Freedom of religion, abuse of power in Louisiana and social connectedness

In May of this year the Louisiana State Legislature passed a law – House Bill No. 71 – requiring that the Ten Commandments be posted in every elementary, secondary and post-secondary classroom. The text of the Ten Commandments must “be displayed on a poster or framed document that is at least eleven inches by fourteen inches.” The words of the Ten Commandments “shall be the central focus of the poster or framed document and shall be printed in a large, easily readable font.”¹

On its face the measure seems clearly to violate the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution which requires lawmakers to respect a separation between church and state: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; …” Although worded in terms of “Congress,” the federal law-making body, the First Amendment has been consistently interpreted so as to apply to the law-making bodies of the states as well.

In Canada section 2(a) of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees “freedom of conscience and religion.” The clause has been interpreted to include a right to be free from religion, which is pretty much entailed by the freedom of conscience guarantee in s. 2(a) anyway. So Canadians also have a constitutionally mandated separation of church (religion) and state although we don’t typically talk of it those American terms. And it is crystal clear in our Charter that the rights and freedoms guaranteed by it apply to all levels of government.

Section 32(1) of the Charter states that the Charter applies:

• to the Parliament and government of Canada in respect of all matters within the authority of Parliament including all matters relating to the Yukon Territory and Northwest Territories; and
• to the legislature and government of each province in respect of all matters within the authority of the legislature of each province.

Although it is highly unlikely that a Canadian provincial government would legislate as Louisiana just has, if one did so a political and constitutional firestorm would most certainly ensue.

Supporters of the Louisiana law seem convinced they will prevail in the litigation, which has already been launched, challenging the new law. Some of their reasoning, as revealed in media reports, begs any number of questions. For example, upon signing the bill into law the whole-heartedly supportive governor of Louisiana, Jeff Landry, offered as justification of the apparent constitutional breach as follows: “If you want to respect the rule of law,” he said, “you’ve got to start from the original law giver, which was Moses.” Another defense made of the new law is that the Ten Commandments are not a matter of religion but simply of history: they would say, I suppose, that it’s just a matter of fact that Moses laid these imperatives down and by requiring that they be posted throughout the education system they are merely informing students of a historical occurrence.

Such attempts to evade the issue about separation of church and state – some of which may be sincere, and some of which must be disingenuous – invite at least some of us to wonder how proponents of the law cannot see the profoundly undemocratic abuse of power inherent in it. It’s a law that forces all students in the state of Louisiana to encounter and somehow deal with a document that plays a major role in only Judeo-Christian religions and sets out prohibitions that simply don’t make sense in any other context. For example, one of the commandments according to Louisiana law requires all to “Remember the Sabbath Day, to keep it holy.” The word “sabbath” comes directly from the Bible. Some supporters of the law seem not even to understand that not all religions are monotheistic: “The measure allows for “our children to look up and see what God says is right and what he says is wrong,” Dodie Horton – the Republican sponsor of the legislation – told colleagues. “It doesn’t preach a certain religion, but it definitely shows what a moral code we all should live by is.”²

Whether the US courts uphold the Louisiana law is of course of enormous consequence for democracy in that country. Democracy will not long survive the persecution of minorities by the majority. The USSC declared a similar law passed in Kentucky to be unconstitutional in a 1980 decision. In that case, Stone v. Graham, the majority declared that the Kentucky law violated the separation of church and state because “it lacked a non-religious, legislative purpose.”³ It was permissible to teach the Bible as a piece of literature in an English class, for example, but there was no legitimate educational purpose in posting copies of the Ten Commandments in classrooms. If the court overturns that precedent – which is I think hard to imagine – and upholds the Louisiana legislation, as Dorothy said to her pet dog in “The Wizard of Oz,” “Toto, I have a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.” (Or maybe given prevailing views on such things in Kansas, that’s exactly where we are!⁴)

But even for those of us who are legally trained and long-time civil liberties advocates, perhaps most intriguing about this example of Louisiana law-making is the psychology of the people behind such legislation, and the sociology of the broader community. It’s puzzling: how can they profess not to see that this law imposes one set of religious beliefs on everyone else? How can they not see the abuse of power that such a move entails? Can those who support the legislation not imagine what it would be like if the shoe were on the other foot?

There is a strong revenge-seeking element in American politics these days. Donald Trump is quite open about seeking retribution for the various wrongs he claims have been done to him:

And no doubt it looks like there is some of this motivation at work in the promotion of the Ten Commandments in Louisiana schools. But it is also unlikely that the desire for revenge explains the whole episode. Some people who support the legislation probably do so in good faith (so to speak!) The psychological or sociological quandary is how can this be the case?

There are I think a lot of things are going on here, including as I have already noted, what some supporters of the law would see as “getting even” for what they perceive as attacks on their belief system in the public square. But one surely is this: a failure of imagination, a failure to conceive of how it would feel to be made subject to a comparable religious imposition.

Getting past the limitations of our own experience

We can probably all come up with examples from our own experience of where someone made it clear to us that they see themselves as a special case and does not see others as having the same justification as they think they do for a certain action. I remember well some examples from the period – thankfully over for the time-being in our country – when access to abortion was being contested in the Canadian courts. I worked for a number of years with a woman, a member of a conservative religious group, who was quite adamant that abortion was seriously wrong and should not be allowed. But it turned out, as she once directly told me, that she had in fact had an abortion. When challenged then on her position against the general availability of abortion her response was that “her situation was different.” She had become pregnant after being assaulted by her ex-husband. She did not seem to understand that others might have equally poignant stories to tell about their unwanted pregnancies. She could not imagine suffering in others that could be equal or greater to hers.

Another abortion-related example was told to me by a friend in medical school at the time. When the availability of legal abortion arose during one of her courses, her professor told the class, while he had once been sympathetic to the anti-abortionists’ position, that had ended when the then leader of the movement in the province had brought her own daughter into hospital for an abortion! This mother had not been able to imagine the horrors an unwanted pregnancy can entail until she saw them for herself in the case of her child. Her previous across-the-board resistance to abortion hadn’t been based on an appreciation of real impacts on real people. And when she was forced to deal with reality, she saw the need for safe access to the procedure (and quit the anti-abortion movement.)

How do we try to ensure a broader understanding of life?

We are faced I think with the question how to nurture a broader appreciation for the predicaments of others. The answer, at least in part, seems to lie in our degree of social connectedness. Through social connections we can begin to be able to imagine the exigencies of other people’s lives, whether we are talking about the importance of another person’s religion to them or the reasons why they cannot go through with a pregnancy, or any other deep issue or dilemma that they face. I say in part because not everyone needs actual social connections in order to imagine a reality different from their own. Some people seem more innately empathetic than others; some can get the bigger picture they need from literature or movies. But many need direct social connection to get beyond the confines of their own experience.

Someone who has worked extensively in this area is the American political scientist, Robert Putnam who is best known for his book Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. Putnam has been much concerned with the impact of social isolation on the health of democracy in America. Some of his latest work analyses trends in social connectedness from 1900 to the present. According to Putnam in a recent interview: “… what we’ve seen over the last 25 years [i.e., since Bowling Alone] is a deepening and intensifying of that trend [i.e., to less connection]. We’ve become more socially isolated, and we can see it in every facet in our lives.”⁶

Central to a lot of Putnam’s work is the concept of social capital, “the networks of relationships among people who live and work in a particular society, enabling that society to function effectively.”⁷ Putnam distinguishes between two types of social capital – bonding social capital and bridging social capital. He puts it this way:

He goes on to say that we need bridging social capital so that we can come to “sense that we’re all in this together and we have obligations to other people,” for example, the obligation not to impose our own religious (or atheistic) beliefs on others. He adds, “It’s only by connecting with other people that we generalize from our experience.”

And there is the key: bridging social capital connects us to people different from ourselves and in so connecting we have opportunities to sense that they are people like us who need our caring and support. We may still not want abortions for ourselves or our friends and relatives, but we can see and empathize with the struggles of others who are different from us in some significant ways.

One of Putnam’s more profound insights, I think, is that the connecting with others from outside our own group (however we define that) isn’t necessarily an intellectual process. We don’t have to talk politics to come to have a better appreciation of the reality of other people’s lives and thus understand that they are just as entitled as we to legal protections for their dignity.

Putnam has long encouraged joining clubs as a way to connect with others. Hence the name of his book on social isolation – Bowling Alone. In a recent interview Putnam was asked, “Does it matter what kind of a club you join? Is there a tension between what might be more enjoyable for you and what might be better in terms of saving American democracy?” His answer might surprise:

It’s in the doing of things together, the hanging out, that we can get beyond the limitations of our own similarly-minded group. And to be clear, this is equally true for Canadians as it is for Americans, even though we do not suffer from as extreme polarization as they now do.

Constitutional guarantees of the fundamental rights and freedoms sort are put in place to prevent abuse of the power that a majority, or dominant group, wields in a democracy. These guarantees are not sufficient to ensure good government. Much, much more is needed. But those limitations are necessary – as indubitably necessary as Louisiana law-makers are indubitably wrong in force-feeding students the Ten Commandments. And to get the buy-in necessary to support those limitations we need the greater social connectedness that can allow us more easily to bridge our differences and thus more fully respect one another.