Religious Freedom and its Limits

Many people have been asking me lately my opinion on the mosque controversy in Manhattan. I haven’t brought it into the blog, mainly because I didn’t think I had anything new to add to the discussion. I still might not, but for the sake of satisfying my questioners, I’ll have go at it.

Obviously, I’m a publicly religious man, so the preservation of religious freedom is important to me. I believe that the Constitution has been twisted to mean something it doesn’t say. The exact text of the establishment clause of the first Amendment reads: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. Nowhere do the words “separation of church and state” or “wall of separation between church and state” appear in the clause. These phrases represent a particular interpretation of this clause; it is the prevailing one at this time, but it’s an interpretation nonetheless. There are people who want to keep religion in a box, on the shelf and out of public life and they use the Constitution to justify it. I don’t want to get sidetracked too far into a discussion on the nature of the constitution, but I only want to make clear that I don’t believe that the First Amendment was written to limit religion, but rather to safeguard its free practice.

In light of this, I have no problem with the idea of a mosque being built in New York City. I am against this particular mosque near Ground Zero though. On a related issue, I understand that our constitutionally protected freedom of speech allows us to do many things, like burning objects that have a symbolic value to make our point, but I’m against the burning of Korans by anyone, especially those who claim to be doing it for Christ. Do both groups have a right do what they’re proposing? Yes they do. But just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should do it. I’m not writing as a constitutional scholar here, but there are reasonable limits to our rights. Some limits are imposed by the courts; some should be imposed on ourselves by using a little common sense. Both actions are insensitive and unnecessarily provocative. They are both, in their own ways, mean spirited acts that go against the values that religion in general should stand for.

In the case of the mosque, or community center, or whatever they want to call it, I have concerns as a citizen about the whole thing as well. While there are people who will cynically use the Constitution to limit religious freedom, there are those who will just as cynically use religious freedom to disguise less than holy objectives. I hate to use a popular cliché, but the Constitution is not a suicide pact. I want to know where the money is coming from and whether this community center will really be nothing more than a front for those who want to do damage to our country. In light of recent history, we would be foolish not to ask these questions.

So I am against the mosque, on both religious as well as civic grounds.