amendment's religion clauses.

Suppose, for example, the police officer I made up eralier lived in the early civil rights era in a state with racial segregation laws. As an agent of the state, the officer is charged with enforcing those laws. But as a Christian (well--as a particular kind of Christian--modern-day evangelicals often conveniently forget that Southern white Christians were frequently--though not universally--among the most ardent supporters of racist practices), the officer may feel strongly that racial apartheid is unjust and sinful. Under the establishment clause, the religious belief may not play a part in the officer's decision of whether or not to enforce the law.

Of course--one hardly needs to be a Christian (or any kind of religious person) to recognize segregation as unjust. The hypothetical officer could very well be an atheist and feel a similar moral conundrum. Such a concession, however, only reinforces the point that religious motivations are not easily distinguishable from secular philosophical convictions save that in the US, faith-based convictions enjoy explicit Constitutional protection. Which ought to be stronger, then: the officer's (ostensibly private) faith convictions or the officer's (ostensibly public) duties as a state agent? What if, instead of a police officer the hypothetical agent were an elected official, a US Representative from a pro-segregation district? Should such a Representative vote against desegregation in concert with his constituents' wishes but in violation of his faith?

Christians of all stripes--orthodox, evangelical, mainline, conservative, moderate, liberal--regularly find themselves confronting such paradoxes today. May a police officer look the other way when learning about an illegal immigrant being housed in her own church's basement if her sincere belief is that immigrants are to be welcomed? May a judge deeply convicted that marriage is a heterosexual-only affair refuse to marry a gay couple in a state that allows gay marriage?

If find it helpful for me to recognize that the faith/civics conundrum here isn't just the problem of conservative evangelicals, although I believe they are more apt to cry foul--inaccurately, many times. Indeed, part of the problem with the religious right's mantra of "government oppression of Christianity!" is that it lets liberal or moderate people of faith (and, I would say, even atheists) off the hook of confronting the fact that the first amendment's establishment clause generates vexing problems for everyone. It opens the door, in fact, to conscientious betrayals of either duty or belief. A betrayal of belief or faith tenet may be, depending on the betrayal or the faith, a sin or an act of hypocrisy. But a betrayal of civic duty represents an act of civil disobedience.

More tomorrow,

JF