Mitt vs. atheists, martyrs

“Freedom requires religion just as religion requires freedom.”

— Mitt Romney, Dec. 6, 2007

I’ll probably want to discuss Mitt Romney’s “Faith in America” speech at greater length later, but the quote above was the sound bite so let’s deal with that first.

That’s a nice bit of parallelism. It pleases the ear even as it disturbs the brain. In a formal sense, the statement is valid. The first part is not true “just as” the second part is not true.

Romney repeatedly says in his speech that his topic is religious liberty and his own faith. Given that, it’s not surprising that he would argue that “freedom” and “religion” are compatible or complementary. But he goes beyond that, arguing that each requires the other — that religion is necessary for freedom and that freedom is necessary for religion.

Let’s deal with the latter assertion first: “religion requires freedom.” There are far too many counter-examples for this to be true. Think of China, where the government denies religious freedom to millions of Christians and Falun Gong adherents and Tibetan Buddhists. Yet despite this lack of freedom, despite this active oppression — and, in a way, in response to this oppression — these faiths are all thriving. This is what the early Christian theologian Tertullian was getting at when he said, “the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.” Religion can survive, and thrive, in the absence of freedom.

This part of Romney’s statement only makes sense if you read it as meaning “religion deserves freedom,” but this is a weird and unhelpful way of stating this truth. Consider, as another example, the statement “speech deserves freedom.” Stating it that way makes it seem as though the freedom and the right in question belong to speech itself, in the abstract, rather than to the speakers. Likewise, Romney makes it seem as though religious liberty — freedom of conscience — is something that belongs to religion itself in the abstract, rather than to every person. (There’s a reason why Jefferson did not write the Declaration of Independence this way. He did not write: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.”) Every individual deserves religious liberty and justice requires that they be accorded that right, but religion does not require freedom.

But as potentially troubling and unfactual as the latter part of Romney’s assertion is, the first part of it is worse.

“Freedom requires religion,” Romney said. Had he said, “Freedom requires religious freedom,” then I would agree, absolutely. Try to imagine if you can a society in which people were denied this most intimate of freedoms, the freedom of conscience, yet remained in all other respects free. Such a thing is impossible. This is part of the genius of the First Amendment:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

Take away any one of those freedoms and you take away the others as well. Each of those freedoms requires the others.

But Romney did not say that freedom requires religious freedom. He said, “Freedom requires religion.” And that’s a contradictory statement — a very different, and very frightening, thing.

If freedom requires religion, then the a-religious and irreligious, the non-religious and un-religious are the enemies of freedom. Romney believes, in other words, that atheism is incompatible with freedom. Whatever it is he means by “religious liberty,” he does not believe it can safely be applied to atheists.

Keep in mind that this is Mitt “double Guantanamo” Romney talking — he’s made it clear what he wants to do to those he regards as the enemies of freedom.

Much of the rest of Romney’s speech recalls President Eisenhower’s famous gaffe, “Our government makes no sense unless it is founded on a deeply felt religious faith, and I don’t care what it is.” That is, essentially, Romney’s strategy for coping with voters’ suspicions about his Mormonism — a vague appeal to the grand, but contentless, importance of “deeply felt religious faith.” Yet this emphasis on sincerity over substance makes no sense when applied to his claim that “Freedom requires religion.”

Whatever else that claim means, it seems to imply that freedom requires the right kind of religion. Having already established, in the case of atheists, that individuals are neither competent nor entitled to decide for themselves what they should or should not believe, it thus falls to the government to make this decision.

“Freedom requires religion just as religion requires freedom” implies that the government must protect religion’s right to freedom by determining which believers have the right kind of religion (the kind that freedom requires) and which believers have the wrong kind of religion (the kind that threatens freedom by exercising it).

I’m a Baptist, which means that for me religious liberty is not only a human right and a constitutional right, it is also a religious belief. We Baptists believe in “soul freedom,” meaning nobody else can decide for you what it is that you believe (that’s why we don’t baptize until you’re old enough to choose baptism for yourself). So I’m pretty sure, from Romney’s point of view, that I’m the wrong kind of believer with the wrong kind of religion. How about you?