Religious Liberty 2010 – A Year in Review
By Jason Hines -
2010 has been an interesting year in the area of church-state relations, both at home and abroad. While we cannot cover every event of magnitude that took place this year in this forum, we will touch on some of the more important events have taken place over the last 365 days.
American Events
In March, the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit upheld the phrase “under God” in the pledge of allegiance. The case of Newdow v. Rio Linda Union School District, 05-17257, was the next round in the fight of Michael Newdow against the reference to God in the Pledge of Allegiance. In 2002, The Eastern District of the Ninth Circuit ruled that the reference to God in the pledge was unconstitutional. The Supreme Court overturned that ruling on the technical issue of standing in 2004. The present case was argued in 2007. In siding with the school district, the Court found that the reference to God in the pledge was recognition of the religious history of the nation and was not an affirmation of God Himself. Furthermore, the Court found that the pledge was voluntary and students were allowed to opt out of the recitation for religious reasons.
Islamophobia once again became a popular buzzword in the months leading up to the ninth anniversary of 9/11. Much of the furor revolved around the proposed Park51, more popularly known as the “Ground Zero Mosque” in New York City. The popular name of the proposed structure is exceedingly ironic, considering the fact that the structure is not a mosque and not within view of Ground Zero. The debate over Park51 was just the tip of the iceberg, as debates about proposed mosques erupted in Tennessee, California, and Wisconsin. The debate culminated over the treatment of Muslims culminated in the proposed Qur’an burning by Pastor Terry Jones on the anniversary of 9/11. Many politicians and religious groups of all stripes objected to the Qur’an burning, and Pastor Jones eventually canceled the event.
On August 4, the District Court for the Northern District of California ruled on Prop 8 and the issue of gay marriage in the case of Perry v. Schwarzenegger. Judge Vaughn Walker ruled that Prop 8 violated the both the Due Process and the Equal Protection Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment. Those on the defense who supported Prop 8 presented a fairly weak case, presenting only two witnesses, both of whom were ineffectual. Judge Walker was almost given no choice in ruling for the plaintiffs. However, all admit that this is just the first skirmish in an issue that may very well end up in the Supreme Court.
Church-state issues were briefly a part of the midterm elections, thanks to Christine O’Donnell. The Delaware Tea Party Candidate, in a debate with her Democratic opponent Chris Coons, questioned the presence of the concept of separation of church and state in the Constitution. She continued to press the issue even after Coons explained to her that the Religion Clauses of the First Amendment and Supreme Court cases had established the concept as a Constitutional principle. Many conservatives leapt to her defense, arguing that she was technically correct, and that she was misunderstood.
International Events
Throughout this year, France has been embroiled in a controversy regarding banning burqas and other forms of Islamic face coverings. The ban passed the lower house of the French Parliament in July, and passed the Senate in September. Naturally, Muslims in France have protested this law, citing the fact that their religious freedom is being violated. The last legal hurdle was cleared in October when France’s highest court ruled that the law was constitutional. The Court found that because the law did not restrain the use of burqas during worship, there was no violation of religious freedom.
In July, Argentina became the first Latin American country to allow gay marriage. The President of Argentina, Fernandez de Kirchner, supported this legislation, despite the strenuous objection of the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church organized several protests in the days leading up to the vote. While the Kirchners (her husband is the former president) have been accused of supporting this legislation because of its personal political benefits, they and others have argued that the time for this law has come. Argentina has shifted to more politically liberal mores and therefore this legislation reflects the changed sensibilities of Argentineans.
Late this year, a truly historic piece of legislation passed in Peru. The legislature in Peru passed legislation that will guarantee religious freedom for all citizens, codifying a principle that was already present in Peru’s Constitution. The law protects both public and private expressions of religion, unless the exercise of that right infringes on the rights of others or causes a public disturbance. Furthermore, the law outlaws any type of discrimination against anyone on the basis of religion and establishes religious equality, providing these benefits to all citizens, regardless of their religious preference.
This year has seen an interesting shift in the status of religious liberty around the world. Nations that have largely been seen as the stalwarts of religious freedom, such as the United States and countries in Europe, have taken some steps to restrict the religious freedom of religious minorities and the irreligious, with varying amounts of success. However, countries that have historically been described as unwelcoming to religious minorities, such as countries in Latin America, have taken steps to extend freedoms to those less fortunate.
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Jason Hines is an attorney and doctoral candidate at the J.M. Dawson Institute of Church-State Studies at Baylor University.
Greg Hamilton’s Book Shelf – 2011
Greg Hamilton, President of the Northwest Religious Liberty Association and advisory panel member of ReligiousLiberty.TV presents his book list for 2010-2011.
1) Ratification: The People Debate the Constitution, 1787-1788 by Pauline Maier
2) Decision Points by George W. Bush
3) The Second Disestablishment: Church and State in Nineteenth-Century America by Steve Green
4) The Ideological Origins of American Federalism by Alison LaCroix
5) Washington: A Life by Ron Chernow
6) Habeas Corpus: From England to Empire by Paul Halliday
7) The Idea of Justice by Amartya Sen
8 ) Revolutionaries: A New History of the Invention of America by Jack Rakove
9) God of Liberty: A Religious History of the American Revolution by Thomas Kidd
10) The Decline and Fall of the American Republic by Bruce Ackerman
11) Woodrow Wilson: A Biography by John Milton Cooper, Jr.
12) Napoleon by Paul Johnson
13) Washington Rules: America’s Path to Permanent War by Andrew Bacevich
14) The Age of Reagan: A History, 1974-2008 by Sean Wilentz
15) God’s Battalions: The Case for the Crusades by Rodney Stark
16) John Hancock: Merchant King and American Patriot by Harlow Giles Unger
17) The Enemy at the Gate: Habsburgs, Ottomans and the Battle for Europe by Andrew Wheatcroft
18) Lion of Liberty: Patrick Henry and the Call to a New Nation by Harlow Giles Unger
19) Samuel Adams: A Life by Ira Stoll
20) Founding Faith: How Our Founding Fathers Forged a Radical New Approach to Religious Liberty by Steven Waldman
21) Tear Down This Wall: A City, A President, and the Speech that Ended the Cold War by Romesh Ratnesar
22) The Strong Horse: Power, Politics, and the Clash of Arab Civilizations by Lee Smith
Secrecy v. Transparency – Wikileaks and the Gospel
The keywords for today are “Secrecy” and “Transparency.”
There are good secrets and bad secrets. Things to be concealed and things to be revealed. Some people want to know, others want to hide.
Secrecy is an valuable commodity. From universities that want to protect professors’ academic freedom by keeping their controversial viewpoints from public criticism to the Central Intelligence Agency’s protection of international sources, secrecy and confidentiality allows organizations and governments to effectively achieve their goals with a degree of freedom and flexibility.
On the other hand, transparency is also valuable. For instance, without whistle blowers, the American people would never have learned about the torture of Iraqi prisoners of war at Abu Ghraib and the United States would not have recently apologized for purposely infecting 696 Guatemalan prisoners, soldiers, and mental patients with syphilis in the 1940s. (For that story, see http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/oct/01/us-apology-guatemala-syphilis-tests)
After 9/11 when the United States went to war in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Bush administration was roundly criticized for keeping things too private, and when President Obama took office, he promised a different approach the Administration issued a memorandum called “Transparency and Open Government” which is still visible online at http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/TransparencyandOpenGovernment/
In the memo, Obama said, “My Administration is committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in Government. We will work together to ensure the public trust and establish a system of transparency, public participation, and collaboration. Openness will strengthen our democracy and promote efficiency and effectiveness in Government.
In the age of the Internet, information can be shared on a worldwide basis at the speed of light. The recent Wikileaks revelations of State Department communications, which were dispersed through the established media, have caused a great deal of embarrassment for the United States diplomatic corps, and may in fact harm international relations. In response, we can expect that it will be more difficult for representatives to operate, and we can also expect attempts to curtail freedom of speech.
They have also showed the American people the precarious situation in which we find ourselves by trying to balance between competing national interests. For instance, we are economically tied to China which has been sharing technology with Iran. But we are tied by oil to Saudi Arabia whose leadership wants the U.S. to attack Iran.
Other leaks from other sources have showed us that the Federal Reserve secretly bailed out General Electric and other U.S. companies to the combined tune of trillions of dollars. The Fed had long said that it needed complete secrecy to run the U.S. economy and we can only hope that revelations along these lines will not hurt our international credit rating.
If you remember the old Road Runner cartoons, Wiley Coyote can run over the side of the cliff and will hang in mid-air until he looks down and sees what the situation is. It is then that he falls. Hopefully the same will not happen if China and other major creditor nations look and see that the Fed has printed money beyond its value in order to prop up a perception of credit worthiness. Right now, the Fed’s veil of secrecy is providing the buffer between Wiley and the bottom of the canyon.
So what’s the moral to this story? We can learn that we cannot always trust what is on the surface because other things may be lurking below although you can go crazy trying to figure it out. We can see that secrets can protect good and bad activities, and that when there is harm being committed it is not a bad thing for people to stand up and say so. We can also learn that the path of a whistle blower is fraught with peril as people with multiple interests or fear of association will agree to “shoot the messenger” and for this reason that some secrets, like the Guatemalan experiments, may not be revealed for decades.
On a spiritual angle, the Bible has something to say about both secrecy and transparency. In Luke 8:17 Jesus says that there’s no point in trying to look good in public while doing evil in private. “For there is nothing hidden that will not be disclosed, and nothing concealed that will not be known or brought out into the open.”
If we want to avoid living life in fear of society’s spotlight, there is a simple standard – live life as if you’re in a fishbowl in the middle of Times Square. When the spotlight hits, people will see good things and criticism of you will be because they can’t handle the brightness of your goodness, not because they find actual fault with you.
“But even if you should suffer for the sake of righteousness, you are blessed. and do not fear their intimidation and do not be troubled, but sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts, always being ready to make a defense to everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you, yet with gentleness and reverence; and keep a good conscience so that in the thing in which you are slandered, those who revile your good behavior in Christ will be put to shame. For it is better, if God should will it so, that you suffer for doing what is right rather than for doing what is wrong.”
1 Peter 3:14-17 (NIV).
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Say No to the Defamation of Religions Resolutions, Yes to the Right to Believe (Open Doors)
This year the Defamation of Religions Resolution will once again be voted on in the UN General Assembly. Its supporters claim that it protects religious freedom… but in fact it does the exact opposite. It allows governments the power to determine which religious views can and can’t be expressed in their country, and it gives the state the right to punish those who express ‘unacceptable’ religious views as they see fit. So, in effect, it makes persecution legal.
Hillary Clinton: Religious liberty is essential and must not be kept private
November 17, 2010. Speaking at the launch of the US State Department’s International Religious Freedom Report, Hillary Clinton spoke of the importance of religious freedom. She said the freedom is “both a fundamental human right and an essential element to any stable, peaceful, thriving society”.
Respecting the Religion of Your Brother
By Rajmund (Ray) Dabrowski -
Authentic religion calls for a respect, sensitivity and acceptance of another’s beliefs and practices. Do unto others … the saying goes.
It really did not matter which one of the muezzins woke me up. The melodic reciting of a call to prayer from one of the minarets at 4:45 in the morning on the next to last day of the Holy Month of Ramadan could have come from any of the mosques surrounding the Holiday Inn hotel in the Western part of Amman, Jordan.
Soon, I was asleep again, even though it seemed that the call to prayer was endless. It was still before sunrise, and why was he doing it at such an ungodly hour, I was asking the little man in my head.
Waking up an hour or so later, my head gave-in to a bit of an early morning reflection. Just like with any other varieties of life, cultivating an approach of have open mind allows acceptance of diversity. That’s what I like to experience in my global village.
So, sleeping and dreaming will come soon enough, I said aloud to myself.
As a participant of a consultation on “Teaching Respect for Religion” my Amman experience was a valuable lesson. My own lesson. The hosts – The Arab Bridge Centre for Human Rights and Development – did not have to argue how tolerant the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan is. After all, churches and mosques frequently coexist next to each other with only a fence providing a gentle reminder of diversity. What matters is that being a Jordanian yields respect, even acceptance, for your brother’s or sister’s religion.
A few phrases from the Meeting of Experts of the International Association of Religious Liberty (IRLA) stand out in my mind – I say ‘no’ to tolerance. Instead, I call for ‘mutual acceptance’ - Hasan Abu Nimah, former Ambassador of Jordan to the United Nations; We are all in a global classroom and a part of education for good or for bad – Dr. Gunnar Stalsett, Bishop Emeritus of Oslo, and vice chairman of the Norwegian Peace Prize Committee; In America, we have an incomplete view of religious liberty – Mitch Tyner, Esq, from IRLA.
The Amman conversation spoke plainly about what makes or breaks social harmony. Without a decisive practice in the realm of commonly held values in all and any milieu, we will not halt the effect of an erosion of such values, irrespective of a religious tradition that guards them.
The current European experiment with social interaction and freedom in the midst of secularism does not bid well for the nurture that Christian tradition seems to claim for itself. When the human person,and his or her dignity, ceases to be at the center of human interaction, the loser is always the humanity itself.
Is there is a room for an option that would allow respect to be a circumvented by some other lofty ideal? Respect should always walk hand-in-hand with the acceptance of one’s identity and the professed truth. Authentic religion calls for a respect, sensitivity and acceptance of another’s beliefs and practices. Do unto others … the saying goes.
Last week, there was a moment when all participants of the Amman conversation were feeling the effect of a call by an obscure Pentecostal clergyman in Florida to burn the Koran. It was a media-driven stunt to be held. Such an expression of hatred and intolerance could have unleashed an avalanche of violent repercussions across the globe, who knows.
But, rhetoric of hatred and an atmosphere of fear is not what creates peace and respect. Thus, the Amman exchange of views and expression of shared values was timely, to say the least.
As I listened to muezzin calling the faithful to pray according to an Islamic tradition, I thought that such a “wake up call” was actually timely. For myself. I was called to respect a religious moment of my brothers and sisters in Jordan.
Was this a private lesson in tolerance, in spite of the ungodly morning hour?
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Rajmund Dabrowski directed communications for the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists from 1994-2010. For a number of years he has held a position as a vice president of the International Religious Liberty Association. In the early 1990s Dabrowski edited the English edition of “Conscience & Liberty,” in St. Albans, England, a journal of the International Association for the Defense of Religious Freedom, and was a contributing writer/researched of “Freedom of Religion and Belief – A World Report,” [Edited by Kevin Boyle and Juliet Sheen; Ruthledge, 1997]. This article and accompanying photographs come from his personal blog, Pushing the Borders.In Peru, ‘historic’ religious liberty legislation passes (ANN)
Law recognizes religious pluralism; all faiths to enjoy same ‘rights, obligations and benefits’
Members of Peru’s congress voted last week to approve legislation guaranteeing the religious liberty of all citizens, a freedom already recognized by the South American country’s constitution.
The act comes a year after more than 40,000 Peruvians gathered in the country’s capital, Lima, for a festival in support of burgeoning religious liberty there.
The law guarantees free public and private exercise of religion, except where such expression infringes on the freedoms or fundamental rights of others, or where public order or welfare is threatened, religious liberty advocates said.
Specifically, the act protects students’ religious convictions and requires state educational institutions to respect those convictions, assuring that a student’s practice of faith does not affect his or her academic grades, said Edgardo Muguerza Florián, who directs Public Affairs and Religious Liberty for the Seventh-day Adventist Church in Peru.
It also prohibits any “action or omission” discriminating against a person because of religious belief and recognizes religious pluralism, assuring that all faiths enjoy the same “rights, obligations and benefits,” Florián said.
Adventist Church representatives have worked for broader religious liberty protections in Peru for more than a decade, meeting with government officials and faith representatives in the country.
“We are very pleased to see that our work may have played a role in the passage of this historic law,” said John Graz, director of the world church’s department of Public Affairs and Religious Liberty.
Graz said the legislation is a testament to the efforts of all defenders of religious freedom in Peru. The country’s religious liberty movement has a long history, making the continued protection of religious freedom there an important investment, he said.
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ANN World News Bulletin is a review of news issued by the Communication department of the Seventh-day Adventist Church World Headquarters and released as part of the service of Adventist News Network. For reproduction requirements, click here. The opinions expressed by Commentary authors and sources in ANN news stories do not necessarily reflect those of Adventist News Network© and/or the Seventh-day Adventist© Church.
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