As Australia’s first Pentecostal Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, perhaps could not help but notice, the events of his first years in office had biblical connotations. “Floods. Fires. Drought. Pandemic. Mouse plague,” Morrison recently quipped to his…
Religious freedom is the right of individual conscience; to believe as we will and to change our minds freely, without undue influence from government or from powerful religious institutions. The right to believe differently from the rich and the powerful is a prerequisite for free speech and a free press, the other two elements of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. This makes religious freedom a progressive value by any measure – and is exactly why the rich and powerful of the 21st century are hell-bent on redefining it to their advantage.
The Christian Right is bringing a vast set of distortions into public life in the name of religious freedom. Their goal is to impose a conservative Christian social order with theocratic elements inspired by religious law. To achieve this goal, they seek to remove religious freedom as an integral part of religious pluralism and constitutional democracy, and redefine it to justify discrimination.