In this past week I sought to compare and contrast the concept of “Freedom of Religion” and “Freedom from Religion.” The immediate spur was the current holiday season, but this theme has been a concern of mine for many years. I argued that “Freedom of Religion” must mean the population is free from any efforts by the state to establish an official religion, per the US Constitution; the state itself must be free from any popular pressure to make it establish a religion; and that each religion must be free from attack by any other religion.
I think those points are non-controversial, and recent news items have reinforced my belief in them: In Pakistan, a businessman from Sri Lanka, perhaps Hindu but not identified as such, was beaten to death by an angry mob and burned in the street for the crime of heresy. The specific act he committed? Taking down a poster that referenced the Prophet Muhammad as part of a renovation to his building. The national government condemned the murder. Here’s the Al Jazeera report.
Separately, there are reports this week from the United Kingdom about a group of young men making Nazi salutes, throwing shoes and spitting at passengers in what was described as a “Hanukkah party bus” in London. The local police are treating the event as a hate crime and the government has condemned it. See story here.
Also, Foreign Affairs magazine has published a lengthy piece titled “All Against All: The Sectarian Resurgence in the Post-American Middle East” in its January/February 2022 issue. I didn’t know sectarian violence had ever gone away, but you can read the article here, though you may hit a paywall.
It’s all bad news but it speaks as much to the need for more tolerance as it does to the dangers of religion interfering in civil society, which was my earlier concern. The old Soviet Union, to the extent it was based on Communist ideology, tried to wipe out all religion. It didn’t work. The Communist Party of China clearly is trying to suppress Islam among the Uyghur people – I don’t think it will work. Separation of church and state, combined with tolerance, is a better plan after all.
During this holiday season I’d once again become troubled by local governments and the White House, as well most mainstream media outlets, celebrating a plethora of religious observances when I thought they should all be neutral. It was as if they were promoting religion in general, albeit not one religion. It looked to me like an end run around the Constitution.
But I now think I was wrong. I think I underestimated the value of what is essentially a multicultural policy, not any form of proselytizing.
Think of the horrific Pakistani example. Would not an appreciation for other religions, or at least an acknowledgement that not everyone shares your religion, have been a better response to an alleged act of heresy? I have to think so.
I received two thoughtful comments to my earlier post, both suggesting that I had gone too far. The upshot of each was that it is freedom of religion, not freedom from religion, that must be the goal. I remember a statement that former Vermont governor Howard Dean once made, to the effect that the Democratic Party is open to all religions, and is open to non-believers, as well. He took a lot of flak for the latter part of his statement – apparently, some religionists are intolerant of those who are not religious, but my position is now close to Dean’s.
So, I’m going to amend my earlier position. The state cannot impose a religion on the people; the people cannot impose religion on the state; no religion can impose itself on any other religion; and, people are free to be non-religious.
Thanks Abe for your thoughtful update. The multicultural policy has it merits if it can be applied without the political mongering.
I am also thinking about "tolerance". How complicated that is. Maybe we opt for equality and compassion. There's a great book by Wendy Brown called, "Regulating Aversion: Tolerance in the Age of Identity and Empire" where she problematize the idea of tolerance:
"Tolerance is generally regarded as an unqualified achievement of the modern West. Emerging in early modern Europe to defuse violent religious conflict and reduce persecution, tolerance today is hailed as a key to decreasing conflict across a wide range of other dividing lines — cultural, racial, ethnic, and sexual. But, as political theorist Wendy Brown argues in Regulating Aversion, tolerance also has dark and troubling undercurrents."
https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691136219/regulating-aversion