Indeed, one lesson of history is that religious beliefs evolve in response to changing cultural attitudes. The transformation, in part, reflects altered interpretations of scripture and tradition.
Some Faith Leaders Call Equality Act Devastating; For Others, It’s God’s Will, 10 March 2021
The quote above is from an article in an NPR story about The Equality Act, which is being debated again by Congress. This is an act that has been introduced three to four times over the years. It has passed the House before but been turned down by the Senate. It was passed by the House again about two weeks ago and will soon be taken up by the Senate again. The bill has been causing quite a stir in religious circles to the point that the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, the Coalition for Jewish Values, the National Association of Evangelicals, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and the Seventh-day Adventist Church have all formally opposed it.
A great part of the opposition to this bill comes from the stipulation in the bill that the 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) will not apply to this federal law. The opposition by the various religious groups does not necessarily have to do with the general thrust of the legislation, but rather with the implied threat (by removing the RFRA) that religious groups will be forced to engage in activities to which they are opposed. Already, even under the protection of the RFRA, the Little Sisters of the Poor were forced to expend large amounts of money to take a case to the US Supreme Court to preserve their right not to fund abortions through their insurance program, even indirectly. While the US Supreme Court ruled in their favor, there were a large number of voices that thought that forcing them to fund what they considered to be an immoral program was fully appropriate.
When I was younger, I was regularly surprised by the frequency with which those people who most insisted on the freedom to practice their beliefs were often those most passionate about subverting that very freedom in others.
Decades ago, evangelical Christian groups in the South were adamant on maintaining prayer in school. However, they were equally adamant that those prayers could have no hint of Catholicism (or Orthodoxy) about them. Even prayers that sounded liturgical but did not mention either the Virgin Mary or the Saints were questionable. Of course, the arguments all sounded reasonable, that is, that we must have a prayer that is acceptable to all parents. Oddly, here in the South, somehow those acceptable prayers never had a hint of either Judaism or liturgical Christianity about them, but always sounded non-liturgical evangelical. Therefore, it is not surprising that among the groups that were not strongly upset by the banning of prayer in public school were almost all non-evangelical non-fundamentalist religious groups.
It is important that the reader to understand that for non-evangelical non-fundamentalist religious groups, prayer in school is not seen as an expression of the freedom to speak about God in the schools but rather it is seen as the imposition of a dominant cultural form of Christianity on their children. Had prayer in school been allowed to be varied, had it been allowed to mention the Virgin Mary and the saints (even if only once in a while), had it had once-in-a-while Jewish rhythms, etc., I suspect that the opposition to banning prayer in school would have been much stronger and much more varied. However, even today, when various conservative Christian groups are blaming almost every social change on the failure to pray in school, there is no hint that they would yet allow those prayers to have the variety of the entire Judeo-Christian spectrum. Rather, it is clear that what they want is a return to the same imposition of evangelical prayer as existed back then.
In a similar way, liberal groups today are acting just as their religious counterparts did in the past. They are appealing only for freedom for themselves while being quite willing to impose their “freedom” on others. The same type of thinking that could not even understand that prayer in school should have had the variety of the Judeo-Christian spectrum (at a minimum) now pervades those who support The Equality Act. Today’s Equality Act advocates specifically removed the protections of the RFRA from the bill. They show themselves to be the “sons of the prophets” who “killed” any group but theirs when it came to prayer in school. Just like those Christian groups, they seek to impose an orthodoxy in the name of freedom. One imposed a prayer orthodoxy in the name of freedom of religion while today’s partisans seek to impose another type of orthodoxy in the name of equality and the XIVth Amendment.
Is The Equality Act all bad? No, not in the least. There are good features about the act, including the attempts to make sure that all people have equal access to the diverse parts of the public sphere. I am not one who subscribes to the idea that the Founding Fathers intended to have a Christian nation. Quoting a few fathers on their Christianity does not make up for those fathers who were not practicing Christians or orthodox Christians. I do subscribe to the idea that the Founding Fathers intended to have a diverse pluralistic nation in which certain freedoms would be especially valued, to include both freedom of speech and freedom of religion. This does mean that there will be times when we will feel uncomfortable (all the way to utterly frustrated) at the way some use their freedoms. It also does not mean that freedoms will not clash. They will most often clash in the public sphere. Sadly, The Equality Act, as currently written, fails in its task of balancing freedoms.
I started out this post with a quote from an editorial which stated that “religious beliefs evolve in response to changing cultural attitudes”. I am not seeing that. Rather, what I see is the same old same old. When a group accedes to power it immediately is exposed to the temptation to impose that power to suppress others. I saw it both in the imposition of evangelical-only prayers and see it now in the attempt to impose a gendered orthodoxy upon all. And, in both cases it was done / is being done in the name of freedom.
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