The Basis of All Our Freedoms

 Many people find the idea of religious freedom confusing and even worrying. As Cardinal George Pell highlighted in Quadrant recently (January-February 2010), this includes the Australian Human Rights Commission, which has spent two years now puzzling over whether religious freedom is even “compatible” with human rights to begin with. The Commission was meant to publish its report earlier this year, but there is no sign of it yet. Whenever the report appears, it would be contrary to form if the Commission decided to treat religious freedom as anything other than a problem requiring very strict management, preferably by human rights commissions.

The report is also unlikely to dispel the confusion that often surrounds this fundamental human right. To clear away some of the clutter, it might be helpful to look at five of the most common mistakes made about religious freedom. 

Religious freedom is not a perk

First, religious freedom is not some sort of claim for privileges or special treatment for Christians—or any other particular religious community. Religious freedom is a fundamental human right, a right that belongs to everyone by virtue of their being human. It is recognised as such in all the major international human rights documents. It is so important and so fundamental that the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion is one of only seven rights in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights which cannot be suspended or limited—even in a public emergency which threatens a country’s existence.

In fact, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights places religious freedom and freedom of conscience on the same level as the right to life, the right to be free from slavery, the right to be free of arbitrary arrest and imprisonment, and the right to be recognised as a person before the law. Some of the rights that we think of as basic to a democratic society, such as freedom of expression, freedom of movement, freedom of association and assembly, can all be limited or suspended in a time of emergency, but this does not apply to the right to life and it does not apply to the right to freedom of religion and belief.

Why is freedom of religion seen to be so important? Because consideration of questions of value and meaning, having the freedom to search for the truth and to live our lives in accordance with it, is essential to being human. No one seems to be satisfied with solutions simply of our own devising, and so we tend to seek answers to these questions in something greater than ourselves.

The word religion comes from the Latin word religio, which means both “to reverence” and “to bind”. Whatever answer we give to questions of meaning and value, in the end we are all answering a religious question: What should I revere as the supreme value, and how should I bind myself to it? For religious people the source of answers will be God. But non-religious people too have ultimate sources—human dignity, justice, freedom, equality, science, community, the environment—which validate their individual sense of life’s goodness and the importance of working to make things better.

We live by seeking answers to questions of meaning and value which command our deepest respect. When we have found them, we voluntarily commit ourselves to live in the light they shed. Because not all answers to these questions are religious, international human rights agreements speak of the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion. These are separate rights, but they also run together. For this reason, religious freedom is a right which protects everyone who seeks the truth and believes in its importance, whether they are religious or not.

Religious freedom is based on separation of church and state

A second stumbling block for understanding religious freedom properly is the idea that somehow or other religious freedom is opposed to the separation of church and state. As it has come to be understood, the separation of religion from the state is treated as a way of protecting the state and society from having religious beliefs and morality imposed on them, either by force or by stealth. The assumption seems to be that religion is in some way a threat to democratic society that has to be guarded against constantly. This is to get things exactly the wrong way around.

A major foundation of the separation of church and state in the West comes from the Gospels, and not only from Jesus’s admonition to “render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s” (Luke 20:20–26). The universality of the Christian message meant it could never be bound or subordinated to one form of politics or one form of society, as religion always had been before Jesus. In this way, Christianity freed religion from politics. The first clear formulation of the separation of “church and empire” was offered not by a statesman or a thinker of the Enlightenment but by Pope Gelasius in the fifth century, as a means of protecting the church from the constant depredations of the Roman imperial state.

The struggle between the church and political power which continued for several centuries afterwards is characterised in secularist mythology as a story of heroic efforts to free temporal authority from the domination of religion. A more accurate description is that the church was constantly forced to defend the religious domain against the state’s endless attempts to claim sacred authority for itself, trying all the time to recall the state to its proper domain, which is keeping the social and political peace. The history of the West, in the twentieth century especially, shows that it is not the religious takeover of the state that we need to worry about if we value human rights. The real worry is when the state claims some sort of sacred mission or authority to remake human nature and society, or simply to control most aspects of life.

Religious freedom is not dangerous

A third and related snag that trips people up about religious freedom is the idea that it is a threat to the rights of others; either because in a diverse society, deeply-held religious convictions will lead to conflict and division; or because if you give religious people half a chance they will try to use the state to mandate their values for the entire community. This view puts religious freedom in an unusual category of human rights, all by itself, as a “dangerous” right that can only be respected if particular caution is taken to protect the rights and freedoms of others.

Overall, the concern that different religious beliefs are potential sources of conflict is not strongly supported by the historical record in Australia from the last fifty years. There was a long history of sectarianism between Protestants and Catholics which is now well behind us, and there have been some tensions with more recently arrived religious groups, but thankfully they are not the norm. In Australia, deeply held belief in the truths of a religion usually co-exists easily with respect for the rights of others, including the right to believe in different religious truths or none at all.

Far from being a threat to the rights of others, religious freedom is one of their guarantees. Fundamental human rights are bundled together. Unless the right to life, for example, is respected, respect for all other rights is placed in doubt, at least to some extent. In a similar way, respect for freedom of religion and belief necessitates respect for freedom of conscience, thought and inquiry, freedom of expression, and freedom of assembly. Being free to think, inquire and change our minds, to express our thoughts and questions, to gather to discuss them and to persuade others to our conclusions, and to hold to our convictions in the face of pressure or coercion, are essential to the freedom to search for the truth. Any curtailment of freedom of religion and belief curtails these other fundamental human rights as well.

Religious freedom is not just freedom to worship

A fourth misunderstanding about religious freedom is that it means nothing more than freedom to worship and freedom to pray in private. Religious freedom does entail these things but neither is under threat in Western countries at the moment (they are in other places). Religious freedom also means the freedom to live publicly and privately according to your beliefs and to serve others in the light of your beliefs. For Christians this begins with the answer Jesus gave when he was asked, “Which commandment is first of all?” Jesus replied: “… love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength”; and “love your neighbour as yourself” (Mark 12:28–31). Love of God and love of neighbour—private devotion and public service—are inseparable for Christians.

Some would like to constrain the place of religious faith in democratic life by putting up a Berlin Wall between private belief and public action. This is not very helpful. No human being lives in neatly divided public and private worlds. In addition to our private lives and our public roles there is the social domain which encompasses both: the family falls into this category. To require, as some have argued, that religious people quarantine their beliefs from any public debate or activity—or even from their profession or occupation—is not only unfair but incoherent. Apart from the way this would allow some to act on their beliefs but not others, the bigger problem with this position is that human life just does not work that way.

So when believers take part in a public debate, religious freedom means they have the right to bring their beliefs to the discussion, argue for them, and try to persuade others. When believers come together and build a hospital or school for the wider community, they have a right to operate it in accordance with the beliefs which led them to take on this work for others in the first place, and to appoint staff who share these beliefs and commitments.

Religious freedom is not a special permission to discriminate

This takes us to the fifth and final tripping point on religious freedom. The law as it stands in most Australian states makes some limited allowance for religious freedom when it comes to legislation which makes it illegal for employers to discriminate on the basis of religion, sex, marital status and sexual orientation in choosing their staff. These allowances are misleadingly called “exemptions”, which suggests that they are special favours granted by the government to religious institutions so that they can use their strange beliefs as a reason for discriminating against some people, either to deny them a job or to sack them.

But religious freedom is not a gift of the state. It is a fundamental human right which governments are obliged to respect and protect, as they do other rights. So-called “exemptions” which allow (say) a Catholic school to appoint only Catholic teachers are not a special permission to discriminate, but a protection of religious freedom. What it protects specifically is the right of church agencies to exercise a preference in selecting staff for people who share the convictions at the heart of the agency’s work, and who consistently live out those convictions in public and private—because that is what the school depends on to be able to keep doing what it is doing.

Most Australians like church schools and hospitals. They operate for everyone, not just for Catholics. However, policy-makers and judges sometime fail to understand the part that religious conviction plays, both in generating the energy and resources for these works, and in inspiring and sustaining their commitment to helping people. The protections for religious freedom that do exist are applied very narrowly and only to the most limited extent necessary. In this, tribunals and law-makers fail (or refuse) to understand the indivisibility of faith and service for Christians (and others), and the necessity of a broader environment of witness among the staff of religious organisations to maintain the inspiration and commitment which makes their services to the community possible.

The people religious freedom protects

If we really want to appreciate the importance of religious freedom, we need to turn our minds to the situations where it is not respected. When religious freedom is not respected there is no protection for:

• nurses, teachers or welfare workers who are penalised by their employers for offering to pray for those they are caring for, or simply for saying “God bless”;

• individuals who write letters to the editor arguing that marriage can only mean the exclusive lifelong union of one man and one woman;

• church and civil marriage celebrants who for religious or conscientious reasons can only celebrate marriages contracted between one man and one woman;

• religious leaders who in public debates on morally controversial legislation suggest that the good standing of legislators in their congregations may be compromised by how they vote;

• religious schools which want to reflect the beliefs and teachings of their faith, including those on sexuality, in the selection and appointment of their staff and in their teaching;

• children wearing religious symbols to school;

• the celebration of religious festivals and the use of decorations for these festivals in public places or public institutions such as schools;

• the saying of prayers on public occasions, in public places, and in parliaments and town councils;

• religious welfare agencies which provide fostering and adoption services in accordance with the doctrines and tenets of their faith on marriage and family;

• religious foster parents caring for a child or young person who on their own initiative adopts their foster parents’ faith;

• individuals or organisations which contribute to a political campaign to uphold moral or ethical beliefs shared by their religion;

• public servants who in their professional duties are required to act against their religious convictions or conscientious beliefs;

• doctors, nurses and pharmacists who for religious or conscientious reasons inform their patients that they are unable to provide or facilitate particular services;

• individuals or organisations which engage in peaceful but possibly “offensive” protest against abortion from religious or conscientious convictions;

• people, whether religious or not, who make seriously-intended criticism in good faith of particular religious traditions or of religion in general;

• people who embrace a religion, change their religion or abandon it altogether.

This is not a list of hypothetical possibilities, but of real-life situations where individual believers and church communities have faced legal proceedings, coercion, penalties and prohibitions for peacefully and publicly living out their deepest beliefs and convictions. As this list shows, even quite insignificant manifestations of a person’s religious beliefs can bring about legal or administrative proceedings. This is happening in democracies like Canada, the UK and the USA. It is also beginning to happen here in Australia.

Religious freedom is important, not just for believers but for how much freedom there is in a free society for everyone. Australia is one of the freest countries in the world and we should thank God for this. If we want to keep it that way, one of the things we have to do is learn to take religious freedom seriously.

Michael Casey is private secretary to Cardinal Pell, and Adjunct Professor in the School of Philosophy and Theology at the University of Notre Dame Australia. Earlier versions of this paper were presented to
the Ambrose Centre for Religious Liberty and the
St Thomas More Society, Sydney.