A Rational Debate of the Freedom of Religious Belief?

Alternative or Non-Existent Facts, and Words with new convenient meanings,

It’s a phenomenon sweeping the world. Don’t allow facts to stand in the way of your views. Either pretend that they’re not there, or create your own alternative facts. Pretend that words don’t mean what they mean to most people, but what you conveniently chose them to mean. Those who choose to think rationally recognise this method in the pronouncements of President Trump and fellow populists.

Here in Australia, we are embarking on an already politicised, and most probably heated, and divisive debate about religious freedom. Unless we clarify and agree on what it is that we’re discussing, we run the risk of replicating populists’ irrational and dishonest discourse.

What is ‘Freedom of Religious Belief’?

Freedom of religious belief is a term that is bandied about as if any of us are likely to agree on what it means. We simply don’t.

Is it the freedom to hold a religious belief? If so, how can we tell what someone believes?

Is it the freedom to express a religious belief? Does the belief require and justify any or all forms of expression?

Is it the freedom to act on this religious belief? If so, even if it’s against the law?

Is the freedom of religious belief, absolute? If not, who determines its limits?

What makes a belief ‘religious’?

Are the beliefs of all religions to be accorded freedom? Are the beliefs of terrorist Islamists also religious beliefs? If not, why not?

Does this freedom only pertain to current religious beliefs?

Does it have to be a belief officially held by a religion? Where a religion or denomination does not have a clear view on the issue, should, for example, those running a religious school have the final say?

Contrary to what some would have us to believe, the freedom of religion is legally no greater than the freedom of those expressing political views, or those dictated by their conscience. It simply can’t be otherwise in a secular society.

Parties to the Debate

The debate is mischievously being presented as one of religious Australians seeking protection from liberal secularists. Once again, this is simply not the case. It is not a debate between two groups in our society.

The debate is between mainstream Australian society and a small sector of religious conservatives. The latter reject society’s views as to marriage, and insist on their right to express such beliefs (with the aid of public funding in church schools)

Acceptance of Public Funding but not Public Policy and Law

Pro-religious-freedom groups, are intent on being exempt from laws that would potentially limits their ability to express views on marriage that are at odds with those held by our society.

Can such religious groups justify retaining their tax free status. Why should they feel entitled to have their minority views funded through tax breaks and by the taxes of society at large?

Limiting the Scope for Expressing your Beliefs

Those wishing to express their religious beliefs are free to do so in places of worship and in other meetings. They would also be free to do so in their schools, if they did not seek government funding and accreditation of courses.

In a secular and multi-religious country like ours, expression of religious beliefs will always need to be limited. Without restrictions we would not have a peaceful society.

For many centuries it was accepted that God required that those who refused to convert to a religion had to be put to death. Thankfully that was stopped. Those who believe that God requires them to intrude, uninvited into the lives of gays and lesbians will also be stopped. Harassment is harassment, whatever the motivation.

Today’s Example

I refer to a ‘sermon’ by Kel Richards, lay canon at St. Andrews Cathedral, Sydney, masquerading as an opinion piece in today’ Weekend Australian. In defending Folau’s warning to homosexuals that they risked going to hell, Richards (apparently seriously) suggests that the word hell should not be understood in terms of ‘cartoon visions of devils with pitchforks’, but rather as being ‘cut off’ from God.

So hell does not mean what it has meant for centuries and what I’ve little doubt it means to almost all believers and secularists alike. What’s wrong with honestly saying what you mean, even if it doesn’t have the same impact? However, the view expressed by Richards’ has a number of other flaws.

Apparently he did not pause to consider whether fundamentalist evangelical Christians like Folau believe in an actual fire and brimstone hell. If he did, he would find that many, if not most, do.

But let’s accept the improbable case that those expressing warnings about hell did not mean hell. Did they use the term hell because it carries the caricatured connotations in the broader community? If they did, or ought to have realised that this was the case, then they must have intended to at least frighten if not offend or cause distress. And as for Richards – what a contemporary liberal theologian believes hell to be, is irrelevant to this public debate.

Richards also questionably quotes from the Bible to justify the offending expression of religious beliefs. All he succeeds in doing is inviting the customary derision reserved for selective quotation of scriptures. (I have yet to hear of an action that can’t be justified by a biblical text.)

Parting Thoughts

Our debate needs to acknowledge and take into account the full context of exempting religions from compliance with a law that seeks to protect others from their harassment and discrimination.

That some religious belief dictates particular behaviour does not automatically require our law to protect it. Sadly, few of our legislators have any understanding of the historical relationship between religion and law. If they did, they would realise that without laws denying religions what they wanted, we would still be burning witches as an exercise of religious belief.

The separation of church and state may need to be reassessed. Organisations that oppose government policy should not expect government funding just because they’re religious institutions. As a law abiding citizen who upholds the law of this land, I do not want my taxes to fund messages designed to undermine the law and government policy regarding the protection of a minority.