Freedom of religion – Bureau County Republican

Editors column: This is the second commentary in a three-part series on the First Amendment.

If you look to the text of the Bill of Rights, the very first thing you will find affirmed in the First Amendment is freedom of religion: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. It precedes freedom of the press, the right to petition the government, the right to fair and reasonable punishment, and even to due process. If youre like most people, youve probably seen the Bill of Rights numerous times without this ever striking you as something of special importance.

Yet, the primary place of freedom of religion in the Bill of Rights is no accident. Democratic governments of all varieties are committed to the ideal of political liberalism: that the government, as far as possible, should remain neutral regarding conceptions of the good life, allowing its citizens to pursue the good as they see it, consistent with their respecting the equal rights of others. It was an ideal developed first by the social contract thinkers of the 17th and 18th centuries out of the recognition, still best stated by John Locke in his Letter Concerning Toleration, that a government which fails to respect neutrality engages in oppression and sometimes even in outright violence. This was a recognition powerfully demonstrated to them by the experiences of the Wars of Religion and the English Civil Wars.

What political liberalism promises us is the right to formulate our own understanding of the good lifeof what we find valuable, what we believe right or wrong, and what makes our life meaningful and valuable to us. It places the meaning of our lives into our own hands; politically it makes our lives our own. These understandings of the good life are produced by what the American political philosopher John Rawls calls our comprehensive doctrines, our basic world views. For many of us, this will be the religion weve been raised within or adopted. For some of us, those world views are unconnected to any religious tradition. Either way, without government neutrality regarding these comprehensive doctrines, the very meaning of our lives is taken from us, to be determined by political or bureaucratic fiat.

It is for this reason that violations of government neutrality, such as the endorsement of religious doctrine by proclamation, practice or institutionalization, or by allowing the religious rights of one group to restrict the equal rights of others, is so pernicious. When a government demands that we declare allegiance to some conception of the divine (or declare oaths to a particular claim to revealed truth) to be considered trustworthy citizens (especially if it punishes us for refusing); when it speaks entirely through the concepts and images of one religious tradition; or treats us as suspect due merely to our religious adherence (or lack thereof), it assumes for itself the ability to decide for us and enforce on us the meaning of our own lives.

Freedom of religion is placed first in the Bill of Rights because without it we are not free to think and act for ourselves, voiding the significance of all other rights. In the maintenance of freedom of religion (which must include the right not to adhere to any religion to be meaningful), nothing less is at stake than our basic autonomy that justifies all other rights.

Jason Beyer is a professor of philosophy and religious studies at Illinois Valley Community College. This commentary is his own and does not necessarily reflect the views of IVCC. It has been submitted by Voices from the Prairie, a local citizens group that is committed to upholding the values of tolerance, fairness and inclusion in American society and political life.

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Freedom of religion - Bureau County Republican