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Religious freedom

By: Cactus Flower in ALEA | Recommend this post (0)
Fri, 25 Nov 11 7:55 PM | 53 view(s)
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Msg. 06335 of 54959
(This msg. is a reply to 06331 by Cactus Flower)

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Religion tends to be treated liberally where people who believe in the tenets of one religion exercise no power over people who believe differently.

Let's say you are a Rastafarian and for you, smoking marijuana is a sacred activity. Are you free to do so in the United States?

Let's say fundamentalist Islam gains strength in America and becomes a majority. Would the US tolerate a politics defined by seventh century ideas of morality expressed through a secular vehicle such as the US Congress?

Why is fundamentalist Christianity any different, when it seeks to impose its values on the US by secular means? For instance, by eroding the values of observed science in text books. Or by imputing its morality of "life" upon individuals whose beliefs differ.

Let me put it another way. The desire for freedom of religion is a rebuttable presumption and depends to an extent on circumstances. There are other principles which compete with religious freedom and virtuous outcomes are achieved only when these other principles are also considered.

For instance, the secular notion of a separation between church and state is generally honoured by US citizens as a whole as having a higher authority than the stipulations of any religious text. A US religion is not free to reject that division.


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The above is a reply to the following message:
Re: Thursday ramblings--The Plymouth colony!
By: Cactus Flower
in ALEA
Fri, 25 Nov 11 7:12 AM
Msg. 06331 of 54959

Nice to see you posting again, j-t.

The Puritans got the chance to dominate proceedings in England for a few years in the middle of the seventeenth century. They weren't altogether tolerant of a wide variety of ideas themselves. Amongst other things, they stopped the tradition of dancing around maypoles, which is unforgiveable of course.

The English fought their own battles to establish a measure of religious flexibility in that period. But you also have to remember that religion and politics held hands back then. The pope liked to reach into a country to influence policy, encourage invasions and rebellions, tax people, excommunicate princes, extract confessions and suchlike.

So the idea of "freedom of religion" was something which had more baggage when the pilgrims went adventuring than it does now.

The English still burn a Catholic ritually every November 5th. Why? Because he - Guy Fawkes - tried to bomb the Houses of Parliament for the sake of his religion.

As a twenty-first century American seeking to understand English attitudes to seventeenth century Puritans, you might consider the parallel of the puritan and fundamentalist forms of Islam. In which there's a sense of subversion and actual physical threat to the United States.

Maybe we are a little more tolerant now. And maybe not. Tolerance and virtue are not always synonymous.


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