Religious Freedom

Opening and Closing Remarks to the First DFW Summit on Religious Freedom

We live in society more diverse and complex than was imagined by the founders of the United States. And this isn’t just a matter of demographics over the entire nation. We each personally experience this diversity and complexity in what appear to be ever accelerating forms. Moreover this experience is becoming a global human experience. Almost no one in the world lives in a monoculture any more.

It's worth thinking about this diversity as it is manifest in the public spaces in the United States.

• First there is greater ethnic diversity than ever, and it is more and more evident in the public space. 
• There is more religious diversity than ever, and it is more and more evident in our shared public spaces. 
• There is more ideological diversity that we have known, with the traditional binary of conservative and liberal being fragmented into different groupings that only partially claim or own the legacy of those names. 
• And finally there are new forms of diversity as humans re-imagine what it means to be human. Most notably the sexual differentiation of male and female is being reimagined in terms not just of sex, but gender and sexuality as well. So that individuals may identify Lesbian, Gay, Bi-Sexual, Trans-sexual, Queer, Twin-Spirited and other. 

This last form of diversity reminds us that in our post-enlightenment culture the centuries-long consensus in the West of a divinely mandated order bound by golden chains beneath God’s feet has been largely obliterated by the reality of cultural difference. The imago Dei is contested in both its meaning and substance.

One may wish to blame the rise of materialism and science for this, but the critiques of the Western conception of humanity and thus human diversity would as inevitably come from the Islamic world, or the world of Hindu, Buddhist, Taoist, and various forms of animist thought. What Christians have thought to be foundational to civilization itself is really just one possibility for organizing concepts of the human person in what may be not so much civilization as an unusually well-armed and organized barbarism. 

This diversity of diversities brings forth new religious options, and new ways of being religious. And all of those who adopt these options wish to exercise their freedom to express their particular religious beliefs and ethical mandates in public along side the older more recognized forms of religion. 

This means that we live in a period of constant negotiation between conflicting narratives of religious expression, and conflicting narratives between religious expression and public rights. And importantly, we live in an era in which governments at every level are called upon to mediate these conflicts. 

And so we call upon the establishment clause of the 1st Amendment for guidance in law, and ultimately as the arbiter in disputes. And that is why we need to talk to one another. All social progress depends on dialogue between competing understandings of the common basis of our social imagination. The greatest danger we face is any effort to delegitimize voices in our public discourse, to push anyone away from the tables at which we negotiate our future. 

Perhaps that is why right after the 1st Amendment restricts Congress from prohibiting the free exercise of religion, the 1st Amendment forbids Congress from prohibiting freedom of speech and freedom of assembly. We are here in Southern Methodist University because SMU understands its mission is to uphold those freedoms the responsibility they entails. 

Closing Remarks:

After a full day of workshops, speakers and panels it is becoming clear that the foundational documents (the US Constitution in this case) have their own foundations. What lies beneath our constitution are sets of ideas more complex that we usually realize.

So when you have a dispute over what it means to be human in society, and which rights adhere to our humanity the question arises: who decides and what basis? 

The Enlightenment basis of the US Constitution understood what it meant to be human largely on the basis of the Jewish and Christian traditions laid over those of Greek and Roman philosophy. This logically followed the Renaissance of classical learning that helped spur the Enlightenment. A brief quote from the US Declaration of Independence shows this.

When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.  

Let’s begin with the final line fo the first paragraph, “A decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires. . . “ This is a statement thoroughly rooted in the Enlightenment ideal of rational discourse as the basis of human decision making. Individuals and societies do not undertake to act without having and declaring their rational reasons for doing so. To fail to do so is indecent, an offense against humanity and the human mind. 

In the preceding line we can see how the classical Enlightenment understanding of humans is built on the Western theistic tradition. It refers to "The Laws of Nature and Nature’s God" as if they are indivisible, which seems only logical. Yet it is now contested. 

The Enlightenment opened the door to a new way of understanding what it means to be human, one based on the scientific exploration of what it means to be human. And that exploration, in order to realize its own integrity and freedom, disestablished nature's law from any purported lawmaker. And with this we find the rise of evolutionary, biological, medical, anthropological, sociological, and psychological definitions of what it means to be human that are not only incompatible with those of the Western Theistic tradition, but deny its relevance entirely. There is only nature, no God. 

But there is something else implicit in these short paragraphs. The Enlightenment pushed us toward concepts of human persons as free to choose their own company and destiny. They may dissolve political bonds and forge new ones with the blessing of Nature’s law and even God. But there is more than that to their autonomy. It is personal, all are equal and endowed with inalienable rights. The new citizens of the United States were no longer tied to their old hierachires, the old-world ethnic identities, clans, and religions. They could choose their personal identity and the social groups they wished to relate to. Eventually they would claim the right to choose their own sex and sexuality as well as to upend all established views of gender. As they continue to do. 

So as we discuss religious freedom we do so in an American culture that accepts three different authoritative basis for understanding the human person: 1. the classical Western tradition, 2. science, and 3. individual choice. And these three both assert themselves, are called upon in public debate, and come into conflict in our time. And all three are in fact being continuously re-negotiated. We don't agree with our founding fathers about what Scripture teaches about human nature. Science has and is changing continuously with regard to its normative understanding of the human. And even what it means to be an individual is in question as we try to understand ourselves as essentially social beings.

What we do not have is a social consensus expressed in legislation regarding the relative values for decision making of these three independent authorities. And given that, we rightly suspect that the courts that ultimately arbitrate real cases may be more influenced by the ideological commitments of the judges than existing laws.   

But if this creates conflicts, some of which Judge Starr referred to in his lecture at lunch, it also creates the demand that we continue to talk together and work together. Because only through dialogue that we reach a consensus on what is essential to our humanity, and thus the meaning of human freedom and human dignity. 

Our American English language is promiscuous to a superlative degree. As we have interacted with new and different cultures over centuries our language has continuously become enriched with new ideas and re-constructions of the world. We aren’t unique in this regard. The most basic of human actions is speech, and since the dawn of humanity we humans have spoken with one another until a common language emerges. I’ve seen this first hand as children in my granddaughter’s preschool, who speak German, English, Turkish, and Chinese at home manage quite nicely to work out how they can both communicate and work together. You can see this process in where youth gather in Europe mixing English with German, Spanish, French, and different Slavic languages. The idea of linguistic purity is as nonsensical as that of racial purity. That which humans universally can do they will universally do with one another; whether it is speak or procreate. 

To create new languages that better express a shared experience than any one older language is our greatest gift. But it only comes to us through speaking to and listening to one another across cultural, linguistic, and experiential boundaries. And more, it almost always comes about in face to face engagement that allows the full richness of our abilities to express ourselves. 

And that is why, to repeat, we are here in a university, have been here today, and will come back. Because our university is dedicated to that process of creating the language by which the Americans of the 21st century will understand themselves as humans together, and continue to defend their freedom of religion.