In 1989, the builders of a tea garden in a San Francisco park inadvertently left a parking barrier behind. Four years of complaints yielded zero efforts to remove the eyesore. Then \u2014 and I’m not making this up \u2014 a group of New Agers began to venerate the barrier as \u201ca manifestation of the Hindi god, Shiva.\u201d<\/p>\n
Quicker than you can say \u201cwall of separation,\u201d park rangers hastened to remove the now-sacred eyesore. While the barrier’s worshippers eventually got to keep the object of their veneration, officials insisted that their worship be in private.<\/p>\n
It’s hard to imagine a better example of the tortured relationship between religion and public life. Fortunately, however, there’s a new book that offers a possible way out of the mess we have created.<\/p>\n
In THE RIGHT TO BE WRONG, attorney Kevin Hasson [see also HolwickID #30790] calls those who insist on excluding religion from the public square \u201cpark rangers,\u201d named after those rangers who drove people worshipping parking barriers out of their park. The insistence of the rangers is rooted in the belief that \u201cfreedom is simply incompatible with public claims of religious truth …” no matter \u201chow harmless\u201d those claims may be.<\/p>\n
But \u201cpark rangers\u201d aren’t the only people out to restrict the free exercise of religion. The other side of this restrictionist coin is those whom Hasson calls \u201cpilgrims.\u201d The \u201cpilgrim\u201d response to religious diversity is to restrict or \u201coutlaw others’ religious freedom in the name of their own truth.\u201d Some good Christians fall into this trap.<\/p>\n
Hasson’s alternative to these extremes begins by acknowledging that \u201creligious diversity is a fact of life\u201d that can’t be \u201coutlawed,\u201d and \u201cneedn’t be glorified.\u201d Instead, our goal should be to live \u201cauthentically\u201d in the midst of this diversity and allow others to do the same.<\/p>\n
How you do this is what sets Hasson apart from other commentators. He doesn’t ground religious freedom in the kind of relativism that says all religions are equally valid and, thus, all deserving of respect. Hasson knows that believers in different religions can and do vehemently disagree about a lot.<\/p>\n
Since people don’t agree about God, Hasson proposes that they agree about man, instead \u2014 specifically, that \u201cman is born to seek freely the truth about God,\u201d a truth that our nation’s founders embraced when they wrote in the Declaration of Independence that \u201call men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.\u201d<\/p>\n
This idea makes what Hasson calls \u201cpluralism without relativism\u201d possible. The \u201cright to be wrong\u201d means respecting \u201cothers’ duty to follow their conscience even as we insist that they’re mistaken.\u201d<\/p>\n
That’s why Hasson, as head of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, represents not only Christians, but also Muslim cops in Newark and Jewish prisoners in Texas. His defense of Muslims has earned him the right to be heard on al-Jazeera, an audience that, as recent events show, needs to embrace religious freedom.<\/p>\n
While Hasson’s approach, given our elites’ hostility to religion, may not be the way to \u201cend the culture war honorably,\u201d it is the right way to think about religious freedom \u2014 everybody’s freedom. Like Hasson, I’m confident that Christianity, rightly articulated, will prevail in the free market of ideas \u2014 that is, if the park rangers will stick to protecting picnic baskets.<\/p>\n
________<\/p>\n
Copyright (c) 2006 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. “BreakPoint with Chuck Colson” is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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