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
Showing posts with label freedom of religion. Show all posts
Showing posts with label freedom of religion. Show all posts
Thursday, December 3, 2009
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
State Neutrality and Religious Liberty
So: do public schools have the right to censor graduation speeches of valedictorians when those speeches contain overt Christian evangelizing (i.e., not merely mention of their faith but an explicit proselytizing pitch)? As a matter of law--as demonstrated in the cases I referenced yesterday--the answer is yes. School officials have a right to control speech given by persons acting as representatives of that school at events the school sponsors.
The underlying debate, however, relates to why schools feel the need to censor said speeches in the first place. One conservative evangelical commentator (posting a comment on a conservative news site report about the story) wondered if the students' remarks would have been censored had the students been speaking about a divisive issue that had nothing overt to do with religion, such as global warming. Of course no one but the school officials in question could offer an answer to that inquiry; I suspect that school officials are fairly controversy-averse and that a screed either for or against environmentalism would at least get some heavy scrutiny.
Clearly, however, the feeling in these situations seems to be--whatever might be the status (censored or allowed) of nonreligious controversial speech--religious speech is certainly suspect. Public schools strive to maintain a "separation between church and state," interpreting this idea (a Jeffersonian turn of phrase that doesn't actually appear in the Constitution) to mean that state entities must avoid any appearance or substance of preferring a specific faith over another. Indeed, the reality of people who do not profess any religious belief at all pushes many institutions to step back from making or endorsing any affirmation of faith (e.g., a reference to a Higher Power, "in God we trust," "one nation, under God").
The evangelical argument I rehearsed yesterday argues that such strict faith-neutrality contains and demands a particular understanding of faith that in and of itself qualifies as religious. In the neutral-state view of religion, faith is a private affair with optional public features. A person may enjoy the right to believe in their heart of hearts whatever they'd like. They furthermore have the right to associate with others of similar belief and practice faith rituals in private space (provided said rituals do not themselves involve illegal activity, such as human sacrifice, polygamous marriage, or drugs).
But, when operating in public space or when acting as an agent of the government, the believer must submit the practice of their belief to norms of social commerce. When private belief and public duty conflict, government agents are expected to prioritize their public duty. A police officer may not arrest a Wiccan simply because the officer is Southern Baptist and believes witchcraft to be evil. A teacher may not use class time to proselytize students in public school.
The counter-argument to this logic would say that faith does not--cannot--map cleanly onto a logic of public and private separations. An evangelical is a Christian no matter where she works or where she travels. She does not shed her Christian convictions when she leaves church or when she arrives at work; indeed, most varieties of evangelicalism would teach that "part-time Christianity" isn't Christianity at all. Faith is all-encompassing, un-ignorable, or it is nothing. For the state to suggest that faith must be otherwise--that it should be privatized--is a religious imposition.
Now, several objections to this line of thinking present themselves. If religious liberty--the freedom of conscience so prized by evangelicals--is to have any real effect, the state must refrain from endorsing any one faith formally. Were the state to declare one faith the "correct" or "official" faith, all other faith practices (including atheism) would instantly assume second-class status. Christian conservatives often draw on authors like David Barton to argue that the US is in fact "a Christian nation," that Christianity (as opposed to other faiths) plays a privileged historical role in US history and is thus due for some acknowledgment and deference. They would contend that such acknowledgment need not translate into hardships on other religions. The UK boasts the Church of England as an official faith but allows the full spectrum of religions to flourish.
I suspect, however, that such Christians would not find this argument nearly so convincing were the US's historical tradition seen as Jewish, Muslim, or Hindu rather than Christian. Calls for a faith-based nation as compatible with a scheme of religious liberty evaporate when the faith in question ceases to be a particular variety of Christianity. At the very least, having an official recognized faith suggests that conflicts between religions would likely be decided in favor of the predominant religion. If the state is to stay out of the business of promoting one religion above another, if the state is instead to maintain space for all religions to co-exist in the same society, then the only sensible scheme involves strict state neutrality.
That neutrality, and the general religious liberty it seeks to ensure, forms the Greater Good to which an individual's otherwise always-everywhere-no-matter-what practice of faith gets submitted. The right to religious expression, after all, exists in concert with other rights and other Goods. The government would ban the practice of a religion that called for the murder of a next-door neighbor, for example, because the neighbor's right to life outweighs the individual's right to practice a murderous faith.
To be sure, the scheme of religious liberty that allows for a thousand faith flowers to bloom does not reflect the exclusivity that is the property of many faiths. A die-hard Missouri Synod Lutheran, for example, believes his faith is uniquely correct. Other faiths aren't just variations; they are heresies, and their beliefs are false teachings. By taking a neutral stance, the state grants a kind of practical legitimacy to all faiths in general that few if any of those single faiths would endorse. But what of it? The alternative would seem to be some form of state theocracy, either soft or hard. Christian conservatives often stray dangerously close to calling for just such a theocracy (indeed, some Christian groups overtly assert that God's law ought to be the law of the land--that's a whole other argument for later).
Thus, religious liberty, state neutrality, and therefore the willingness of state agents to submit their faiths to a public/private division all form part of the given circumstances, the social compact, of what it is to be a US citizen. Those unable or unwilling to accept that the state won't echo their personal religious beliefs should, to put it brutally, find another country.
Clear enough, no?
Perhaps--but I think there's some room in this religious debate for a bit of Devil's Advocacy.
More tomorrow,
JF
The underlying debate, however, relates to why schools feel the need to censor said speeches in the first place. One conservative evangelical commentator (posting a comment on a conservative news site report about the story) wondered if the students' remarks would have been censored had the students been speaking about a divisive issue that had nothing overt to do with religion, such as global warming. Of course no one but the school officials in question could offer an answer to that inquiry; I suspect that school officials are fairly controversy-averse and that a screed either for or against environmentalism would at least get some heavy scrutiny.
Clearly, however, the feeling in these situations seems to be--whatever might be the status (censored or allowed) of nonreligious controversial speech--religious speech is certainly suspect. Public schools strive to maintain a "separation between church and state," interpreting this idea (a Jeffersonian turn of phrase that doesn't actually appear in the Constitution) to mean that state entities must avoid any appearance or substance of preferring a specific faith over another. Indeed, the reality of people who do not profess any religious belief at all pushes many institutions to step back from making or endorsing any affirmation of faith (e.g., a reference to a Higher Power, "in God we trust," "one nation, under God").
The evangelical argument I rehearsed yesterday argues that such strict faith-neutrality contains and demands a particular understanding of faith that in and of itself qualifies as religious. In the neutral-state view of religion, faith is a private affair with optional public features. A person may enjoy the right to believe in their heart of hearts whatever they'd like. They furthermore have the right to associate with others of similar belief and practice faith rituals in private space (provided said rituals do not themselves involve illegal activity, such as human sacrifice, polygamous marriage, or drugs).
But, when operating in public space or when acting as an agent of the government, the believer must submit the practice of their belief to norms of social commerce. When private belief and public duty conflict, government agents are expected to prioritize their public duty. A police officer may not arrest a Wiccan simply because the officer is Southern Baptist and believes witchcraft to be evil. A teacher may not use class time to proselytize students in public school.
The counter-argument to this logic would say that faith does not--cannot--map cleanly onto a logic of public and private separations. An evangelical is a Christian no matter where she works or where she travels. She does not shed her Christian convictions when she leaves church or when she arrives at work; indeed, most varieties of evangelicalism would teach that "part-time Christianity" isn't Christianity at all. Faith is all-encompassing, un-ignorable, or it is nothing. For the state to suggest that faith must be otherwise--that it should be privatized--is a religious imposition.
Now, several objections to this line of thinking present themselves. If religious liberty--the freedom of conscience so prized by evangelicals--is to have any real effect, the state must refrain from endorsing any one faith formally. Were the state to declare one faith the "correct" or "official" faith, all other faith practices (including atheism) would instantly assume second-class status. Christian conservatives often draw on authors like David Barton to argue that the US is in fact "a Christian nation," that Christianity (as opposed to other faiths) plays a privileged historical role in US history and is thus due for some acknowledgment and deference. They would contend that such acknowledgment need not translate into hardships on other religions. The UK boasts the Church of England as an official faith but allows the full spectrum of religions to flourish.
I suspect, however, that such Christians would not find this argument nearly so convincing were the US's historical tradition seen as Jewish, Muslim, or Hindu rather than Christian. Calls for a faith-based nation as compatible with a scheme of religious liberty evaporate when the faith in question ceases to be a particular variety of Christianity. At the very least, having an official recognized faith suggests that conflicts between religions would likely be decided in favor of the predominant religion. If the state is to stay out of the business of promoting one religion above another, if the state is instead to maintain space for all religions to co-exist in the same society, then the only sensible scheme involves strict state neutrality.
That neutrality, and the general religious liberty it seeks to ensure, forms the Greater Good to which an individual's otherwise always-everywhere-no-matter-what practice of faith gets submitted. The right to religious expression, after all, exists in concert with other rights and other Goods. The government would ban the practice of a religion that called for the murder of a next-door neighbor, for example, because the neighbor's right to life outweighs the individual's right to practice a murderous faith.
To be sure, the scheme of religious liberty that allows for a thousand faith flowers to bloom does not reflect the exclusivity that is the property of many faiths. A die-hard Missouri Synod Lutheran, for example, believes his faith is uniquely correct. Other faiths aren't just variations; they are heresies, and their beliefs are false teachings. By taking a neutral stance, the state grants a kind of practical legitimacy to all faiths in general that few if any of those single faiths would endorse. But what of it? The alternative would seem to be some form of state theocracy, either soft or hard. Christian conservatives often stray dangerously close to calling for just such a theocracy (indeed, some Christian groups overtly assert that God's law ought to be the law of the land--that's a whole other argument for later).
Thus, religious liberty, state neutrality, and therefore the willingness of state agents to submit their faiths to a public/private division all form part of the given circumstances, the social compact, of what it is to be a US citizen. Those unable or unwilling to accept that the state won't echo their personal religious beliefs should, to put it brutally, find another country.
Clear enough, no?
Perhaps--but I think there's some room in this religious debate for a bit of Devil's Advocacy.
More tomorrow,
JF
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
Valedictory Speeches, Religious Expression, and Faith-Neutral Worldviews
Some background:
My interest in the Swiss Minaret Ban controversy stems most immediately from a longish conversation I had with my partner this past Thanksgiving weekend as we made the 10-hour drive back from my family's home in Oklahoma. There we listened to part of a podcast about another event stirring up religious/tolerance issues.
The situation? One Erica Corder, a graduating senior at a Colorado high school, was chosen as one of three valedictorians based on her grade point average. As such, she and was given the chance to write and deliver a 30-second speech at graduation. Her remarks were submitted beforehand and approved by school officials, but at the graduation ceremony, Corder altered her speech (text from this Christian Science Monitor story):
The school officials, dismayed at the proselytizing surprise, demanded--on pain of withholding her diploma--that Corder submit a formal apology that both specified that the remarks were her own and that she knew that, had she submitted those remarks to the school, they would not have been approved. This she did, but she then sued the school for violation of her first amendment right to freedom of speech. The court (first a federal judge, then the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals) ruled against her, and the Supreme Court declined to hear the case.
Paralleling this situation in many ways is this case of Brittany McComb, who similarly strayed from her approved valedictory remarks to speak on the sacrificial death and resurrection of Jesus--only to have school officials turn off her microphone mid-speech. With the help of the Rutherford Institute, McComb also sued for violations of her free speech rights. As was the case with Corder, federal and appellate courts ruled against her, and the Supreme Court turned down her case for review.
Now--the conservative evangelical spin on/reaction to these cases differs significantly from the cases themselves. To many conservative Christian organizations, these cases represent clear instances of Christian expression's being censored from public life, which they interpret as a violation of the first amendment's establishment clause. Crucially, however, the cases themselves involve not freedom of religion but freedom of speech. The courts' rulings against Corder and McComb deal not with whether the student may or may not make religious expressions but whether or not the schools have the right to control student speech at events those schools sponsor (like graduation). Here legal precedent supports schools' authority to so contorl speech.
Moreover (and this is a point that gets glossed over in some news stories), both McComb and Corder entered into understandings with their respective schools that they would deliver speeches pre-approved by school officials. Both McComb and Corder violated that understanding by straying from their remarks. Thus, to frame these events as schools swooping down to penalize Christians for their beliefs is to block out significant parts of the story.
That being said, clearly the religious nature of the women's speeches were at issue in both schools' actions. Indeed, McComb's school had, on previewing her speech, blocked out the religious references contained therein; McComb's change to her speech as delivered apparently consisted largely of restoring those parts of her statements. So, while freedom of speech was the presenting issue, the special nature of religious expression turns out to be the underlying issue. Schools, as official state institutions, are uncomfortable with appearing to support the expression of a particular religious belief. In deference to the first amendment's prohibition against state establishment of any particular religion, the schools restrict religious expression at their official events.
Conservative evangelicals (here I might specify the more politically active, "religious right" segments of conservative evangelicalism) challenge this interpretation of the establishment clause. While agreeing (ostensibly, at least) that government ought not formally declare support for a particular religion, they would insist that individuals can and must be able to express and practice their religion regardless of the particular context in which they find themselves. For the government to restrict religious speech of its employees or representatives, conservative evangelicals argue, is to take the establishment clause too far, intruding upon the individual's right to religious practice.
The most interesting variant of this argument suggests that the logic of state neutrality towards religion is in fact itself a religious belief, or at least a particular worldview about the proper status of religious belief and expression. That is, the US establishment clause as commonly interpreted casts religious expression as a private practice, an aspect of a person's existence and life-world that the person may bracket or mute in particular situations. A Christian could, in this view, practice her faith by preaching on street corners on day and cease preaching/proselytizing while working as a government census taker the next day. The state thus imagines a world where particular religious expression can and should take a back seat to the greater good of state neutrality toward any one religion.
The counter-argument here (and I'm not quoting from any particular argument I've read) would be that religions are not light-switches to be turned on or off as the situation commands. One is a Christian--one behaves as a Christian and does Christian things--all the time. Especially when presented with a situation in which one's faith demands a particular action, one cannot allow the state's interest in faith neutrality to override the individual Christian imperative to faith expression. A Christianity that can be turned on and off, in other words, is not really Christianity at all. To suggest otherwise is to disrupt a fundamental understanding of Christianity itself.
Now, immediately I can think of (and my partner quickly outlined for me) several objections to this line of thinking.
Let's go over these tomorrow.
JF
My interest in the Swiss Minaret Ban controversy stems most immediately from a longish conversation I had with my partner this past Thanksgiving weekend as we made the 10-hour drive back from my family's home in Oklahoma. There we listened to part of a podcast about another event stirring up religious/tolerance issues.
The situation? One Erica Corder, a graduating senior at a Colorado high school, was chosen as one of three valedictorians based on her grade point average. As such, she and was given the chance to write and deliver a 30-second speech at graduation. Her remarks were submitted beforehand and approved by school officials, but at the graduation ceremony, Corder altered her speech (text from this Christian Science Monitor story):
"We are all capable of standing firm and expressing our own beliefs, which is why I need to tell you about someone who loves you more than you could ever imagine. . . . He died for you on a cross over 2,000 years ago, yet was resurrected and is living today in heaven. His name is Jesus Christ. If you don't already know him personally, I encourage you to find out more about the sacrifice he made for you so that you now have the opportunity to live in eternity with him."
The school officials, dismayed at the proselytizing surprise, demanded--on pain of withholding her diploma--that Corder submit a formal apology that both specified that the remarks were her own and that she knew that, had she submitted those remarks to the school, they would not have been approved. This she did, but she then sued the school for violation of her first amendment right to freedom of speech. The court (first a federal judge, then the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals) ruled against her, and the Supreme Court declined to hear the case.
Paralleling this situation in many ways is this case of Brittany McComb, who similarly strayed from her approved valedictory remarks to speak on the sacrificial death and resurrection of Jesus--only to have school officials turn off her microphone mid-speech. With the help of the Rutherford Institute, McComb also sued for violations of her free speech rights. As was the case with Corder, federal and appellate courts ruled against her, and the Supreme Court turned down her case for review.
Now--the conservative evangelical spin on/reaction to these cases differs significantly from the cases themselves. To many conservative Christian organizations, these cases represent clear instances of Christian expression's being censored from public life, which they interpret as a violation of the first amendment's establishment clause. Crucially, however, the cases themselves involve not freedom of religion but freedom of speech. The courts' rulings against Corder and McComb deal not with whether the student may or may not make religious expressions but whether or not the schools have the right to control student speech at events those schools sponsor (like graduation). Here legal precedent supports schools' authority to so contorl speech.
Moreover (and this is a point that gets glossed over in some news stories), both McComb and Corder entered into understandings with their respective schools that they would deliver speeches pre-approved by school officials. Both McComb and Corder violated that understanding by straying from their remarks. Thus, to frame these events as schools swooping down to penalize Christians for their beliefs is to block out significant parts of the story.
That being said, clearly the religious nature of the women's speeches were at issue in both schools' actions. Indeed, McComb's school had, on previewing her speech, blocked out the religious references contained therein; McComb's change to her speech as delivered apparently consisted largely of restoring those parts of her statements. So, while freedom of speech was the presenting issue, the special nature of religious expression turns out to be the underlying issue. Schools, as official state institutions, are uncomfortable with appearing to support the expression of a particular religious belief. In deference to the first amendment's prohibition against state establishment of any particular religion, the schools restrict religious expression at their official events.
Conservative evangelicals (here I might specify the more politically active, "religious right" segments of conservative evangelicalism) challenge this interpretation of the establishment clause. While agreeing (ostensibly, at least) that government ought not formally declare support for a particular religion, they would insist that individuals can and must be able to express and practice their religion regardless of the particular context in which they find themselves. For the government to restrict religious speech of its employees or representatives, conservative evangelicals argue, is to take the establishment clause too far, intruding upon the individual's right to religious practice.
The most interesting variant of this argument suggests that the logic of state neutrality towards religion is in fact itself a religious belief, or at least a particular worldview about the proper status of religious belief and expression. That is, the US establishment clause as commonly interpreted casts religious expression as a private practice, an aspect of a person's existence and life-world that the person may bracket or mute in particular situations. A Christian could, in this view, practice her faith by preaching on street corners on day and cease preaching/proselytizing while working as a government census taker the next day. The state thus imagines a world where particular religious expression can and should take a back seat to the greater good of state neutrality toward any one religion.
The counter-argument here (and I'm not quoting from any particular argument I've read) would be that religions are not light-switches to be turned on or off as the situation commands. One is a Christian--one behaves as a Christian and does Christian things--all the time. Especially when presented with a situation in which one's faith demands a particular action, one cannot allow the state's interest in faith neutrality to override the individual Christian imperative to faith expression. A Christianity that can be turned on and off, in other words, is not really Christianity at all. To suggest otherwise is to disrupt a fundamental understanding of Christianity itself.
Now, immediately I can think of (and my partner quickly outlined for me) several objections to this line of thinking.
Let's go over these tomorrow.
JF
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