Religious Tolerance

Calpundit says that atheistic types should let up about religious symbols in the public square because it unfairly tags liberalism as being irreligious and hurts the Democrats for no good reason.

I might be persuaded to agree but only after we’ve truly tested the constitutional argument that religious conservatives have been making — that the establishment clause has been misinterpreted. Their argument is that religious speech in general, not just Christianity, has been banished from state institutions and that this perverts the founders intention which was that America should be a country of religious pluralism not secularism.

Therefore, I would like to see the issue engaged in a different way. The next time a Judge Roy Moore wants to install the Ten Commandments in his courtroom or some high school senior wants to lead the school in a prayer I would encourage several people of different faiths to demand that their religion be treated no differently and observed in exactly the same manner. I think it might be especially helpful if Muslims, Buddhists, Rastafarians and Scientologists waged this fight since they represent a variety of ways in which American politics’ new public embrace of religion might be tested.

My gut tells me that the reason the body of law developed as it did was that judges and legislators knew from reading the history of Europe that it was far more practical to secularize the state apparatus than it was to try to get various religions to agree that each was equally entitled to a claim on that apparatus. In fact, it may be just that reasoning that allowed this country, more than all others, to enable religious pluralism and allow so many different faiths to flourish along side each other relatively comfortably.

Rather than just allow the Christians to unilaterally change that to their advantage however, let’s put the establishment clause to the test. If Judge Roy Moore would not object to having a statue of Heile Selassie next to his monument or a bunch of Hare Krishna’s selling books in the lobby of the courthouse, then I suppose I couldn’t really argue with his sincerity in making the claim that he’s not trying to unconstitutionally establish Christianity as the state religion.

If he does object then I think we’ll know that his agenda is really to establish his religion as the legitimate religious voice associated with the state. And, that is exactly what the establishment clause was designed to prevent.