Respecting Religious or Moral-based Decisions in the Government and as Individuals

I am going to talk about how the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment currently works and how I think it should work, and I will relate that to how I think we should behave in our day-to-day lives.

Currently, the Free Exercise Clause prevents the federal and state governments from making any law that intentionally targets a particular religion. That particular standard started, or at least was made clear, when the Supreme Court said that Oregon could ban peyote smoking for everybody, despite the fact that it infringed on some Native Americans' ability to smoke it religiously. Since the purpose was not to attack that religion, it was okay that the law incidentally infringed on their religious practice.

Now I will explain how I think the Free Exercise Clause should work. (An alternative to changing the 1st Amendment would be for legislatures to provide defenses to the laws they pass, so that courts would not need to rely directly on constitutional provisions.) I will also note that many people think that this is how the Free Exercise Clause did work prior to the peyote case I mentioned. (If you are interested in the history, please comment and I will delightedly research and do another article on this!) So this is how I think it should work: the government should only limit a person's exercise of religion if they have compelling reasons and laws narrowly tailored to those reasons, even if the government did not intend to target any religious practice.

I prefer this system I just described of having protection against even incidental infringement, despite some challenges presented by that standard. Admittedly, more laws will be thrown into question since the government will unintentionally infringe on the practices of religions more than it intentionally infringes on them. And of course we can’t let someone merely say they have a religious belief and let them off. But religious practice could be treated much as other defenses, like insanity or lack of the requisite intent (the defense of “I didn’t mean to!” for intentional murder). Those defenses are usually handled by juries hearing testimony by various witnesses, including the defendant if he chooses to testify, and deciding if the person’s defense is sincere or not. Sometimes the system will decide incorrectly, but it may be the best option for deterring bad behavior while taking into account the many different circumstances and conditions that people have. And if the government can show that a law is narrowly tailored to a compelling reason to infringe on certain religious beliefs (meaning that society would go into chaos if all requests for special protection were granted) then the government could still enforce that law regardless of the religious belief.

While I don’t get my way concerning what the government does, I can at least conform my personal behavior to the respectful standards that I think the government should follow. I can do more than just avoid attacking the beliefs of others; I can try to be actively aware of how I may be pressuring others against their conscience. I could even show interest, appreciation, and love for the sincere beliefs of others.

Christ will always see and be grateful for when people act on moral conviction, and sooner or later will lovingly correct them when they are misguided, so in that sense those acting on religious conviction do not need to worry too much about how other people or the government treats them. But it would be nice if we could be like Christ and also respect the religious convictions of others.

For example, some media or politically incorrect language may be acceptable to me, but somebody else may feel deeply uncomfortable with it. Instead of saying “that’s silly” or “it’s not a big deal” or “there is nothing wrong with that,” a more respectful response may be “I totally understand not being comfortable with that, I should say ____ instead,” or I could just change the subject or media if I think that person would like that.

Another area where respect is important is how a person spends her time. An invitation usually makes the recipient feel loved, but before pressuring too much we should remember that often a person does not want to spend time in a certain way because of a sincere belief that they need to spend their time in another way. This comes up as a husband and father a lot; there are unlimited opportunities for me to serve it seems, and I hope my decisions about how I balance in-family service and socializing with out-of-family service and socializing can be respected, even if not fully understood.

Like with legal defenses, evaluating a person’s sincerity may be important to avoid abuse. I am grateful my wife gives me the benefit of the doubt in how I spend my time, believing that many things I do in an effort to please God. But if I were to be gone with friends all the time, for example, my wife may understandably want to talk with me about how sincere I am when I say I feel obligated to be away, and about whether I understand her needs and the obligations she is trying to fulfill.

For the most part, however, people err in the other direction, not explaining their moral reasoning for a certain action until it weighs heavily on their minds. So I think the best default is to take a person's claim of religious or other moral belief at face-value and let them off the hook for perhaps violating a social norm or otherwise acting in a way we find disagreeable. And if we do that personally, I think our democratic government is likely to follow suit.