Sexual Identity Politics and Religious Freedom in a Secular Age
by Gerard V Bradley, Public Discourse:
For the first time in American history, it has become respectable to publicly oppose religious liberty and its supreme value in our polity. This unprecedented turn is ominous. It will not only diminish our constitutional law. It will remap our common life, for religious liberty has always been a linchpin of our political culture.
Religious liberty was planted in America by Protestants working on distinctively Protestant soil. Their handiwork was nonetheless supple enough to absorb the shock of Roman Catholicism during the nineteenth century, and to survive the death of the “implicit” Protestant establishment at the turn of the twentieth.
By the end of World War II, American religious liberty incorporated Judaism into the new “tri-faith” America. The term “Judeo-Christian tradition” was introduced into our national vocabulary to indicate this successful merger, or melding, of biblical religions. By that time, American religion had balkanized into more than 250 sects, at least according to one Supreme Court justice’s estimate. Another justice, Robert Jackson, quaintly observed in 1944 that “Scores of sects flourish in this country by teaching what to me are queer notions.” These odd groups included Jehovah’s Witnesses, who believed in no human government and held that God’s sovereignty over the universe was undivided. They refused to salute the flag, and they bitterly denounced Catholics. These Witnesses won signal religious liberty victories in cases where they did these very things!
In the 1960s, American religious liberty renewed itself by confronting and integrating rugged religious individualism. Existentialists who doubted God, and other loners who professed no creed and belonged to no sect, won Supreme Court victories for religious liberty. (For examples, see United States v. Seeger and Illinois v. Frazee).
Each of these encounters left its mark: religious liberty changed and grew stronger and more inclusive, even as America experienced profound secularization through the whole twentieth century. Religious liberty weathered that challenge, too, proving itself a most resilient “first freedom.” But today’s identity politics poses a very grave threat to religious liberty in America. The same-sex wedding vendor cases, most prominently including the continuing saga of Masterpiece Cakeshop, constitute the aggressive front of this threat.
For the first time in American history, it has become respectable to publicly oppose religious liberty and its supreme value in our polity. This unprecedented turn is ominous. It will not only diminish our constitutional law. It will remap our common life, for religious liberty has always been a linchpin of our political culture.
Rising Hostility toward Religion
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