Freedom of Religion

Freedom of religion is an interesting case of Natural Rights. It does not generally exist in small political units. The religions of the City States were State religions. This was so widespread that the idea that a society could not be united unless it has an Establishment of Religion became one of the basic principles of early political thought.

On the other hand, the Classical world believed that allowing the people of conquered nations to be ruled by their own laws and traditions was a good way of preventing revolution. Laws and traditions were closely tied to religion. The idea of religion then was different than now. It allowed greater latitude for introducing new Gods. It was intimately tied to politics and law.

So, religious tolerance, of a kind, was a fundamental of successful political policy of Rome. Allowing people to maintain their own culture traditions and laws was a form of religious tolerance. Rome ran into trouble when it violated this policy. It caused the revolt of the Jews, problems with the Christians, etc.

After the fall of Rome, when it was conquered and ruled by barbarians who were Christian but not of the official state sect, it caused problems again. Both Christian sects wanted to destroy the other and revolution and unrest were generated. One of the most successful of these rulers was one who insisted on a policy of tolerance.

When Islam broke into the world, it was far more tolerant of minority religions in the areas it conquered than the state religions that existed before it had been. This meant that large religious minorities welcomed the Islamic conquerors as Liberators. The intolerant ugly Islam which we know today is a development that largely coincided with the Crusades. It would be wrong to blame it on the Crusades as the persecution of Christian Pilgrims in Jerusalem was one of the causes of the Crusades showing that intolerance was growing in Islam before the Crusades.

Freedom of religion is a form of tolerance and clemency. Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar are said to have conquered more easily because of their reputation for clemency than they would have if they had not been more merciful and forgiving than other leaders of their time. All of this demonstrates the historical necessity of religious tolerance and freedom to a stable Social Contract. Throughout history those large scale political organizations which have respected this principle in one form or another have flourished and all of those which have disregarded it have either suffered revolution or been conquered by more tolerant powers. Hobbes fundamental basis for all his Natural Laws is that the Social Contract, Leviathan, or Sovereign power cannot act to produce its own destruction. Religious intolerance is historically suicidal for Leviathan. Religious tolerance or freedom is therefore a natural law in terms of Hobbesian principles.

Freedom of Religion and Human Needs

It is in the self-interest of men to surrender if they expect mercy and to fight to the death if they do not. It is in the interest of men to accept a state which tolerates their religious beliefs and to strive to destroy it if it does not.

States which have had Establishments of Religion in the recent past do not have strongly religious populations today. When people attend a church because the State requires them to do so, it is not a choice, not a commitment they feel personally. The US which has no establishment of religion is the most strongly religious country in the West. (There is a lesson here for fundamentalist Muslims and other similar religious groups.)

(If you compare Maslow’s pyramid with Dante’s Inferno there is an interesting correlation. Abuses of needs lower on Maslow’s list are punished less severely than abuses of needs higher on Maslow’s list.) Maslow’s pyramid ends with self-actualization. The list of needs goes something like this, though different versions exist; body needs, security needs, social needs, ego needs and self-actualization. Another version runs like this;

1) Physiological: hunger, thirst, bodily comforts, etc.;

2) Safety/security: out of danger;

3) Belongingness and Love: affiliate with others, be accepted; and

4) Esteem: to achieve, be competent, gain approval and recognition.

Religion falls into one of those later categories of needs. Some forms of self-interest, such as gaining respect and being an achiever by gaining wealth might fall their as well.

There are needs that religions satisfy. A state religion makes religious choice a formal matter determined by the state, not an act of self-actualization, not involved with personal commitment, and not related to ego. In this sense, by denying the Citizen freedom to act in the sense of choosing his own beliefs it destroys the relationship between action and result. This is a violation of the fundamental natural law underlying most of our natural rights and freedoms.

Some ego needs like respect and acceptance can be satisfied by joining a state church, but only if others actually believe and accept the religion which the state has chosen for them.

Ego needs are not satisfied by compulsion as well as by personal commitment and choice. Self-actualization needs cannot be satisfied by compulsion but can only be satisfied by personal commitment and choice. Freedom of Religion is one method of providing the freedom for humans to satisfy these needs.

In a number of subtle ways an establishment of religion inhibits the ability of humans to satisfy their higher needs which are part of their self-interest. Freedom or Religion is therefore a Natural Right in terms of its being fundamentally necessary for human beings to satisfy the needs higher on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.

What is Religion?

Religion is more than just singing psalms in church. It is more than just repeating words. It is a way of life, an accepted moral code, and unless you practice what you preach you are not religious. Everyone agrees with this.

Despite this, the Democratic Party today is set upon the total eradication of freedom of religion in a real sense. It is all very well they think for people to go to church and sing songs, but ‘God Forbid’ they should also practice what they preach. If they dare to try to practice the moral teachings of the Bible they are condemned as fanatics and hate mongers.

Democrats will point to religious leaders who do not perfectly practice what they preach to criticize religion for hypocrisy and then pass laws making it illegal to practice what is taught as religious principles. There is no purer hypocrisy than this.

The Democratic Party is essentially dedicated to destroying any real practice of traditional religion and replacing it with the sacred principles of The Church of Secular Humanism of the Shining Path of Political Correctness. The Democratic Party today appears totally dedicated to destroying separation of Church and State while pretending to defend it. By claiming that the moral or immoral values they espouse are not a ‘religion’ they claim a right to legally force those values down everyone else’s throat. This is functionally and in reality an establishment of religion.

People evolved in small groups with shared values where everyone knew and shared basic standards of behavior. Those standards varied tremendously from group to group. The fact that they were shared and practiced and respected by all in the group did not. People need this kind of environment today. One of the roles the Church serves is to created congregations with shared values. It recreates in part the natural social environment which humans would have had as hunter-gatherers. It is a necessary institution for the emotional health of the individual. The Democrats are set on destroying this and forcing all Americans into a brainwashed totalitarian mold.

A moral code dictated at the point of a gun can never command the allegiance or fulfill the emotional needs of a human being as well as one chosen on the basis of personal commitment and belief. The right of Americans to form small communities which live according to a moral standard accepted within that community and not dictated by the Federal Government is fundamental to the mental and emotional health of American Citizens.

This ability to form such communities of moral agreement is protected by the Bill of Rights under freedom of religion. The protection reads like this:

You will note that there are two guarantees. One is against an establishment of religion, the other is against prohibitions on the free practice of religion. Free practice of religion means the ability to practice it in public, to pray, to defend your moral beliefs. Even to attempt to spread your faith. It is worth noting that freedom of speech occurs in the immediate context of free practice of religion. Many of the most common prohibitions of free speech in the time of the Revolution specifically related to the prohibition of forms of religious speech. It is clear that freedom of speech as understood by our founding Fathers was specifically related to freedom of religious speech. Freedom to publicly speak of and present the principles of your religion to others.

The Democrats in the name of no establishment of religion have insisted on making free practice of religion illegal. Allowing religions equal use of Federal or State facilities designed for public use with other organizations is legitimate free practice of religion. Not allowing such use violates the second protection of religion in the Bill of Rights. It also violates the right to freedom of speech by prohibiting a kind of speech especially protected by the Bill of Rights in virtually all Public Forums because virtually all Public Forums are maintained in own way or another by a Municipal, State or Federal Authority. It violates freedom of the press by denying the right of people to distribute printed religious material in such public forums. It violates freedom of assembly by denying equal right to assemble to members of religious groups as opposed to those groups who claim that their values are not religious in nature. These freedoms do not occur together in the First Amendment by accident. They occur together because they were violated together historically around the time of the Revolution. It is not to be doubted that freedom of religious speech, freedom of religious press, and freedom of religious assembly was one of the first categories of freedom in all these arenas on the minds of the Framers of the Bill of Rights when they penned these words.