Two Painful Truths of America’s Religious Culture War

[Chris]

Just keep in mind that historically the first claim to rights had to do with liberty of conscience. If that's chipped away, then what's next?

The first truth of Two Painful Truths of America’s Religious Culture War:

...First, the mainly progressive effort to restrict the free exercise of religion is plainly illiberal and contrary to the constitutional order. If there is one single legal strand that ties together the myriad threats to religious liberty and free speech in the United States — efforts to coerce Catholic hospitals and adoption agencies into violating their convictions, to toss Christian student groups off campuses, to force Christian institutions to facilitate access to abortifacients, to compel the speech of Christian creative professionals, or to place in doubt the accreditation and tax exemptions of Christian educational institutions — it’s that they depend for their success on inverting the proper constitutional order.

Progressive government passes sweeping and intrusive statutes and regulations and then treats the free-exercise and free-speech claims of religious individuals and institutions as a form of special pleading. Yet this gets the legal hierarchy upside down. The Constitution — including the First Amendment, of course — is the supreme law of the land, and statutes and regulations are making claims against it. Thus, the default proposition is that free speech, free exercise, and voluntary association enjoy protection, with that protection to fall away only in the face of compelling governmental interests, enacted through the least restrictive means.

Efforts to chip away at this default structure aim to disrupt the primacy of liberty and the legal primacy of the Constitution. So, when people of faith decry attacks on religious freedom, they’re not merely an interest group seeking accommodation; they’re citizens seeking to maintain the core principles of the American founding....

[Sergeant Gleed]

The goal of the Rodents is to destroy the religious and cultural underpinnings of society to create a chaos upon which they can then impose their own religious social foundation.

Their religion is socialism.

Their God is a jealous god and tolerates no competition. Hence the laws and the endless lawsuits and the outrage.

Pay MO mind when a Rodent claims to be sn atheist. They are lying. Lying is part of their religion, just like Islam.

[donttread]

Just keep in mind that historically the first claim to rights had to do with liberty of conscience. If that's chipped away, then what's next?

The first truth of Two Painful Truths of America’s Religious Culture War:

Religious freedom is one of the reasons Europeans originally came here. This right was important long before the Constitution. I agree with the examples you give with one possible exception. If and when a church funded group gets too political it's tax exemption should be lost in some cases.

[Chris]

Religious freedom is one of the reasons Europeans originally came here. This right was important long before the Constitution. I agree with the examples you give with one possible exception. If and when a church funded group gets too political it's tax exemption should be lost in some cases.

"When they [the Church] have opened a gap in the hedge or wall of separation between the garden of the church and the wilderness of the world, God hath ever broke down the wall itself, removed the Candlestick, etc., and made His Garden a wilderness as it is this day. And that therefore if He will ever please to restore His garden and Paradise again, it must of necessity be walled in peculiarly unto Himself from the world, and all that be saved out of the world are to be transplanted out of the wilderness of the World." Roger Williams, "Mr. Cotton's Letter Lately Printed, Examined and Answered," The Complete Writings of Roger Williams (New York: Russell & Russell Inc. 1963), Vol. 1, 108.