The Cost of Religious Freedom

This is the talk I gave at Claremont's Annual Independence Day Oratory Program in 2001.


One of our deepest values as Americans is religious freedom.  The American experiment in democratic self government has also caused religious freedom of citizens to be constitutionally enshrined and guaranteed in the majority of nations throughout the world.  The US Department of State publishes an annual report on International Religious Freedom, which is readily available on their web site, which also details the many violations of religious freedom in too many countries throughout the world.  While religious freedom is a matter of international concern, it is more fundamentally a question of individual attitude and behavior.  How we look at one another as individuals is the basis of how we look at one another as communities, societies, and nations.

What is the cost of consistently upholding religious freedom in our relationships with one another?  We may value our own freedom to worship as we choose, but the way that we value the freedom of another who disagrees with us may become more complex in practice than we’d like to think.

Any person of deep and sincere convictions is going to suffer pain when those convictions are not shared.  It might be helpful to recognize that conflict over deeply held convictions is more often born of pain than power.  If I am deeply convinced that my way is true, I cannot help but feel pain if those people I care about are on what I am convinced is the wrong path.  I would be unfaithful to those convictions if I did not try to bring you to share my convictions.

Religious freedom means that what I say about my convictions, including the legitimacy of my desire to share the truth of my convictions with you, is equally said about your convictions and your desire to share the truth of your convictions with me.  The sticky thing is that religious convictions are never solely a private, individual matter.  They are always a shared belief system.  Individual conviction determines how we relate to one another in society.

One of the foundations of a truly democratic society is that there are no limits or restrictions on whom we care about.  If we believe that all are created equal, we have to put that belief into practice by upholding that equality.  Of course, we as a nation and society continue to struggle with equality in practice.  That struggle to discover the full meaning of equality, and how respect for this equality ought to be translated into action, points the direction to uncovering the cost of religious freedom.  How can I be faithful to my convictions without compromise, including the public nature of those convictions, and at the same time respect your convictions as differing, perhaps radically from mine?  That, I think is the challenge that faces all of us in a free society.

This affirmation of equality and dignity as a basic human right of all people without exception, is common to nearly all religious traditions.  Yet how often exceptions are made in practice.  We are usually conscious of those exceptions when others make them, especially in our own regard.  The ways that we ourselves in practice make some “more equal” than others, is all too often hidden from our own eyes.
I believe that the basic cost of religious freedom is to bring to light our own attitudes that tend to separate us from others, to examine our own criteria for judging the worth of others in the light of the equality and dignity of the human person deeply rooted in our shared human nature, not subject to differences of behavior or culture.

Another way of looking at this is to say that the basic cost of religious freedom is to take to heart the “Golden Rule,” which in one form or other is part of nearly every religious tradition, including agnosticism and atheism: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

The essence of the Golden Rule is that it is without condition or exception.  It is not “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you, if they reciprocate.”  It is not “Do unto others as they do unto you,” much less the humorous, but very real, twist we often put on it: “Do unto others before they do unto you”!

I think a problem arises when we confuse respect for one another’s religious freedom with tolerance.  Mere tolerance is not yet respect.  Tolerating another person is a far cry from respecting and accepting him or her, even with differing or opposing convictions.

What does religious freedom cost me, a Catholic priest, for example?  Let me get personal about this.  I believe it is twofold.  First, I have to be faithful my convictions, which includes giving public witness to them – not to water them down or be silent about them, even in face of disagreement and diversity.  But, secondly, my public witness has to respect the integrity and convictions of others, including those very diverse from my own – including even those whom I perceive as not respecting my convictions.  Failure of mutual respect does not lesson my obligation of respect.

As a Catholic, I would go so far as to say that that kind of respect of persons and their human rights and dignity, even in the face of diversity and disagreement, is at the heart of what Jesus proclaimed as the “Kingdom on God.”