Benjamin Wiker
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The embrace of religious liberty as a right was memorably expressed by James Madison in his “Memorial and Remonstrance” (1785). Madison, one of the great Founders, is considered to be the father of the Bill of Rights, so it would seem we’d want his opinion about the First Amendment. “The Religion…of every man,” Madison proclaimed, “must be left to the conviction and conscience of every man; and it is the right of every man to exercise it as these may dictate. This right is in its nature an unalienable right.”
In fact, Madison declared that this right was rooted in a duty, “the duty of every man to render to the Creator such homage and such only as he [i.e., every man] believes acceptable to him [presumably, but not unambiguously, God].”
Here comes the puzzler, which I’ll set out in semi-syllogistic enumerated steps.
(1) Today we passionately hold that we each have a right to believe, to worship, as we see fit—each of us individually. But that means everyone else has that same right.
(2) The claim and practice of that right creates a diversity of beliefs, as many as there are different convictions about what homage is acceptable to the divine.
(3) In order for each individual to protect himself from some other believer using government power to dictate his beliefs, he must not allow his own or anyone else’s belief, anyone else’s faith, to define or inform the state as the established state religion (so that the Free Exercise Clause is inextricably linked to the Establishment Clause).
(4) But the result is a state defined by no one’s beliefs, a state defined by the subtraction of all religious beliefs, that is to say, a state defined by the establishment of unbelief, a secular state.
But, it is precisely this state, as secular, that ever more forcefully infringes on religious liberty by actively imposing a secular worldview upon the citizenry as the default, established worldview. This view is gotten by the subtraction of all beliefs, including the subtraction of the particular moral beliefs in Christianity that stem from its doctrinal beliefs, but not merely that. It also entails the addition of its own moral beliefs. The HHS mandate is just that: an attempt at forced subtraction of Christian moral beliefs, and the imposition of secular sexual beliefs in their place.
In fact, Madison declared that this right was rooted in a duty, “the duty of every man to render to the Creator such homage and such only as he [i.e., every man] believes acceptable to him [presumably, but not unambiguously, God].”
Here comes the puzzler, which I’ll set out in semi-syllogistic enumerated steps.
(1) Today we passionately hold that we each have a right to believe, to worship, as we see fit—each of us individually. But that means everyone else has that same right.
(2) The claim and practice of that right creates a diversity of beliefs, as many as there are different convictions about what homage is acceptable to the divine.
(3) In order for each individual to protect himself from some other believer using government power to dictate his beliefs, he must not allow his own or anyone else’s belief, anyone else’s faith, to define or inform the state as the established state religion (so that the Free Exercise Clause is inextricably linked to the Establishment Clause).
(4) But the result is a state defined by no one’s beliefs, a state defined by the subtraction of all religious beliefs, that is to say, a state defined by the establishment of unbelief, a secular state.
But, it is precisely this state, as secular, that ever more forcefully infringes on religious liberty by actively imposing a secular worldview upon the citizenry as the default, established worldview. This view is gotten by the subtraction of all beliefs, including the subtraction of the particular moral beliefs in Christianity that stem from its doctrinal beliefs, but not merely that. It also entails the addition of its own moral beliefs. The HHS mandate is just that: an attempt at forced subtraction of Christian moral beliefs, and the imposition of secular sexual beliefs in their place.
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