Re-Thinking Religious Freedom

Pro-choicers are using religious freedom claims to push abortion rights. Is that brilliant or dangerous?

Photo by Diana Vargas on Unsplash

Two stories about religious freedom came across my screen this morning, one about Muslim and Ethiopian Orthodox parents protesting in Maryland over books that feature LGBTQ characters, and one about progressive Christians, Jews, and Satanic Temple members suing over abortion bans they say violate their religious affirmation of abortion rights.

I think one of these efforts is great. I think one is terrible. You can probably guess which is which.

Both, though, point to the stunning success of the Christian right in bending American politics and the American public to its will. A 50-year effort to get the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade and strip abortion rights from millions of American women is certainly the Christian right’s largest coup yet, but the movement has also been wildly successful in asserting the primacy of Christianity in politics and public life more broadly, and in giving religious conservatives rights not on offer to any other group.

Part of how they’ve done this is by ignoring the separation of church and state / “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion” very first clause of the very First Amendment, while emphasizing the prohibition on Congress curtailing the free exercise of religion. Except even free exercise isn’t enough; neither is the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which was arguably well-intentioned, but in practice has handed religious groups and individuals even greater power. Religious conservatives want the first clause of the First Amendment gone — they want a Christian nation, the total freedom to force their religious views on others, and a society that defers to their beliefs, preferences, and superstitions. The establishment of religion is the entire goal.

The Christian right has been increasingly effective at roping other conservative religious minorities into this, including a small, reactionary minority of Jews, Muslims, and others — conservative Muslims and conservative Ethiopian Orthodox Christians, for example, are the people demanding their kids be exempt from so much as seeing LGBTQ characters in books in Maryland schools.

This is not just a Maryland story. Conservative Muslims have joined forces with conservative Christians in efforts to ban books, limit sex ed, and strip out information about the very existence of same-sex couples from classrooms across the country. A large group of leading Muslim scholars and preachers recently took it upon themselves to issue a statement of hostility to LGBTQ people and their rights — which was also, if you read between the lines, a statement of anti-feminism and hostility to gender equality (“Islam affirms that men and women are spiritually equal before God, even though each has different characteristics and roles,” the statement reads, which is the same kind of “separate but equal, although not really equal either because women should submit to men” ideology conservative Christians espouse).

This is all part of a broader project to allow for blatant discrimination and conservative religious supremacy — to allow religious conservatives rights that no one else has. It is an effort to inject right-wing Christianity into public life, under the guise of “religious freedom.”