Religious Liberty, Religious License

Much ink has been spilled extolling the glory of religious liberty, much less in expounding its nature and meaning. Brad Littlejohn’s recent article, “Honoring God As A Nation?” is thus a welcome invitation for us to rethink the religious liberty bromides we have accepted uncritically. His article ends by noting that early American statesmen were more clear-eyed about both the duties of the magistrate regarding religion and the distinctions needed to make laws that encourage “right worship without coercing it.” This article picks up the conversation where Littlejohn’s left off, helping recover a right understanding of the relationship between liberty and religion in civil law with an example from early American history.

Americans especially have a hard time discerning the fine distinctions involved in religious liberty because of how exuberant we get over the very idea of liberty. We act this way about freedom in general, of course, and the rest of the world both loves and loathes us for it. Does a right definition of freedom even matter, one that distinguishes it from license? Sadly, this essential distinction is almost entirely absent in American rhetoric today.  

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