July 11, 2004
MORE DIFFERENT (via Tom Morin):
Faith and liberty (EMANUELE OTTOLENGHI, May. 27, 2004, Jerusalem Post)
Despite the commonly shared principle of separation, religious freedom emerged in Europe and North America out of different historical experiences that still shape a different approach to religion on both shores of the Atlantic. And if the principle of separation between Church and State appears central to the promotion of human rights, democracy, freedom, and moderation, the premises of that principle profoundly differ in Europe and the US and teach important lessons to those who want to promote religious freedom in the Middle East.The distinction originates in the two great revolutions that, at the tail end of the Enlightenment, disestablished the Church both in Europe and in the US. A cursory reading of Western constitutions bears evidence of this: While many European constitutions affirm the idea of the secular nature of the state, this reference is lacking in the American case. That reference, which the Founding Fathers intentionally omitted, reflects a different understanding of religious freedom, which in turn is rooted in the different history of the two continents.
Religious minorities fleeing European persecution created many North American colonies - Puritans in Massachusetts, Quakers in Pennsylvania, Catholics in Maryland, Baptists in the Carolinas. When, two centuries later, their descendants gathered in Philadelphia, they agreed on one thing: Government could not forbid religious freedom by legislating against this or that denomination, nor could it promote one denomination's establishing one Church to the detriment of others.
In other words, the kind of religious freedom intrinsic to the US Constitution First Amendment aims to empower believers to freely practice their own faith. It is a freedom that embraces the idea of religious pluralism, religious tolerance, and respect for different readings of the Christian gospel and revelation.
The Christian religious pluralism of the Founding Fathers, implicitly at first and explicitly later, was extended to all other faiths. It is on this basis that the US emerged in 1787 and remains to this day a great religious democracy. Differently from Italy and Germany, it forbids the crucifix in schools and public offices but has its churches full. In its American version, religious freedom as a corollary of democracy involves the free practice of religion in all its human and earthly manifestations because it was men of faith who first preached that freedom was a tool to protect their different religious convictions from the encroachment of the state and state-sponsored churches.
EUROPE IS another story. While religious minorities escaped persecution and entrenched church privileges in Europe to establish colonies in the new world, on the old continent there ruled one church, whether Protestant or Catholic, against which arose French revolutionaries and their Enlightenment supporters. Freedom of religion in Europe is born out of a revolt against religion.
As a result, faith and liberty coexist in America but clash in Europe. The European version of the principle of separation between Church and State emerges from an anti-clerical and secular sentiment that supports separation not to promote religious pluralism but to free mankind from the yoke of established religion.
Not surprisingly, American liberalism proclaims "In God we trust" without fear that belief will trample freedom, while European liberalism bans God from its constitution to affirm freedom. In America, God was synonymous with a freedom that reasserted faith against religious persecution, while in Europe God was perceived as liberticide because in God's name, books and people were burnt.
But Europe's faith in reason did not only assert freedom. Expropriations of ecclesiastic property, abolition of ecclesiastic privileges, and the opening of the ghettoes were followed by massacres of Catholics during the French Revolution. Later came communist totalitarianism which, instead of forcing men to believe in God, forbade them to believe in any god.
The long-term consequences of this difference are readily visible in today's Europe. While American democracy, rooted in Protestant ethics and in the religious tolerance of the Anglo-Saxon liberal tradition, could reconcile faith and freedom, Europe's 19th-century anti-clerical liberalism has now become an atheistic, anti-religious and post-Christian sentiment, which views religion as synonymous with intolerance and sees it suspiciously as an obstacle to freedom and democracy.
And lacking its religious basis they've given up freedom too--the worst of both worlds. Posted by Orrin Judd at July 11, 2004 8:50 AM
I know a number of American atheists who embrace the European concept of bigotry against and intolerance of all religions. The tolerant Atheist is a rare bird indeed. I think it stems from a feeling of being alienated by their own beliefs, in atheism, a religion of sorts. I have no problem with an atheist's beliefs, except when it embraces intolerance, which is decidedly beyond the American concept.
Tolerance goes both ways, of course.
Posted by: Genecis at July 11, 2004 9:53 AMGenecis,
As atheism is a distinct minority in the US, most atheists will not be open about their lack of faith. The atheists that most believers will know about are the vocal, militant, extreme types who want to do away with all religion.
The American model is better for all religious persuasions, including Atheists. I am not supportive of the extreme secularists of the ACLU school. In the end, they will only incite a vigorous backlash that will make life for atheists more difficult.
Posted by: Robert Duquette at July 11, 2004 11:23 AMThe remarkable thing is that under his terms, America's left switched from American liberalism to European leftism sometime in the 20th century. His description of European attitudes to religion fits a majority of the Supreme Court.
Posted by: pj at July 11, 2004 11:23 AMWell, Genecis, I like to think I'm a tolerant atheist, being very much a product of the American tradition in these matters, as defined in the article. But I do believe you may be right about Euro-style anti-religious bigotry among certain Americans. I perceive myself as sharing a common culture with millions upon millions of believers - my fellow citizens - with whom I have a few differences of opinion. The bigots seem to regard believers as The Enemy. (With exceptions made, of course, for members of the wetter denominations. Strange way to live, consumed with fear and loathing for the vast majority of your countrymen.)
This in itself wouldn't bother me. (So sit it in the corner in your paranoid sulk. See if I care.) What does bother me is the implied - rarely stated outright - conviction that state power can rightly be used, if not to bully you out of your religious beliefs and practices, then at least to bully you out of the public square, and protect your children from having their futures blighted by the alleged mind- and spirit-narrowing consequences of being the recipient of a religious tradition.
They do, as a matter of fact, believe the state should have a role in "free[ing] mankind from the yoke of established religion". Get a rope, I say.
Posted by: Moira Breen at July 11, 2004 12:20 PMWell, he certainly strides through the issue with 7-league boots.
It wasn't so easy to bring the American religionists to heel -- Connecticut still had a state-sponsored religion in 1807, and it's a question whether the US would have any recognizable religious freedom for non-Christian believers if Irish Catholics hadn't become politically influential in eastern cities during the most dynamic period of US urbanization.
On the other hand, European fears that religion in the ascendancy would abrogate civil liberties were well-founded.
Had any European Christian leaders of the 18th or 19th centuries adopted a policy of preaching decency, it might have worked out differently. But none did.
Posted by: Harry Eagar at July 11, 2004 1:44 PMYet religious America rises and secular Europe declines--a genuinely scientific mind would draw conclusions.
Posted by: oj at July 11, 2004 2:02 PMIt's your obsession that Europe is declining. I believe the Europeans consider themselves to be on the way up from the murder and degradation of their centuries of religious violence.
An ordinary European, given a choice of any generation to live in, would certainly pick now.
Posted by: Harry Eagar at July 11, 2004 4:26 PMThen why do they use so many antidepressants and not have children?
Posted by: oj at July 11, 2004 4:35 PMI haven't noted that Americans are conspicuous in their abstinence from antidepressants.
Single factor analyses of complex systems are very nearly always bound to be wrong.
There are several other significant differences. Very high marginal tax rates. Small political entities greatly reducing the economic competitive potential against a gigantic single market like the US. Two catastrophic wars in less than 100 years.
Interestingly, Jesus would probably smile much more favorably on the Europe's approach to economic issus than to the US's.
Posted by: Jeff Guinn at July 12, 2004 7:56 AMExcept that those factors are wrong:
small states have significant advantages
Christ wasn't a statist
etc.
Posted by: oj at July 12, 2004 8:09 AMI don't know what the figures are now, but back in the '70s there were more psychoanalysts in Manhattan than in all of Europe.
Posted by: Harry Eagar at July 12, 2004 2:11 PMWhich would by why Manahattan is so Blue.
Posted by: oj at July 12, 2004 2:13 PMYet it's also full of immigrants, which ought to make it Red, no?
Posted by: Harry Eagar at July 13, 2004 12:17 AMNo, they can't vote, but the immigrants certainly aren't the ones seeing therapists.
Posted by: oj at July 13, 2004 12:20 AMOJ:
Maybe if the US was one giant state, but it isn't. Yet it combines a gigantic single currency area with unfettered internal migration. Just a couple more factors you leave out of your one-note symphony.
Christ's attitudes towards wealth were clearly against human nature. Only one way to implement them: that state. So in what meaningful way was he not a statist?
Posted by: Jeff Guinn at July 13, 2004 7:23 AMThat's gibberish. The U.S. is one giant state and the command to help others is the opposite of a command from the state that it take from you.
Posted by: oj at July 13, 2004 8:35 AMAn article I read last year said that the state with the highest per capita use of antidepressants was Utah. Utah is Red, no?
Posted by: Robert Duquette at July 13, 2004 1:55 PMOJ:
You are speaking gibberish. Imagine how Europe would be different if it spoke one language and had unfettered internal migration. And you simply cannot ignore that states possess a degree of autonomy.
Besides, you seem rather sure of yourself that Jesus wouldn't smile upon a goverment that implemented his economic ideas. Why wouldn't He favor the state helping us become holier in his eyes?
Posted by: Jeff Guinn at July 14, 2004 7:52 AMJeff:
It does.
Its problems are moral, not linguistic.
Render unto Caesar.
Posted by: oj at July 14, 2004 8:18 AMIt had a bigger morality problem when it was all Christian. They couldn't stop killing each other.
Posted by: Harry Eagar at July 14, 2004 5:24 PMYeah, that's why there are only two billion left.
Posted by: oj at July 14, 2004 6:02 PMOJ:
It most certainly does not. Just because it is legal to do so does not make it practical--language differences are far from irrelevant. I am certain internal migration numbers in the US are orders of magnitude higher than in Europe.
That there are 2 billion Christians worldwide has not the first thing to do with the historical inability of European Christians to stop killing each other.
Posted by: Jeff Guinn at July 15, 2004 7:09 AMUnlimited killing = 2 billion
Math is as poor a suit as biology, eh?
Posted by: oj at July 15, 2004 7:57 AMOJ:
Apparently English is no more a strong point for you than math.
NB, "inability to stop" does not mean even remotely the same thing as "unlimited."
Posted by: Jeff Guinn at July 15, 2004 1:25 PM