Liberty and freedom are different and misunderstood

Lest We Forget

Freedom and liberty often are confused in the public mind. The media add their bit to the popular confusion, reporting on events with a maximum of sensationalism, a minimum of analysis, and an absence of historical perspective.

Amidst the most overblown portrayal of dramatic incidents, the generalization keeps bobbing up: our "freedom" is threatened. The "freedom" to incorporate offshore in order to escape a fair share of the taxes is in jeopardy. The "freedom" to pillage the national forests and parks is asserted - by predators who complain of "socialistic government" while demanding tax-built roads on which to truck away their loot.

And they want the "freedom" to pay sub-standard wages in the name of "free enterprise," while demanding government assistance in defeating foreign competition.

In the meantime, our real historic liberties are indeed in jeopardy - and none more dangerously than #1 in the Bill of Rights: Religious Liberty.

Religious Liberty, a uniquely American principle of government, is different in both origin and concept from both individual "freedom" and "toleration." All advanced societies have today recognized - at least formally - that persecution is wrong and toleration of unpopular opinions is a better practical alternative. But few have experienced true liberty.

In Russia the established church, having learned nothing and forgotten nothing in 75 years of persecution by the state, is still fighting valiantly to turn the clock back to state preferment and privilege over "lesser creeds without the law."

In Italy and Germany, France and England, toleration of religious minorities is generally praised and usually practiced.

In the history and constitutional theory of Religious Liberty, there are two principles at work. First, the government ("state") is neutral in matters religious, neither persecuting nor favoring. The second principle is that religious activities and institutions are supported by the voluntary gifts of time, money and devotion on the part of believing people.

In religious liberty, the religious community lives free from meddling by political authorities, however well-- intended. Governmental agencies-- supported by general taxes - provide equal services to all citizens, regardless of religious affiliation or lack thereof. On the one hand, the religious community maintains its own standards and disciplines. On the other hand, government agencies have no constitutional right to interfere in the religious life and activities of a church, synagogue, mosque or other religious society.

For religious liberty to remain a vital principle of American life, however, two things are necessary. Government must practice a conscious self-restraint, and the religious communities must maintain a high standard of internal discipline and ethical practice. The classical saying is sound: "Let the church's standards be higher than the laws require."

Anyone who follows the headlines today can see readily that both poles of Religious Liberty are in danger. Nothing illustrates this more than the present predicament of the Roman Catholic Church in handling the pedophile cases. Equally threatening, although less vulnerable to salacious exploitation by a sensationalist media, have been a series of cases of gratuitous intrusion in internal religious affairs by government agencies.

Illustrative of the first point is the daily feeding of the public mind with the semi-pornographic tales of pedophilia in the Roman Catholic priesthood. On the one hand there is the feasting of prurient vultures; on the other hand there is the failure of the Catholic hierarchy to maintain internal standards higher than the civil law requires.

On the second point: hidden in the back pages was a story that Scientology, a modern religious philosophy and lifestyle, has paid a fine of 8.6 million dollars rather than continue to fight a 22-year old case, to pay lawyers to continue to contest a court charge of "brain-washing." One does not have to subscribe to the beliefs of the Church of Scientology to know that every religious community worth its salt maintains some requirements in belief and practice that hostiles can call "brain-washing."

In both of these cases, and in recent decades there have arisen many more to illustrate either or both danger points; the courts have moved aggressively into a problem area where typically the judges are ignorant of the historical background and setting, and in recent years uninhibited by the traditional American principle of judicial restraint.

With intellectuals who can't distinguish "freedom" from "liberties," and with courts that don't know the line between the internal discipline of minorities and the political authority that governs all citizens, will religious liberty survive?

Dr Franklin H. Littell, who has a Ph.D. from Yale, retired 20 years ago as Professor of Religion at Temple University. Currently he serves as Distinguished Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at the Richard Stockton College of New Jersey. He is a retired United Methodist clergyman and lives in Merion Station, PA. He may be reached by email at .

Copyright The Human Quest Sep/Oct 2002
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