In case you haven’t been aware, this week is Religious Freedom Week! Every January 16, in honor of Thomas Jefferson, the US president declares Religious Freedom Day. Here is this year’s, www.whitehouse.gov/… I doubt *Rump actually wrote it — I see no buzzwords, misspellings, random capitalizations, nor ungrammatical phrases.
The opening statement is:
From its opening pages, the story of America has been rooted in the truth that all men and women are endowed with the right to follow their conscience, worship freely, and live in accordance with their convictions.
This proclamation was immediately followed by new guidelines that will force students and others to pray or put up with listening to others’ prayers where they are not allowed to escape.
But you know, freedom. *Rump does not know the meaning of hypocrisy. He just lives it with a complete lack of self awareness.
But I digress.
See, for example, Rebecca Todd Peters in Religious Dispatches, Opposing Anti-Choice Legislation Isn’t A Violation Of Religious Freedom, It’s An Expression Of It. Please click the link; I can only do a few fair use excerpts here:
Questions about personhood and when life begins and ends are theological and philosophical questions. They are not medical questions.
-snip-
Religious people hold a variety of beliefs about when life begins and what constitutes personhood. Any attempt to pass legislation that imposes one religious group’s narrow theological position on the rest of the country is a breach of religious freedom.
-snip-
What’s different in the case of abortion is that the policies (abortion bans in this case) that are being passed are based on a particular theological belief about when life begins that is not a medical fact.... The problem isn’t that anti-choice Christian traditionalists are religiously motivated, it’s that they seek to impose their narrow religious beliefs on the broader public who do not share those beliefs.
In other words, if abortion goes against your religious beliefs, then don’t have one. But you do not get to decide for me. The influence of your religion ends where mine begins. This works both ways. I shouldn’t be able to force you to have an abortion either. Women should always be free to choose in either direction.
I am a very lapsed Catholic. I left the Church decades ago. As soon as I heard, “Women, obey your husbands,” I knew there was nonsense in the Bible. Why do men get to tell women anything about women? We need to break our chains.
My religion, what’s left of it, says that we should all have enough money, time and energy to raise children properly. So we don’t try to deliberately ignore others’ poverty. We respect the Earth and don’t try to overpopulate it. We support each other emotionally. So we don’t ignore women’s pain at the prospects of certain pregnancies. By using free will to decide for ourselves, we grow. Thus I agree with Ms. Peters: Attempts to force pregnancies — or prayers — are in violation of my religion!
How do we resolve religious issues? By keeping government secular. The conservative churches have this issue wrong.
In case you think I’m the only Christian who thinks this way, meet the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, twitter.com/… They also think it is possible to be pro-choice and pro-family and pro-faith. The kind of faith that frees people, not boxes them in.
So your assignment at the end of this Religious Freedom Week, should you choose to accept it, is to keep a close eye on the Dominionists such as Mike Pence et al., consider joining Christians against Christian Nationalism (more explanation here), and support abortion-rights model legislation such as that written by the Public Leadership Institute! Thank you and Happy Religious Freedom every day!
diaries in this year’s religious freedom series:
Frederick Clarkson, Religious Freedom Day is on the way!
Frederick Clarkson, The crucible of religious freedom in our time
Officebss, Religious Freedom Day: Religion and Abraham Lincoln
Frederick Clarkson, Reclaiming and renewing religious freedom in the 21st century
Ojibwa, Religious Freedom Day: Jersey’s heresy case
other diaries on topic through the years
Tagged Religious Freedom Week.
Tagged Religious Freedom Day.
my previous Rfd diary :-D
#ReligiousFreedomIs Unity in Diversity, even worship of Ceiling Cat.
Please read any you may have missed for the true meaning of RFD!