Opinion/Fortunato: The dangers of religious exceptionalism – The Providence Journal

Stephen J. Fortunato, Jr.| Guest columnist

Stephen J. Fortunato, Jr. served for 13 years as an associate justice of the Rhode Island Superior Court.

In Rhode Island, and around the country, many people refusing to take the COVID-19 vaccine are basing their opposition on personal religious beliefs, regardless of whether any organized religious institution to which they may belong has endorsed their behavior. The exalted claim that a personal religious belief can trump a public health policy not only inhibits efforts to combat a dangerous and often deadly disease but also subverts the fundamental principles of a representative democracy.

Nowhere in the Constitution or the writings of the Founders is there any support for the idea that a deeply-held personal belief allows a person to reject public health policies without suffering consequences. In the current vaccine controversy, neither government officials nor private employers are physically restraining people against their will in order to inoculate them, but they are telling firefighters, health-care workers, teachers, and others that a refusal to comply with a vaccination requirement might lead to firing, suspension, or similar sanctions.

This approach is in keeping with the balance sought by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison between the rights of people to be free from government interference in their religious beliefs and the legitimate concerns of government to protect the interests of the wider community. Both advocated for the inviolability of the individual conscience, but both also recognized that religious practices were not always an unalloyed benefit. As James Madison observed in his famous 1785 tract against a proposed law to tax citizens to pay for Christian educators, the history of religion is filled with episodes of superstition, bigotry and persecution.

Jefferson was especially sensitive to the problems for civil society if certain religious beliefs were translated into actions. As author of the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom (1786), Jefferson opposed any efforts to punish a person for their beliefs, but he recognized it was necessary for government officers to interfere when principles break into overt acts against peace and good order.

The Madison-Jefferson approach was expressly referenced by the United States Supreme Court in an 1878 case called Reynolds v. United States. Mr. Reynolds claimed that his Mormon faith exempted him from prosecution under an anti-bigamy statute even though he had more than one wife. The Court said that the statute applied to everyone and did not target Mormons, and that Mr. Reynolds was free to believe anything he wished; he just could not put his belief in polygamy into practice. To show how extreme beliefs could be, the Court said one could even believe in human sacrifice, but that tenet of ones faith surely could not be lawfully implemented.

People who reject vaccines on religious grounds are advancing a state of affairs condemned by Madison in his Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments because it [makes] their professed doctrines of religious belief superior to the law of the land. The clear distinction between belief and action that appears in the writings of Jefferson and Madison has been blurred in some recent United States Supreme Court decisions, particularly the widely-reported ones that allowed the religious beliefs of a baker to justify his refusal to sell a wedding cake to a same-sex couple and those of a corporate employer to deny employee medical insurance coverage for birth control devices.

Nevertheless, judges around the country have recognized that logic, science, and a sense of constitutional history cannot be subordinated to individual religious beliefs when the actions generated by those beliefs threaten lives and frustrate efforts to control a dangerous pandemic.

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Opinion/Fortunato: The dangers of religious exceptionalism - The Providence Journal