Difficult to believe that Freedom of Religion will survive unscathed

We have taken the Bill of Rights for granted for a long time in this country.

So much so that I would be surprised if one American in 100 could enumerate all 10 amendments and what they contain. I know I can't, at least not off the top of my head. But if we're honest, we ought to accept the fact that we don't value all our so-called "rights" equally.

Those on the Left may love freedom of speech, and those on the Right may love the right to keep and bear arms, but there is at least one right which might not survive the next 10-20 years.

Be honest. Do we really still believe in freedom or religion? And more to the point, can we still afford it?

Let me start by saying that every religious person in this country certainly believes that they should be free to practice religion. Most folks who are truly religious doubtless believe their faith is the best way to live, and they have varying degrees of tolerance for those who disagree with them.


This works pretty well with people who aren't fanatical about their religion, but when you have people telling others that their way is the only way and that those who follow other religions are apostates, you've got trouble.

Our Constitution says there can be no religious test to hold public office, but the Christian Right made poor Mitt Romney jump through hoops and there were still a lot of them who were never going to vote for him because he was a Mormon.

Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn., is a Muslim, and there are plenty of people who believe it's not possible to be a Muslim and a good American at the same time. Then there was good old Fred Phelps, the wacko minister from Kansas, whose crusade against homosexuality included protesting at funerals of people who weren't even gay.

It's one thing to remind people that religious freedom -- and the right to practice a different religion than the majority -- was the chief reason many of the original settlers came to the New World.

So what happens when practitioners of a religion decide that their particular brand of faith is the only real way to God and all the others are infidels? Is there a point where religious freedom stops and instead becomes religious coercion?

Of course there is.

It isn't only in Muslim countries that believers are practicing Sharia law. There are already cities in Europe -- in England, even -- where Islamic immigrants have demanded the right to govern themselves by religious law and not the same laws as the rest of the country. Even in this country, Muslim fathers have killed their daughters for disgracing the family or beheaded their wives and children for similar transgressions.

Islam certainly isn't the only religion that has gone through things like this. Muslims love to point out the Crusades and how Christians killed thousands of Muslims, but the last Crusade ended more than 800 years ago.

Then of course there was the Spanish Inquisition -- more than 600 years ago.

Yes, there are still folks who call themselves Christians yet murder doctors, but violence and coercion aren't the policy of any mainstream Christian sect. For all the people who see Christianity as a list of "thou shalt nots," the true message of Christ was love -- love God and love your neighbor.

Not tolerate your neighbor of a different religion and allow him to live as a second-class citizen only if he pays a special tax.

As incomprehensible as it may have seemed as recently as 50 years ago, we may actually be reaching a point in this country when we cannot allow absolute freedom of religion. We certainly can't allow people to violate our civil and criminal laws just because the tenets of their religion demand it.

Murder is murder, even if someone calls it honor killing. If a woman wants to cover her head for whatever reason, including her religion, that's fine. But forcing women to cover is un-American and cannot be tolerated.

Lenin once said that capitalists would cheerfully sell communists the very rope to hang them with. We can't let our own religious tolerance provide the very weapons that will eliminate our beliefs.

Don't get me wrong. I am not saying we need to ban Islam or any other religion, but I do think that when someone says that this is the way they do it in Saudi Arabia, we can respond by saying this isn't Saudi Arabia and they have to obey all our secular laws if they want to live here.

It's one thing to stand for freedom. That doesn't mean we have to allow so much freedom to people who hate us that they can change our society. I honestly don't know what do to here. I'm just saying that this is a debate we need to have.

Note: This is a reworking of something I wrote for All Voices in 2011.