{"id":6690,"date":"2024-07-10T19:56:29","date_gmt":"2024-07-11T00:56:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/thereligioushistorynerd\/?p=6690"},"modified":"2024-07-11T06:17:09","modified_gmt":"2024-07-11T11:17:09","slug":"religious-liberty-and-josh-hawley","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/thereligioushistorynerd\/2024\/07\/religious-liberty-and-josh-hawley\/","title":{"rendered":"Religious Liberty and Josh Hawley"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Religious Liberty and Josh Hawley don\u2019t mix. The Republican U.S. Senator from Missouri has made it clear in speeches and in writing that he is opposed to the free exercise of religion if that religion isn\u2019t Christianity. In fact, he has said that the freedom to think for ourselves is dangerous. And he thinks there is a \u201ccrisis\u201d in America that\u2019s been caused by a heretical 5th century monk.<\/p>\n

Senator Josh Hawley recently came out as a Christian Nationalist. Monday at the NatCon (National Conservatism) Conference in Washington, DC, he told the audience, \u201cSome will say now that I am calling America a Christian Nation. So I am. And some will say that I am advocating Christian Nationalism. And so I do.\u201d This won\u2019t be a surprise to anyone who has paid any attention at all to Senator Hawley. He has in the past let it be known that he thinks the United States should conform to Christian orthodoxy.<\/p>\n

A Crisis in Public Life?<\/h2>\n Back in 2019 Senator Hawley wrote an article for Christianity Today<\/em><\/a> in which he spoke of a \u201ccrisis in public life\u201d that he blamed on a 5th century Christian monk named Pelagius. See also this speech he gave, also in 2019<\/a>. Here\u2019s a bit of the speech:<\/p>\n " For years we have been told that to be truly free is to be without the constricting ties of family and place, without the demands of faith or tradition.<\/p>\n We\u2019ve been told that liberty means release, separation. And this view has had its effect.<\/p>\n It\u2019s an idea with a long tradition of its own, and a wide circle of influence, back to Immanuel Kant and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and farther back still to a British monk named Pelagius.<\/p>\n But it is only in the last century that it found true staying power in America.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n That Pelagius sounds like a bad guy. But before we get to Pelagius, let\u2019s think about we mean by \u201cliberty.\u201d<\/p>\n What Is Liberty?<\/h2>\n*** ** ***Does anyone remember being told that \u201cto be truly free is to be without the constricting ties of family and place, without the demands of faith or tradition\u201d? I certainly don\u2019t. I\u2019ve known a few people who might have adopted that definition of liberty for themselves, but I never noticed it as a major part of our general culture.<\/p>\n In the realm of politics and government, liberty<\/em> usually is defined<\/a> as freedom from arbitrary and unreasonable restraint. This includes not just bodily restraint but also limitations placed on one\u2019s life choices. U.S. Supreme Court Justice James Clark McReynolds wrote in Meyer v. Nebraska<\/em> (1923)<\/a> that liberty \u201cdenotes not merely freedom from bodily restraint but also the right of the individual to contract, to engage in any of the common occupations of life, to acquire useful knowledge, to marry, establish a home and bring up children, to worship God according to the dictates of his own conscience, and generally to enjoy those privileges long recognized at common law as essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men.\u201d That definition works for me. And I suppose if what you really want to do is live by yourself in a hollow tree that\u2019s freedom also, as long as you obey the law and your lifestyle isn\u2019t imposing on anyone else.<\/p>\n Hawley mentions Immanuel Kant<\/a> (1724-1804) and Jean-Jacques Rousseau<\/a> (1712-1778) as promoters of the idea that freedom means abandoning family and tradition. Both of them certainly wrote a lot about liberty. Both are listed among the major Enlightenment<\/a> thinkers who influenced the founders of the United States. I confess I lack encylopedic knowledge of what these two men wrote, but if they advocated abanding home and family I can\u2019t find mention of it. They both harbored some ideas about religion that Josh Hawley may find alarming. For example, Rousseau proposed some ideas about a civil religion<\/a> that would not be exclusively Christian<\/em>. But like most Enlightenment thinkers \u2014 and like Thomas Jefferson<\/a>, James Madision<\/a>, and many of the other founders \u2014 they thought religion should be a matter of personal conscience and not something the government dictates, one way or another.<\/p>\n Pelagius the Heretic<\/h2>\n Pelagius was the originator of Pelagianism, which Britannica says<\/a> was a heresy that \u201cstressed the essential goodness of human nature and the freedom of the human will.\u201d Pelagius taught that the sin of Adam and Eve was not passed down to all who came after. Humans could choose to do good or evil, which means sin is something one chooses to do, not something that infects us all at birth. Some of Pelagius\u2019s students would go on to explicitly denounce the doctrine of original sin and deny that baptism was required for salvation.\u00a0 If you want to go a bit deeper into why Pelagianism was declared heresy, do see \u201cExamining The Doctrine Of Original Sin<\/a>\u201d by Patheos writer Kathryn Shihadah. It\u2019s very informative.<\/p>\n But where does Pelagius the monk fit into Senator Hawley\u2019s claim of a crisis in U.S. public life? And I do think it\u2019s important to explore this, because it reveals a lot about where the Senator is coming from.<\/p>\n See \u201cThe Roots of Josh Hawley\u2019s Rage<\/a>\u201d by Katherine Stewart in the New York Times<\/em>, January 11, 2021. Stewart dissects Hawley\u2019s Pelagius obsession. In a commencement speech at a small Christian college, she said, he denounced Pelagius for teaching \u201cthat human beings have the freedom to choose how they live their lives and that grace comes to those who do good things, as opposed to those who believe the right doctrines.\u201d<\/p>\n The Right to Think for Ourselves?<\/h2>\n******* ** Katherine Stewart wrote that as an example of the influence of Pelagianism in modern life, Senator Hawley quoted the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Planned Parenthood v. Casey<\/em> (1992), which affirmed a right to abortion. In the decision, Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote,\u00a0 \u201cAt the heart of liberty is the right to define one\u2019s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.\u201d Senator Hawley disagreed. The 5th century church was right to stamp out such thinking as heresy, he said. \u201cReplacing it and repairing the harm it has caused is one of the challenges of our day,\u201d Hawley declared. In short, Senator Hawley thinks you have only the \u201cfreedom\u201d to think as as he does.<\/p>\n ** *******Katherine Stewart quotes Hawley from another speech, where he said \u201cThere is not one square inch of all creation over which Jesus Christ is not Lord.\u201d And it\u2019s fine with me if the Senator believes that. But then he said, \u201cWe are called to take that message into every sphere of life that we touch, including the political realm.\u00a0 That is our charge. To take the lordship of Christ, that message, into the public realm, and to seek the obedience of the nations. Of our nation!\u201d In other words, he thinks that placing us all under the lordship of Christ is part of his job as a Senator.<\/p>\n Theocracy vs. Democracy<\/h2>\n First, let me point out that this is why the wall of separation between church and states has two sides<\/a>. Most Americans agree that \u201cfreedom of religion\u201d means that we can choose to practice, or not, whatever religion we wish without interference from the government. However, a great many religious conservatives don\u2019t understand why, once they\u2019ve been elected, they aren\u2019t allowed to use the government to enforce their beliefs through government policy, or teach their religious beliefs in public schools. They honestly don\u2019t seem to grasp that this is how government becomes oppressive of religious freedom.<\/p>\n As I\u2019ve written in some other recent posts, the founders of the United States were not hostile to religion. Many were deeply religious. But most shared the common Enlightenment view that governments are, in Jefferson\u2019s words<\/a>, \u201cinstituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,\u201d And this is the essence of democracy<\/em>, a word that evolved from the Greek d\u0113mokrat\u00ed\u0101<\/em> \u2014 \u201cthe people\u201d (d\u0113mo) \u201c<\/em>rule\u201d (krat\u00ed\u0101).\u00a0<\/em> The founders explicitly rejected the idea that rulers were anointed by God and ruled by divine right. If the authority to govern comes from God, then the only ones really in charge are those believed to speak for God. We can have democracy or theocracy, but not both.<\/p>\n Josh Hawley has made his choice. We, the people, need to make ours.<\/p>\n ********* ** Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) speaks at the 2022 America Fest at the Phoenix (AZ) Convention Center. Photo by Gage Skidmore. Source: Wikimedia Commons, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" ** *********Religious Liberty and Josh Hawley don\u2019t mix. The Republican U.S. Senator from Missouri has made it clear in speeches and in writing that he is opposed to the free exercise of religion if that religion isn\u2019t Christianity. In fact, he has said that the freedom to think for ourselves is dangerous. And he thinks there […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4714,"featured_media":6696,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[232,100,97,154,258],"class_list":["post-6690","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-christianity","tag-establishment-clause","tag-religion-and-current-events","tag-religion-and-politics","tag-religion-in-u-s-history","tag-wall-of-separation"],"yoast_head":"\nReligious Liberty and Josh Hawley<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Religious Liberty and Josh Hawley don't mix. 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