In my youth as a member of a Southern Baptist church in
northern Virginia I became acquainted with an organization called Protestants and Others United for Separation
of Church and State (now called Americans
United), an advocacy group supported by my church to remind us that the
Constitutional principle of the separation between Church and State was a key construct
of both the Virginia and the Federal constitutions.
Since
Religious
Freedom Day occurs today (January 16) and Donald Trump will be inaugurated
later this week with Republicans coming to power with threats against our
religious freedom, it seems a good time to remind ourselves that our nation was
founded on this bedrock principle. Since
the religious right in our country has regularly and intentionally distorted
the facts by a stubborn insistence that Christianity was an integral part of
our Nation’s founding documents and history, I want to correct the record by
extensively quoting from an article entitled “The Christian Right Does Not Want
You To Know About This Day” by Frederick Clarkson, originally published December
27, 2014 and just republished in
Daily
Kos. I have written on this subject
before [See
Is The United States a Christian Nation?] and
because Mr. Clarkson has stated the issues so clearly I am quoting extensively from his
article because there is no point in my writing again when he has stated the issues
so clearly.
"For all of the shouting about
religious liberty — from the landmark Hobby Lobby Supreme Court case, to the
passage of the anti-gay Religious Freedom Restoration Act in Mississippi, and
more — there is barely any mention, let alone any observance, of the official
national Religious Freedom Day, enacted by Congress in 1992 and recognized every
January 16 by an annual presidential proclamation.
The day commemorates the enactment
of the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom in 1786.
Why is this seemingly obscure piece
of Revolutionary-era legislation so vital? And why doesn’t the Christian Right
want you to know anything about it?
The bill, authored by Thomas
Jefferson and later pushed through the state legislature by then member of the
House of Delegates, James Madison, is regarded as the root of how the framers
of the Constitution approached matters of religion and government, and it was
as revolutionary as the era in which it was written.
It not only disestablished the
Anglican Church as the official state church, but it provided that no one can
be compelled to attend any religious institution or to underwrite it with
taxes; that individuals are free to believe as they will and that this “shall
in no wise diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil capacities.”
As a practical matter, this meant
that what we believe or don’t believe is not the concern of government and that
we are all equal as citizens.
Following the dramatic passage of
the Statute in 1786, Madison traveled to Philadelphia, where he served as a
principal author of the Constitution in 1787. As a Member of Congress in 1789
he was also a principal author of the First Amendment, which passed in 1791.
Jefferson was well aware that many
did not like the Statute, just as they did not like the Constitution and the
First Amendment, both of which sought to expand the rights of citizens and
deflect claims of churches seeking special consideration.
So before his death, Jefferson
sought to get the last word on what it meant. The Statute, he wrote, contained
“within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian
and Mohametan, the Hindoo and Infidel of every denomination.”
That is a powerful and clear
statement. Jefferson, almost 200 years ago, refuted the contemporary claims of
Christian Right leaders, many of whom not only insist that America
was founded as a Christian nation, but that the framers really meant their
particular interpretation of Christianity. (And they are sometimes encouraged by
a surprisingly wide array of pundits.)
Jefferson further explained that
the legislature had specifically rejected proposed language that would have
described “Jesus Christ” as “the holy author of our religion.” This was
rejected, he reported, “by the great majority.”
No wonder the Christian Right does
not want us to remember the original Statute for Religious Freedom — it doesn’t
fit their narrative of history! Nor does it justify their vision of the
struggles of the political present, or the shining theocratic future they
envision.
Religious Freedom Day is nothing
but bad news for the likes of Religious Right leaders like Tony Perkins,
who argue that Christians who favor marriage equality are not really
Christians. They can believe that if they want, but it can make no difference
in the eyes of the law. That is probably why on Religious Freedom Day 2014,
Perkins made no mention of what Religious Freedom Day is really about — instead
using the occasion to denounce president Obama’s approach to
religious liberty abroad.
This barely commemorated day
provides an opportunity for LGBTQ people, and progressives generally, to
reclaim a philosophical, legal and constitutional legacy that the Christian
Right is busy trying to redefine for their own purposes.
Alright. So the Christian Right
really does not want us to know about this day, but if we do, they certainly
don't want us thinking about this stuff -- and so the standard fare of faux
outrage about president Obama and various conspiracies against faith in general
and conservative Christianity in general is likely to dominate our foreseeable
future.
But it doesn't have to be this way.
And the Christian Right probably knows it.
When I say that the Christian Right
does not want “us” to think about it, I mean everyone who is not the Christian
Right and their allies, and especially not LGBTQ people and the otherwise
“insufficiently Christian.” I think that is why the Christian Right is
mostly so eerily quiet about it, even though religious freedom is so central to
their political program.
But what if we did?
What if we seized this day to think
dynamically about the religious freedoms we take for granted at our peril;
freedom that is in danger of being redefined beyond recognition. What if
we decided to seize this day to consider our best values as a nation and
advance the cause of equal rights for all?
If we did, we might begin by
recalling the extraordinary challenge faced by the framers of the Constitution
when they gathered in Philadelphia. They met to create one nation out of 13
fractious colonies still finding their way after a successful revolt against
the British Empire; and contending with a number of powerful and
well-established state churches and a growing and religiously diverse
population.
Their answer? Religious
equality. And it is rooted in Jefferson’s bill. Let's remind ourselves
about the origins of the bill.
Jefferson wrote the first draft in
1777 — just after having authored the Declaration of Independence in 1776.
And it was James Madison who finally got the legislation passed through
the Virginia legislature in 1786, just months before he traveled to
Philadelphia to be a principal author of the Constitution. The Virginia
Statute states that no one can be compelled to attend or support any religious
institution, or otherwise be restrained in their beliefs, and that this “shall
in no wise diminish, enlarge or affect their civil capacities . . .”
The Constitution, framed according
to “The Virginia Plan,” drafted primarily by Madison, contains no
mention of God or Christianity. In fact, the final text’s only mention of
religion is in the proscription of “religious tests for public office,” found
in Article 6.
In other words — Jefferson’s
words — one’s religious identity, or lack thereof, has no bearing on
one’s “civil capacities.”
If we thought about the meaning of
Religious Freedom Day, we might start thinking about things like that — and not
capitulate to the Christian Right’s effort to redefine religious
freedom to include a license for business and institutional leaders (both
government and civil) to impose their religious beliefs on employees and the
public.
If we thought about things like
that, then we might consider them in light of a host of initiatives in recent
years, often advanced under the banner of religious freedom, but which, in
fact, restrict the religious freedom of others.
We might consider, for example, the
recent federal court decision in the case of General Synod of the
United Church of Christ v. Cooper, which found that North Carolina’s ban on
clergy performing marriage ceremonies without first obtaining a civil marriage
license, was unconstitutional.
Since state law declared that
same-sex couples could not get marriage licenses, this subjected clergy in
the United Church of Christ, the Alliance of Baptists, and the Central
Conference of American Rabbis, among others, to potential prosecution for
performing a religious ceremony.
As religious equality advances, so
does equal rights for all. So you can see why the Christian Right might not
want people—people like us—thinking like Jefferson. And that is why we
must."
© Kos Media, LLC
