The Left is adopting a Rousseauian view of religion's role in public life...

Why Religious Liberty Became Controversial: The Left and Jean-Jacques Rousseau

by William Haun

The Left is adopting a Rousseauian view of religion's role in public life:

 the state is to determine where, when, and how religious instruction 

should be permissible for citizens.

In the words of Harvard Law Professor Mary Ann Glendon, "until recently the status of religious liberty as one of the most fundamental rights of Americans has seldom been seriously challenged." This is understandable. After all, proponents of religious liberty simply ask the right to have and exercise their beliefs; they don't ask others to approve of them.
This "live and let live" sensibility made it easy for both Democrats and Republicans to pass the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) in 1993. RFRA is the basis for many religious freedom lawsuits against the federal government, including the challenges to the HHS mandate, and it is the framework adopted by many states in their own religious liberty laws. RFRA passed in the Senate 97-3, unanimously in the House, and received a swift signature from President Bill Clinton.
Yet twenty years later, religious liberty claims brought in RFRA's name are criticized by many on the Left as smokescreens to advance a distinctly conservative agenda.
Understanding why religious liberty became politically controversial requires more than just identifying the political fault lines. The underlying problem is our society's movement toward a Rousseauian, and away from an authentically American, conception of religion's role in public life. While our founders greatly valued religion as a public instructor of virtue, Rousseau thought that religions should only have educational power in spheres not relevant to society at large, and further that the state should determine those precise boundaries. The Left has progressed quite far along this track, and its members can hardly be expected to protect religious liberty unless they relearn its value for any free society.
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