I am grateful to have been interviewed on religious freedom, along with my good friend and colleague at Notre Dame Law school, Rick Garnett, for an article by Ines San Martin for Crux. We spoke of religious persecution overseas but also about challenges to religious freedom in the U.S., both of which Rick elaborated on, too.
A couple of excerpts:
“I would like to see religious freedom incorporated into what’s called ‘High Foreign Policy’, which includes defense, diplomacy, alliances and foreign aid. Right now, it’s a little corner of the State Department,” said Daniel Philpott, Professor of Political Science at the University of Notre Dame.
And:
According to Philpott, in the West there are two faces of religious freedom.
“One is the issues surrounding sexuality, like the contraception mandates under the Obama administration,” he said,” involving “the increasing creation of conscience issues for institutions.”
The second is the use of anti-religious rhetoric, which has become clear under Trump, he said, as the way the president speaks of Muslims or the travel ban, has led to a sharp spike in anti-Muslim incidents and also a growth of anti-semitism.“I would call for both left and right, each in their own way, to understand what religious freedom means for them and understand the religious freedom on the other side,” he said.
“The left thinks teachings on contraception are crazy, but they are issues of conscience, and we have a long tradition of respecting that in the United States,” he said. “But we also have a tradition of being welcoming to people of all faiths. At large, we have a good history of respecting both Muslims and Jews. They’ve been able to find a home where they can flourish here in a way they can’t in other countries, and I would hate to see that change.”
Rick Garnett on whether religious freedom is still a “special,” or distinctive, right:
The challenge in the U.S., [Garnett] said, is not a “theocratic desire to persecute us and punish us for our beliefs,” but the fact that increasingly, religion is not a part of the life or the upbringing of Americans, so the importance of religious freedom is not obvious.
“They wonder what is so special about religion: ‘Isn’t religion like what sports team you like, a club?’” Garnett said. “That used to be something we could take for granted, because our Constitution makes religion special and our tradition has treated religion specially. But I think increasingly it’s seen as a luxury good, so if it conflicts with something else we care about, you see a growing number of people who think religious freedom should lose.”
For him, there’s no room for doubt: “The right way to think about it is that religious freedom is this foundational good that makes so many other things we care about possible.”