TruthBook Religious News Blog

Page one of three: Please click on "external link" to view entire article

Misconceptions and ignorance are weakening the Constitution's 'first freedom.'
By Jane Lampman | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
from the January 16, 2008 edition

Reporter Jane Lampman talks about the First Freedom Awards.They are heroes in a battle most Americans think has already been won. On Wednesday evening, they are to be honored for their contributions to strengthening religious freedom at home and abroad.

Although the US is home to the greatest experiment in religious freedom ever, and the great majority of Americans support that principle, surprising gaps in knowledge and understanding remain when it comes to practicing that freedom. And support for it seems to rise and fall.

Only a slim majority (56 percent) of Americans said in a 2007 survey that freedom of worship should extend to people of all religious groups, no matter what their beliefs (down 16 points, from 72 percent in 2000).

"A great many Americans don't define religious liberty as a universal right for everyone," says Charles Haynes, one of the honorees. He is senior scholar at Freedom Forum's First Amendment Center, which conducted the survey.

At the same time, others see a weakening in federal courts in recent years of the First Amendment provisions relating to religion, a development that could endanger the rights of minority faiths.

Freedom weaker, now

"It's a disquieting fact that the First Amendment clauses are now very weak provisions, not giving the robust protection ... that historically and for much of the 20th century they did provide," says John Witte, professor of law and religion at Emory University in Atlanta and another of the honorees.

In an era when the US is promoting democracy and freedom of conscience around the world, such knowledgeable people say, it's crucial to get the experiment right here at home.

One organization seeking to boost understanding and respect for this fundamental freedom is the Council for America's First Freedom, based in Richmond, Va. The council sponsors a variety of public education programs, including a nationwide high-school essay competition.

And each year on Jan. 16 – the date in 1786 when Virginia passed the nation's first law guaranteeing religious liberty – the council hands out First Freedom Awards to individuals whose actions have made a significant difference. The three 2008 recipients have advanced religious freedom domestically and internationally:

• For two decades, Dr. Haynes of the First Amendment Center has helped local school districts and communities across the US find common ground to resolve conflicts over religion and values. He recently helped the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe draft guidelines for the study of religions in European classrooms.

• Mr. Witte, director of Emory University's Center for the Study of Law and Religion, has led major global projects related to religion and human rights among scholars from the major faiths; the projects have broken new ground on key issues.

Labels: Center for the Study of Law and Religion, Christianity, faith, first amendment, First Amendment Center, First Freedom Awards, Jane Lampman, religion, religious freedom, Unites States

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Thursday, August 16, 2007

Professor says religion is key to global view

Knowledge of faiths is central understanding of world events, according to university teacher

By Jean Prescott
MCCLATCHY NEWSPAPERS
08/11/2007

BILOXI, Miss. -- As the world grows smaller, and it does so every day, we find "the neighborhood" overrun with new and different people expressing unfamiliar ideas about which we understand little and care not at all.

What to do? Some advise: get smarter.

I don't care what field of endeavor you happen to be in," said Allan Eickelmann, a professor of religion at the University of Southern Mississippi-Gulf Coast Campus and an ordained United Church of Christ minister, "in this day and age, you'd better have some understanding of human diversity, because the fact is that globalization is not going away, and America is not going to become less diverse. In fact, it is going to become more diverse, if that's possible."

A recent count places the number of religions in America today at about 1,800, Eickelmannsaid. He hasn't had time to keep up with them all.

"Knowledge leads to understanding, and understanding human diversity is absolutely essential for our society to function," Eickelmann said.

He deals in knowledge -- about the religions of the world and the people who practice them.

"there is no better way to come to an understanding of human diversity than to understand the diversity of religious expression."

In fact, he and a couple of colleagues recently drew a standing-room-only crowd to an Issues=Answers lecture in downtown Gulfport, Miss. Several hundred people turned out to hear them talk about religion and violence, a hot-button topic. The question-and-answer segment that followed their presentations not only did not dissolve into a riotous affair, but many in the audience seemed reticent, unsure of how to frame a question for which they wanted, perhaps desperately needed, answers.

How do we become better informed? "Take a class" is the logical answer, though that can be expensive at the university level (we provide a thumbnail of what's available locally when fall sessions begin).

Why not begin before university? Why not offer courses in religion, something like basic world religions, in high school?

"There are several practical reasons why it's not done broadly," Eickelmannsaid, notable among them being the difficulty of fitting a religion elective into the overall curriculum.

"History, English, math, science all are offered for four years. ... And when you have one or two spots for electives, you probably can offer only one course for religion." A certified instructor is needed, nevertheless, and unless the school has thousands of students who could fill a day with religion classes, "one course wouldn't keep the teacher busy."

And high schools are quite concerned about indoctrination, "which is verboten," Eickelmann said. "The issue of equal access under the law comes up.

"It's all related to the First Amendment," he said, "which has two clauses tied together. The first is freedom of speech, which people in (journalism) know about, and freedom of religion." The framers of the Constitution, he said, declared that if the government (and by extension, public schools) were to favor one particular form of religious expression over another, it would disallow the free exchange of religious ideas. That's indoctrination, and the Constitution prohibits it.

Eickelmann stands by his claim, though, that at this time in human history it is imperative that we understand what motivates even those whom we observe to be least like ourselves.

"If you don't understand diversity, you don't understand how to be an American in the 21st century; you don't understand how to be a citizen of the world."

Labels: diversity, faith, first amendment, Jean Prescott, knowledge, religion

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Monday, July 09, 2007

First Freedom

Preying on prayer.
By Paul Marshall

In his recent speech at the Islamic Center of Washington, D.C., President George W. Bush once again stressed the fundamental importance of religious freedom. It is “the very first protection offered in America’s Bill of Rights. It is a precious freedom. It is a basic compact under which people of faith agree not to impose their spiritual vision on others, and in return to practice their own beliefs as they see fit.”

Unfortunately, despite the presidential emphasis, these fine words seldom shape the foreign-policy bureaucracy. Promoting religious freedom is too often reduced to the noble task of helping those in prison, or occasionally treated as a sop to the president’s religious constituents.

It is seldom treated as an integral part of foreign affairs: Instead we find what Tom Farr calls in his forthcoming World of Faith and Freedom “a strong diplomatic distaste for understanding religion as a policy matter.” Yet there is a reason America’s Founding Fathers placed religious freedom as the very first freedom in the First Amendment: They viewed it as central, as a key to other rights. The Hudson Institute’s just-completed international survey of religious freedom shows they were right.

The president correctly tied religious freedom to the threat of radical Islam, to helping “the forces of moderation win the great struggle against extremism that is now playing out across the broader Middle East. We’ve seen the expansion of the concept of religious freedom and individual rights in every region of the world — except one.”

Our survey shows that the Muslim world, especially the greater Middle East, is the most religiously repressive region, and that that repression is expanding. One of the greatest barriers in this great struggle is that many Muslims who advocate interpretations of Islam that favor human freedom are silenced by threats from extremists, or charged by governments, with heresy, apostasy, or insulting Islam.

Nor is religious freedom merely a Western preoccupation: It is not confined to any area or continent. Despite the problems in the Islamic world, there are free Muslim countries such as Mali or Senegal. They, together with Japan, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, Guatemala, Botswana, Namibia, and South Africa score better in this survey than do Belgium, France, Germany, or Greece. The most egregious persecuting states tend to be either Communist, such as North Korea and China, nationalist, such as Burma and Eritrea, or radical Islamist, such as Iran and Saudi Arabia. They also tend to be those that act against U.S. interests. Conversely, those with good records are likely to be good U.S. allies.

While Western Europe is still one of the freest regions of the world, the situation is worsening and most countries score worse on religious freedom than they do for civil liberties in general. The reasons for this — continuing religious discrimination, increasingly aggressive secular ideologies, and an increase in religiously demarcated violence — illustrate and exacerbate the continent’s increasing tensions.

Religious freedom also correlates highly with other human rights, such as Freedom House’s civil-liberty index (.862) and political-liberties index (.822), and with Reporters without Borders press-freedom index (.804). Countries with good religious records also have comparatively little social conflict, remain democratic, and are unlikely to become failed states.

There is strong relation with economic wellbeing; both of men and women, and religiously based social restrictions on women are one of the major determinants of their economic status. One major reason for this is the strong linkage with economic freedom: Our religious-freedom scores have a correlation of .743 with the Heritage Foundation/Wall Street Journal economic-freedom index. This is more than a finding that rich countries tend to have other good things as well.

Religious freedom not only correlates well with positive economic outcomes but also actually contributes toward them since it promotes the accumulation of social and spiritual capital. Good religious policies, good economic policies, and good economic outcomes go together.

Our modern world is becoming increasingly religious, religion shapes countries, and political and economic freedoms require religious freedom. Realistic foreign policy requires that action on the first freedom be moved from the fringes of diplomacy and given a centrality that reflects its growing importance.

— Paul Marshall is senior fellow at the Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom and the editor of the forthcoming book Religious Freedom in the World 2007 .

Labels: economics, first amendment, foreign policy, George Bush, Muslim world, Paul Marshall, radical Islam, religious freedom