The Necessity of Religious Freedom for Public Discourse

By Nick Spencer

Danbury Institute Fellow

The previous article in this series examined the history of the United States to determine whether Justice Hugo Black’s insistence upon a strict and inviolable separation between church and state erected in his Everson v. Board (1947) opinion was necessitated by the First Amendment’s protections for religious liberty. Upon review of the historical record, it was determined that the founders could not have intended religious freedom to be equated with freedom from religion itself. Rather, it seems clear that the sentiment of the founders was one in favor of religiously grounded public discourse, albeit one that did not come from a state-sponsored church.

The question remains, however, whether the foundation of religious affections are truly necessary for effective public deliberation on political matters regardless of the founders’ personal opinions and thus whether religious liberty granting the latitude to make such arguments in the public square is still advisable, historical record notwithstanding. This article serves to show that political deliberations always inherently rely upon a particular moral framework shaped by a person’s religious convictions—whether consciously or unconsciously. Thus, in order for public political discourse to truly be free and comprehensive, protecting the rights of individuals to speak and act in accordance with those religious convictions is necessary—particularly in the American context of representative democracy.

Political Discourse as a Moral Act

In his famous work Making Men Moral, Robert George correctly recognizes political action on the part of the magistrate as an inherently moral act. He writes, “the legislator ordinarily cannot be freed from the need for moral deliberation and judgment in considering a proposal to enforce moral obligations. His enquiry cannot legitimately be restricted in such a way as to avoid the question whether an act proposed for legal prohibition is morally right or wrong.”[1] One’s moral commitments are intimately connected with one’s political decisions. Here, George connects moral deliberation with the enforcement of moral obligations—think a prohibition of murder. To some, this may seem to limit the attribution of moral action to a particular class of political decisions, but there is greater reason to think that more than just debates over cultural issues rise to the level of being moral acts.

In truth, all political decisions rely upon some kind of moral epistemology—what one believes about the nature and source of right and wrong.[2] Certainly, it is easier to look at more cultural concerns such as marriage, abortion, even education, and recognize the moral component in political discourse on those issues. More difficult is determining a particularly moral component to issues like tariff and tax policies—things that are obviously of great interest as of writing this. To be clear, Scripture does not speak decisively on the economic issues listed above, and thus there ought to be room for Christians to disagree charitably. However, Scripture does speak clearly, for instance, on the value of work (2 Thes 3:10), and the importance of being paid a fair wage for that work (1 Tim 5:18). These are things that relate politically to economic decisions, but also things that Scripture ties back to the value and dignity of the human person as the bearer of the imago Dei—an inherently moral declaration.

Ultimately, human beings bear the imago Dei in part because of our capacity for moral action. Human beings cannot help but be moral creatures, and by being moral creatures, everything we do has some moral element—including our politics. To his credit, George does seem to recognize this to an extent, saying “religion, considered as a basic human good within the grasp of practical reason, can indeed provide a reason for political action.”[3] Ultimately, however, religion is not just one reason among many for political action, but rather is the foundation on which all other reasons for action rest—even for those who would be counted among the “nones.”

True Moral Deliberation Requires Free Religious Expression

If all political deliberation is moral in nature, and if all moral discourse depends upon a particular set of religious commitments, then for political deliberation to truly be free and open, religious liberty must protect the ability of individuals to publicly espouse and practice those religious commitments without fear of government reprisal.[4] To say, as Justice Black and others would today, that religion must stay a private matter and cannot be brought into political issues is to (1) mislead individuals into believing that political deliberation can be accomplished apart from moral and religious commitments, and (2) to not actually remove religion from the political process, but rather to decide which forms are publicly acceptable and which are not.

America was built upon the free exchange of ideas in an open marketplace—hence the associated First Amendment protection of speech. In a democratic system such as ours, though a representative democracy and not a direct democracy, our free participation in that system necessitates that we have the ability to make our voices truly heard through a direct appeal to our religious values. It also means that we have a right to consider the extent to which candidates for political office align with those religious values—not as a religious test for office eligibility in the same way as an age requirement, but rather as an indication to individual voters of whether or not this or that particular candidate is likely to represent me as an individual in the way I would like. Being able to understand what our elected representatives truly believe about life’s deepest issues and questions, and being able to tell them what we believe about those same issues and questions is fully worthy of government protection.

Removing religion from the public square was not something envisioned by America's founders. Removing religious truth claims from political discourse also distorts the inherently moral and religious nature of that discourse. However, as individuals who hold to the authority and sufficiency of Scripture, we still must turn to God’s gracious revelation to us in order to understand whether we as Christians ought to hold a particular interest in fighting for free religious expression in the public square. We turn to that issue in the next and final article of this series.

[1] Robert P. George, Making Men Moral: Civil Liberties and Public Morality (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), 7.

[2] Troy Gibson and Christopher Hare, “Moral Epistemology and Ideological Conflict in American Political Behavior,” Social Science Quarterly97, no. 5 (November 2016): 1157.

[3] George, Making Men Moral, 41.

[4] Though the length of this article precludes a fuller examination, this freedom is secured to the extent that religious exercise does not inflict undue physical harm and thus threaten various other rights of individuals. Under the proper scheme, then, things like ritual sacrifice of children would not be protected religious expression.

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Nick Spencer serves as the Director of Policy for The Family Foundation, a nonprofit organization that stands for Kentucky families and the biblical values that make them strong by advocating for God-honoring public policy in the Commonwealth.