Religious freedom and America

Jefferson's heirs still find tyranny easier to define than freedom

Jan 17th 2016, 16:40 by ERASMUS

THIS weekend, some Americans, at least, have been pondering the meaning of religious liberty. January 16th has been designated Religious Freedom Day because it is the anniversary of what Thomas Jefferson regarded as one of his greatest achievements, ranking with the Declaration of Independence: the approval of a statute in his native Virginia which overturned the entrenched status of the Anglican church and set all faiths on an equal footing before the law. Although he was an Anglican himself, of a very free-thinking sort, he admired the integrity of his non-conformist compatriots and came to the view that religious privilege damaged everybody, including the privileged. The statute's opening lines reflect the American founder's mastery of language and clarity of thought.

It's probably just coincidence, but this sonorous passage seems to echo a verse in the Koran: "If God had willed, he could surely have made you all one single community, but he willed otherwise in order to test you...." Anyway, whatever inspired them, these well-crafted words about the "hypocrisy and meanness" of faith enforced by state power must rank as one of the eloquent critiques of theocracy ever made.

To mark the anniversary, the chairman of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) and one of his fellow commissioners co-signed an op-ed which drew attention to the lamentable—and in many ways worsening—state of religious liberty in the world today. They wrote, for example, that:


Also singled out was Myanmar, a country where "Buddhist extremists have furiously assaulted Rohingya Muslims." The co-authors also recalled that back in 2014, a Christian bishop in Baghdad had predicted that the nihilist fury of Islamic State's terror would in due course reach Europe; this forecast had come horribly true.

http://www.economist.com/blogs/erasmus/2016/01/religious-freedom-and-america