Religious liberty is not just a right; it's a necessity
Two new books on why religious liberty is essential to the future of the American political experiment
Debates over religious liberty in the United States are as old as the nation itself. Yes, the First Amendment guarantees that Congress “shall make no law…prohibiting the free exercise [of religion],” but what does this really mean? Can a religion centered on human sacrifice find safe haven to practice in the United States? Obviously not. But what about a religion depending upon hallucinogenic drugs for sacramental purposes? Or what about people whose beliefs on gender and sexuality conflict with civil rights protections for their fellow citizens? In these situations, where must we draw the line regarding religious liberty?
Two new books—Asma Uddin’s The Politics of Vulnerability: How to Heal Muslim-Christian Relations in a Post-Christian America, and Andrew Walker’s Liberty for All: Defending Everyone’s Religious Freedom in a Pluralistic Age—take different paths in defending the importance of religious liberty. Ultimately, though, each highlights the value of protecting religious liberty for all people, as a legal and theological good. These are important and timely books.
In The Politics of Vulnerability, Uddin explains how a commitment to religious liberty can help bridge the political and social divisions plaguing the United States at this moment in her history. A veteran of religious liberty litigation and a faithful Muslim, Uddin explains how divisions in America have become more and more pronounced, and why this poses a danger for religious liberty jurisprudence in the years ahead. She adeptly weaves a keen understanding of the legal landscape, familiarity with social science research on identity formation and polarization, and anecdotes and experiences into a readable and compelling narrative about the importance of religious liberty in a fractured age.
Turning to Liberty for All, Walker approaches the importance of religious liberty not primarily from a legal or political perspective, but from a theological one. Walker, a Baptist theologian, claims religious liberty is essential for all peoples (Christian or not), grounding his arguments in eschatology, anthropology, and missiology. Religious liberty, to Walker, stems from God’s redemptive and restorative purposes. Walker’s two chapters on anthropology are particularly compelling, emphasizing humanity as being made in the image of God as just one reason necessitating religious liberty. For Walker, religious liberty is not just a way to foster healthy pluralism; instead, it is required by a right understanding of the created order.
Despite the books’ similar enthusiasm for religious liberty, they are quite different in scope and presentation. Uddin writes as someone who has been involved in these disputes for some time, drawing on her experience as an attorney and an advocate in arguing that Christian-Muslim relations in the U.S. can be strengthened by shared appeals to religious liberty. Walker, on the other hand, writes as a theologian. If Uddin’s book is meant mainly for a popular audience, then Walker’s is meant mainly for an academic one. He cites myriad scholars throughout the book, yielding pages and pages of endnotes (Uddin references researchers, too, but in a less “academic” way). This does not, however, render Walker’s book imperceptible; his prose is engaging, and he communicates complex ideas effectively, just as Uddin does.
Together, these two books suggest a better way of approaching religious liberty in the public square. Rather than starting with the assumption that religious liberty should be limited inasmuch as it can be used to harm others, Uddin and Walker assume that religious liberty is essential in its own right, and that any discussion of limiting or burdening religious liberty (sometimes necessarily) should flow from this assumption.
What this does not mean is that religious individuals should have veto power over any aspect of public policy or law that burdens their religious practice. Consider the example above, of a religion centered on the importance of human sacrifice. Neither Walker nor Uddin would defend this tradition’s right to free exercise, given the harm that such a practice poses to the community and, to use Walker’s language, the common good. Nor would they defend a religious right to Jim Crow-type invidious discrimination.
But what this does mean is that when addressing the tensions between religion and, say, LGBT rights, religious liberty should not be so easily discarded. This was the position of the U.S. Supreme Court for several decades prior to the landmark Employment Division v. Smith case (and, for what it’s worth, the days of the Smith precedent appear to be numbered). Under this sort of framework, a florist who is asked to create arrangements for a same-sex wedding ceremony should be legally allowed to turn down that request, but she she should not be able to refuse to sell a dozen roses to a gay customer. A photographer who is asked to shoot a same-sex wedding should be allowed to refuse, but he should not be able to decline to take graduation photos for a lesbian student because of her sexual orientation. Simply put, if the government’s interest in restricting religious liberty is not compelling and narrowly tailored, religious liberty ought to win out.
These examples illustrate the importance of robust religious liberty in a society marked by pluralism. Uddin and Walker do not advocate for religious liberty to be used as a sword against people with different perspectives from their own, but rather as a shield against the power of the state to enforce a monolithic belief system upon divergent communities. Early in his book, Walker quotes from David Foster Wallace’s famous speech at Kenyon College, reminding the reader, “Everybody worships.” As such, we all should be committed to strengthening religious liberty — not for self-interested reasons, but to bolster a pluralist society and make room for faithful disagreement.
Both Uddin and Walker have written persuasive accounts of the value of religious liberty, from a legal and political perspective and from a theological and ethical perspective. Read together, they articulate a positive vision of religious liberty during a moment when it is far from universally supported. In an increasingly divided United States, a consistent, holistic, and strong religious liberty may be something that brings people—religious or not—together.