Tag: First Amendment

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Religious liberty, atheism, and the question of faith

Fresno Bee, July 30, 2023

The atheists are coming out the closet.  A new Gallup poll shows that 12% of Americans don’t believe in God. Only 74% of Americans say they do believe in God. The other 14% are not sure. Back in 2001, 90% of Americans believed in God, and the atheists and agnostics only made up 10%. 

The Pew Research Center published a report last year suggesting that in a couple of generations about half of the population will be non-religious and Christianity will be a minority religion. Earlier this year, a Wall Street Journal poll found that only 39% of Americans said that religion was “very important” to them. That was down from 62% in 1998.

This radical shift in American values helps explain the Christian nationalist backlash among those who want to make American Christian again. As Christianity loses its dominance, it is understandable that some Christians want to demand that the U.S. be a Christian nation. But the idea of forcing religion on people seems doomed to fail in the modern world. The First Amendment to the Constitution prevents the establishment of any religion. It also guarantees the free exercise of religion.

Religious liberty means that individuals are free to choose their faith. This idea is deeply rooted in a modern understanding of religious belief. Modern thinkers tend to agree that external conformity to religious rituals is not sufficient for genuine faith. Rather, faith is thought to require consent and subjective commitment. 

In the late 1600’s, the British philosopher John Locke said, “All the life and power of true religion consist in the inward and full persuasion of the mind; and faith is not faith without believing.” He suggested that people may go through the motions of religious life without genuine belief. But external conformity is not real faith. That’s why trying to use violence, force, or law to establish religious conformity is wrongheaded. Locke famously said that with regard to religion, “all force and compulsion are to be forborn.” In fact, Locke suggested that external conformity breeds hypocrisy. 

Locke’s writings on government and religion had a profound influence on the American Founders, as I noted in a column earlier this month. The Declaration of Independence appealed to Locke’s idea of a right to revolution. And his thinking about religion appears to undergird the view of religious liberty found in the First Amendment. 

Again, the issue is that when people are forced to go through the motions of faith because they fear punishment or social disapproval, they simply become liars and phonies, lacking in authenticity. The Danish philosopher Kierkegaard made this a central theme of his work in the 19th Century. Kierkegaard understood faith as an inward or subjective experience. For Kierkegaard, faith was a passionate existential commitment. Kierkegaard was also critical of the hypocritical conformity of those who simply go through the motions of faith. 

According to this modern understanding of faith, your religion is not about your ethnicity or your family identity. Nor is it a matter of which church you grew up in, or which Bible you have on your bookshelf. Nor is faith about what you wear, what you eat, or which holidays you celebrate. Rather, faith is about what you freely choose to believe in the depth of your soul and with the whole of your mind.

With this on the table, let’s reconsider the rise of atheism and agnosticism. If people don’t believe in God, isn’t it better that they are honest about that lack of belief? Do the Christian nationalists want atheists to just play along and pretend they believe? And if not, what would they propose to do about those who are not persuaded by the claims of Christianity?

It is best for people to be honest about what they believe or don’t believe. Only then can we have genuine and free conversations about faith. Of course, free and open conversations about faith may result in some people becoming atheists. But it’s better for people to make that choice freely than to try to enforce conformity and push nonbelievers back into the closet. The growth of disbelief is a sign of our liberty. It is also an opportunity for deeper discussions of faith, and of freedom. 

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Faith, Freedom, and the First Amendment: Trump’s Proposed Ban on Socialists is Un-American

First Amendment

Fresno Bee, July 2, 2023

This past week, Donald Trump announced that if elected he will prevent “foreign Christian-hating communists, socialists and Marxists” from coming to the U.S. He also suggested he would do something about the un-Christian socialists who already live here. He asked, “What are we going to do with the ones that are already here, that grew up here? I think we have to pass a new law for them.”

The audience at the Faith and Freedom Coalition Conference cheered Trump’s speech. Which makes you wonder about the relationship between faith and freedom in America. Will Americans round up and expel communists, atheists, and others?

Or maybe we will divide the union by ideology. Florida Sen. Rick Scott posted a video warning socialists and communists to avoid “the free state of Florida.” He said, “If you’re thinking about coming to Florida and you’re a socialist or a communist, think twice. We like freedom, liberty, capitalism, things like that.”

This almost seems like a parody. And for those who study the history of ideas, it is absurd. Socialism is not anti-Christian or un-American.

There are important Christian socialists in the American tradition, including Francis Bellamy, a Baptist preacher who authored the Pledge of Allegiance. Bellamy’s original pledge did not, by the way, include the phrase “under God.” That phrase was added in the 1950s during another anti-communist era.

Christian socialists claim that Jesus was critical of the accumulation of wealth and the exploitation of the poor. They cite passages in the Bible’s book of Acts, where early Christians sold their private property, lived communally, and distributed “to each as had any need.”

Of course, Christians disagree among themselves about this. Some Christians embrace socialism. Others preach the gospel of wealth. Some advocate for Christian nationalism. Others claim Christ was an anarchist.

Centuries ago, such disagreements would result in violence, as reformers were burned at the stake. We don’t do that anymore. Our secular system guarantees freedom of religion and freedom of thought.

An argument for secular tolerance can be traced to British philosopher John Locke. Locke thought that compulsion in religion was useless. Faith is internal and not subject to external authority. He said every man “has the supreme and absolute authority of judging for himself.”

Locke’s theory was limited in application. He did not extend toleration to atheists or Roman Catholics. A century after Locke, Americans like James Madison improved the idea and put it into the First Amendment to the Constitution, which prevents the political establishment of religion and guarantees the free exercise of faith.

This idea evolved to include toleration for Catholics, and non-Christians. Thomas Jefferson said that the state has no right over “conscience.” He explained, “It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are 20 gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.”

Freedom of religion is linked to freedom of thought. The First Amendment also protects freedom of speech, and freedom of the press. Which takes us back to the question of banning socialists.

Would Trump’s proposed ban on socialists also ban their ideas? How would you prevent socialist ideas from being disseminated? Maybe we’d also need book bans as they do in “the free state of Florida.” Perhaps the Bible would be among those books.

Now Trump and Scott may suggest that socialists are somehow anti-American. But there is nothing more American than the First Amendment. Our Constitution allows us to argue, and think. Laws that target ideologies are un-American.

The assumption of our secular system is that the “free marketplace of ideas” is fundamental. That capitalist metaphor for freedom of thought means that if you disagree with an idea, you make an argument and let people decide for themselves. In this economy of thought, it is we, the people who sift and winnow ideas.

Sometimes bad arguments prevail in the short-term. But democracy rests upon the faith that good arguments ultimately defeat bad ones. The democratic faith believes that citizens are smart enough to discern right from wrong. It rests on the hope that citizens are wise enough to understand the difference between democratic freedom and dangerous demagoguery.

Read more at: https://www.fresnobee.com/opinion/readers-opinion/article276873328.html#storylink=cpy

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Religious Liberty, Modesty, and The Morality Police

Fresno Bee, October 2, 2022

Morality is not external conformity. Let’s keep this in mind when thinking about recent protests in Iran against the “morality police.” Those protests broke out in response to the death of Mahsa Amini, a woman who died after being detained by the morality police for wearing her hijab (a head covering) too loosely.

For Americans of the present generation, the notion of the morality police is hard to fathom. How strange that anyone cares whether women cover their hair.

Of course, societies have often attempted to control women’s lives, bodies, and sexuality. A hundred years ago in the United States, swimsuit police tried to prevent women from showing too much skin at the beach.

We’ve come a long way. Thanks to the secular principles found in the First Amendment, we are free to wear what we want. There is no morality police here because we view fashion as a form of free expression.

There are limits, of course. Schoolchildren are not free to wear pornographic or offensive T-shirts. Nudity is prohibited. And in a recent case out of Everett, Washington, the courts upheld a law prohibiting baristas at the Bikini Hut coffee shop from dressing like strippers. The Ninth Circuit Court drew a line at “pasties and a G-string” with your coffee.

But beyond those limits, our secular system holds that fashion, sex, and sexuality are private matters, not subject to policing. This is the result of a long struggle against a more restrictive worldview. And some Americans might prefer a return to modesty and conformity. Until recently, school districts prohibited girls from wearing tight leggings or yoga pants — including here in Clovis, which only changed its policy this year.

So, let’s not take the struggle for liberty and privacy for granted. It’s only been about 20 years since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned laws against sodomy, in Lawrence v. Texas. It’s only been seven years since Obergefell v. Hodges gave same sex couples the right to marry. And challenges remain. The court has called the idea of a “right to privacy” into question with the Dobbs decision that overturned Roe v. Wade earlier this year.

Behind these legal issues is a basic argument about the importance of liberty. This is related to a claim about the futility and absurdity of trying to police fashion, sex, and modesty.

Americans pledge allegiance to the idea of a country founded on the idea of liberty and justice for all. Liberty means that you can wear a hijab or a bikini. The choice is up to you.

And if I don’t like your choice, I can choose not to look. We forget this important point with regard to modesty. Rather than worrying about women flaunting their bodies, why don’t we insist that men stop ogling them?

There is no doubt that state power can dominate people. But police power does not actually create modesty or virtue. It is futile to use police power to enforce external conformity to norms of fashion, virtue, and modesty.

Clothing and hairstyles have nothing to do with the content of your character. It’s what’s inside your head and your heart that counts, not what you wear on the outside. That’s why the idea of fashion police is absurd. It is a meaningless exercise in enforcing conformity that is only skin deep.

Morality is simply not the kind of thing that results from the application of external force. The way to make people moral is to educate them, not to beat them into compliance. External force is useful for animals. We fence them in and leash them. But that’s not how you treat human beings.

Arresting people for what they wear (or don’t wear) also breeds discontent and further nonconformity. Women protested against the swimsuit police in the United States a hundred years ago. They are pushing the limit in the case of bikini baristas. And in Iran, women are burning their hijabs.

To force human beings to conform to some standard of modesty is degrading and ineffective. Secular systems of law respect our freedom to decide for ourselves about what we believe about modesty and how we adorn our bodies. This approach is respectful of our humanity, our rationality and our liberty.

Read more at: https://www.fresnobee.com/opinion/readers-opinion/article266575386.html#storylink=cpy

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Religious Switching is a Sign of Freedom

Fresno Bee, September 17, 2022

The religious composition of the United States has changed significantly in the past 50 years. A new report from the Pew Research Center predicts that the Christian population will continue to shrink during the next half century. This is what happens in a world of religious liberty.

In 1972, 90% of Americans were Christian. Today only 64% of Americans identify as Christian. If the rate of change remains steady during the next 50 years, Pew predicts that the Christian population will be 46% in 2070.

Those who have left Christianity have mostly turned away from organized religion. Social scientists call this group “the nones.” When asked about their religious affiliation they say “none.” During the past 50 years, the nones increased from 5% in 1972 to around 30% today. If trends remain the same, five decades from now 41% of the population will be nones.

There are also non-Christian religious affiliations: Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, and others. Those folks add up to about 6% of the population today. This combined group of non-Christians may increase to 13% during the next 50 years, if rates remain constant.

The result will likely be a country in which Christianity is no longer the dominant religion. Some may view this as a tragedy, especially those who maintain that America ought to be a “Christian nation.” But proponents of secular social and political systems will suggest that this is just the way that liberty works. If people are given the freedom to choose their own path through life, then we ought to see a profusion of lifestyles, affiliations and identities.

The Pew Center does not offer an explanation as to why all of this change began to occur after the 1970s. But such an explanation might include the fact that liberal interpretations of the First Amendment in the middle of the 20th century fanned the flames of liberty. School prayer was prohibited along with devotional Bible readings in the 1960s. The civil rights movement and changed immigration laws opened doors and eyes. A bigger, freer world emerged.

This does not mean that American secularism is opposed to religion, as some religious folks claim. The First Amendment framework is not antireligious. It protects the free expression of religion while preventing the state from creating an establishment of religion. This framework is good for religious people because it allows them to pursue their own faith in their own way.

But as liberty grows, a world of possibilities unfolds. This includes the likelihood that people will leave old traditions behind in order to make meaning for themselves in new and different ways. Lovers of liberty should celebrate our shifting religious demography. Religious switching is a sign of our freedom.

One of the great defenders of liberty, the philosopher John Stuart Mill, spoke of the importance of “experiments in living.” We need to be free to explore and experiment because no human being has a monopoly on truth. To believe something, we must experience it for ourselves. And if the old traditions no longer make sense, we should be free to create new ones.

Experimentation helps us discover new and better ideas. This process is also good for faith traditions. Competition in the realm of ideas encourages people to think more carefully about what they really believe and why they believe it.

Some people don’t like the marketplace of ideas. If your faith once had a monopoly, you may not welcome challenges to your dominance. You may resent new ideas and the liberty that allows them to be born.

Intolerance is “natural to mankind,” as Mill pointed out. Genuine religious freedom has rarely been practiced in human history. Bigotry and persecution are more common. Socrates and Jesus were both killed for opposing traditional dogma. The Protestants of Europe were persecuted by the old regime. Some fled to America, where they wrote religious tolerance into law.

In a world of liberty, nothing stays the same for long. We are creative and curious beings. Free people explore and innovate. Old traditions get left behind. Or they grow and adapt to the needs of the present. But the future belongs to the vitality of the experimental mind.

Read more at: https://www.fresnobee.com/opinion/readers-opinion/article265910211.html#storylink=cpy

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Is the US a Christian Nation?

Fresno Bee, January 23, 2022

In our secular society, Christianity has become an interest group vying for influence in the marketplace of ideas. It is no longer taken for granted that this is a Christian country.

Consider a recent case before the U.S. Supreme Court, involving a Christian group that wanted to raise its flag outside city hall in Boston. The court is considering whether this would be an endorsement of Christianity by the city, or whether the flag is merely the private expression of Christian citizens.

Christian Flag SCOTUS Blog

If the Christian group wins the case, its victory will mean only that the group has the right to express its religious beliefs in a public forum. They must take turns along with advocates of LGBT rights, BLM protesters, and other groups who want to fly their flags. No one is arguing here that the state ought to reserve a privileged place for Christian symbols and beliefs.

American secularism is grounded in the First Amendment to the Constitution. The First Amendment’s “establishment clause” prevents government entities from endorsing any faith. Its “free expression clause” permits individual citizens to express their own religious (or non-religious) beliefs.

Clarity about this is important, given the shifting religious identification of American citizens and the threat of religious violence. Our system allows people with diverse religious and non-religious beliefs to peacefully coexist. And it prevents the government from oppressing religious minorities.

Some people continue to maintain that America is a Christian nation. A recent report on NPR quoted a minister at a “patriot church” in Tennessee, who said, “You know why there’s churches everywhere and not mosques? Because we’re a Christian nation.”

But the First Amendment and our shifting demography point in another direction. In a report published at the end of 2021, the Pew Research Center indicates that the Christian population has continued to decline. Only 63% of Americans identify as Christian. Non-Christian religions (Jews, Muslims, Sikhs, Hindus, etc.) account for another 6% of the population. And even among the faithful, religious belief is often lukewarm. Fewer than half of Americans report that they pray daily. Only about 40% say that religion is very important in their lives.

The fastest growing group in our country is the “nones,” those who answer “none of the above” when asked about their religious affiliation. The “nones” have nearly doubled since 2007, when Pew began tracking the data. Nearly one in three Americans (29%) are “nones.” This includes some atheists (4%) and agnostics (5%). But many of the non-religious simply do not identify with traditional religious categories.

It is true that at one point in our history, Christianity was the dominant faith. But even that claim needs qualification. Many of the founders had unorthodox views. George Washington attended church infrequently. When he did go, he refused to take communion. Thomas Jefferson admired Jesus, but was skeptical of the Bible’s miracles. John Adams claimed that the Christian view of the trinity was absurd. And America is the home of alternative Christian faiths such as Mormonism, Adventism, and Christian Science.

Critics will also argue, as Frederick Douglass did, that a nation founded on slavery could hardly be called “Christian.” Douglass argued against “the corrupt, slaveholding, women-whipping, cradle-plundering, partial and hypocritical Christianity of this land.” He said, “I can see no reason, but the most deceitful one, for calling the religion of this land Christianity.”

Elizabeth Cady Stanton said something similar. She thought that Christianity contributed to the oppression of women. She worked with a team of feminists at the end of the 19th century to rewrite the Bible. The result was “The Woman’s Bible,” which thoroughly revised the Bible’s patriarchal and misogynistic texts.

And so it goes. We disagree about what Christianity means. A growing number of us no longer identify as Christian. And Christian groups must vie time on the flagpole along with other interest groups.

This is the reality of our secular system, operating under the First Amendment. Under our Constitution, religious liberty is valued while the government is prevented from endorsing any specific religion. In this country we are free to argue about the meaning of the Bible. We are also free to gather round the flagpole and argue about history and the role of religion in our public life.