What is religion? And what recognition does it deserve?

Independence Hall, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Photo credit: Dan Hall on unsplash

Two years before the Constitutional Convention, America’s founding fathers were embroiled in a battle over religious liberty in Virginia. Patrick Henry faced off against James Madison over a bill to fund the teaching of morality. Thomas Jefferson, George Mason, and other famous names joined the fray. 

The principles that prevailed became the pillars of the “establishment” and “free-exercise” clauses of the First Amendment. The controversy also produced a document titled, “Memorial and Remonstrance.” It deserves recognition on par with the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution among our most important documents. 

The Memorial begins with a quote from the Virginia Declaration of Rights, “Religion or the duty which we owe to our Creator and the manner of discharging it, can be directed only by reason and conviction, not by force or violence.” America’s founders defined religion not as a collectivist project, but as an individual duty that each person owes to the Creator.

Only illegitimate rulers consider religion fundamentally as mindless “group think.” The opposite is true. Human beings do not join some group and subsequently conform their thinking to its precepts. Rather, each person’s individual mind comes to a conviction about reality and, subsequently, finds others who share this same conviction. 

Groups and religious leaders do not create or validate beliefs. Nor are religious beliefs confined to the margins of human existence. Religion encompasses all of life. Therefore, it is deeply antihuman both to treat people only as group-members, and to restrict the subject matter of religion. Nevertheless, many misguided corporations and government officials today are doing just that.

Cheyenne Regional Medical Center

Cheyenne Regional Medical Center (CRMC) is one such example. Its standard application for religious exemptions to vaccinations subjects them to the whims of “the Chief Legal and Human Resource Officer.” It reserves the right to require “documents from your religious leader” and “will not”’ grant exemptions based on “personal” beliefs. 

This policy threatens faithful employees with loss of job in a bid to force compliance without the need to persuade by evidence and reason. CRMC is not alone with its policy. It is following a new and progressive denial of the religious liberty for which America’s founders fought and died.

Denial of “personal” beliefs destroys religious liberty because religion is precisely personal. Madison and company understood that personal convictions can “only be directed by reason and conviction, not by force or violence.” Failure to govern by this principle is the exact opposite of the American ethos. 

Progressives object that this gives too much freedom for people to hold unreasonable opinions. Those who believe this simply do not understand human nature. Examine your own mind and observe that you cannot bring yourself to believe and act upon unreasonable opinions. No sane person can. You will not throw yourself off a cliff. Nor will you willingly ingest poison.

Sane people may do unreasonable things if they are misinformed about the truth. But the solution for this is simply to present evidence and reason that persuades them of the truth. Humans simply cannot thrive in circumstances where reason and persuasion are replaced by force and violence.

So, Madison wrote: “The Religion then of every man must be left to the conviction and conscience of every man; and it is the right of every man to exercise it as these may dictate.” Notice, here, that the “right” stands in service of a prior “duty.” The duty is to the Creator.

For this reason, the “right is in its nature an unalienable right.” That means that it cannot be taken from anybody without denying an individual’s personhood. Even that person, cannot barter away this right. For, properly speaking, it is not a right that belongs to the individual, but to the Creator who gave it. Thus, there are two reasons why religious liberty is an “unalienable right.” 

It is unalienable, first, “because the opinions of men, depending only on the evidence contemplated by their own minds cannot follow the dictates of other men.” Madison knew that human nature—not personal stubbornness—makes it impossible for a person to act against his or her own mind.

Religious liberty is unalienable, second, “because what is here a right towards men, is a duty towards the Creator.” Soldiers know that duty cannot be denied even on pain of injury or death. Every sane person also knows this. Governments that act otherwise deny the very humanity of their citizens.

In its opening four sentences, the Memorial sounds a powerful corrective to the flawed progressivism of our day. The rest of it is equally profound. It should be required reading for every policy maker and thoughtful citizen. Policies from school curriculum to vaccine mandates, would all be truer to human nature if we relearned the truths of Memorial and Remonstrance.

Also published in the Wyoming Tribune Eagle, September 24, 2021.