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Culture War Roundup for the week of November 14, 2022

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Thoughts on Shifting Definitions and Models of Religious Liberty

Every man has three hearts, A false heart in their mouths, which they show to the whole world; another heart in their chests, which only relatives and friends know; and finally, a real heart, which no one knows, hidden. Only god knows where. -- James Clavell, Shogun

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; -- First Amendment to the US Constitution

I've been thinking a lot lately about how the definition of religious liberty has morphed in my lifetime. The legal definition of religious liberty seems to be expanding outward legally, while at the same time the feeling of liberty of belief for actually existing religious people feels like it is shrinking. These expanding protections feel necessary to maintain a degree of freedom, rather than expanding it. But so much of it is that the model of public faith has changed. The two quotes above give me my model of what religious freedom was, and how the context has changed.

The framers envisioned a society of men with three hearts when it came to religious liberty: a false secular heart in their mouths in public spaces, a sectarian religious heart in their chests that they shared with their friends and family and coreligionists, and a real true heart of their beliefs that they were entitled to keep private and that no one could punish or penalize them for. One's true personal third heart might be atheist or animist or deist, one's sectarian second heart might be Catholic or Quaker, but everyone agreed their first public heart would be secular and nonsectarian and that no one would be punished for their other beliefs. This view of religious liberty envisioned a country in which men could hold any religion, in which men would collectively acknowledge a kayfabe of secularism in public so that no one creed predominated, while all men would hold a private religion together with their friends, and where all men had the right to believe or not believe anything in their own heart without punishment or censure.

This is distinct from other visions of religious liberty historically. Many empires allowed variants of a different kind of religious liberty, confessional liberty, freeing the second heart but restricting the first and the third. Groups had some right to practice their own religion privately (second heart), even allowed to punish their own apostates (third heart), but in public they had to acknowledge the divinity of the imperial faith (first heart) and had no freedom to contradict it.The Jews under Roman rule could practice their religion amongst themselves, but they must engage publicly in worshipping and acknowledging Caesar Augustus, because the Roman cults were the public religion Jews would always be second class citizens. At the same time, individual Jews like Jesus were subject to punishment under Jewish religious laws for their own private beliefs, there was no individual right to freedom of worship.

In America, Quakers and Babtists and Catholics and Jehovah's Witnesses and even a few Jews and hey maybe a couple Muslims too all worked off the same system. None really believed in the secularism taught in schools but they would go along with it and agree with it., because everyone knew that everyone else went to church/synagogue/meeting on Sunday and learned something different that we agreed or disagreed about it in parts that weren't worth arguing. And it was understood that atheists were probably in those pews as well, but no one was going to launch an inquisition against them, that was their own business.

But in the 21st century, fewer and fewer Americans are actually operating on three different hearts. The rise of the "Nones" or secularism or wokism or successor ideology or whatever you want to call it, is the combination of the first and the second hearts. Max Lynn Stackhouse, when defining religion, called a religion "a comprehensive worldview or 'metaphysical moral vision' that is accepted as binding because it is held to be in itself basically true and just even if all dimensions of it cannot be either fully confirmed or refuted." Wokism meets all those criteria, while failing the Merriam-Webster definition of having supernatural elements (arguably). Because Wokes skirts the traditional lines of "religion" they are able to advocate everything they want in the public sphere, where traditional religions are restricted to only advocating half their beliefs. Wokism is, in many ways, a religious memetics that has evolved to avoid being restricted by traditional freedom of religion law. It offers answers to universal questions that feed the need for the sacred which all humans possess, while also being entirely within the rules of public discourse.

That is what Roberts, Barrett, Scalia (RIPower, King) are groping towards but not yet saying out loud. Traditional religions are fighting off the back foot, they aren't allowed to advocate in the public square because traditionally that was a method to avoid religious conflicts and persecutions. But Wokism has adapted to that circumstance, and now provides a full binding metaphysical moral vision in public that must be bowed to, Wokism seeks by monopolizing the first heart to destroy the freedom of the second and third hearts. For traditional religious pluralism to survive against this evolved competition, as the founders envisioned, we have to allow religions to fight on an even playing field. The religious freedom advocates on SCOTUS are groping towards this, but are restricted by their textual originalism, they are looking at the text of the constitution when what matters it that the circumstances have changed, the founder's vision is no longer possible when one competitor has adapted to the rules. So much like the NFL or MMA will change the rules of the game when a strategy emerges that ruins the spirit of the game, so freedom of religion must be changed to allow for the competition envisioned.

So how do we level the playing field, without shredding the constitution in ways we'll regret later when we live in Rick Santorum's Iran? I'm interested in all ideas. Here are a few I see.

  1. School choice seems like step one. Religious schools already deliver better results at a lower cost, offering vouchers to as many students as want them would allow religious schooling to exist on a level playing field with secular schooling, and see who wins the Trans-Black-Lives-Matter School or the Sisters of Perpetual Ruler Snapping.

  2. Restrict Atheist speech in the same way that religious speech is restricted. One should be just as loathe to say that there is no God as one is to say that there is only one. The traditional point of conflict is Biology class, which I think is a case of religions failing to adapt to facts, one can make evolution about the way the world works rather than how it started quite easily.

  3. Restrict claims of religious faith to those who hold genuine religious beliefs more strictly. The phenomenon of fake religious trolling by atheist-Jews claiming that abortion-on-demand is a religious rite, or fakakta Satanists putting up statues of the Dark Lord because someone else put up one of the Ten Commandments, needs to reined in. How do we do that without instituting Santorum-Iran? I'm not sure.

  4. Make and allow for more non-sectarian expressions of religious belief. I was an Eagle Scout, and for years the Chaplain's Aide of our troop, I've given tons of prayers in the name of a faux-Lenape "Great Spirit" that stood in for the member's of my troop for our personal beliefs in God, Allah, Jehovah, or Krishna. That worked, we all understood what was meant. How do we develop that secular stand-in that would work universally? Maybe we choose to honor Amerindian beliefs as a nation, invoke the Great Spirit? We should expect our presidents and our politicians to invoke a God, and assume everyone has the maturity to understand that it also means their God. Make America Believe Again.

ETA: Have a Happy Thanksgiving everyone. If you don't celebrate it, I recommend it. A feast of gratitude towards the almighty is a positive tradition, and should be exported.

It offers answers to universal questions that feed the need for the sacred which all humans possess, while also being entirely within the rules of public discourse.

So did communism and socialism and many other ideologies.

The key distinction is how they treat axioms. For all that they try to avoid talking about it, non-religious (the kind where you don't find someone espousing belief in deities or supernatural entities) ideologies cannot refuse the charge that their axioms are ultimately arbitrary. You can debate a communist and in theory, persuade them to some other view.

Religions, however, do not admit or accept this. As far as they are concerned, there is an objective moral standard and everyone is obligated to follow it. Here, you can only convince someone they are wrong about their beliefs to the extent they are either misinformed or inconsistent about their own ideology.

Here on Earth, the costs to a person to disavow their former ideology or religion are identical: social pariahdom from former friends, psychological pain caused by having to completely reassess very deeply-held views, etc. and people tend to grasp this quickly. Sometimes this is after they change their views and then run back because they can't bear the costs. But the cost to the religious believer is much higher, because religions often carry explicit warnings that if you turn from the faith, you will be subject to divine punishment in the form of Hell or something else. In the former's case, you're talking about infinite punishment.

This is why religion is a protected class and ideology/political beliefs are not. The former cannot be reasonably changed if you are a sincere believer, but political views can be.

There may be value in saying that political ideologies should be treated like a religion. But it would be another brick in the foundation which treats a man as not a rational human capable of making his own decisions. I don't think people necessarily want to lay that brick. It supports more than you assume.

Religions, however, do not admit or accept this. As far as they are concerned, there is an objective moral standard and everyone is obligated to follow it.

You think Wokism doesn't have this feature?

As I said, it and other non-religious ideologies try to dodge the question, but they are ultimately relying on an axiom or axioms somewhere, and all of them are humanly chosen. I think they may try to hide the fact that human-chosen axioms require the bearer to be more humble about how certain they are, but a rational believer would recognize this and adjust accordingly. I don't think religion requires the same humility. Why would it, most of them tell you that you and everyone who agrees with you is correct on one of the most important questions of all time.

ideologies cannot refuse the charge that their axioms are ultimately arbitrary.

They can absolutely do this. The whole reason postmodernism and critical theory were invented was to get around having to defend anything properly. Wokism posits that blacks are holy. Push them on why this should be and you will eventually get an answer roughly equivalent to "God said so," plus they will be very upset.

Sure, if you want to be pedantic, then they can refuse to acknowledge what they're doing. I'd call them out as irrational at best and liars at worst. My point is that they don't have the ability, like religion, to claim that their morality is objectively true because a divine and superhuman being gave it to them.

Wokism posits that blacks are holy. Push them on why this should be and you will eventually get an answer roughly equivalent to "God said so," plus they will be very upset.

This is an irrelevant point, one that I already addressed. Yes, it's true that they masquerade on this point as if they are religious in nature, but they fundamentally are not. They do not justify their beliefs with reference to God(s) for the most part, though you can certainly find religious progressives who one might argue are misled about what their own faith compels them to believe.

Equality and fairness are their gods.

This is meaningless and suggests you're more interested in scoring anti-woke points instead of actually grasping my argument. You know damn well they do not engage in worship of a god like Christianity, Hinduism, or Islam do.

You have been posting a lot of naked assertions that consist of little more than weakman sneering.

You actually need to argue things here. You don't get to just assert them. You don't get to just wage culture war. You also need to be civil.

You've been warned about this before, and you're filling the mod queue with these sorts of low-effort "boo wokes, blacks bad," etc.

Heed this warning.

No, it doesn’t. They will be very upset because you’re strawmanning.

Can you give any examples?

Yes!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Black_Lives_Matter_street_murals

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/okay-to-be-white-halifax-1.4887174

I promise this is not meant to be a low effort sneer. The treatment of these two slogans only makes sense if they are religious icons and heresy, respectively.

We make public statements, even murals, for things other than religious icons. Is New Deal art religious? Is everything funded by the National Endowment for the Arts?? I could see a case for the Lincoln memorial bordering on religious, but what about the Washington monument? The Capitol proper? These are big artistic projects explicitly symbolizing our culture—but they remain firmly in the realm of the secular.

The same applies for unappealing speech. It’s a much broader category than heresy. You could replace those posters with pornography, slander, even proselytizing and see a similar article. Offending/intriguing the public enough to get a news article does not require a religious schism.

Yeah, but ignoring the ideological significance of art for a second, people do not get nearly as upset when regular art (especially low effort stuff) is besmirched or even vandalized. Can you imagine the police investigating some tire marks on a crosswalk, were it not a religious symbol? The same thing has happened with BLM logos as well.

Consider that the slogan "black lives matter," was painted by the government (or sanctioned) in huge letters on countless prominent streets in America. Then consider that the nearly identical but less assertive "it's ok to be white" on 8x11 sheets of paper launched police investigations and news articles about how racists are among us.

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