It is high time that we grapple with, and resolve the fact that freedom of religious expression shouldn’t necessarily mean individuals must be publicly subjected to religious speech. And instead of allowing evangelicals to use this protection to publicly engage in denigrating, bigoted, and dangerously misinformed speech, religious expression should be seen as something relegated to a person’s personal and private life alone.
With that being said, I by no means want this to be seen as a call to begin stripping away protections from our fundamental right of free speech, nor a bashing of Christianity or its denominations. Moreso I want to point out why individuals have become so irritated with the Christian majority within the United States, often stemming from being forced to engage in a belief system they want nothing to do with.
I can understand that an analysis like that may anger many people, especially in a country where many of our social and political leaders proudly espouse their Christian beliefs, openly call for our governmental and educational institutions to become one of theological democracy with religious doctrine as our guide, and incorrectly suggest that every one of our founding fathers were proud christians and not a sectarian group.
Furthermore, while it would be easy for me to claim that the action of publicly proselytizing is unconstitutional there are numerous examples of the Supreme Court consistently ruling in favor of nearly all religious expression in both public and private manners. [With obvious exceptions pertaining to felonious crimes and the direct teaching of religious material in any state organization.]
While I can appreciate the consistency with how the Supreme Court rules on religious expression and the freedom of religion, I would argue that freedom of religion is not the same as having to tolerate religious speech and beliefs within what should be an expectedly neutral, and secular public setting.
Take the Gideon’s, the evangelicals you often run into as you walk the thoroughfare of UW’s campus that try to pass you hand-held bibles.
While they are nothing but courteous and polite, it is no less annoying to have to keep them at arm’s length, or in my experience, feigning ignorance of their presence in the vain hope they don’t hound you down and try to shove their scripture into your hands.
That’s where I think the heart of the issue is, not the actual content of the expression, nor the legality of it, although the often vile, calloused and bigoted language of certain evangelicals only further adds to many peoples annoyance and contempt for certain organizations.
But rather through the fact that when individuals don’t fall under the majority of Christianity in the US and interact with religious speakers or figures like the Gideon’s, the best case scenario is a feeling of irritation after being forced to politely refuse their scripture. The worst, and unfortunately more common case, is being aggressively harangued, followed, and harassed.
While some faiths such as Sikhism or Islam do require religious symbols and attire as part of their practices, such as ceremonial daggers, burqas, turbans etc. and have had this right to wear these symbols and attire consistently protected by both State and Federal Courts as well as the Supreme Court.
Those who are not required to don such symbols or attire, or required to proselytize should take pride in their beliefs, and feel free to practice them, but should do so in the privacy of their own home rather than adhering so tightly to their scriptures words that they forgo basic decency, and instead choose to disrupt public settings with their aggressive evangelism.
Now again, I don’t believe a reinterpretation of the First Amendment is a solution to this problem, as systems on the opposite end of the spectrum like France’s “laïcité” which are set on removing any form of religious expression is an extreme, and terribly offensive form of unconstitutional control.
However, while an extreme redesign of the first amendment is frankly unattainable, the core ideal of “laïcité”, the expectation that religion along with its symbols and dress should be absent from the public sphere, is something that should be individually aspired.
While I think employing a system like “laïcité” is grounds for further discrimination, censorship and control, it is time for religious individuals and organizations to understand and redesign their practices around the fact that public settings just simply shouldn’t be a large scale pulpit for their religious doctrine, and that the public itself are not a flock in need of their often unasked for guidance.
