Religious Liberty in Geneva

Published on by D. G. Hart

Okay, I know this is going to be anachronistic, to suggest that Calvin’s Geneva should conform to United Nations policy, but it may help to clarify differences between 1555 Geneva and 2013 United States.

First the eighteenth article from the U.N.’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights:

Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.

Then Tommy Kidd’s commentary on the Obama administration:

This statement is definitive because it is so specific. Religious liberty does not just entail the oft-criticized phrase “freedom of worship” that the Obama administration has often employed instead of the 1st amendment’s guarantee of “free exercise of religion.” Here religious liberty includes the freedom to convert to another religion, or to renounce religion altogether. This freedom is most obviously curtailed in the Muslim world, but also in places like China where many pay a steep political or legal price for openly professing faith.

It also entails the liberty to “manifest,” or to make public, one’s religion by expressing opinion, engaging in advocacy, and yes, attending worship services. This guarantee would also presumably include the freedom from government coercion requiring people of faith to engage in practices that violate conscience (such as military service or, more controversially, providing consumer wedding or church services to gay and lesbian couples, or offering contraceptive and abortifacient coverage to employees).

Debates about our current president aside, this is a pretty tall standard set for religious liberty. It was not the view that Calvin or Luther for that matter advocated. It did not become a desirable outlook until the late eighteenth century with the American and French revolutions. It may have become universally desirable during the middle decades of the twentieth century.

That rough historical schema should prompt readjustments to those who would attribute the American founding to Calvinism.

7 thoughts on “Religious Liberty in Geneva”

  2. Ginger,

    I can’t really tell from the interview what Guinness is saying. I do get it about religious freedom. But I don’t understand how that is the solution to everyone getting along. He keeps quoting James Madison. But Madison promoted religious freedom in part to create factions that would be a further check (aside from the checks and balances of the Constitution) on each other. Madison’s view seemed to be a world teaming with antagonism, not one of harmony. But that suspicion and opposition would keep everyone honest. That’s how I read Madison anyway.

    Then you see OG say something like this:

    Guinness: Let me be clear what my criticism is. There’s two major problems in the Religious Right. One is politicization, which is trusting politics to do more than politics can do. Politics is always downstream from where the problems come from.
    The second mistake is more Christian. To use 19th century language, they try to, in say, fighting for life and for marriages, do the Lord’s work but in the world’s way. So, Jesus tells us to love our enemies. They demonize and stereotype their enemies. And, that’s just the beginning of so much of the ugliness of the Christian Right, which has turned off [young people]. And you would think much of the younger generation would say, “well, I’m not going to be like them in my politics.” But instead, as you know, they’re dropping out of the faith altogether. And that is really tragic.
    Well, what’s a better way? If you look at the last 120 years, for most of the 20th century, evangelicals were privatized. Privately engaging, publicly irrelevant. In other words, a warm-hearted pietism that was privatized politically. And that was disastrous. In one word, it lacked integration.
    Then, with the rise of the Moral Majority, you had some evangelicals, not all, go to the other extreme – politicization, which lacks independence, looking like the political parties and ideologies around them, rather than as Christians.
    We should be engaged politically, it’s a free republic, but never equated. In other words, Christians should be the City of God within the City of Man. So, yes, members of the Democratic Party and Republican Party. Engage, but never equated, always thinking and acting Christianly in the midst of the other organizations we are in. And we need to regain that moral position.

    This sounds nice and clever and it seems to position OG as a third way. But hard it is to tell what that third way is.

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  3. Hi Dr. Hart,
    Thanks for the response. I heard an interview with OS by Michael Horton awhile back and have read another book of his “A Case for Civility.” He comes across so reasonable, both his speaking and his writing. He reminds me a bit of Wendell Berry but without the side order of dry wit.
    It took him almost an entire book to get to the “third way,” although I am sure it’s quite purposeful.
    I have gleaned much from your blog.

    Thank you,

    Ginger

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  5. Just as an aside because there is a lot of misinformation about… HHS guidelines do allow employers not to provide contraceptive coverage to employees. What they don’t allow for is those employers to pocket the savings. Rather the insurance company deliberately issues a non-compliant insurance policy and charges the employer the cost of the contraceptive coverage in exchange for the liability they are incurring. The insurance company then decides how to rectify the situation. No one is forced to buy contraception.

    As for allowing a military exemption for pacifists that’s been in place for decades.

    As far as wedding and church services the Elane Photography case is bad. Christian conservatives have a legitimate gripe on that one. The court followed the law but New Mexico law is bad in this case. Lots of liberals also think the law goes too far in extending the blank protections regarding Woolworth lunch counters in 1960 to gays in 2011. I think there is plenty of room to get this protection in inside an environment where people are looking for a long term resolution.

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  6. CD – Rather the insurance company deliberately issues a non-compliant insurance policy and charges the employer the cost of the contraceptive coverage in exchange for the liability they are incurring.

    No one is forced to buy contraception

    Erik – Uh-huh.

    Only a liberal could come up with that conclusion.

    You’re charged the same amount for the policy that lacks contraceptive coverage as the one that includes contraceptive coverage, but somehow your employee still gets contraceptive coverage, but you’re not paying for it, even though you are.

    And these people are going to basically be running our entire medical system in a few months…

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  7. I’m getting to the age where the only joy I have in life is seeing liberals eventually get screwed by the same policies they have set up intending to screw everyone but themselves. Except when it happens they don’t admit it and still find a way to blame conservatives. What a way to go through life — never fully reaching adulthood — forever believing in the Santa Claus of the free lunch.

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