Freedom to Worship: An Analysis of Freedom of Religion in the United States and Sweden.

GCSE Religious Studies (Philosophy & Ethics)

Freedom to Worship: An Analysis of Freedom of Religion in the United States and Sweden

Nicole Ellen Colraine and Marisol Gonzalez

Government 20

04/13/2004

What does it mean to be an American? Well, the word “American” is interpreted differently from person to person. When thinking of what an American is, some feel that events such as sitting around the Thanksgiving table, children dressed up in their best Sunday clothes for Easter service, and Fourth of July parades are truly representative of American culture. We conjure up images of the marchers in Washington, who are protesting against the government or for policy reform. We think of America as the melting pot of faces of all colors and languages, coming together to form one nation. When political scientists consider what it really means to be an American citizen, they think in terms of political culture. An important element of Americas’ political culture is an unyielding faith in God. Political culture is defined as a wide set of views, beliefs, and values that address what is the role of government, what is and is not acceptable in society, how society should be structured, how people should be involved in politics, and so forth. Furthermore, America, like every country, has a distinct political culture, one that defines what it truly means to be an American. America’s political culture has evolved from it’s origins as a cluster of fledging colonies battling Great Britain for their ultimate independence to the country that we are today. American political culture is based on liberty, equality, it’s based on democracy, it’s based on capitalism and it’s based on a variety of beliefs in God. America is quite unusual in that large proportions of our public believe that a God true exists who’s presence is integral in every waking moment of the day. Thus, as Americans, vast majorities believe and strongly tout the significance of religious activity. However, American culture and government are such that they do not marginalize individual beliefs and attitudes concerning religious. Resultantly, this directly translates to the fact that every citizen in the United States has poetic license to select their own faith. For this very reason, America is a Nation that is blessed with countless religions. Unlike most Western Nations, we are not explicitly a Protestant, Catholic, or Orthodox nation. Rather, the US is defined as a convivial land of Hindus, Muslims, Protestants, Christians, Catholics, Jews, and countless other belief systems from all over the world. It is the peaceful co-existence of all these religions that assist in characterizing Americans a people of different aspirations, diverse perceptions and values. How, in fact, did America come to be a haven of religious tolerance and diversity? Most Americans are well aware of the story of the pilgrims, who were victims of persecution in England by reason of their ostracized religious beliefs. They eventually fled to Massachusetts where they foraged their own society in which they were free to openly expresses and carry out their religious beliefs. It was this tumultuous struggle for self-rule and independence that has colored American life by firmly establishing the right to freedom of religion/self-expression and by ensuring the protecting of the individual against government oppression. Both of these statutes led to the formation and creation of the First Amendment. The First Amendment says, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” Much of the question of religion in America is what does the First Amendment really mean: When and how can it be violated? What is it that government can and cannot do that interferes with the free exercise of religion? There are certain conclusions that can be asserted in regards to the First Amendment. We know it was not intended to ban any form of religion from America. We know that religion was very important to the colonists and also to the founding fathers who drafted the Constitution. We also know that these English pilgrims did not want the new nation of America to be established under the dictates of a national church, like in England, where people had to pay taxes to the Anglican Church -- regardless of their beliefs and one which actively attempted to impose their beliefs on the people. We also know that the pilgrims did not want to empower religious leaders to make decisions for the rest of the population and dictate how an individual is to lead their life. This, unfortunately, is how life is in many Middle Eastern countries under the iron rule of the Ayatollahs -- the supreme leaders of Islam. Americans did not want to be ruled by a theocracy nor did they want another repressive Church of England and therefore, these systems were not established in the U.S. Religion has always been important throughout the history of the United States and remains of utmost significance to this day. Some of these examples maybe trivial, but are illustrious nonetheless. On all American money, it reads: “In God we trust,” which is clearly a religious statement. Also, congress and the state legislatures start their days with a prayer. Indeed, even as late as 1952 Justice William O. Douglas, the great libertarian of the 20th century U.S. Supreme Court proclaimed that, “…we are a religious people whose institutions presuppose a supreme being. (Pryor) Throughout American history there have been pressures on religious views. They came, in part, from immigration, which brought to the United States those who were not Protestant, and indeed, not Christian. In addition, there was the secularization movement of the 19th and 20th centuries which brought people who did not share orthodox beliefs in religion. Unfortunately, this has created a tension between how to protect those who wish to practice their religion without coercing those who have a different view, who perhaps wish to be free of religion. As aforementioned, the text of the First Amendment says that in regards to religion“…Congress shall make no law.” However, there is no clause in the First Amendment that states shall make no law. Therefore, this amendment didn’t apply to the individual states but this law changed in 1940 when the Supreme Court interpreted the First Amendment to apply to all the states. Then in 1947, in an interesting case, the Supreme Court offered a metaphor to think about how to understand the relationship between church and state and said there :was a wall of separation” between the two institutions. Of course, the idea behind the wall is it’s not penetrable -- You can’t get through it. It’s not a street that you can cross. Now, this seemed to many people to be different from much American experience, which was previously about the government not giving preferential treatment to any religion and not the complete autonomy of the two institutions. For the past 30 years, an ongoing battle has been waged against religious devotees and non-coercion advocates in American schools. The debate between these two institutions was sparked in 1971 and it was instigated by state’s lobbying to fund the teachers of parochial schools, and in this case the court evolved some standards to decide when government action went too far. (Lemon v. Kurtzman, 403 U.S. 602, 612, 613 (1971). The test is referred to by the name of the case and is known as the Lemon Test. This test asks the following questions: (1)“Is the purpose of the law to further religion?”
(2) “Is its primary effect to either inhibit religion or to further it?”
(3) “Does the law excessively entangle the government with religion?”

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If the answer to any of the above questions is a resounding “yes” then if so, the law is in question is immediately rejected. One specific issue in which the court has been quite involved is that of prayer in school. In 1962 it struck down a New York state law that required every school day in public schools to start with a non-denominational prayer. (Engel v. Vitale, 370 U.S. 421 (1962). In 1963 it struck down a Pennsylvania law that required the reading of selected Bible verses and the recitation of the Lord’s Prayer every day in public schools. These decisions were met with a political outcry, constitutional amendments to overturn them were introduced in Congress, and public opinion registered enormous opposition to these opinions. Now, these constitutional amendments did not pass the Congress, but public opinion has stayed resolutely opposed to the court’s decisions in favor of prayer in schools. (American Atheists Magazine) Nonetheless, the court has continued along these lines. In 1992, for example, it banned prayer at high school graduations for public schools, and then in the year 2000 it banned prayers at the start of high school football games, again, on the notion that organized prayer was coercive. (Chebium) Another area of public education where the courts have been engrossed deals with curriculum content, and here the question is how much religious subject matter can be taught in schools? In 1968, for example, Tennessee had prohibited the teaching of the theory of evolution – however, the court deemed this to be unconstitutional and therefore denied their case. In 1987, Louisiana had tried something different -- It stated that “You can teach evolutionism, that’s fine. But you have to teach creationism with it … the theory of the Christian and Jewish Bible of the Old Testament.” (Edwards v. Aguillard, 482 U.S. 578 (1987) The court rejected this case on the grounds that violated the Lemon Test -- there was no secular purpose in this situation. It may seem, from the previous examples, that deeply hostile to religion. On the contrary, there’s lots of room in schools for religious belief and religious groups. Religious groups, like any other groups, have access to schools. They can use school classrooms; they can use them after hours, given whatever requirements the school has for any other group. Clearly, students can gather informally to pray, to read religious text, and the like, and when appropriate, students can write about their religious feelings, spiritualism, and so forth. As mentioned before, Congress is prohibited in interfering with the free exercise of religion … however, what is the exactly is role of the state? One example of state intervention can be seen in an 1878 case that had to deal with Mormons in Utah. Part of the belief of Mormons is the practice of polygamy, that is to say one man having more than one wife at the same time. What the court ruled was that Congress can indeed ban the practice of polygamy. However, the state does not have the jurisdiction to decide as to what Mormons must believe. In spite of this, the state does have the authority to ban a practice that is banned for every citizen of the state, without interfering with the free exercise of their religion. Another example comes from schools. The Amish populace strong disapproves of their children attending school past the 8th grade. The Amish sector reasons that if their children attend school past junior high, then they will drift away from the community. (Gatto) Wisconsin, it turned out, had a law that required students to go to school until they were 16. Many states have similar laws. The court in Wisconsin struck down the law. It said the Amish did have a right to the free exercise of their religion, and they could remove their children from schools after eighth grade. Yet, another case regarding the freedom to practice religion had to do with an orthodox Jew in the air force who was a clinical psychologist. His beliefs and faith required him to act to wear a yarmulke - a small head covering that orthodox Jews wear. He was disciplined by the air force for this because it violated Air Force dress regulations. However, the Supreme Court sided with the Air Force in that the first amendment does not require the military to accommodate such practices as wearing a yarmulke in the face of its view that they would detract from the uniformity sought by dress regulations. One more noteworthy legislative decision pertaining to the freedom in practicing religion happened in 1990 in the case, Oregon v. Smith. The plaintiff in this court case was a Native American male (Smith) who regularly practiced Native American religious ceremony, which included the use of the hallucinogenic drug, peyote. (Oregon v. Smith 484 US 872 (1990) ) He lost his job because of this. The use of hallucinogenic drugs violates Oregon law, and he claimed it violated his right to free exercise. Now, the U.S. Supreme Court claimed that Smith could freely believe what he wanted, but if engaged in the smoking of peyote, it is in direct violation to both State and Federal law. Congress tried to overturn this decision in a piece of legislation called the Religious Freedom Restoration Act in 1993. What the Congress said is when a claim of free exercise is being made; the legislation adopted must be the least restricted means of reaching a compelling governmental objective. It maybe a compelling objective to prevent people from using hallucinogenic drugs, but in this case Congress felt there were other means of achieving it. However, the court overturned this piece of legislation recently and argued that the Congress has no power under the separation of powers to tell it, the court, how to make its decisions. Now, think again about the wall that exists between church and state. Clearly, we believe in separation of church and state. The United States of America is not to be a theocracy. On the other hand, there are many Americans who hold deeply religious views and the tension and the challenge we face is how to respect their views without coercing those who have other views in the process. That is one of the challenges this country faces in the 21st century. In Western Europe, as in the United States, religious freedom is almost universally enjoyed, although its legal and institutional nature may differ from country to country. However, Sweden has a different point of view on religion than does America. This is greatly due to the way their government established religion, making the protestant church the church of the state, and in turn not giving the people the freedom to choose their own religion or the freedom to practice anything other than what they had established. A freedom we take for granted in America. Beginning in the 16th century the Swedish government added a clause into their constitution establishing the protestant church as the church of the state, and making the king of Sweden the head of the church. For the centuries that followed the church and the Swedish people were regarded as identical entities. The church was used to control the citizens, church discipline and state discipline were almost entirely identical and church attendance was compulsory until the 19th century. It wasn’t until 1858 that practicing other religions became legal. In 1860 the Swedish people were further allowed to entirely withdraw from the protestant church but only under the condition that they join another religious institution, however they still had to pay a state tax designated to the protestant church. And only in 1952 did complete withdrawal from religious life become legal. The extent to which the Protestant church was so thoroughly able to control religion and gain economical advantages, with the church tax, is very surprising to people who have always grown up in a place like the United States, where we place such value on the idea of religious freedom. But also knowing as we do, that times change, and knowing the diversity that exists today throughout the world we would expect this long held monopoly by the church to change, and it did, but not until January of 2000. It is hard to believe that it took this long, especially when one thinks of the recent trends towards secularization in many western nations, and studies have proven that this trend is even more prominent in Sweden for many reasons. Firstly, the Churches’ long held monopoly over religious convictions and the imposition of these religious principals upon the people of Sweden required every citizen, regardless of their personal faith, to pay a fixed tax to the Church of Sweden. Furthermore, in Sweden there is a distinction between those who preach in the protestant church and the actual administrator’s of the church, who are elected in the national elections along with the nation’s leaders. This has led to administrator’s who were themselves not religious and who rarely attended church and who were only interested in the money this tax provided. Another reason for this is that during the 19th century the church and state were so closely linked that any action against one was considered to be against the other as well. So in light of all this, it is truly surprising that the church was able to hold a monopoly on religious life for as long as it did, seeing as only in 2000 did this church tax stop being demanded and other religious communities became able to define themselves legally as such, rather than as simply voluntary associations or foundations. Also currently all churches of all faiths receive state financial support. The idea to separate church and state was one of such controversy that even members of the church and administrators were torn between were they stood on the issue. In the church of Sweden the majority of Clergy, active churchgoers and bishop’s were the ones that predominantly agreed to a separation between the church and state. I think that these people understanding the true importance of religion in people’s lives and the idea that to truly believe in something you have to choose it ‘of your own free will’ were more inclined to have less members in the church but at the same time have these be members who truly stood by the beliefs of the church. However the Parish councils, who as I mentioned earlier, were not necessarily religious, but simply oversaw the work of the church and their finances, were more concerned with the effect that a separation between church and state would have on the protestant church financially, when the general population was no longer required to pay the church tax. These parish councils also worried that the separation of church and state would ultimately give more power to active churchgoers and consequently make the church less open and democratic, which the church had needed to be in the past in order to somewhat encompass the views of an entire nation. Ironically, though the official separation between church and state only took place as of 2000, the Swedish government was adamant about its citizen’s accepting other religious views. They are and have been extremely intolerant of segregation or racism amongst religious minorities. Also though the protestant church was the official church in Sweden until 2000, the Swedish constitution provided freedom of religion beforehand and the government strived to respect this right. The government also granted exemption from the ‘church tax’ routinely at tax payers’ demands before the new law to separate church and state was officially passed. Though the government’s intolerance of ethnic discrimination seems somewhat in disaccord with their apparent religious limitations, there is a sector of the government simply dedicating to investigating claims of ethnic discrimination. Furthermore for several years the government has supported groups working to combat anti-Semitism. As well as a national education project began in 1998 to educate children on the reality of the holocaust. Also in public schools religious education is part of an overall schedule of compulsory coursework. It seems somewhat ironic that in a government where religious beliefs and practices were limited for such a long period of time the government is so actively dedicated to educating their citizens on diversity and ethnic tolerance, in turn leading the people to be more accepting. Whereas in a country like the United States were religious freedom has always been our way of life, we deal daily with racism and discrimination of religious minorities as well as ethnic minorities.

References

http://www.riksdagen.se/english/work/fundamental/ introduction/introduction.ASP

American Atheists Magazine, “School Prayer Decision”. July 1988,

Chebium, Raju. “Supreme Court bars student-led prayer at high school football games” CNN.Com NewNet. June 19, 2000

Gatto, John “Universal Education.” Education for Life, Winter 1999.

Pryor, Bill “Religious Display Proper.” USA TODAY Sun, April 27, 1997