US

What Clinton thinks religious liberty is

In a play to capitalize on Mormon’s dissatisfaction with Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton wrote an op-ed piece in the LDS-owned Deseret News in which she emphasizes her commitment to religious liberty. But notice what she thinks religious liberty is.

Read what she says and my analysis after the jump.

From Exclusive: Hillary Clinton: What I have in common with Utah Leaders–religious freedom and the Constitution, Deseret News:

I’m running for president to make sure our country continues to live up to our founding principles. Those timeless ideas teach us that we’re stronger together when we work in unison to solve our problems, no matter what we look like, where we come from or how we pray.

That last one is important. As Americans, we hold fast to the belief that everyone has the right to worship however he or she sees fit.

I’ve been fighting to defend religious freedom for years. As secretary of state, I made it a cornerstone of our foreign policy to protect the rights of religious minorities around the world — from Coptic Christians in Egypt to Buddhists in Tibet. And along with Jon Huntsman, our then-ambassador in Beijing, I stood in solidarity with Chinese Christians facing persecution from their government.

We stood up for these oppressed communities because Americans know that democracy ceases to exist when a leader or ruling faction can impose a particular faith on everyone else.

[Keep reading. . .]

Her whole essay is worth parsing for what it says about her understanding of being faithful to the Constitution.

As for religious liberty, notice how she first describes it as having to do with “how we pray.” “Everyone has the right to worship however he or she sees fit.”

So religious freedom is not about what we believe, but how we worship. Most of the threats to religious freedom both here and around the world are not about what happens within the walls of a house of worship, but whether or not what is taught there may be believed and acted upon outside those walls.

But then she touches on this: “democracy ceases to exist when a leader or ruling faction can impose a particular faith on everyone else.”

Set aside the extent to which her State Department stood up against the persecution of Christians and other religious minorities, with many saying the administration should have done much more. Clinton believes that religious freedom is a matter of not imposing “a particular faith on everyone else.”

That is part of it, to be sure. But by this measure, Russia’s new anti-evangelism law would be an example of religious liberty. (Although since it benefits the Russian Orthodox Church, I suppose it could also be an example of “imposing” religion.)

But framing the issue this way means that the current assaults on religious liberty are actually examples of religious liberty. A pro-life employer must pay for his employees’ abortions because he doesn’t have the right to impose his religion on them. This takes away the “free exercise” of his religion (the Constitution’s definition) for the higher claim of “not imposing.”

This novel interpretation applies to just about every one of today’s religious liberty controversies, from discrimination exemptions to religious expressions in public. Liberals can thus squelch religious liberty while claiming they are advancing religious liberty!

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