Religious freedom

I may have this backwards, as to whom addressed whom first, but back when the Denver Jewish community was planning its first eruv, or Sabbath perimeter, someone asked:

“Isn’t this just a fake? You say that some wires hanging across telephone poles, with some mini-poles standing vertically alongside the telephone poles, create a single ‘domain,’ in which it is suddenly permissible under Jewish law to carry on the Sabbath — you expect me to see any sense in this?”

The questioner was a Catholic.

The answer went like this:

“Transubstantiation makes sense?”

Wine and a wafer, inside the Catholic believer’s mouth, literally turn into the blood and body of Jesus?

I use this exchange by way of introducing what is quickly becoming a lost cause in certain political circles in this country: religious freedom.

Religious freedom does not mean my right to practice what makes sense to you. It means my right to practice what makes sense to me, despite the fact that it makes no sense to you.

So, in the instance above, the Catholic helped pave the way for Denver’s first eruv, and the Jews involved saluted the Catholic for his own religious commitment.

How is it that mainline Catholics as well as Orthodox Jews, evangelical Christians, Mormons, Greek Orthodox Christians, Sikhs, Muslims and other out-of-the-mainstream religions make common cause in promoting religious freedom legislatively? Is it because they affirm the truths of these other religions? Well, maybe on a few moral issues, such as abortion or marriage, or maybe on a very general belief in G-d, many of these religions affirm each other; but in the overwhelming majority of religious principles, these religions are as far from each other as they are from secularism. They make common cause in the political sphere not from shared religious beliefs and practices, but because they all feel that their religious freedom is threatened in the current political climate.

The threat is this: The liberal view that it’s OK to be religious, just so long as it does not transgress another orthodoxy, that of liberal politics.

If your religious commitment forbids the supply of contraceptives, then that isn’t freedom of religion anymore. It’s oppression.

If your religious commitment forbids change in gender identity, then that isn’t freedom of religion anymore. It’s bigotry.

If your religious commitment forbids abortion, then that isn’t freedom of religion anymore. It’s sexism.

If your religion is not egalitarian in that it does not allow female clergy, then that isn’t freedom of religion anymore. It’s discrimination.

If your religion requires circumcision or shechita, that isn’t freedom of religion. That is cruelty.

To oppose religion, or at least some religions, as oppressive, bigoted, sexist, discriminatory or cruel is to launch an assault on religious freedom.

It is also something else, more subtle  and even more pernicious. It is to insist that religion confine itself strictly to ritual and worship. It is to rob religion of the right to define itself as bearing its own moral and ethical commitment.

The expectation that freedom of religion will yield a ritual or a moral commitment that is universally assented to is to deny religion its essence. There is no religion that, at least in pre-Messianic times, commands universal assent. The genius of America has been the tolerance for all religions, provided only that government does sanction any religion, and that religion does not sanction lethal or non-lethal violence.

The British thinker, Isaiah Berlin, pointed out the critical difference between freedom from and freedom to. “Freedom from” is the freedom from outside interference. It is real political freedom. “Freedom to” is the freedom to do what some outside power says you can do. For example, freedom from is the freedom from government interference in the practice of religion. Freedom to is the province of others who tell you what you can and can’t do, and when, where and how.

The lack of government sanction of religion — freedom from — is, in the current political climate, at risk of being turned into freedom to: the demand that religion excise any element in it that does not meet politically correct definitions of everything from life on up. For example, “you have freedom of religion, up to the the point where you do not dispense contraceptives.”

That is freedom to, which severely limits and indeed eviscerates your religious freedom.

I don’t expect anyone not committed to Jewish law to see the sense in an eruv. I don’t see the sense in transubstantiation. I don’t see the sense in a lot of beliefs or practices of religions different from my own. But I respect their right to their religion; I admire them for their commitment to it; and I freely affirm that a religious commitment different from my own has a positive effect on the other person and on society as a whole — provided only that that other religion affirms my right to practice mine, too.

Very ironically, while it is conflicts between religions that have caused severe social disruptions (often to the point of war) in the past, today in America, religions, which generally affirm other religions’ freedom, form much of the social cement, including the intact family. It is the secular . . . well, there is no other word, the secular religion which speaks in a universal tone that sometimes divides the body politic by derogating or denying the exercise of certain fundamentals of religion, as the religions themselves define them.

True enough, just as religion should be free from the control, legal or otherwise, of secularism; the reverse is also true. Religion should have no right to impose its practices or teachings on society at large. My point is that in this difficult balance, the pendulum has swung heavily on the side of secularism, as religious teachings are regularly stigmatized (“bigoted,” “discriminatory,” etc.) and even outlawed.

Example: Recent leaked emails reflect snide, stereotypical, anti-Catholic bias among some progressives. An associate of the Center for American Progress is scandalized that Rupert Murdoch and other journalists “are raising their kids Catholic” and and wrote that “many of the most powerful elements of the conservative movement are all Catholic (many converts) from [the Supreme Court] . . . ”

Catholics aren’t allowed to serve on the Supreme Court?

Another associate of the Center for American Progress wrote, “I imagine they think it [Catholicism] is the most socially acceptable politically conservative religion. Their rich friends wouldn’t understand if they became evangelicals.”

Religion does not attract adherents out of conviction?

An associate of another liberal group, Voices for Progress, writes, “There needs to be a Catholic spring in which Catholics themselves demand the end of a middle ages dictatorship and the beginning of a little democracy and respect for gender equality in the Catholic church.”

This is the language of respect for religious freedom?

On Sukkos, Jews hold the lulav and esrog. Jews sit in temporary shelters called sukkahs. Many Jews find these practices the height of joy and meaning. Others would look on these rituals as mystifying at best, meaningless at worst. But there is a critical distinction among those who consider them mystifying or meaningless.

Some would say, “each to his own.”

Others would say, “this is of a piece with a religion some of whose practitioners deviate from current political views on everything from gender identity to egalitarian clergy. So, let ‘em have their lulav — but no further!”

That is not religious freedom.

Rabbi Hillel Goldberg may be reached at [email protected].

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