The Attorney General of the United States, and religious liberty

Sometimes I just can’t believe my luck. After starting my Political and Spiritual website and blog last week, what a surprise that William Barr, US Attorney General, made a speech about religious liberty at Notre Dame University. It’s a perfect illustration of some of what has become backwards and upside down in our country. You can read his full speech here. Here’s my critique. I apologize in advance that’s it’s lengthy, but—oh my—there’s just so much to say.

1. The Attorney General has the religion clauses of the First Amendment only half right. Or less than half. I’m no lawyer (and I don’t even play one on TV), but I have studied much over the years about the First Amendment’s relationship to religion. Here’s what the amendment says: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. Barr only seems to need and want the second clause that prevents congress from prohibiting the free exercise of religion. I don’t know of anyone who disagrees with that clause. The freedom to worship and believe is at the heart of our country’s foundations.
   1. a. It’s the first clause to which Barr gives brief lip service but apparently doesn’t like—no establishment of religion. This first clause was extremely important to our founders; they had seen the abuse of state-sponsored religion. In Europe, state religions led to discrimination against other faith groups. This pattern reasserted itself in the colonies. James Madison and Thomas Jefferson, among others, took the lead in keeping that abuse from being a part of our foundational documents. Madison was behind a change in the Virginia Declaration of Rights that concerned religion. The change from “full Toleration” to “free exercise of religion” marked the difference between having a state religion (Anglicanism) in Virginia that would simply permit other faiths, and granting rights to individuals to follow their consciences with vigor and equality, and without interference. Madison later wrote to Jefferson: I flatter myself we have in this country extinguished forever the ambitious hope of making laws for the human mind.
2. That Madison quote is compelling, because Barr claims that “secular humanists,” as he calls them, would do just that—make laws that govern others’ beliefs. Barr is not only wrong about that, it’s actually his own combination of law and faith that wants to govern and curtail the beliefs of others.
   1. a. The Bill of Rights (the first ten amendments to the Constitution) was designed to protect human rights—individual rights—from government overstep. Yes, this certainly includes religious rights, but also includes the rights of those who are not religious. It definitely isn’t just for the protection of the rights of conservative Christians, which is oddly what Barr seems to advocate. It’s admirable and understandable that AG Barr believes his personal faith is the best and most important expression of right beliefs and morals. It is wrong when the government’s highest legal official makes this a public policy stance.
   1. b. Freedom to exercise one’s religion in America isn’t confined to Christianity. As a matter of fact, all Christians don’t believe the same things, and many Christians don’t conform at all to the beliefs contained in Barr’s talk.
   1. c. Barr either fails to understand or refuses to acknowledge that the founding documents, including the Constitution and its Bill of Rights, were informed not only by Christianity but also by those who espoused Enlightenment ideals and/or Deism—two related philosophical platforms. Deists talked of God, and by that they meant a creator who set things in motion and then stepped back as the universe ran on its own (like a watchmaker building a timepiece). Jefferson, Madison, Adams, Washington, Franklin, and others identified as Deists or followers of the Enlightenment, or some mashup of the two. Both Enlightenment principles and Deism focused on laws that flowed from both reason and morality.
   1. d. So, if the AG is going to disparage “secularists,” he needs to start with the secularists who wrote the very founding documents he uses to support a different view from what they intended.
3. Secularism vs. faith? This isn’t a reasonable division. Barr is a conservative Catholic, and many other Catholics have already expressed disagreement and dismay at his comments. The Attorney General speaks of an orchestrated scheme by secularists. He says: This is not decay; it is organized destruction. Secularists, and their allies among the “progressives,” have marshaled all the force of mass communications, popular culture, the entertainment industry, and academia in an unremitting assault on religion and traditional values. What’s interesting is that the people he calls secularists and progressives are the ones who are fighting for the rights of all people, including all religious people and the rights of those who do not belong to a particular faith—not just the rights of conservative Christians. Though Barr speaks often of “religion” in his sermon (yes, it’s a sermon—I know a sermon when I see one), he plainly does not mean any other religion besides conservative Christianity. That view is the opposite of what our founders intended.
4. And there’s more. Barr goes on: Similarly, militant secularists today do not have a live and let live spirit – they are not content to leave religious people alone to practice their faith. Instead, they seem to take a delight in compelling people to violate their conscience. Wow. Really? Because from where I sit and stand and preach, it’s people like Mr. Barr who don’t want to live and let live. They want every person to conform to their beliefs. I say beliefs and not actions, because their own actions often don’t conform to what they say they believe. And “militant” secularists? What does that even mean? It recalls the days when women who stood up for their rights were called “militant feminists.” Maybe we still are called that and I haven’t noticed?
5. Men. Several times Mr. Barr uses the term “man” or “men.” Like this one: Men are subject to powerful passions and appetites, and, if unrestrained, are capable of ruthlessly riding roughshod over their neighbors and the community at large. While I don’t disagree with that theology, and though I acutely appreciate his accomplished alliteration, I am both surprised and relieved to know that I’m not included in that sentence. I’m not a man. Mr. Barr, please note that while referring to all people as “men” may have been socially acceptable when the Constitution was written, it has been neither socially acceptable nor good writing/speaking for a very long time.
6. Your freedom to swing your arm ends just where the other person’s nose begins. This famous quote was taught to my first grade class by Mrs. Pippin, our teacher. No lie. On the first day of school she was talking about rules, and the way she told her example story—or the way my 6-year-old mind remembered it—was that a person claimed he hit someone else in the nose because “it’s a free country.” The injured person replied, “Your freedom ends where my nose begins.” Why use this expression in a blog about religious liberty? To remind you that while you have all the freedom you need to express and practice your religion, you may not swing your arms of faith so as to impede someone else’s freedom.

The bottom line. Secularism has never been an enemy to democratic principles, and secular people were a driving force in the foundational documents of our country. Far more dangerous are the ideas of those who want to defy our Constitution and laws by claiming their own faith rules for everyone.

I have stood proudly, and will again stand, shoulder-to-shoulder with people who profess other religions or no religion, as we demonstrate for human rights and freedom for all. This is what the framers envisioned.

© Melissa Bane Sevier, 2019