Government Must Protect Nonbelievers

The following op-ed appeared in the Richmond Times-Dispatch on Sunday January 20, 2013.

On Wednesday, the United States observed its annual National Religious Freedom Day. This day commemorates the Virginia General Assembly’s adoption in 1786 of Thomas Jefferson’s Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom and celebrates the enshrining of this right in the U.S. Constitution and our country’s culture.

While religious freedom is an integral part of our heritage, it also is misunderstood. A key misunderstanding concerns the matter of belief. Simply stated, religious freedom means not only the right to believe, but the freedom to disbelieve — to embrace any religion and to reject every religion.

People express their religious freedom by choosing theism, atheism or any other response to ultimate questions. Religious freedom allows them to follow wherever their conscience leads.

Through such documents as the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the 1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, nations around the world have acknowledged on paper that freedom of religion or belief is an inalienable human right.

These documents capture the broad essence of the right, speaking of “freedom of thought, conscience and religion.” Yet according to a Pew Research study released last August, nearly 75 percent of the world’s population lives in countries in which this fundamental freedom is significantly restricted.

The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), on which we serve, has found that countries that typically persecute atheists also target members of disfavored or minority religious communities and individuals belonging to majority faiths who dissent from government-sanctioned interpretations.

In a number of nations, disseminating atheist views is specifically prohibited or restricted. Among these countries is Egypt, which USCIRF recommended in 2012 that the State Department add to its list of the world’s worst religious freedom violators. Just last month, Alber Saber was given a three-year jail sentence in Egypt for “offending” religion as a result of administering an atheist Facebook page.

Another such country is Indonesia, which USCIRF continues to monitor due to its permitting serious religious freedom abuses. Last June, Alexander Aan, a 31-year-old civil servant, was sentenced in Indonesia to a 2½-year prison term for creating a Facebook group supporting atheism and posting questions about the existence of a deity and cartoons depicting and insulting the Prophet Muhammad.

Both of these cases underscore how states that persecute atheists violate not only freedom of religion or belief, but other precious freedoms, including freedom of expression. They remind us that, in the end, freedom is indivisible. There is no bright line that can be readily drawn in the sand to separate them.

The implication is clear. Those who stand unequivocally for other freedoms, including freedoms of speech and press, association and assembly, also must support religious freedom, just as those who stand for the right of believers to follow their conscience must do the same for nonbelievers.

While history bears stark witness to the persecution of atheists in the name of belief and believers in the name of atheism, the call of conscience requires us to pursue a brighter path of freedom and dignity for all. Thus, as we mark National Religious Freedom Day, we’d do well to recall these wise words from the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom:

“No man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place or ministry whatsoever ... nor shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief.”

For believer and skeptic alike, freedom of thought, conscience, religion or belief merits our firm support around the world.

Katrina Lantos Swett serves as chairwoman of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF). M. Zuhdi Jasser serves as a USCIRF commissioner. To learn more about the commission, go to uscirf.gov.

"In God We Teach"

The newly released documentary “In God We Teach” follows the story of Mattew LaClair, a high school student in Kearney, New Jersey. LaClair brought forth allegations of his high school history teacher, David Paszkiewicz preaching Christianity in the classroom. This documentary examines this case and its underpinning issues in just over an hour. I highly recommend you watch the entire film. However, if you would like to skip around and see just the highlights if have a few key moments referenced.

21:50 - 23:00: Paszkiewicz likens Christianity to having the cure for cancer. If you have the truth, why would you keep it from other people?

26:00: Paszkiewicz says, "there are a lot of lost people out there. If they are unreached, the consequences could be terrible"

29:00: Is the younger generation as aware as older generations of issues around separation of church and state?

31:30 - 34:00: Academic freedom is discussed.

34:42: Paszkiewicz says, "Teaching Darwinism is something thats going to take poeple's eyes off of God, especially Jesus Christ."

37:30: Paszkiewicz says, "and it may be against the law to teach creationism as fact but that doesn't mean its wrong."

In addition to being a youth pastor, Paszkiewicz also leads Christian Club Meetings for youth. At these meetings he attempts to disprove evolution and the big bang. This is something that has always rubbed me the wrong way. Regardless of my personal opinions about religion and its constant denial and suppression of science in fundamentalist followings, religion and science, especially religion and evolution are not mutually exclusive. There are certain folks, that would like to be seen as representative of religion, who draw this distinction. They do not represent religion, and they certainly are not representative of Christianity as a whole. That being said, evolution is not, and should not be associated with atheism. It is nontheistic. It is science. Nothing more. If this disproves any aspect of religious thought, then that religious thought must adapt, change or be destroyed. It is no longer representative of our current knowledge about the world and our relationship to it.

42:15: Paszkiewicz says, "I don't believe that my religious beliefs trump the constitution but I do believe that the word of god does."

42:00 - 44:00: Paszkiewicz says, "Religious neutrality is one thing but hostility to Christianity is quite another, and what I find is that this neutrality often means the exclusion from Christianity in the public square."

There is to often the argument that there is a war against Christianity in this country, or a war against Christmas. This is all complete nonsense. If the government does not support a certain view of Christianity or any religion, it is automatically seen as being hostile to that view/religion. The government is a secular institution. It is meant to be free of competing religious ideas as these are the most virulent competitions.

46:00: Paszkiewicz says, "We take god out of the equation, in time, i fear what kind of government we could have."

46:30: Paszkiewicz says, "I do think we ought to be unified around a set of values that are essentially Judeo-Christian"

48:00: Paszkiewicz "I don't see the danger in promoting, lets say the 10 commandments, how can things like 'thou shalt not kill' be psychologically damaging to a student?"

It is so easy for a supporter of the ten commandments to cite the “thou shalt not kill’ commandment as evidence that all ten should be accepted and taught. It neglects to mention the majority of the other nine. Why is this? Maybe its because “thou shalt have no other gods before me” or “do not take the lords name in vain” or “on the seventh day the lord rested” have absolutely no place in civil society, let alone its governance.

A year after this incident Paszkiewicz formed a student “Alpha and Omega Club.” This club was planning a trip to the creation museum in Kentucky. The “educational rationale,” for the trip was that: "students will be exposed to the science behind creationism."

This is a great documentary. I highly recommend it. If anything else it’s a great introduction into the multifaceted debate on the separation of church and state, prayer and other religious ceremonies or ideas in public schools, the so-called evolutionism/creationism debate and the growth of the nonbeliever population in the United States and what its effect could be on combating the religious right and the organization of “nones” as a political demographic. The link for the documentary is here: http://ht.ly/cndug