Protect Your Religious Freedom By Protecting That Of Others

Last updated on: September 2, 2015 at 6:46 am by James F. McGrath

Protect Your Religious Freedom By Protecting That Of Others 2015-09-02T06:46:10-04:00 James F. McGrath

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Religiously neutral civil mechanisms Joe Childers quote

On Facebook, Joe Childers wrote the following:

Concerning the county clerk in Kentucky: Religiously neutral civil mechanisms are the only possible way for true religious freedom to exist for multiple religions simultaneously. Civil servants who are religious ought therefore to be even more scrupulous about preserving religious neutrality in their duties than non-religious servants, for they are more directly enjoying religious freedom in their own lives and have more to lose from threats to that freedom.

I asked for permission to quote him, and he gave it, and I am glad, because this makes a crucial and timely point, and makes it particularly well.

Among the others who’ve commented on the topic of Rowan County clerk Kim Davis refusing to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, appealing to her “religious freedom” as justification, are Kyle Roberts, John Pieret, and Hemant Mehta. The latter quotes a Kentucky newspaper editorial on the topic, which says:

Nothing reveals the absurdity of her position more clearly than her lawyer’s response to the latest ruling against her. Liberty Counsel chairman Mat Staver continues to insist that elected public officials have a constitutional right to pick and choose which of their government duties they will perform based on their religious beliefs — in other words, that public officials can use religion to discriminate against certain citizens.

Nothing could be more un-American. What he is advocating would destroy the rule of law, a foundation of our republic. And imagine the chaos, given the wide range of religious beliefs.

See also what Zack Hunt had to say on the topic, which includes this:

We love to believe that biblical values are clear and being biblically faithful is easy or at least pretty straightforward. While sometimes those things might be true, the Bible isn’t quite as black and white as we want it or need it to be. Because the Bible was written in a language different than our own in a context dramatically different than our own for people who lived and died long, long before our great-great-great-great grandparents walked the earth, understanding and the living out what the biblical writers call us to live and believe isn’t as easy as just pointing to a verse and declaring “the Bible says it, I believe it, that settles it.”

Not only is that sort of approach to faith incredibly lazy, it creates awkward situations like Kim Davis is currently experiencing (whether she realizes it or not) that can’t be resolved with more proof-texting. And, worse – much worse – proof-texting our faith transforms the Bible into a weapon and us into sanctified judges, juries, and executioners who wield the power to exclude, condemn, and destroy lives with nothing but a verse and our sincerely held religious beliefs.

This doesn’t mean we can’t or shouldn’t live with conviction. We can and we should. But that conviction has to come from more than a list of proof-texts and sincerely held beliefs.

What Ms. Davis would do well to remember, what all of us would do well to remember in moments like this is the teaching of that great Church Father, St. Augustine who, via the teaching of Jesus himself, called us to read the Bible using the Greatest Commandment as the beginning and end of our scriptural interpretation for “the fulfillment and the end of the Law, and of all Holy Scripture” is love of God and love of neighbor. Therefore, Augustine says, “Whoever, then, thinks that he understands the Holy Scriptures, or any part of them, but puts such an interpretation upon them as does not tend to build up this twofold love of God and our neighbor, does not yet understand them as he ought.”

Simply put, if your interpretation of scripture compels you to treat your neighbors like second-class citizens who don’t deserve the same rights you enjoy, then you can rest assured that regardless of the proof-texts you have compiled, you have not reached an interpretation of those verses that builds up the twofold love of God and neighbor.

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