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Religious freedom

Religious Freedom Deserves a Right of Its Own

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Religion is a basic good for all human beings everywhere, therefore religious freedom is a universal human right. It is neither unfair nor parochial, but a requirement of justice.
Indiana State House, Indianapolis

Abusing Religious Freedom for Abortion Access

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States would have to choose between religious liberty laws and every other law they would enforce, nearly all of which burden someone’s conscience and limit behaviors some people consider obligatory. What appears to be a victory for religious liberty is really just the opposite.
Church building in the fall

Minimalist Religious Freedom as a Self-Inflicted Wound

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Philip Muñoz’s new book helps illuminate the “social contract–natural rights” style of reasoning that was undoubtedly influential at the Founding. But I find it hard to follow—or, for that matter, to fathom—when this sort of reasoning from fictions is deployed normatively to justify contemporary prescriptions that would otherwise seem unjust or undesirable.
Photo of Independence Hall in Philadelphia

Bare-Bones Religious Freedom

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In Religious Liberty and the American Founding, Phillip Muñoz believes that there is a kind of natural rights logic that leads to his minimalist version of religious freedom. His central premise is that the Constitution should be interpreted according to the “natural rights” logic that was prevalent in the Founding period; and he tries to follow this logic to its conclusions, come hell or high water.
Photo of person praying with bible

Why Religious Freedom Can’t Protect Abortion

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According to a recent complaint filed by the Jewish congregation L’Dor Va-Dor, Florida’s new law restricting abortion limits the free exercise of religion for Jewish women in Florida who wish to have an abortion after fifteen weeks. But this complaint misunderstands the nature of religious liberty: no religion, or any adherent thereof, has the lawful or moral claim to kill an innocent person in the name of that faith.
Vaccine protest sign

Can Catholics Object to COVID-19 Vaccines on Religious Freedom Grounds?

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There are likely vanishingly few individuals who apply the rigorous ethical criteria they use against the COVID-19 vaccine to the rest of their medical and personal decisions. Such inconsistent application of religious freedom principles in the COVID-19 vaccine debate threatens to significantly weaken desperately needed protections for Catholic medical practices.
Supreme Court chambers

The Smith Case, Religious Freedom, and Originalism

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One might wish that the Free Exercise Clause, as originally understood, had provided a basis for more judicial protection of religious rights than it does. But wishing doesn’t make it so. Judges don’t have the authority to interpret the Constitution to get better policy results, even if those are really, really important results.
Religious symbols

Don’t Rain on Fulton’s Parade: Religious Freedom Is Winning at the Supreme Court

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Defenders of the free exercise of religion need to accept that we are playing a long game. Religious freedom is winning, even if the Court’s religious freedom jurisprudence develops over the span of more than one term.
book and American flag

The Bookshelf: Essential Reading on Religious Freedom

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Every “no” to the state in the name of religious conscience is predicated on a greater “yes” to a power higher than the state.
Gay and Christian person shaking hands

Protect Both Religious Freedom and LGBT Rights: Support the Fairness For All Act, Not the Equality Act

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The time has come for people of faith to acknowledge reality and seek a resolution that protects both LGBT civil rights and religious liberty. The Fairness For All Act is a serious effort to reach a sustainable and balanced resolution while there’s still time.

Why Religious Pluralism and Religious Literacy Matter for the Future of Religious Freedom in America

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To have any chance of seriously mitigating common misperceptions of religious freedom, Evangelicals must publicly demonstrate a sincere commitment to religious pluralism and its necessary counterpart, religious literacy.
vatican

Religious Freedom, the Church, and State Coercion

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The Church must exercise its authority over temporal matters in a way consistent with its spiritual mission, of which the exercise of temporal jurisdiction is a betrayal. The human person is drawn by nature to seek out and hold the truth whose fullness is revealed in God’s revelation in Christ, but this vision of human fulfillment implies a human subjectivity whose freedom must be respected as it seeks out the truth which fulfills it.
church

Building A Culture of Religious Freedom

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Serve the poor. Help the weak. Protect the unborn child. Speak the truth about the beauty and order of creation: Male and female he created them (Gen 5:2). Fight for your right to love and serve God, and for others to do the same. Defend the dignity of marriage and the family, and witness their meaning and hope to others by the example of your lives. Adapted from an address delivered at the Alliance Defending Freedom Summit on July 9, 2019.

Measles, Mumps, and Religious Freedom: Mandatory Vaccination and the Limits of Parental Rights

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It is a mark of responsible governance, not authoritarian overreach, for states to act when the demands of public health call for such measures. It is true that the presumption of freedom, religious liberty, and parental authority are all at risk in an increasingly regulatory, secular, and statist culture, but it is an error to see vaccination policy as an essential battleground for defense of these important rights.

Sexual Identity Politics and Religious Freedom in a Secular Age

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For the first time in American history, it has become respectable to publicly oppose religious liberty and its supreme value in our polity. This unprecedented turn is ominous. It will not only diminish our constitutional law. It will remap our common life, for religious liberty has always been a linchpin of our political culture.

Religious Freedom as Freedom to Discriminate?

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Removing religious exemptions will not promote tolerance or inclusiveness. It will forcibly strip religious organizations of their ability to operate as religious organizations.

Religious Totalitarianism, Secular Totalitarianism, and Other Threats to International Religious Freedom

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Westerners should neither exaggerate our problems and forget how good we have it nor exaggerate our blessings and neglect the defense of religious freedom. We’re not inherently better or more deserving of religious freedom than anyone else in the world, and we should not take our good fortune for granted. The first in a two-part series.

Considering Our Options: Deepening Religious Freedom, Witness, and Argument in the Public Square

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Christian witness must go deeper than simply asserting our right to our “sincerely held beliefs.” Igniting the religious question is the best way to restore reason to a public square.

To Win Back What We’ve Lost: How Defenders of Religious Freedom Are Fighting to Reclaim International Law

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Despite conceding crucial legal and political ground for decades to organizations such as Planned Parenthood, opportunities abound for defenders of religious freedom to gain that ground back.

Islam and Religious Freedom

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What is the status of religious freedom in Islam, and what are its prospects?

Neither Reformation nor Enlightenment: The Seeds of Religious Freedom Within Islam

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Contrary to what one often hears in Western media, Islam needs neither a Reformation nor an Enlightenment. Islam must—and can—find resources from within its tradition to defend the full human right to religious freedom. The second in a two-part series.

Religious Freedom in the Muslim World: A Nuanced Appraisal

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What is the status of religious freedom in Islam, and what are its prospects? An answer to this question must begin with a nuanced appraisal of the political theologies that govern different Muslim nations. The first in a two-part series.

Unconscionable: Threats to Religious Freedom and Rights of Conscience in the Abortion Debate

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Waging war against those who cannot in good conscience help perform or facilitate abortions does little to improve access for women seeking abortions, damages the integrity of those who object, and harms civil society.

Make Religious Freedom Great Again

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Donald Trump should commit to protecting the free exercise of religion for all Americans of all faiths.
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