Written by Don Byrd
An article by AP’s Rachel Zoll offers a broad stroke overview of religious liberty debates in the U.S. She argues the nature of that debate has changed in recent years from a focus on small oppressed minorities to today’s headline concerns.
Here is a snippet:
“We’ve gone from a moment a quarter century ago where it’s small religious minorities who want to do their thing in private to very large religious minorities – Catholics and evangelicals and Mormons – who feel they’re being oppressed by a hostile society,” said Mark Silk, director of the Leonard Greenberg Center for the Study of Religion in Public Life at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut. . . .
Smaller-scale religious liberty cases continue to arise, over issues such as wearing a Muslim veil in a driver’s license photo or a Sikh turban to work.
But the loudest cries over religious freedom are coming from the conservative leaders of major religious groups . . .
It is an interesting point, and the shape of religious liberty claims has surely expanded in recent years to include larger groups. Whether the nature of the grievances themselves have changed – and if so, how they have changed – is less convincingly addressed here. Does “religious liberty” really mean something different now than it did 25 years ago?
To say, as Zoll does, that the issue has become “politicized” is a valid criticism of our politics, and those who dominate its conversation. But it says little about the merits of the underlying claims, or the sincerity of those who bring them. What new freedoms are being sought? By whom? To what end? And at what cost?
The piece is definitely worth a read, and the issue is worth a deeper dive.
