19 August 2008
About This Issue
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”
The First American Congress added the First Amendment to the United States Constitution as part of the Bill of Rights in 1791, when the memory of the War for Independence was still fresh. But the concept of religious freedom is even older than the nation itself.
More than a century before, in 1657, citizens of Flushing, New York, a Dutch colony, protested the persecution of Quakers by their governor who had banned all religions save his own. They laid their objections to paper in a document called the Flushing Remonstrance. Some were jailed for their protest, and years passed before freedom of faith came to their town.
Today in Flushing, New York, more than 200 places of worship flourish within a few square kilometers, and those brave citizens of the 17th-century colony are remembered as some of the earliest Americans to stand firm for the religious freedom enjoyed by more than 300 million 21st-century Americans.
Members of churches, temples, synagogues, mosques, and thousands of other places of prayer across the country, no matter how small, worship with the knowledge that the right to practice a religion of one’s choosing is protected by the First Amendment, and woven into the fabric of American society. And those members of society who choose not to practice a religion at all are equally protected.
But sometimes in a diverse country like the United States, individuals and institutions will clash, and the boundaries of religious freedom may need to be redefined. When that happens, Americans turn to the court system and seek redress. Then the courts, even the Supreme Court, will perform their constitutional duties to decide how fundamental principles like religious freedom are best upheld in a nation where the population has multiplied by 100 since the First Amendment was written.
These court rulings influence everyday activities in schools, hospitals, workplaces, and other public places. Respect and tolerance for many faiths is tested as imperfect human beings attempt to adhere to what is often seen in America as an inviolate principle.
Today, this nation pulses with the vitality of a new wave of immigration, and a unique cultural chemistry. In these times, the principle of religious liberty will likely face new tests, but the noted experts who discuss the issues on these pages express confidence that religious minorities in the 21st century and beyond will still find protection in the 18th-century commitment to the principle of freedom of faith.
The Editors
