Love Religious Liberty? Remember: It Goes Both Ways

The season of Advent is upon us, which calls us to wait in anticipation for the coming of Christ.

I’m going to be honest, I love the Christmas season: the lights, the smells (preferably incense), and Advent hymns, which I started listening to before Halloween. This is truly a mystical time of the year that’s devoted to the coming of our Savior. With that being said, the boundaries between private religion and civil society blur during Advent.

This blurring of lines allows us to see Christmas lights in town and Nativity Scenes in the public square. This is made possible by the freedom of religion spelled out in the First Amendment. Before its ratification, Alexander Hamilton wrote in “The Farmer Refuted”:

“Remember civil and religious liberty always go together: if the foundation of the one be sapped, the other will fall of course.”  

Hamilton believes that the foundation of civil society and religious liberty are not mutually exclusive. One can’t exist without the other, because the suppression of one will lead to the fall of the other.

Recently, an Atlanta suburb voted to deny a building permit to a mosque, Suffa Dawat Center, in attempt to bar Muslims from expanding their place of worship into a strip mall. Signs at the Kennesaw City Hall read, “Ban Islam” and “Islam Wants No Peace!”  Fortunately for the Kennesaw Muslims and the First Amendment, the permit ban was overturned by the Mayor.

Sadly, this is not an isolated case. My hometown of Murfreesboro, Tennessee attempted to ban the construction of a mosque, Islamic Center of Murfreesboro,  on grounds that “Islam was not a religion.” The opponents to the construction of the mosque claimed that Islam is a political ideology bent on destroying Western Civilization. To those of us who know Islam and have Muslim friends, we understand that their goals for society are not that different from Christians. They advocate for strong families, rooted community, and devoted religion.

While opponents claim they are “defending America,” they should return to the words of Hamilton and realize that if we pull the rug out from beneath Muslims, it may very well happen to other religious groups. Civil society cannot exist without the existence of religious liberty. We get upset about the persecution of Christians in the Middle East by ISIS but we are barring the extension of worship of Muslims by not letting them freely practice. This seems paradoxical.

In short, the First Amendment is clear: religious liberty goes both ways.