Before we go anywhere, as religion is an extremely sensitive subject, for the sake of tolerance and in an attempt to avoid offending people, each action that is claimed will be followed by a reference. In each case I’ve read the reference (I’m lucky enough to own a few far out religious texts as well) and felt that it was solid enough to include. ANY WHO...
Before we start, I disagree with
freedom of religion
To add some confusion to the matter I’m splitting this debate into two parts,
Freedom of institution and
Freedom of Worship. They’re both very different epochs, yet equally important part of the topic.
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Ok,
Freedom of institution
If you’re being dragged out the bath to answer the door, one of the last people you want to have to talk to is a Jehovah Witness. There not bad people, in fact they adhere to a particularly moral and ethical form of life, considering their door to door visits as ‘humanitarian aid’ as opposed to a ‘justified annoyance’, yet their stringent belief system and social interaction has lead to a reputation of harsh coercion. They’ve been banned from hospital wards for convincing the dying to refuse life saving treatment (reference 1), they discuss the dangers of ‘independent thought’ within the group (reference 2) and openly practice mental manipulation (reference 3) all in the name of God, and more importantly, it would seem, the gospel of the Watchtower. This isn’t limited to Witnesses; Scientology’s renowned for similar actions, maintaining personal information on people who have left the church, as well as using ‘authoritative hypnosis’ as means of coercer (reference 4) and almost all major world religions have, in some respect, been accused of related tactics.
The trouble with freedom of religion is that we don’t know where it stops. All sorts of actions can be carried out in the name of metaphysical being, with the only limitation being its supposed or actual teachings. This allows the ‘cult’ style of coercion which haunts the reputation of a number of smaller religions and directly affects the freedom of the individual members. Aside from the metaphysical implications, a lot of religions, including the now major churches, have used these techniques at some stage simply to boast their following. One of the suspected reasons the anti-homosexuality stance of the Catholic Church was developed was that they needed to draw pagans to the church, by declaring a certain ‘common’ action was against God, their membership swelled as people looked to ‘cleanse’ themselves of this new sin. These actions are immoral as they are detracting from the free will of the individual; limits need to be set on how far a religion can go before it’s no longer operating in a set standard of ethical practice.
Although value religions typically claim to be undertaking an extremely noble task, in that they are trying to save peoples souls, it does allow the self-justification of any action regardless of its actual connection to scripture and gospel. We’ve seen the justification of genocide, invasion and even human sacrifices all in the name of an ambient being, and they all have amounted to the same thing, pointless and violent attacks, both on the person and community. We need to be able to have the right to stand up and tell religious institutions that there are limits on coercion, as by allowing them unmitigated freedoms, we allow them to abuse the individual.
Freedom of Worship
A wonderfully stupid rallying call was placed a few years ago for all Star Wars fans to declare themselves ‘Jedi’ on the UK National census, the idea incorrectly assumed to be that if enough people declared themselves as practicing ‘Jedi’s’, then the UK would be forced to give it the ‘official religion’ status. 0.72% of the UK population declared themselves Jedi.
Staggering, I know.
Obviously, the UK Government was quick to announce that, in actual fact, it didn’t work like that, and the avid star wars fans quickly retreated to their mums basements planning their next coup. But it raised the interesting question on what should be considered ‘religion’; Jedi’s have their own church, (this is taken seriously for the record, it’s not a satire and can be found at
http://www.jedi-church.co.uk/) and a straight forward philosophy based on the same principles of other religions, love and morality. In the eyes of the world’s major religions this is a major cock slap to the face, breaking down centuries of theological growth into a double trilogy (?) of films, yet those members of the Jedi church have made a mature and informed choice to live a moral life, just through separate principles to the mainstream thought of the hierarchical and historical church systems.
This is an extremely healthy perspective of society. Following in the footsteps of the ‘Ethical Atheism’ debate, it shows we’re able to develop morality and ethical judgements away from the traditional resources of the church. With this being the case, does it really matter who we worship in our own homes?
The only thing more outrageous then the mass differences between the various religions is the outrageous similarities. Each religion preaches love, honour, respect and so forth, if we went blind for a day and were then asked to discuss social attitudes with members of another religion, it would almost be impossible to tell the difference. Despite the ridiculous claims about Islam, Catholicism and the many other ‘evil’ religions out there, the truth is, it makes no difference who we worship, it’s simply a matter of taste, and therefore we should be able to worship whoever we want.
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The question is primarily of society. By discussing the freedom of religion, we are by context discussing the freedom of religion outside of itself, what rights it has, what rights the members have and what can be justified. The approach taken here is that whereas the freedom of worship is an extremely important part of our personal lives, the biggest threat to this freedom is that of the religious institution, it is self justifying and therefore cannot be controlled without judicial limits. The saving of souls and regenerating society are all good on face value, but each religion claims to hold the monopoly on it. It’s an extremely tired analogy which probably needs retiring sometime soon but; the worst crimes ever committed by humanity were the ones carried out with the best intentions
References
1. J Guicho and, I Mitchell "Medical emergencies in children of orthodox Jehovah's Witness families: Three recent legal cases, ethical issues and proposals for management".
2. Exposing the Devil’s Subtle Designs" Gary Botting
3. R. Franz, "In Search if Christian Freedom",
4. Report of the Board of Enquiry into Scientology by Kevin Victor Anderson,