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The Seductive Liberal Myth of Religious Freedom
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10330 |
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Section : |
MODERN THOUGHT
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| Issue
Date : |
12 / 1993 |
6,067 Words |
| Author
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Kenneth R. Craycraft, Jr.
Kenneth R. Craycraft, Jr., is a doctorial candidate in the
study of politics and theology in the theology department at
Boston College. |
On June 24, 1992, the U.S. Supreme Court once again demonstrated that under the First Amendment to the Constitution the state must prefer irreligion to religion. In Nathan Bishop Middle School v. Weisman,1 the Court upheld an appellate decision that a nonsectarian prayer at a government middle-school graduation ceremony constitutes a state establishment of religion and therefore may not be allowed. This decision, like others before it, makes extremely problematic the notion that religious liberty is the "first freedom" in America.
Thus it seems that American theologians ought to rethink the idea that the First Amendment is an ingenious protection of religious liberty.
One of the most rigorous and thoughtful defenders of the liberal idea of religious freedom is the Catholic theologian George Weigel, who in turn sees himself as a student of the late John Courtney Murray, S.J. Weigel credits the "Murray Project"2 as the driving force behind the Catholic Church's movement from (at least the perception of) an enemy of the modern human rights project to one of the most important institutional champions of human rights. Weigel lays out a well-reasoned and intuitively attractive argument that religion is not only the first freedom, but indeed the "first human right."3
As the highest of God's creatures, invested with the very Imago Dei and thus with profound dignity, man is endowed with "freedom to pursue the quest for meaning and order" as the "fundamental prerequisite to a truly human life." Weigel argues that this "innate quest for meaning and value" is not "a grant from the state"; rather, human beings as such "are to enjoy the free and unfettered pursuit of truth." To deny the free pursuit of meaning and value is the "deepest meaning of the term inhuman." This free quest is a right of religious freedom or freedom of conscience," a "juridical expression of this basic claim about the essential core and dynamic of human being in the world." As such, argues Weigel, "religious freedom or freedom of conscience is the most fundamental of human rights."4
Religious liberty, then, is not merely as a civic or legal right based upon the incompetence of the state in such matters, but a "'pre-political' human right." "Religious freedom or freedom of conscience," he explains, "is the condition for the possibility of a polis which is structured in accordance with the inherent human dignity of the persons who are its citizens." But, explains Weigel, this fundamental human right "entails an obligation to seek the truth."5 This formulation is
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