Freedom Falsehood: Religious Liberty Isn’t Under Attack In America

[Adsos Letter]

SOURCE: The Wall of Separation
February 7th, 2011
By Rob Boston.


Whenever I hear religious conservatives assert that religious freedom is under attack in the United States, I can only shake my head.

Do they know nothing about history or even the world today? Consider what happened in Soviet Russia under Josef Stalin, where houses of worship were bulldozed and clergy tossed into gulags. Think about China and North Korea, where freedom of worship still remains a dream. Consider even one of our allies – Saudi Arabia – where it’s illegal to build a Christian church.

That’s religious freedom under attack. And it’s deplorable. When Religious Right leaders whine about a judge somewhere in America being told to remove a Ten Commandments display, they trivialize the suffering of those who are truly oppressed.

~snip~
The theocrats have never gotten over the fact that they can no longer automatically rely on the power of the government to enforce doctrines that they have failed to persuade people to adopt voluntarily.
~snip~

LINK: http://blog.au.org/2011/02/07/freedom-falsehood-religious-liberty-isn’t-under-attack-in-america/

[treestar]

1. Rec'd.

To them, under attack means they aren't in control.

[el_bryanto]

2. Pretty much right.

While anti-religious bigotry does exist, such anti religious bigots lack all power to enforce their prejudices.

Bryant

[patrice]

3. And can, in fact, be punished in the most severe ways by means of "at will" employment. nt

[Adsos Letter]

5. That one can work both ways. n/t

[el_bryanto]

6. well all sorts of things can be punished with at-will employment

That said, certainly if an anti-religious bigot refused to stop evangalizing in a work setting, I could see letting them go. Same as if a Baptist or Mormon was doing it.

Bryant

[patrice]

7. It doesn't even have to rise to the level of "an anti-religious bigot" doing anything even close to

evangelizing.

Documentable FACT - which I won't be going into further details on, in order to spare embarrassment of some fine people I know.

[Adsos Letter]

11. "At will" means just that; no real reason necessary.

[patrice]

14. Believe me, I know. 3 jobs in 10 years (2 of them IT, so the terminations were about our SUCCESS,

i.e. the excellent work we were doing which was taken from us and marketed elsewhere), and the third one was about how what I was doing was making someone else over my direct supervisor look bad.

[Adsos Letter]

17. I'm very sorry to hear that. I was at the receiving end of a great deal of hostility,

both overt and passive, from a direct supervisor because my Christianity didn't meet his standards of Christian doctrine.

[patrice]

20. I am a devout Christian too, though I no longer go to church. My trouble was in direct

relationship to something I said on FB, on my own time, about "the money-changers in the temple", of course, there was an attempt to obfuscate what had happened once the termination was accomplished, but the ENTIRE thing was officially documented exactly as it occurred.

To the extent that I ever did anything that could even remotely be construed as evangelizing in the work-place, that would have to be the fact that, when the topic happened to come up, I had no reservations about saying that I believe with all of my heart and soul that the innocent people WE kill for _________________________, such as the people of Iraq, are in fact literally Lord Jesus with us still.

There is an interesting parallel: Oil royalty = Pilate; Bush/ChurchCo = Herod; ALL of the innocent dead and suffering (and in my book that includes, in a special way, our soldiers who where LIED to) = Jesus.

Rejection of the potential truth of these kinds of connection, this wholeness of truths that makes truths True always . . . it seems to me that rejection of the possibility of this kind of reality negates any reason why anyone might value the New Testament in the first place.

As we live in a hyper-religious area, witnessing one's faith is not an unusual occurrence on FB and elsewhere/when, though none of the above was mentioned in the official "reason" for my termination.

Also a true story: In my state, if you happen to speak negatively of the War on Iraq, on the phone, or in email, to certain of our elected representatives, you can expect to be reprimanded most severely, no matter how impersonal you make your critique.

[Kievan Rus]

9. America is the only industrialized nation with that in place

Ain't America grand? :sarcasm:

This country is an embarassment to the industrialized, civilized world. Sort of like the family's alcoholic uncle that gets drunk at Thanksgiving every year and gets into arguments with the rest of the family over stupid stuff.

[sufrommich]

4. The right wing in this country have got the art of victimization

down to a science.

[Adsos Letter]

12. Spot on. n/t

[LuvNewcastle]

8. To many American Christians,

the rules of capitalism also apply to religion. The different denominations are in competition for the limited amount of souls (dollars) in the population. When the ten commandments aren't allowed on the courthouse lawn, it means that valuable advertising space is being taken away from which ever fundie church is paying for the monument. It's just a matter of time before these churches start incorporating themselves and go to court complaining that their right to free speech (or advertising) is being limited by the government.

[Adsos Letter]

10. I agree; and the complaints about the right to free speech have been raised

by the "Christian Nation" types (but not in the context of advertising, as you pointed out).

Some Christians believe it is a biblically sanctioned imperative to "capture" the State. I think this quote from the article sums the issue quite well:

"I’m all for Elder Oaks’ church opening as many temples as they like and using private resources to win converts, which is something they’ve proved pretty adept at. What I’m not for is being compelled to live under his church’s doctrines. If I wanted to do that, I’d join."

[11 Bravo]

13. The Hell it isn't! Ask any Muslim.

[Adsos Letter]

16. I agree, and found the headline somewhat misleading...

I agree; and I found the headline somewhat misleading. I recognize that religious liberty is attacked in different ways in different situations; for the United States, the formal attacks are essentially Constitutional (but certainly not always: arson of mosques, synagogues, etc.), and "Christian Nation" Americans are engaged in a war on our religious liberty.

I found the article meaningful, which is why I posted it; however, I also felt it focused on the more egregious examples of persecution in order to make a point about attacks on religious liberty and, in so doing, undermined the argument somewhat.

In a nation with Constitutional guarantees of religious liberty, the attacks upon it are often going to be more subtle (but not always) than bulldozing a church/synagogue/mosque, etc., but are all the more dangerous for that.

[Arugula Latte]

15. But, but, there's a War on Xmas and stuff!!

:eyes:

[randr]

18. So not permitting a Mosque in NYC is not an attack on religious freedom?

I guess when the fright wing attacks others religious rights it doesn't count.

[Adsos Letter]

19. it is, and it does; see my response in post #10

I think the author, while trying to make one point, overlooked another.

Americans United has done a lot of heavy lifting for religious liberty of all faiths (including non-faiths), and for Church/State separation, since its inception in 1947.

EDITED TO ADD: AU has takeen on the Mosque issue before; see: http://blog.au.org/2011/01/25/land-of-no-liberty-southern-baptist-official-drops-out-of-religious-freedom-group/

and: http://www.au.org/media/church-and-state/archives/2011/01/nyc-mosque-funding-request.html