“A dangerous movement, undetected by many, is now challenging and eroding our great tradition of religious freedom. [This movement] must be confronted and stopped.” – Attorney General Jeff Sessions on the establishment of the “Religious Liberty Task Force” within the Department of Justice.
I serve as a pastor in the United Church of Christ, a denomination that in part traces its roots to the Mayflower Pilgrims who are celebrated everything Thanksgiving. This group of 101 religious “Separatists” (so named because they separated from the Church of England) had already escaped religious persecution in England by crossing the channel and settling in Holland, where religious toleration was the law. But since all sorts of other licentious behaviors were also tolerated by the Dutch, this devout group of believers decided to risk a voyage across the Atlantic to the New World, where they hoped to form a new community free to practice the Christian faith as they saw fit in what they believed would be a more pristine environment. They named their new settlement “Plymouth.”
The pilgrims’ understanding of “religious liberty” was simple. All people should be free to worship God as they chose. No one should be coerced to accept a particular faith tradition, but all should be free to express their beliefs without fear of reprisal. It didn’t take long for this principle to be tested. The pilgrims soon realized the New World was actually very old and populated by people with their own traditions and beliefs. For roughly half a century, the pilgrims and natives engaged in sometimes tense but always hopeful dialogue and a rich exchange of practices and ideas.
This peaceful co-existence would soon be overwhelmed, however, by another colonial enterprise just to the north. The Massachusetts Bay Colony was formed out of a mixture of commercial and religious interests. Puritans (not Separatists) came to the New World with the stated intention of creating a “New England,” purifying English religion with a more biblically-based church. These Puritans also sought religious freedom, but only for themselves. When confronted with the presence of natives, they were quite clear about their intention either to convert them to Christianity or drive them away. The Massachusetts Bay Congregational Churches were determined to create a new Christian society, a theocracy supported by local taxes. Citizenship and church membership were one and the same.
The smaller Plymouth colony was overwhelmed and absorbed by the burgeoning Massachusetts Bay. Yet, the pilgrim understanding of religious liberty found new life as the basis of the colony of Rhode Island, which welcomed people seeking asylum from persecution in Massachusetts and advocated peaceful co-existence with native Americans. After the Revolutionary War, religious minority groups in the fledgling republic began lobbying the founders for a Bill of Rights that would, among other things, ensure that the federal government did not favor one religion over another but instead granted full freedom of religious expression to all citizens.
The First Amendment enshrines the kind of religious liberty envisioned by the pilgrims and practiced in Rhode Island. But that vision has continued to compete with the Puritan view of religious liberty, which grants special status to one form of Christianity on the pretext that the free exercise of this particular faith depends upon the existence of a Christianized culture.
Jeff Sessions’ “Religious Liberty Task Force” is the latest incarnation of Puritan Christianity. It is a thinly veiled effort to resist religious pluralism. When the Attorney General claims that a “dangerous movement” is eroding religious freedom, he’s heating up some really old leftovers. For much of my life, I have heard conservative Christian pastors claim that their faith is under siege. Ironically, this dire assessment is trumpeted most loudly in parts of the country where conservative Christian churches are numerous and, by the looks of their facilities, quite wealthy. But fear is stoked in those congregations so that their members are constantly on guard against “secular humanism,” “liberalism,” “Sharia law,” or whatever bogeyman at the moment is threatening irreversible changes to our society.
The Religious Liberty Task Force is not led by an ecumenical interfaith group of religious leaders. It is created to serve the project of Christian conservatives who believe their version of the faith deserves favored status because it is right. Religious freedom, this group has always argued, was never intended to extend beyond various forms of Christianity (even though the original advocates of the First Amendment were well aware of Jews and Muslims), and since their definition of true Christianity is so narrow, “liberty” doesn’t even need to extend to all who claim to be Christians. They won’t admit it, but what they actual espouse is the view that Christians (as they define the term) have a constitutional right to live in a Christian society, which includes the right to legislate morality and discriminate against those who violate that morality. This is why the LGBTQ community is so critical of the Task Force, and why proponents of a woman’s right to control her own body are also nervous about it. The Task Force is a new iteration of Puritanism, which was rejected with the adoption of the Bill of Rights.
Christians have no right, either legally or under God, to expect favored status. In this country, we have every right to worship according to our beliefs, to practice our faith as we are led, and to seek to persuade others of the truth of our convictions. But if my freedom comes at the expense somebody else’s freedom, it’s not worth a dime. And when Christian persuasion is allowed to become imposition, Christianity loses its moral authority. You cannot impose faith. Nor can a government remove faith from people’s hearts. If our free and open society has become less “Christian” (and what that means is a subject of endless debate), the fault lies, not with secularism or government overreach, but with Christians who have become either too lazy or too concerned with defending their cultural territory to bear authentic witness to Christ.
©2018 by J. Mark Lawson
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