I know in my last post I promised to continue elaborating on God and Being, but I've decided to put that off a little while. My reason is basically that I have a number of ideas I want to write about while I've been pondering how to put that post together, so I have been postponing them. However, I want to get some of them down fairly soon. I will eventually get back to God and Being, but in the meanwhile, you can enjoy some of my other thoughts.
I've recently come to the realization that there is no surety of religious liberty in the United States (or most countries). This is the case for two interrelated reasons: (1) there exist no churches with substantial authority over the state, and (2) there is no charter of religious liberties. The two are interrelated in that a powerful church can force the state to issue a charter, and a charter allows churches to challenge the state. However, each of these institutions is crucial for religious liberty, and for liberty in general.
Before going further, we have to know more about what religious liberty actually is. It consists in the freedom of members of certain faiths to practice their religion without state interference. It cannot possibly mean freedom to believe whatever one wishes about religious matters--anyone can believe whatever they wish about anything; the only the way liberty has place is in freedom of action. Nor is religious liberty something which can apply to any religion. For one, there might be a religion which demands holy war against infidels. Insofar as the adherents of this religion obey this injunction, their "religious liberty" would necessary conflict with the liberty--religious being beside the point--of everyone else. Thus, only certain kinds of religions can enjoy religious liberty. Also, religious practice is part of a community, which includes specific religion(s) in its identity. To say that any religion is acceptable implies either that there is no community or that the community doesn't care about religion, which practically speaking means that there can be no guarantees that everyone will be free to practice their religion.
With this in mind, it should be fairly obvious how a powerful church and a charter of religious liberties can be useful to ensuring religious liberty. The charter lays out certain spheres in which the church will be free to act without state interference, and the church acts to defend its rights. And it's not hard to imagine, or look into history and find, how religious liberty is imperiled without these two institutions. Without them, the state may very well tax churches, restrict their practices, confiscate their lands, or force their members to act contrary to their faith. A recent example is the federal government forcing Catholic employers to pay for their female employees' birth control.
But how do powerful churches and charters of religious liberties help protect liberty in general? Well, if these institutions exist, then there exists an alternative power structure to the state which can challenge it. For example, the Roman Emperor Theodosius was excommunicated by St. Ambrose after committing a bloody massacre, and King Henry II was forced to do penance after three of his knights killed Thomas of Beckett. If the state is not the sole arbiter of its power and jurisdiction, it will tend to be more moderate. And the presence of a single institution that can challenge the state opens the door for others.
Thus we come to bills of rights and their significance. Charters of religious liberties are examples of bills of rights: they enumerate certain freedoms which will not be impeached by the state. In a sense, a bill of rights is a list of "we shalt not"s published by the state. Bills of rights cannot be comprehensive, simply by their nature, nor can they be absolute guarantees of liberty. For example, the United States Bill of Rights has been thoroughly trashed by the state--only the Third Amendment remains intact. However, bills of rights serve as shields against the state, and as such should not be cast aside lightly.
The chartered rights of a country or people consist of those enumerated in their bills of rights. It was to these that Edmund Burke referred in his defense of the British Constitution. Won over the course of centuries, he advised basing political rights-claims on these chartered rights rather than on abstract, universal rights. Though the chartered rights are never complete in their enumeration, they were superior to abstract rights in that they were tied to the real world in which people lived yesterday, live today, and will live tomorrow. If chartered rights are cast aside, this connection is lost, and with it all guarantees of liberty. Without bills of rights, how do you hold the Jacobins or Napoleon at bay?
However, John Randolph of Roanoke pointed out that parchment is no true defense for liberty. What is needed is some power to challenge the state and keep it from infringing the rights it has promised. For this purpose, the states in the U.S., guilds, churches, and chambers of commerce are invaluable. Of course, these other powers might abuse their rights or take over the state, but rivalry amongst them, as well as their own, and hopefully the state's, narrow purview will keep them in check. This managed to work for several centuries. Perhaps we should try reinstituting this system today.
