tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/jehovahs-witnesses-19176/articlesJehovah's Witnesses – The Conversation2023-03-10T21:11:34Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2016172023-03-10T21:11:34Z2023-03-10T21:11:34ZWho are Jehovah’s Witnesses? A religion scholar explains the history of the often misunderstood group<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/514740/original/file-20230310-24-nugrkx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=6%2C6%2C1016%2C660&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The entrance at the headquarters of the Jehovah's Witnesses Germany.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/march-2023-berlin-the-entrance-at-the-headquarters-of-the-news-photo/1247981601?phrase=jehovah%27s%20witnesses&adppopup=true">Britta Pedersen/picture alliance via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Six adults were killed March 9, 2023, in Hamburg, Germany, in what police described as <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/jehovahs-witness-hall-shooting-in-hamburg-what-we-know/a-64941116">a “rampage</a>” after an evening religious service. Several others were wounded during the attack at a Jehovah’s Witness center, called a Kingdom Hall, including a woman who lost her pregnancy. The suspected shooter was reported to be a former member of the religious group.</p>
<p>The attack has put a focus on the religious group, which has some <a href="https://www.jw.org/en/publications/books/2017-yearbook/worldwide-preaching-teaching/">8 million</a> members across 240 countries. In Germany, more than 170,000 Jehovah’s Witnesses are associated with 2,020 congregations, <a href="https://www.jw.org/en/jehovahs-witnesses/worldwide/DE/">according to the organization’s records</a>. </p>
<p>In many countries, Jehovah’s Witnesses are known for their outreach work, going door to door or standing in public areas to try to distribute religious material. But many people are unfamiliar with their beliefs, and when the group makes headlines, it is often for reasons related to <a href="https://www.uscirf.gov/news-room/uscirf-spotlight/russias-persecution-jehovahs-witnesses">persecution abroad</a>. </p>
<p>So who are they?</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/514738/original/file-20230310-24-a5y9ru.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A man and woman in winter clothes crouch by a makeshift memorial with candles and flowers." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/514738/original/file-20230310-24-a5y9ru.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/514738/original/file-20230310-24-a5y9ru.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/514738/original/file-20230310-24-a5y9ru.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/514738/original/file-20230310-24-a5y9ru.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/514738/original/file-20230310-24-a5y9ru.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/514738/original/file-20230310-24-a5y9ru.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/514738/original/file-20230310-24-a5y9ru.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">A man crosses himself outside the Jehovah’s Witnesses building in Hamburg where several people were killed during a shooting March 9, 2023.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/march-2023-hamburg-a-man-crosses-himself-at-the-jehovahs-news-photo/1247993511?phrase=jehovah%27s%20witnesses&adppopup=true">Georg Wendt/picture alliance via Getty Images</a></span>
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<h2>Early history</h2>
<p>The <a href="https://canopyforum.org/2022/09/16/why-are-jehovahs-witnesses-persecuted/">story of Jehovah’s Witnesses</a> begins in the late 19th century near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, with a group of students studying the Bible. The group was led by <a href="https://www.jw.org/en/jehovahs-witnesses/faq/founder/">Charles Taze Russell</a>, a religious seeker from a <a href="https://www.pcusa.org/">Presbyterian</a> background. These students understood “<a href="https://www.jw.org/en/bible-teachings/questions/gods-name/">Jehovah</a>,” a version of the Hebrew “<a href="http://www.desiringgod.org/articles/10-things-yahweh-means">Yahweh</a>,” to be the name of God the Father himself. </p>
<p>Russell and his followers looked forward to Jesus Christ establishing a “millennium” or a thousand-year period of peace on Earth. This “Golden Age” would see the Earth transformed to its original purity, with a “righteous” social system that would not have poverty or inequality. </p>
<p>Russell died in 1916, but his group endured and grew. The name “Jehovah’s Witnesses” was formally adopted in the 1930s.</p>
<p>Early Jehovah’s Witnesses believed <a href="https://www.jw.org/en/publications/books/2014-yearbook/one-hundred-years-ago-1914/#?insight%5Bsearch_id%5D=3af7276d-9315-42c6-83fd-a81c1a06fad7&insight%5Bsearch_result_index%5D=2">1914</a> would be the beginning of the <a href="https://wol.jw.org/en/wol/d/r1/lp-e/1200004288">end of worldly governments</a>, which would culminate with the <a href="https://www.jw.org/en/bible-teachings/questions/battle-of-armageddon/">Battle of Armageddon</a>. Armageddon specifically refers to <a href="http://www.biblewalks.com/Sites/armaggedon.html">Mount Megiddo</a> in Israel, where some Christians believe the final conflict between good and evil will take place. Jehovah’s Witnesses, however, expected that the Battle of Armageddon would be worldwide, with Jesus leading a “heavenly army” to defeat the enemies of God.</p>
<p>They also believed that after Armageddon, Jesus would rule the world from heaven with <a href="https://www.jw.org/en/bible-teachings/questions/go-to-heaven/#?insight%5Bsearch_id%5D=1d330ed9-a205-417b-bbdc-b3d70cf0bfde&insight%5Bsearch_result_index%5D=21">144,000</a> “faithful Christians,” as specified in the <a href="http://biblehub.com/revelation/7-4.htm">Book of Revelation</a>. Other faithful Christians would be reunited with dead loved ones and live on a renewed Earth. </p>
<p>Over the years, Jehovah’s Witnesses have <a href="https://wol.jw.org/en/wol/d/r1/lp-e/2006126">reinterpreted</a> elements of this timeline and have abandoned setting specific dates for the return of Jesus Christ. But they still <a href="https://www.jw.org/en/publications/books/bible-teach/are-we-living-in-the-last-days/">look forward</a> to the Golden Age that Russell and his Bible students expected.</p>
<p>Given the group’s belief in a literal thousand-year earthly reign of Christ, scholars of religion classify Jehovah’s Witnesses as a “<a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048721X84710256">millennarian movement</a>.”</p>
<h2>What are their beliefs?</h2>
<p>Jehovah’s Witnesses <a href="https://www.jw.org/en/bible-teachings/questions/trinity/#?insight%5Bsearch_id%5D=23c7879c-91c5-46c4-9248-b090850fb862&insight%5Bsearch_result_index%5D=0">deny the idea of the Trinity</a>. For most Christians, God is a union of three persons: <a href="http://www.allaboutgod.com/trinity-doctrine.htm">Father, Son and Holy Spirit</a>. </p>
<p>Instead, Jehovah’s Witnesses believe that Jesus is distinct from God – not united as one person with him. The “<a href="https://www.jw.org/en/bible-teachings/questions/what-is-the-holy-spirit/#?insight%5Bsearch_id%5D=19aed8ee-f94c-412f-99a1-c9da42d4e1c9&insight%5Bsearch_result_index%5D=0">Holy Spirit</a>,” then, refers to God’s active power. <a href="https://www.jw.org/en/news/legal-resources/information/packet-who-are-jehovahs-witnesses/#?insight%5Bsearch_id%5D=c57ee38f-20d3-42f2-a546-84ab296dc23e&insight%5Bsearch_result_index%5D=5">Such doctrines</a> distinguish Jehovah’s Witnesses from mainline Christian denominations, which hold that God is “triune” in nature.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/167951/original/file-20170504-15005-1ioc4x1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/167951/original/file-20170504-15005-1ioc4x1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/167951/original/file-20170504-15005-1ioc4x1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/167951/original/file-20170504-15005-1ioc4x1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/167951/original/file-20170504-15005-1ioc4x1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/167951/original/file-20170504-15005-1ioc4x1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/167951/original/file-20170504-15005-1ioc4x1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Jehovah’s Witnesses spend a substantial amount of time on Bible study and evangelizing door to door.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/jonathancharles/2090222159/in/photolist-4bGWe6-beCN1V-2uzFG-bqojZe-7se9hY-LH7Zm-LS4f4L-ed6Xju-8ZvFsH-7hKH4b-qciz7Q-yiqtsw-7uzdFR-9Z5caa-6aXsX9-7egBCu-7pNkm8-5R9cPH-uGbUN5-3pQJ1r-7uzeM8-5U1PTs-bVBxMm-7egBmb-Nwa4E-3oVNqJ-2yuvKk-2ytmEM-eEShCz-eFWKbX-3Z78X-e1dK3t-dZ5K8-7n89fc-3oVNnG-6o9ZCe-jpQsir-ee6SSu-3oTBm2-eH2ga9-agPw8E-3qJMyt-2ytoRF-7mrBAH-2yxJro-c3q4E-8qpVys-cRG76C-3qMGop-7FiJ6T">Jonathan Haynes</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But like other Christian denominations, Jehovah’s Witnesses praise God through worship and song. Their gathering places are called “<a href="https://www.jw.org/en/publications/books/jehovahs-will/maintenance-of-kingdom-halls/#?insight%5Bsearch_id%5D=3a7386a8-a97c-43d8-a284-879a48b30aba&insight%5Bsearch_result_index%5D=0">Kingdom Halls</a>,” which are ordinary-looking buildings – like small conference centers – that have the advantage of being easily built. Inside are rows of chairs and a podium for speakers, but little special adornment. Jehovah’s Witnesses are best known for devoting a substantial amount of time to Bible study and door-to-door evangelizing.</p>
<p>Their biblical interpretations and missionary work certainly have critics. But it is the political neutrality of the group that has attracted the most suspicion.</p>
<p>Jehovah’s Witnesses accept the legitimate authority of government in many matters. For example, they pay taxes, following Jesus’ admonition in <a href="http://biblehub.com/mark/12-17.htm">Mark 12:17</a> “to render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s.”</p>
<p>But they <a href="https://wol.jw.org/en/wol/d/r1/lp-e/1102008085">do not vote in elections</a>, serve in the military or salute the flag. Such acts, they believe, compromise their primary loyalty to God.</p>
<h2>A history of persecution</h2>
<p>Jehovah’s Witnesses have no political affiliations, and they renounce violence. However, they make an easy target for governments looking for internal enemies, as they refuse to bow down to government symbols. Many nationalists call them “enemies of the state.”</p>
<p>As a result, they have often suffered persecution throughout history in many parts of the world.</p>
<p>Jehovah’s Witnesses were jailed as draft evaders in the U.S. during both world wars. In a <a href="https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=3946249041792057132&q=minersville+v.+gobitis&hl=en&as_sdt=40000006&as_vis=1">Supreme Court ruling in 1940</a>, school districts were allowed to expel Jehovah’s Witnesses who refused to salute the American flag. Through subsequent <a href="http://www.historynet.com/what-we-owe-jehovahs-witnesses.htm">legal battles</a> in the 1940s and 1950s, Jehovah’s Witnesses helped expand safeguards for <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/319/624">religious liberty</a> and <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/43751909?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">freedom of conscience</a> both in the United States and Europe.</p>
<p>In <a href="https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005433">Nazi Germany</a>, Jehovah’s Witnesses were killed in concentration camps; a purple triangle was used by the Nazis to mark them. In the 1960s and 1970s, dozens of African Jehovah’s Witnesses were slaughtered by members of <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=FuXPkCVjzasC&pg=PA204&lpg=PA204&dq=jehovah%27s+witnesses+malawi&source=bl&ots=9xqA2f9eJf&sig=DjaxtZd9I_cN7CKRfe_IUH39S8U&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjgs7vM69HTAhVI7oMKHZ8_C5k4FBDoAQgyMAM#v=onepage&q=jehovah's%20witnesses%20malawi&f=false">The Youth League of the Malawi Congress Party</a> for refusing to support dictator <a href="http://www.economist.com/node/107513">Hastings Banda</a>. Many Witnesses fled to neighboring Mozambique, where they were held in internment camps.</p>
<h2>The ‘cult’ label</h2>
<p>Police in Germany have said the 2023 shooting was most likely committed by a lone individual who did not leave the organization “<a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/shooting-germany-kingdom-hall-hamburg-jehovahs-witness/">on good terms</a>,” although they have not released information about a possible motive.</p>
<p>At times, disputes between members and ex-members have revolved around criticism over practices such as refusing <a href="https://www.jw.org/en/jehovahs-witnesses/faq/jehovahs-witnesses-why-no-blood-transfusions/">blood transfusions</a> and “<a href="https://www.jw.org/en/library/magazines/w20150415/disfellowshipping-a-loving-provision/">disfellowshipping</a>” members who <a href="https://www.jw.org/en/jehovahs-witnesses/faq/shunning/">do not repent</a> for committing what the group considers serious sins.</p>
<p>In popular culture, Jehovah’s Witnesses are sometimes portrayed as members of a “<a href="https://theconversation.com/what-is-a-cult-165512">cult</a>,” which has made them a convenient target for persecution and multiple forms of violence. As I and other <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-09-29/why-cult-wrong-word-for-most-new-religious-movements/11546284">religion scholars</a> have written, however, that word is very difficult to define – and tends to lead to stereotypes, rather than nuanced understanding.</p>
<p><em>This is an updated version of <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-russia-is-afraid-of-jehovahs-witnesses-77077">an article</a> originally published on May 4, 2017.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/201617/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mathew Schmalz does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Several members were killed March 9, 2023, in Germany. Many people hold stereotypes about Jehovah’s Witnesses but are unfamiliar with their beliefs.Mathew Schmalz, Professor of Religious Studies, College of the Holy CrossLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1141412019-03-24T13:21:58Z2019-03-24T13:21:58ZJehovah’s Witnesses: Neglected victims of persecution<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/265392/original/file-20190322-36244-zvdyha.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Members of Jehovah's Witnesses wait in a court room in Moscow, Russia, on April 20, 2017. Russia's Supreme Court banned the Jehovah's Witnesses from operating in the country.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Ivan Sekretarev)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In February, a Russian court sentenced a Danish citizen who was a legal resident of Russia to six years in prison for such an extremist offence as <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2019/02/06/russia-jehovahs-witness-convicted">organizing other Witnesses to shovel snow from their church’s property</a>.</p>
<p>A month later, Sergei Skrynnikov, a Russian and allegedly a Jehovah’s Witness, was charged with “participating in an extremist organization,” <a href="https://www2.stetson.edu/%7Epsteeves/relnews/190318a.html">an offence under Russian law that could earn him up to six years in prison</a>. Jehovah’s Witnesses have been fleeing Russia and seeking asylum in Germany and Finland <a href="https://www2.stetson.edu/%7Epsteeves/relnews/190127c.html">to escape such harsh sentences</a>. </p>
<p>In China, state authorities harass Jehovah’s Witnesses and raid their meetings. Authorities also <a href="https://bitterwinter.org/jehovahs-witnesses-hunted-down-and-deported/">deport foreign Witness missionaries from countries such as South Korea.</a> </p>
<p>South Korea has only recently dropped a 2003 law prohibiting conscientious objection to fighting in its armed forces, <a href="https://www.economist.com/asia/2019/02/09/south-koreas-conscientious-objectors-escape-military-conscription">a law that confined young Witness men — as well as other men — to jail.</a></p>
<p>All these states violate international laws that protect religious freedom, including the freedoms of unpopular minorities. Article 18, 1 of the 1976 United Nations International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights protects everyone’s freedom to <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/en/professionalinterest/pages/ccpr.aspx">“have or to adopt a religion or belief of his choice” and “to manifest his religion or belief in worship, observance, practice and teaching.”</a></p>
<h2>A long history of persecution</h2>
<p><a href="https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/nazi-persecution-of-jehovahs-witnesses">Jehovah’s Witnesses were among the first groups the Nazis persecuted</a>. There were about 25,000 to 30,000 Witnesses in Germany in 1933. About half of those who did not flee were convicted of various crimes and between 2,000 and 2,500 were sent to concentration camps, where about 1,000 died. About 250 were also executed. </p>
<p>Some years ago I met a Jehovah’s Witness in the city where I live who told me the Nazis had beheaded his grandfather. Germany’s Jehovah’s Witnesses were not merely passive religious group that refused to adopt the Nazi ideology: <a href="https://www.fulcrum.org/concern/monographs/ns0646264">they also actively tried to expose Nazi atrocities</a>. </p>
<p>In the 1960s and ‘70s in Malawi, entire villages of Jehovah’s Witnesses were burned, and many villagers were raped, tortured or murdered as they tried to flee. <a href="https://rowman.com/ISBN/9780847674336/Human-Rights-in-Commonwealth-Africa">Their crime was refusal to participate in rituals of loyalty to the newly independent Malawian state and its president, Hastings Banda.</a> </p>
<p>The Malawi government denied me a visa in the early 1980s when I told its High Commission in Ottawa that I wanted to know what had happened to these Witnesses for research for my book, <a href="https://rowman.com/ISBN/9780847674336/Human-Rights-in-Commonwealth-Africa"><em>Human Rights in Commonwealth Africa</em></a>.</p>
<p>Many Witnesses in Rwanda, both Tutsi and Hutu, lost their lives during the 1994 genocide, <a href="https://wol.jw.org/en/wol/d/r1/lp-e/302012004">many trying to hide people at risk of being murdered.</a> Even now, Rwandan authorities expel some Witness children from school and have fired some Witness teachers because <a href="https://www.jw.org/en/news/legal/by-region/rwanda/jehovah-witness-facts/">they refuse to sing the national anthem or participate in religious training.</a></p>
<h2>Persecution of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Canada</h2>
<p>Here in Canada, Jehovah’s Witnesses have not always enjoyed their rights to freedom of religion and expression.</p>
<p>During the Second World War, Witness children were banned from schools in several locations because they would not salute the flag, sing the national anthem or repeat the pledge of allegiance. A Witness father sued the Hamilton Board of Education on behalf of his two sons, who had been expelled from school in 1940. <a href="https://www.canlii.org/en/on/onca/doc/1945/1945canlii117/1945canlii117.html">In 1945, the Ontario Court of Appeal ruled in favour of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, saying the Board was required to excuse students from participating in religious exercises to which their parents objected.</a></p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/265394/original/file-20190322-36256-kw259y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/265394/original/file-20190322-36256-kw259y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=479&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/265394/original/file-20190322-36256-kw259y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=479&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/265394/original/file-20190322-36256-kw259y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=479&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/265394/original/file-20190322-36256-kw259y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=602&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/265394/original/file-20190322-36256-kw259y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=602&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/265394/original/file-20190322-36256-kw259y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=602&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Former Quebec Premier Duplessis as he entered Superior Court in Montreal: Frank Roncarelli, Montreal restaurant owner, launched legal action against him.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(CP PHOTO)</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>In the 1940s and '50s, Premier Maurice Duplessis of Québec persecuted Jehovah’s Witnesses, mainly because their public missionary activities offended the province’s Roman Catholics. When almost 1,000 young Jehovah’s Witnesses were arrested and fined $40 (a large sum at the time), a Witness restaurant owner named Frank Roncarelli paid their fines so that they could return to the streets and continue trying to make converts. </p>
<p>In response, Duplessis stripped Roncarelli of his liquor licence, ending his business. Roncarelli sued Duplessis and <a href="https://www.lawnow.org/whatever-happened-to-roncarelli-v-duplessis/">the case eventually went to Canada’s Supreme Court, which in 1959 ruled in favour of Roncarelli (the two judges from Québec dissenting).</a></p>
<p>Even now, Jehovah’s Witnesses run the risk that they will be attacked while conducting their missionary work, a central obligation of their faith. Many people object to Jehovah’s Witnesses who come to their door trying to convert them. Some go so far as to attack them, set their dogs on them or even pull guns on them.</p>
<p>Jehovah’s Witnesses aren’t perfect. Among other things, <a href="https://www.ucobserver.org/justice/2018/01/jw/">church elders have been accused of covering up child abuse.</a> But no other religious group is perfect either, especially when it comes to child abuse.</p>
<p>There is no reason to persecute — or tolerate persecution of — Jehovah’s Witnesses. They are equal citizens, and are protected by national and international laws regarding freedom of religion.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/114141/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rhoda E. Howard-Hassmann does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Last week a Russian, Sergei Skrynnikov, was charged with “participating in an extremist organization” because he is allegedly a Jehovah’s Witness.Rhoda E. Howard-Hassmann, Professor Emeritus, Department of Political Science, Wilfrid Laurier UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/979812018-06-19T10:25:28Z2018-06-19T10:25:28ZWhat it means to be a Christian in America today<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/223374/original/file-20180615-85830-4j5aa3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Young people hold hands for a prayer during a gathering at sunset outside the Christian Fellowship Church in Benton, Kentucky.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/David Goldman</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>President Donald Trump spoke recently to the <a href="https://www.sba-list.org/gala">Campaign for Life Gala</a>, an annual Washington gathering of activists opposed to abortion. There he declared that Americans depend upon divine protection to ensure that “our nation will thrive and our people will prosper.” As long as we “trust in our God,” <a href="https://www.sba-list.org/newsroom/news/fox-news-trump-at-pro-life-gala-urges-supporters-vote-for-life">Trump said</a>, “then we will never, ever fail.” </p>
<p>The speech was recent, but the sentiments were not. Presidents have been uttering similar sentiments for <a href="http://www.nationaldayofprayer.org/history_of_prayer_in_america">decades</a>. </p>
<p>This may seem strange in a nation whose Constitution <a href="http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/conlaw/estabinto.htm">declares</a> that the government will “make no law respecting an establishment of religion.”
But in fact, from my perspective as <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=KT0k4-8AAAAJ&hl=en">author</a> of the new book “<a href="http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674737631">Christian: The Politics of a Word in America</a>,” these presidential invocations of religion reflect the fact that Americans have debated what it means to be religious in politics throughout American history.</p>
<p>Because a wide majority of Americans have claimed some form of Christian belief, these debates focused on Christianity. And they continue today.</p>
<h2>Many Christianities</h2>
<p>From the very beginning of European settlement in the United States, a wide range of Christian faiths appeared in America. Roman Catholics, Baptists and Methodists <a href="http://xroads.virginia.edu/%7Ema95/finseth/evangel.html">saw their numbers rise</a> in the early 19th century. By the 20th century, Americans <a href="http://hirr.hartsem.edu/ency/NRM.htm">were claiming</a> a variety of religious identities. They joined the <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-russia-is-afraid-of-jehovahs-witnesses-77077">Jehovah’s Witnesses</a>, Mormonism, black Pentecostal churches and Reverend Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church, among dozens of others. </p>
<p>At the same time, however, the Constitution forbade the federal government from instituting a state church. By the 1830s, <a href="http://americanhistory.oxfordre.com/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780199329175.001.0001/acrefore-9780199329175-e-29">each state in the Union had also abolished</a> state-sponsored churches.</p>
<p>This meant all these new faiths competed for membership, attention and prominence in American culture. Indeed, it is this sense of religious competition that has driven religious growth in the United States. Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism, began his church because, <a href="https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1912&context=etd">he felt</a> that “<a href="http://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/history-circa-summer-1832/2">there</a> was no society or denomination that built upon the gospel of Jesus Christ as recorded in the new testament.” </p>
<p>His solution to the conundrum encapsulates the energies of American Christianity. A visionary experience led him to conclude that no Christian church in the United States possessed the true gospel – and so the answer was to found a new one. By the time of his death 14 years after he had founded the church, <a href="https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3025&context=byusq">he had attracted some 12,000</a> followers.</p>
<p>Other American religious innovators followed a similar path. They contributed new ideas, new sects and new ways of being Christian. Often these new Christianities had social and political implications. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/223375/original/file-20180615-85830-1y0gxq8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/223375/original/file-20180615-85830-1y0gxq8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=409&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/223375/original/file-20180615-85830-1y0gxq8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=409&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/223375/original/file-20180615-85830-1y0gxq8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=409&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/223375/original/file-20180615-85830-1y0gxq8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=514&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/223375/original/file-20180615-85830-1y0gxq8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=514&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/223375/original/file-20180615-85830-1y0gxq8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=514&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A portrait of Christian Science church founder Mary Baker Eddy, at the Longyear Museum, in Brookline, Mass.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Julia Malakie</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>For example, the escaped slave Frederick Douglass <a href="https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2018/january-february/frederick-douglass-at-200-remembering-his-radical-christian.html">denounced</a> white slave-holding Christians as hypocrites and became a preacher for the African Methodist Episcopal Church, a branch of Methodism founded by African-Americans. Mary Baker Eddy <a href="https://www.christianscience.com/what-is-christian-science/mary-baker-eddy">despaired</a> that no Christian church she could find sufficiently embraced the doctrine of faith healing, and so she founded Christian Science.</p>
<p>In other words, Christianity multiplied into Christianities.</p>
<h2>Multiple beliefs</h2>
<p>There are as many variants of Christianity in the United States as there are ways of believing that Christianity is foundational to American politics. </p>
<p>For instance, some Protestants argue that their faith’s emphasis on the individual means that <a href="https://mises.org/library/christianitys-free-market-tradition">Christianity supports the free market</a>. However, Roman Catholics, who emphasize community and institution, have long been much more <a href="http://www.patheos.com/blogs/propernomenclature/catholic-worker-inspirations-dorothy-day-on-capitalism-part-1/">skeptical</a> of capitalism. </p>
<p>Such disputes have often <a href="https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/04/why-paul-ryan-fired-the-house-chaplain.html">marked</a> the national debate about what government policies might most or least express Christian principles. </p>
<p>During the black freedom movement, when African-Americans protested segregation and voting restrictions, black religious leaders like Martin Luther King Jr. <a href="https://www.christianitytoday.com/history/issues/issue-65/martin-luther-king-jr.html">maintained</a> that Christian teaching mandated political equality for people of all races. On the other hand, some white Christian leaders <a href="https://www.clarionledger.com/story/journeytojustice/2014/07/09/sam-bowers-mississippi-burning-christian-identity/12394409/">argued</a> that Christianity taught that certain people were morally inferior to others and therefore segregation was desirable.</p>
<p>To American Christians, who still make up <a href="http://www.pewforum.org/religious-landscape-study/">more than</a> two-thirds of the nation’s population, beliefs like these are fundamental to understanding how society should be organized. For many believers, a religion is <a href="https://www.colorado.edu/ReligiousStudies/chernus/4820-Nationalism/Readings/SUMMARYOFPETERBERGER.htm">more</a> than simply a moral code; it is a way of explaining the nature of the universe. It thus governs both how they think politics should work and what policies should be enacted. </p>
<h2>Christians and democracy</h2>
<p>White American Protestants have frequently <a href="https://www.heritage.org/civil-society/report/tocqueville-christianity-and-american-democracy">claimed</a> that American democracy derives from Protestant Christianity. They associate Protestantism’s emphasis on salvation through individual faith and the individual encounter with God with individual liberty in the political sphere. </p>
<p>They <a href="http://www.ebenezeroldhill.org.uk/articles/Christianity%20and%20Democracy.pdf">link</a>
the rise of democracy in Europe and the United States with the Protestant Reformation. For them, democracy and Christianity are inseparable from American roots in European history. </p>
<p>This assumption that Christianity is essential for democracy was <a href="https://www.politicalresearch.org/2018/04/06/christian-nationalism-and-donald-trump/">behind</a> white evangelicals’ support for Donald Trump in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. </p>
<p>Trump was widely <a href="https://www.npr.org/2016/01/18/463528847/citing-two-corinthians-trump-struggles-to-make-the-sale-to-evangelicals">criticized</a> for his bungling of Christian scripture and his evident lack of adherence to Christian norms and behavior in his private life.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/223417/original/file-20180615-85822-152cov7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/223417/original/file-20180615-85822-152cov7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=378&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/223417/original/file-20180615-85822-152cov7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=378&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/223417/original/file-20180615-85822-152cov7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=378&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/223417/original/file-20180615-85822-152cov7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=475&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/223417/original/file-20180615-85822-152cov7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=475&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/223417/original/file-20180615-85822-152cov7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=475&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">President Donald Trump, as he speaks during the Celebrate Freedom event at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, on July 1, 2017. Members of the First Baptist Dallas Church Choir are seated behind him.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But, at the same time, Trump <a href="https://www.vox.com/identities/2018/3/5/16796892/trump-cyrus-christian-right-bible-cbn-evangelical-propaganda">assured</a> one group of anxious American Christians that he understood their fears. White American Protestant evangelicals, who believed that American democracy and their form of Christianity were linked, <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/why-evangelicals-still-support-trump/">voted</a> for Trump. They <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2017/03/12/rep-steve-king-warns-that-our-civilization-cant-be-restored-with-somebody-elses-babies/?utm_term=.cac03e018dd1">feared</a> that immigration was destroying America’s European heritage, and that as white Protestantism waned, democracy itself would collapse.</p>
<p>There are <a href="http://www.beliefnet.com/news/articles/a-christian-case-against-donald-trump.aspx">many</a> who have claimed that Donald Trump does not understand Christianity. I would argue he understands the <a href="https://wallbuilders.com/america-christian-nation/">turbulence</a> and <a href="https://www.christianfreedom.org/the-christian-faith-is-under-siege/">chaos</a> of the American Christian marketplace all too well.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/97981/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Matthew Bowman does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Americans have debated what it means to be Christian in politics throughout their history. Those debates continue today.Matthew Bowman, Associate Professor of History, Henderson State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/977592018-06-04T19:54:37Z2018-06-04T19:54:37ZWhy the Supreme Court’s ‘gay wedding cake’ ruling won’t resolve religious freedom issues<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/221636/original/file-20180604-175438-lqa96u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Pastors kneel in prayer in front of the Supreme Court, as a counter-protester holds a sign that says "What's Christian About Discrimination." </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The U.S. Supreme Court has issued its long-anticipated ruling in <a href="http://www.scotusblog.com/2017/09/wedding-cakes-v-religious-beliefs-plain-english/">Masterpiece Cakeshop, Ltd. v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission</a>. In a 7-2 decision, the justices sided with a Denver bakery owner who <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/courts_law/the-spurned-couple-the-baker-and-the-long-wait-for-the-supreme-court/2017/08/13/c95c7c5c-7ea8-11e7-83c7-5bd5460f0d7e_story.html?utm_term=.6646d7702ce0">refused to make a wedding cake</a> for a gay couple. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/221637/original/file-20180604-175425-1v5nten.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/221637/original/file-20180604-175425-1v5nten.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/221637/original/file-20180604-175425-1v5nten.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/221637/original/file-20180604-175425-1v5nten.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/221637/original/file-20180604-175425-1v5nten.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/221637/original/file-20180604-175425-1v5nten.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/221637/original/file-20180604-175425-1v5nten.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The couple, Charlie Craig, left, and David Mullins, right, after leaving the Supreme Court.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The couple took the case to court in 2012 after the Christian baker turned down their business. A lower court <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/courts_law/the-spurned-couple-the-baker-and-the-long-wait-for-the-supreme-court/2017/08/13/c95c7c5c-7ea8-11e7-83c7-5bd5460f0d7e_story.html?utm_term=.6646d7702ce0">ruled</a> the baker violated Colorado’s public accommodations law, which forbids discrimination by businesses serving the public, including on the basis of sexual orientation.</p>
<p>In the <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/17pdf/16-111_j4el.pdf">majority opinion</a>, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/courts_law/supreme-court-rules-in-favor-of-baker-who-would-not-make-wedding-cake-for-gay-couple/2018/06/04/50c68cf8-6802-11e8-bea7-c8eb28bc52b1_story.html?utm_term=.2446724c9807">Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote</a> that Colorado officials “showed evidence of a clear and impermissible hostility toward the sincere religious beliefs” of the baker. </p>
<p>The narrow ruling did not, however, meaningfully resolve the larger issue of <a href="http://beta.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-court-religion-gays-20170912-story.html">religious freedom that was central</a> to the case. In focusing on state officials rather than the baker, the justices left unanswered the major question of whether a business owner must provide services that conflict with his or her religious beliefs. <a href="http://www.scotusblog.com/2018/06/opinion-analysis-court-rules-narrowly-for-baker-in-same-sex-wedding-cake-case/">Analysts suggested</a> that the court left open the possibility of a different ruling in the future, depending on the specifics of cases. </p>
<p>Masterpiece Cakeshop has, once again, highlighted the vast difference between the reality and the rhetoric of religious freedom, often considered to be an ideal that promotes harmony and equality. My <a href="http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/?GCOI=80140100411860">research</a>, as a historian of religion, has examined the challenges of pluralism. In a religiously diverse society, rhetoric of religious freedom has often led to conflict. </p>
<h2>The rhetoric: Equality and goodwill</h2>
<p>Throughout U.S. history, Americans have idealized religious freedom and imagined that it brings harmony.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/196801/original/file-20171128-28849-1bhnnxa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/196801/original/file-20171128-28849-1bhnnxa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=897&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196801/original/file-20171128-28849-1bhnnxa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=897&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196801/original/file-20171128-28849-1bhnnxa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=897&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196801/original/file-20171128-28849-1bhnnxa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1127&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196801/original/file-20171128-28849-1bhnnxa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1127&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196801/original/file-20171128-28849-1bhnnxa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1127&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Text of the First Amendment.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/mr_mayer/3023804174/in/photolist-5BcMCJ-4fzgq6-7WVb8t-fbhVEY-aX29kR-npFCnp-6vhvXW-hiWwX6-fUq3FR-dVyQso-64St9u-az6mQ2-4hxwhj-azubXM-qTomUt-bPyj6B-XgN15s-eZbRVa-g1vCAm-cBx37u-adGnmU-RvpagQ-pkfAxk-v3B4t-TN2H63-m5q7Ma-3igNze-eaXHsn-TrVgHj-kmywpW-az91D5-eiwixk-8vSWAA-dYaLsr-bbsYTD-kmwscx-kmvYe8-cJDTdS-qJj11X-54JGiw-jad1Jh-5TTZKs-4hdF3-4Q4M9R-aaSPCX-m3sgBk-nLqGn5-bcgwfx-83EWTp-ezZ4GQ">Jack Mayer</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Founding Fathers believed the First Amendment guarantee of religious free exercise and against the establishment of an official church promised less discord. In an 1802 letter, Thomas Jefferson, for example, <a href="https://www.loc.gov/loc/lcib/9806/danpre.html">wrote</a> that “religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God.” As the nation’s third president, he argued that a “wall of separation between Church & State” would give all people equally the right to free conscience. </p>
<p>Later presidents echoed the view that religious freedom brings equality and unity by preventing government from favoring particular faiths.</p>
<p>Before his election in 1960, John F. Kennedy tried to ease fears about his Catholicism by <a href="https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=16920600">affirming religious liberty</a>. Kennedy believed this freedom kept one group from oppressing another. It formed the basis of a society, he declared, where people would “refrain from those attitudes of disdain and division which have so often marred their works in the past, and promote instead the American ideal of brotherhood.” </p>
<p>In the early 1990s, George H.W. Bush identified religious liberty <a href="http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=47440">as the basis for other rights</a>. He credited it as a major reason for the vibrancy of American society. </p>
<h2>The reality: Conflict and debate</h2>
<p>But, the promised harmony has proved elusive. Scholars such as <a href="http://willamette.edu/law/faculty/profiles/green/index.html">Steven K. Green</a> and <a href="https://divinity.yale.edu/faculty-and-research/yds-faculty/tisa-wenger">Tisa Wenger</a> have documented arguments about religious freedom <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-second-disestablishment-9780195399677?cc=us&lang=en&">throughout</a> <a href="https://www.uncpress.org/book/9781469634623/religious-freedom/">U.S. history</a>.</p>
<p>Minority communities, ranging from <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-religion-schools/religion-and-controversy-always-part-of-u-s-education-idUSTRE75829R20110609">Catholics</a> to <a href="http://scholarship.law.wm.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1309&context=popular_media">Mormons</a>, have fought to have their traditions and customs recognized. As I show in <a href="http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/?GCOI=80140100411860">my work</a> on pluralism, Americans have long debated what constitutes a religious expression rather than a cultural practice. Legal scholars have also <a href="https://kansaspress.ku.edu/978-0-7006-1182-9.html">argued</a> if religious expression can extend into political, social and business interactions. </p>
<p>These debates have required the intervention of the courts and have often ended at the Supreme Court. Thus, a right intended to free Americans from government has instead necessitated frequent involvement of a major government institution.</p>
<p>Further complicating matters, the Supreme Court has changed its position over time. Its evolving interpretations show how religious freedom debates create shifting categories of winners and losers. </p>
<h2>To the courts</h2>
<p>Like Masterpiece Cakeshop, one of the Supreme Court’s first religious liberty cases involved marriage. In 1878, a Mormon resident of the Utah territory sued the federal government after he was charged with bigamy. He argued that the law violated his religious liberty by criminalizing his polygamous marriage. The Supreme Court disagreed. In Reynolds v. United States, the court ruled that the First Amendment guaranteed only <a href="http://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-supreme-court/98/145.html">freedom of belief, not freedom of practice</a>.</p>
<p>In the 20th century, the Supreme Court showed greater sympathy to religious liberty claims. In several cases – including one brought by Jehovah’s Witnesses <a href="http://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-supreme-court/310/296.html">challenging a statute</a> requiring a permit for public evangelizing and another by an Amish community that <a href="http://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-supreme-court/406/205.html">objected to Wisconsin’s compulsory public school law</a> – justices sided with those who claimed their freedom was violated. </p>
<p>That changed in 1990. The court <a href="http://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-supreme-court/494/872.html">ruled against two men</a> who lost their jobs after using peyote, a cactus with hallucinogenic properties that has long been used in Native American religious practices. Because they were fired for drug use, the men were denied unemployment benefits. They claimed that as members of a Native American church, they used the drug for religious purposes. Moving away from earlier decisions, the justices <a href="http://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-supreme-court/494/872.html">ruled</a> that religious belief was not a ground for refusing to obey laws “prohibiting conduct that the State is free to regulate.” </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/196802/original/file-20171128-28852-hxgvwv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/196802/original/file-20171128-28852-hxgvwv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=359&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196802/original/file-20171128-28852-hxgvwv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=359&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196802/original/file-20171128-28852-hxgvwv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=359&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196802/original/file-20171128-28852-hxgvwv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=451&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196802/original/file-20171128-28852-hxgvwv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=451&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196802/original/file-20171128-28852-hxgvwv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=451&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">United States Supreme Court.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/ncindc/2865343328/in/photolist-5ncCKb-2yu1bN-buJ9AA-dTWdP-CHAge-oZ7NxZ-foSsGn-6jKhdX-4bVD4o-uQHRC-4ZHE7z-6NTbKv-7aLyBp-qbF38r-k7SMe-s5dMuE-SXGLft-cfZdF1-6NTctp-92ZN6k-8WPjhw-8RY69x-6uaRzA-uQSMA-6Kfh1o-6ufxxc-4ZJiGX-aS7VWP-47Dahi-6cMQUT-csY28C-pUnxk1-qUAkCS-zvHdq-VShGqo-uabD-pVDtAs-ogRaKg-a7Ttts-8fi5bf-5ubeBk-7vd4HL-csXZ8w-6ujGVS-c9DhE-Dmau1-aS9J42-pcnaXj-btCwKm-9eJMgt">Josh</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>New century, new conflicts</h2>
<p>It was in response to the peyote case that Congress passed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) of 1993. It required that <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/103rd-congress/house-bill/1308/text">laws restricting religious expression</a> must show that they serve a “compelling government interest.”</p>
<p>RFRA was central in the Supreme Court’s 2014 decision in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby. That contentious split ruling allowed small, closely held companies the <a href="http://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-supreme-court/13-354.html">right to deny contraceptive benefits</a> mandated by the Affordable Care Act on the grounds of protecting their owners’ religious liberty.</p>
<p>Similarly, in October 2017, the Trump administration <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/06/us/politics/trump-contraception-birth-control.html">invoked freedom of religion</a> when it allowed all employers a religious exemption to the contraception coverage requirement in the Affordable Care Act. </p>
<p>Critics saw that policy change as an <a href="http://fortune.com/2017/10/06/trump-obamacare-birth-control-mandate/">attack on women’s rights</a>. Reaction to it on both sides again showed that government involvement in debates about religious freedom invariably produces winners and losers. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/221626/original/file-20180604-175445-1sk7rel.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/221626/original/file-20180604-175445-1sk7rel.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=417&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/221626/original/file-20180604-175445-1sk7rel.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=417&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/221626/original/file-20180604-175445-1sk7rel.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=417&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/221626/original/file-20180604-175445-1sk7rel.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=524&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/221626/original/file-20180604-175445-1sk7rel.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=524&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/221626/original/file-20180604-175445-1sk7rel.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=524&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Baker Jack Phillips, owner of Masterpiece Cakeshop, at his shop in Lakewood, Colorado.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/David Zalubowski</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Supreme Court ruling reached on June 4 likely allows those who advocate a broad right to religious liberty to <a href="https://www.nationalreview.com/news/masterpiece-cakeshop-religious-liberty-wins-landslide/">claim</a> at least a small victory. But the narrow scope of the Masterpiece Cakeshop decision ensures that this divisive debate, which has raged for nearly two centuries, will continue for the foreseeable future. </p>
<p><em>This is an updated version of an article <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-messy-reality-of-religious-liberty-in-america-85963">orginally published on Nov. 29</a>, 2017.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/97759/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Mislin does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Arguments on religious freedom have taken place throughout US history and have landed in the Supreme Court as well. Interpretations have changed over time.David Mislin, Assistant Professor of Intellectual Heritage, Temple UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/907462018-02-01T11:40:35Z2018-02-01T11:40:35ZWhat’s behind America’s promotion of religious liberty abroad<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/204091/original/file-20180130-38190-1flu5gh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Samuel Brownback appears before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>On Jan. 24, the Senate confirmed Sam Brownback, the governor of Kansas – a Methodist, who converted to Catholicism and today attends an evangelical church – for the <a href="https://religionnews.com/2017/07/27/5-faith-facts-about-sam-brownback-political-champion-of-religious-freedom/">position of ambassador-at-large</a> for international religious freedom. On Jan. 30, President Donald Trump <a href="https://www.newsday.com/news/nation/trump-state-of-union-quotes-1.16451099">touted</a> in his State of the Union address the “historic actions to protect religious liberty” as a major achievement of his administration.</p>
<p>Brownback’s victory was a razor thin 50-49. Conservative leaders, who know Brownback as an ally in the fight against abortion and homosexuality, were <a href="http://www.christianitytoday.com/news/2018/january/sam-brownback-is-ambassador-international-religious-freedom.html">quick to lavish praise</a> with Southern Baptist leader Russell Moore <a href="http://www.christianitytoday.com/news/2017/july/sam-brownback-ambassador-international-religious-freedom.html">calling</a> him “an outstanding choice.” Democrats, on the other hand, <a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/trumps-new-ambassador-sam-brownback-could-weaponize-religious-freedom-around-the-world">criticized Brownback</a> for <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/lgbtq-groups-slam-confirmation-brownback-religious-freedom-ambassador-n841481">rolling back LGBTQ protections</a> in Kansas. </p>
<p>As a <a href="https://www.genezubovich.com/book/">historian of religion and foreign policy</a> in the United States, I know that this is not the first time Americans have disagreed about the meaning of religious freedom. The United States has, in fact, been promoting religious liberty abroad since its founding, but there has always been disagreement on what exactly it is. </p>
<h2>Religion and American empire</h2>
<p>In 1775, in the early days of the American Revolution, George Washington prepared the Continental Army to invade the Canadian colonies in order to convince the inhabitants to join the rebellion against the British. As Colonel Benedict Arnold prepared to lead the charge, Washington warned him to respect the religious liberty of Catholics in Quebec and avoid unnecessary conflict. <a href="https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/03-01-02-0355">He wrote</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“While we are Contending for our own Liberty, we should be very cautious of violating the Rights of Conscience in others.”</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/204309/original/file-20180131-157495-12ctbf6.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/204309/original/file-20180131-157495-12ctbf6.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=731&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/204309/original/file-20180131-157495-12ctbf6.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=731&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/204309/original/file-20180131-157495-12ctbf6.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=731&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/204309/original/file-20180131-157495-12ctbf6.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=919&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/204309/original/file-20180131-157495-12ctbf6.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=919&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/204309/original/file-20180131-157495-12ctbf6.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=919&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Portrait of George Washington.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3APortrait_of_George_Washington.jpeg">Rembrandt Peale, via Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Washington’s advice was followed in Canada but not in the newly founded United States, where Catholics found themselves facing discrimination. </p>
<p>Although Congress passed the First Amendment to the Constitution in 1791, religious liberty applied only to “respectable” Protestant denominations, like Baptists and Methodists, who grew rapidly in the first decades of the 19th century. As historian <a href="http://history.gsu.edu/profile/david-sehat-3/">David Sehat</a> <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-myth-of-american-religious-freedom-updated-edition-9780190247218?cc=us&lang=en&">explains</a> Protestant denominations created a “moral establishment” that acted like official churches did in Europe. As in Europe, this moral establishment <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-myth-of-american-religious-freedom-updated-edition-9780190247218?cc=us&lang=en&">persecuted</a> minority faiths, like Catholics, Mormons, Seventh Day Adventists, Jews and Jehovah’s Witnesses. </p>
<h2>A way of projecting American power</h2>
<p>America’s record of promoting religious liberty abroad was also spotty. Religious liberty largely meant the rights of missionaries to go out and convert “heathens” to Protestant Christianity. </p>
<p>For example, government agents and missionaries in the 19th century trampled on the religious rights of conquered Native American nations by taking away their children and placing them into faraway residential schools that <a href="http://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/university-of-nebraska-press/9780803235168/">forbade them</a> from practicing their native faiths. The United States banned certain native religious ceremonies, like the <a href="https://www.uncpress.org/book/9780807859353/we-have-a-religion/">Ghost Dance</a>, because of fears that the ritual stirred up rebellion.</p>
<p>In 1898, the United States went to war with Spain and took possession of the Philippines and Puerto Rico, Spanish colonies that were both predominantly Catholic. As historian <a href="https://divinity.yale.edu/faculty-and-research/yds-faculty/tisa-wenger">Tisa Wenger</a> has <a href="https://www.uncpress.org/book/9781469634623/religious-freedom/">pointed out</a>, promoting religious freedom in the colonies was a way for the United States to expand its empire.
The idea that the United States would spread religious freedom through its policies made Americans feel like liberators even when they acted like conquerors. </p>
<p>According to historian <a href="https://www.law.utoronto.ca/faculty-staff/full-time-faculty/anna-su">Anna Su</a>, the United States attempted to <a href="http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674286023">remake these colonies</a> in its image by separating church and state and divesting Catholic religious orders of their property. President William McKinley reasoned that the Filipinos could not be trusted to make that separation themselves. </p>
<p>Ironically, the American claim that promoting religious freedom in the world was its sacred mission <a href="https://www.uncpress.org/book/9781469634623/religious-freedom/">was one of the reasons</a> the country became an empire. </p>
<h2>Two versions of religious freedom</h2>
<p>Many Filipinos, Puerto Ricans and Native Americans <a href="https://www.uncpress.org/book/9781469634623/religious-freedom/">demanded the right</a> to worship freely and to organize their lives as they saw fit. Their appeals, however, fell on deaf ears until the early 20th century, when liberal Protestants and Jews began championing a vision of religious liberty aimed at protecting minority rights, not just the rights of the Christian majority. </p>
<p>These progressives wanted to disassociate religious liberty from empire and promote it through international law. Lutheran academic <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/1972/06/19/archives/dr-o-frederick-nolde-dead-active-in-world-peace-e-ftort-theran.html">O. Frederick Nolde</a> <a href="http://press.georgetown.edu/book/georgetown/all-peoples-and-all-nations">led a liberal Protestant effort</a> to enshrine religious liberty in the <a href="http://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/">Universal Declaration of Human Rights</a> in 1948. </p>
<p>For Nolde, religious freedom was important among other human rights, including social and economic rights. He argued that people had the right to live free from discrimination and that religious freedom was one of the ways of protecting minorities from the tyranny of the majority. Nolde <a href="http://press.georgetown.edu/book/georgetown/all-peoples-and-all-nations">was hired by Federal Council of Churches</a>, one of the most powerful religious lobbies in the United States. </p>
<p>Nolde and his associates were in the vanguard. It was only over time that the liberal Protestant and Jewish communities <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/titles/10008.html">came to be more accepting</a> of same-sex relationships and more supportive of church-state separation and other causes to protect minorities.</p>
<h2>Evangelical view</h2>
<p>Meanwhile, evangelicals and conservative Catholics embraced a different version of religious freedom, one that had the promotion of Christianity at its heart. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/204093/original/file-20180130-38219-779axr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/204093/original/file-20180130-38219-779axr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=434&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/204093/original/file-20180130-38219-779axr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=434&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/204093/original/file-20180130-38219-779axr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=434&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/204093/original/file-20180130-38219-779axr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=545&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/204093/original/file-20180130-38219-779axr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=545&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/204093/original/file-20180130-38219-779axr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=545&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Evangelist Billy Graham.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Pierre Gleizes</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Evangelist Billy Graham, for example, worried in the 1950s that the Soviet Union was <a href="http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674052185">promoting atheism</a> across the world, so he highlighted the country’s oppression of religious people and called on the United States to do more to free them. At home <a href="http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674052185">Graham opposed</a> many of the court decisions that removed Bible reading and prayer from public schools. </p>
<p>Ironically, many conservatives seemed to believe that religious liberty was largely for people abroad, not at home. <a href="http://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Evangelicals/Frances-FitzGerald/9781439131336">They opposed</a> court decisions that they saw as infringing on the rights of Christian communities to pass on their values to their children. Evangelicals were also skeptical about Catholics having a more prominent role in American society, especially following the election of John F. Kennedy in 1960. </p>
<h2>Religious freedom abroad?</h2>
<p>More recently, the legislation that created the position of ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom – Brownback’s new job – was in essence, the result of evangelical concern over the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/1997/09/11/world/gop-leaders-back-bill-on-religious-persecution.html">persecution of Christians in China and the Middle East</a> in the 1990s.</p>
<p>It was under <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/1997/09/11/world/gop-leaders-back-bill-on-religious-persecution.html">pressure</a> from evangelical groups, such as the Christian Coalition, the Southern Baptist Convention and the National Association of Evangelicals, that Congress, in 1998, passed the International Religious Freedom Act to do more to protect Christians abroad.</p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/1997/09/11/world/gop-leaders-back-bill-on-religious-persecution.html">bill gained support</a> among more liberal Protestant, Catholic and Jewish communities as well, along with secular human rights groups. But disagreements about religious liberty remained. While evangelicals were fretting over the fate of Christian communities, progressive groups wanted to see <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/titles/10008.html">religious freedom</a> as part of a broader human rights agenda. </p>
<p>To the progressives, religious freedom was part of a larger canvas of human rights issues. It was no surprise that President Barack Obama, for example, appointed <a href="http://www.blackpast.org/aah/cook-suzan-denise-johnson-1957">Suzan Johnson Cook</a>, a religious leader with a passion for human rights and subsequently <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/rabbi-first-non-christian-tapped-for-us-religious-freedom-post/">David Nathan Saperstein</a>, Brownback’s predecessor. Saperstein was a rabbi who had advocated on a range of social justice issues. </p>
<p>These appointments were in keeping with progressive beliefs. As political theorist <a href="http://faculty.wcas.northwestern.edu/%7Eesh291/Elizabeth_Shakman_Hurd/home.html">Elizabeth Shakman Hurd</a> <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/titles/10626.html">explains</a>, religious freedom could not be isolated from many social, economic and political forces that lead to conflict. Elevating religious concerns above other human rights issues could, in fact, lead to more harm than good.</p>
<p>The question now is whether Brownback will treat religious freedom as a human rights issue or use the position to promote the interests of Christian abroad?</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/90746/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gene Zubovich does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>America has been promoting religious liberty abroad since its founding, but there has always been disagreement on what exactly it means.Gene Zubovich, Postdoctoral Research Associate, Washington University in St. LouisLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/859632017-11-29T02:26:23Z2017-11-29T02:26:23ZThe messy reality of religious liberty in America<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/196799/original/file-20171128-28846-1qttz21.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The wedding cake on display at Masterpiece Cakeshop.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Brennan Linsley</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>On Tuesday, Dec. 5, a <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/courts_law/supreme-court-asked-if-wedding-cake-bakers-case-protects-religious-freedom-or-illegal-discrimination/2017/12/05/c73e6efa-d969-11e7-a841-2066faf731ef_story.html?hpid=hp_hp-top-table-main_baker-1045am%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.38e32f627411">visibly divided</a> U.S. Supreme Court tackled the contentious issue of religious freedom when it heard oral arguments in <a href="http://www.scotusblog.com/2017/09/wedding-cakes-v-religious-beliefs-plain-english/">“Masterpiece Cakeshop, Ltd. v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission.”</a> The arguments appeared to evenly split the four conservative justices from the four liberals. Justice Anthony Kennedy, who is often a swing vote, <a href="http://www.scotusblog.com/2017/12/argument-analysis-conservative-majority-leaning-toward-ruling-colorado-baker/">seemed to side</a> with the baker.</p>
<p>The case involves a Denver bakery owner who <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/courts_law/the-spurned-couple-the-baker-and-the-long-wait-for-the-supreme-court/2017/08/13/c95c7c5c-7ea8-11e7-83c7-5bd5460f0d7e_story.html?utm_term=.6646d7702ce0">refused to make a wedding cake</a> for a gay couple, citing his religious belief that marriage can be between only a man and woman. The couple sued, and a lower court ruled the baker violated Colorado’s public accommodations law. The statute forbids discrimination by businesses serving the public, including on the basis of sexual orientation.</p>
<p>In their appeal to the Supreme Court, the bakery’s lawyers have emphasized free speech issues by presenting the baker <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/16/us/supreme-court-baker-same-sex-marriage.html">as an artist</a> who has a right to choose how he expresses himself. But religious freedom <a href="http://beta.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-court-religion-gays-20170912-story.html">remains central</a> to the case. A key question is whether a business owner must provide services that conflict with his or her religious beliefs.</p>
<p>This divisive case highlights the vast difference between the reality and the rhetoric of religious freedom, which is often considered to be the ideal that promotes harmony and equality. But, history suggests that it does lead to more conflict.</p>
<h2>The rhetoric: Equality and goodwill</h2>
<p>It is true that throughout U.S. history, Americans have idealized religious freedom and imagined that it brings harmony.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/196801/original/file-20171128-28849-1bhnnxa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/196801/original/file-20171128-28849-1bhnnxa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=897&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196801/original/file-20171128-28849-1bhnnxa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=897&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196801/original/file-20171128-28849-1bhnnxa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=897&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196801/original/file-20171128-28849-1bhnnxa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1127&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196801/original/file-20171128-28849-1bhnnxa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1127&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196801/original/file-20171128-28849-1bhnnxa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1127&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Text of the First Amendment.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/mr_mayer/3023804174/in/photolist-5BcMCJ-4fzgq6-7WVb8t-fbhVEY-aX29kR-npFCnp-6vhvXW-hiWwX6-fUq3FR-dVyQso-64St9u-az6mQ2-4hxwhj-azubXM-qTomUt-bPyj6B-XgN15s-eZbRVa-g1vCAm-cBx37u-adGnmU-RvpagQ-pkfAxk-v3B4t-TN2H63-m5q7Ma-3igNze-eaXHsn-TrVgHj-kmywpW-az91D5-eiwixk-8vSWAA-dYaLsr-bbsYTD-kmwscx-kmvYe8-cJDTdS-qJj11X-54JGiw-jad1Jh-5TTZKs-4hdF3-4Q4M9R-aaSPCX-m3sgBk-nLqGn5-bcgwfx-83EWTp-ezZ4GQ">Jack Mayer</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The First Amendment’s clauses guaranteeing religious free exercise and preventing establishment of an official church seemed to promise less discord to the Founding Fathers. In an 1802 letter, Thomas Jefferson, for example, <a href="https://www.loc.gov/loc/lcib/9806/danpre.html">wrote</a> that “religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God.” As the nation’s third president, he argued that a “wall of separation between Church & State” would give all people equally the right to free conscience. </p>
<p>Later presidents echoed the view that religious freedom brings equality and unity by preventing government from favoring particular faiths.</p>
<p>Before his election in 1960, John F. Kennedy tried to ease fears about his Catholicism by <a href="https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=16920600">affirming religious liberty</a>. Kennedy believed this freedom kept one group from oppressing another. It formed the basis of a society, he declared, where people would “refrain from those attitudes of disdain and division which have so often marred their works in the past, and promote instead the American ideal of brotherhood.” </p>
<p>In the early 1990s, George H.W. Bush <a href="http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=47440">identified</a> religious liberty as the basis for other rights. He credited it as a major reason for the vibrancy of American society. </p>
<h2>The reality: Conflict and debate</h2>
<p>But, the promised harmony has proved elusive. Scholars such as <a href="http://willamette.edu/law/faculty/profiles/green/index.html">Steven K. Green</a> and <a href="https://divinity.yale.edu/faculty-and-research/yds-faculty/tisa-wenger">Tisa Wenger</a> have documented arguments about religious freedom <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-second-disestablishment-9780195399677?cc=us&lang=en&">throughout</a> <a href="https://www.uncpress.org/book/9781469634623/religious-freedom/">U.S. history</a>.</p>
<p>Minority communities, ranging from <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-religion-schools/religion-and-controversy-always-part-of-u-s-education-idUSTRE75829R20110609">Catholics</a> to <a href="http://scholarship.law.wm.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1309&context=popular_media">Mormons</a>, have fought to have their traditions and customs recognized as religious. As I show in <a href="http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/?GCOI=80140100411860">my work</a> on pluralism, Americans have debated what constitutes a religious expression rather than a cultural practice. People have also <a href="https://kansaspress.ku.edu/978-0-7006-1182-9.html">argued</a> whether religious expression can extend into political, social and business interactions.</p>
<p>These debates have required the intervention of the courts and have often ended at the Supreme Court. Thus, a right intended to free Americans from government has instead necessitated frequent involvement of a major government institution.</p>
<p>Further complicating matters, the Supreme Court has changed its position over time. Its evolving interpretations show how religious freedom debates create shifting categories of winners and losers.</p>
<h2>To the courts</h2>
<p>Like Masterpiece Cakeshop, one of the Supreme Court’s first religious liberty cases involved marriage. In 1878, a Mormon resident of the Utah territory sued the federal government after he was charged with bigamy. He argued that the law violated his religious liberty by criminalizing his polygamous marriage. The Supreme Court disagreed. In Reynolds v. United States, the court <a href="http://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-supreme-court/98/145.html">ruled</a> that the First Amendment guaranteed only freedom of belief, not freedom of practice.</p>
<p>In the 20th century, the Supreme Court showed greater sympathy to religious liberty claims. In several cases – including one brought by Jehovah’s Witnesses <a href="http://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-supreme-court/310/296.html">challenging a statute</a> requiring a permit for public evangelizing and another by an Amish community that <a href="http://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-supreme-court/406/205.html">objected to Wisconsin’s compulsory public school law</a> – justices sided with those who claimed their freedom was violated. </p>
<p>That changed in 1990. The court <a href="http://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-supreme-court/494/872.html">ruled against two men</a> who lost their jobs after using peyote, the cactus, which has hallucinogenic properties and has long been used in Native American religious practices. Because they were fired for drug use, the men were denied unemployment benefits. They claimed that as members of a Native American church, they used the drug for religious purposes. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/196802/original/file-20171128-28852-hxgvwv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/196802/original/file-20171128-28852-hxgvwv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=359&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196802/original/file-20171128-28852-hxgvwv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=359&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196802/original/file-20171128-28852-hxgvwv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=359&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196802/original/file-20171128-28852-hxgvwv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=451&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196802/original/file-20171128-28852-hxgvwv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=451&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196802/original/file-20171128-28852-hxgvwv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=451&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">United States Supreme Court.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/ncindc/2865343328/in/photolist-5ncCKb-2yu1bN-buJ9AA-dTWdP-CHAge-oZ7NxZ-foSsGn-6jKhdX-4bVD4o-uQHRC-4ZHE7z-6NTbKv-7aLyBp-qbF38r-k7SMe-s5dMuE-SXGLft-cfZdF1-6NTctp-92ZN6k-8WPjhw-8RY69x-6uaRzA-uQSMA-6Kfh1o-6ufxxc-4ZJiGX-aS7VWP-47Dahi-6cMQUT-csY28C-pUnxk1-qUAkCS-zvHdq-VShGqo-uabD-pVDtAs-ogRaKg-a7Ttts-8fi5bf-5ubeBk-7vd4HL-csXZ8w-6ujGVS-c9DhE-Dmau1-aS9J42-pcnaXj-btCwKm-9eJMgt">Josh</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Moving away from earlier decisions, justices <a href="http://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-supreme-court/494/872.html">ruled</a> that religious belief was not a ground for refusing to obey laws “prohibiting conduct that the State is free to regulate.” </p>
<h2>New century, new conflicts</h2>
<p>The peyote case set the stage for Masterpiece Cakeshop. It was in response to the case that Congress passed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) of 1993. It required that <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/103rd-congress/house-bill/1308/text">laws restricting religious expression</a> must show that they serve a compelling need. </p>
<p>RFRA was central in the Supreme Court’s 2014 decision in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby. That contentious split ruling allowed small, closely held companies the <a href="http://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-supreme-court/13-354.html">right to deny contraceptive benefits</a> mandated by the Affordable Care Act on the grounds of protecting their owners’ religious liberty.</p>
<p>Similarly, in October 2017, the Trump administration <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/06/us/politics/trump-contraception-birth-control.html">invoked freedom of religion</a> when it allowed all employers a religious exemption to the contraception coverage requirement in the Affordable Care Act. </p>
<p>Critics saw that policy change as an <a href="http://fortune.com/2017/10/06/trump-obamacare-birth-control-mandate/">attack</a> on women’s rights. Reaction to it on both sides again showed that government involvement in debates about religious freedom invariably produces winners and losers. </p>
<p>Given our polarized society and the division among the Supreme Court justices today, this pattern will continue, whatever the verdict is.</p>
<p><em>This is an updated version of an article first published on Nov. 28, 2017.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/85963/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Mislin does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The Supreme Court appeared divided over claims of religious freedom in the case of a gay wedding. History shows how contentious religious freedom has been in America.David Mislin, Assistant Professor of Intellectual Heritage, Temple UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/770772017-05-04T22:19:40Z2017-05-04T22:19:40ZWhy Russia is afraid of Jehovah’s Witnesses<p>On Monday, July 17, the <a href="http://religionnews.com/2017/07/17/russian-supreme-court-upholds-ban-on-jehovahs-witnesses/">Russian Supreme Court rejected</a> an appeal of an <a href="https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Europe/2017/0501/Jehovah-s-Witnesses-as-extremists-Court-sharpens-edges-of-Russia-s-religious-space">earlier ruling</a> sanctioning Jehovah’s Witnesses as an <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/russia-cant-tell-the-difference-between-jehovahs-witnesses-and-al-qaeda/2017/04/28/b7e02b6a-2915-11e7-b605-33413c691853_story.html?utm_term=.a2d908cc6b3e">extremist group</a>. As a last ditch effort, Russian Jehovah’s Witnesses intend to <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-russia-religion-jehovah-s-idUSKBN1A30UX?il=0">appeal to the European Court of Human Rights</a>. But, as of now, <a href="http://www.newsweek.com/jehovahs-witnesses-russia-ban-police-589791">Jehovah’s Witness gatherings and preaching</a> are criminal offenses in Russia. The Russian government also has the legal authority to <a href="http://rapsinews.com/news/20170420/278327401.html">liquidate</a> any property held by Jehovah’s Witnesses as an organization. </p>
<p>There are over <a href="https://www.jw.org/en/publications/books/2017-yearbook/worldwide-preaching-teaching/">eight million</a> Jehovah’s Witnesses in 240 countries worldwide. Russia, with a population of more than 150 million, <a href="https://www.jw.org/en/jehovahs-witnesses/worldwide/RU/">has a total of 117,000 Jehovah’s Witnesses</a> – one Jehovah’s Witness per 850 people.</p>
<p>Who are Jehovah’s Witnesses, and why would the Russian, or any, government consider them to be a threat?</p>
<h2>Early history</h2>
<p>The story of Jehovah’s Witnesses begins in the late 19th century near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, with a group of students studying the Bible. The group was led by <a href="https://www.jw.org/en/jehovahs-witnesses/faq/founder/">Charles Taze Russell</a>, a religious seeker from a <a href="https://www.pcusa.org/">Presbyterian</a> background. These students understood “<a href="https://www.jw.org/en/bible-teachings/questions/gods-name/">Jehovah</a>,” a version of the Hebrew “<a href="http://www.desiringgod.org/articles/10-things-yahweh-means">Yaweh</a>,” to be the name of God the Father himself. </p>
<p>Russell and his followers looked forward to Jesus Christ establishing a “millennium” or a thousand-year period of peace on Earth. This “Golden Age” would see the Earth transformed to its original purity, with a “righteous” social system that would not have poverty or inequality. </p>
<p>Russell died in 1916 without witnessing the return of Jesus Christ.</p>
<p>But his group endured and grew. The name “Jehovah’s Witnesses” was formally adopted in the 1930s.</p>
<p>Early Jehovah’s Witnesses believed <a href="https://www.jw.org/en/publications/books/2014-yearbook/one-hundred-years-ago-1914/#?insight%5Bsearch_id%5D=3af7276d-9315-42c6-83fd-a81c1a06fad7&insight%5Bsearch_result_index%5D=2">1914</a> to be the beginning of the <a href="https://wol.jw.org/en/wol/d/r1/lp-e/1200004288">end of worldly governments</a> that would culminate with the <a href="https://www.jw.org/en/bible-teachings/questions/battle-of-armageddon/">Battle of Armageddon</a>. Armageddon specifically refers to <a href="http://www.biblewalks.com/Sites/armaggedon.html">Mount Megiddo</a> in Israel where some Christians believe the final conflict between good and evil will take place. Jehovah’s Witnesses, however, expected that the Battle of Armageddon would be worldwide with Jesus leading a “heavenly army” to defeat the enemies of God.</p>
<p>They also believed that after Armageddon, Jesus would rule the world from heaven with <a href="https://www.jw.org/en/bible-teachings/questions/go-to-heaven/#?insight%5Bsearch_id%5D=1d330ed9-a205-417b-bbdc-b3d70cf0bfde&insight%5Bsearch_result_index%5D=21">144,000</a> “faithful Christians,” as specified in the <a href="http://biblehub.com/revelation/7-4.htm">Book of Revelation</a>. Other faithful Christians would be reunited with dead loved ones and live on a renewed Earth. </p>
<p>Over the years, Jehovah’s Witnesses have <a href="https://wol.jw.org/en/wol/d/r1/lp-e/2006126">reinterpreted</a> elements of this timeline and have abandoned setting specific dates for the return of Jesus Christ. But they still <a href="https://www.jw.org/en/publications/books/bible-teach/are-we-living-in-the-last-days/">look forward</a> to the Golden Age that Russell and his Bible students expected.</p>
<p>Given the group’s belief in a literal thousand-year earthly reign of Christ, scholars of religion classify Jehovah’s Witnesses as a <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048721X84710256">“millennarian movement.”</a></p>
<h2>What are their beliefs?</h2>
<p>Jehovah’s Witnesses <a href="https://www.jw.org/en/bible-teachings/questions/trinity/#?insight%5Bsearch_id%5D=23c7879c-91c5-46c4-9248-b090850fb862&insight%5Bsearch_result_index%5D=0">deny the Trinity</a>. For most Christians, God is a union of three persons: <a href="http://www.allaboutgod.com/trinity-doctrine.htm">Father, Son and Holy Spirit</a>. </p>
<p>Instead, Jehovah’s Witnesses believe that Jesus is distinct from God – not united as one person with him. The “<a href="https://www.jw.org/en/bible-teachings/questions/what-is-the-holy-spirit/#?insight%5Bsearch_id%5D=19aed8ee-f94c-412f-99a1-c9da42d4e1c9&insight%5Bsearch_result_index%5D=0">Holy Spirit</a>,” then, refers to God’s active power. <a href="https://www.jw.org/en/news/legal-resources/information/packet-who-are-jehovahs-witnesses/#?insight%5Bsearch_id%5D=c57ee38f-20d3-42f2-a546-84ab296dc23e&insight%5Bsearch_result_index%5D=5">Such doctrines</a> distinguish Jehovah’s Witnesses from mainline Christian denominations, all of which hold that God is “triune” in nature.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/167951/original/file-20170504-15005-1ioc4x1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/167951/original/file-20170504-15005-1ioc4x1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/167951/original/file-20170504-15005-1ioc4x1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/167951/original/file-20170504-15005-1ioc4x1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/167951/original/file-20170504-15005-1ioc4x1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/167951/original/file-20170504-15005-1ioc4x1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/167951/original/file-20170504-15005-1ioc4x1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Jehovah’s Witnesses spend a substantial amount of time on Bible study and evangelizing door to door.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/jonathancharles/2090222159/in/photolist-4bGWe6-beCN1V-2uzFG-bqojZe-7se9hY-LH7Zm-LS4f4L-ed6Xju-8ZvFsH-7hKH4b-qciz7Q-yiqtsw-7uzdFR-9Z5caa-6aXsX9-7egBCu-7pNkm8-5R9cPH-uGbUN5-3pQJ1r-7uzeM8-5U1PTs-bVBxMm-7egBmb-Nwa4E-3oVNqJ-2yuvKk-2ytmEM-eEShCz-eFWKbX-3Z78X-e1dK3t-dZ5K8-7n89fc-3oVNnG-6o9ZCe-jpQsir-ee6SSu-3oTBm2-eH2ga9-agPw8E-3qJMyt-2ytoRF-7mrBAH-2yxJro-c3q4E-8qpVys-cRG76C-3qMGop-7FiJ6T">Jonathan Haynes</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But like other Christian denominations, Jehovah’s Witnesses praise God through worship and song. Their gathering places are called “<a href="https://www.jw.org/en/publications/books/jehovahs-will/maintenance-of-kingdom-halls/#?insight%5Bsearch_id%5D=3a7386a8-a97c-43d8-a284-879a48b30aba&insight%5Bsearch_result_index%5D=0">Kingdom Halls</a>,” which are ordinary-looking buildings – like small conference centers – that have the advantage of being easily built. Inside are rows of chairs and a podium for speakers, but little special adornment. Jehovah’s Witnesses are best known for devoting a substantial amount of time to Bible study and door-to-door evangelizing.</p>
<p>Their biblical interpretations and missionary work certainly have critics. But it is the political neutrality of the group that has attracted the most suspicion.</p>
<p>Jehovah’s Witnesses accept the legitimate authority of government in many matters. For example, they pay taxes, following Jesus’ admonition in <a href="http://biblehub.com/mark/12-17.htm">Mark 12:17</a> “to render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s.”</p>
<p>But they <a href="https://wol.jw.org/en/wol/d/r1/lp-e/1102008085">do not vote in elections</a>, serve in the military or salute the flag. Such acts, they believe, compromise their primary loyalty to God.</p>
<h2>A history of persecution</h2>
<p>Jehovah’s Witnesses have no political affiliations, and they renounce violence. However, they make an easy target for governments looking for internal enemies, as they refuse to bow down to government symbols. Many nationalists call them “enemies of the state.”</p>
<p>As a result, they have often suffered persecution throughout history in many parts of the world.</p>
<p>Jehovah’s Witnesses were jailed as draft evaders in the U.S. during both world wars. In a <a href="https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=3946249041792057132&q=minersville+v.+gobitis&hl=en&as_sdt=40000006&as_vis=1">Supreme Court ruling in 1940</a>, school districts were allowed to expel Jehovah’s Witnesses who refused to salute the American flag. Through subsequent <a href="http://www.historynet.com/what-we-owe-jehovahs-witnesses.htm">legal battles</a> in the 1940s and 1950s, Jehovah Witnesses helped expand safeguards for <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/319/624">religious liberty</a> and <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/43751909?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">freedom of conscience</a> both in the United States and Europe.</p>
<p>In <a href="https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005433">Nazi Germany</a>, Jehovah’s Witnesses were killed in concentration camps; a purple triangle was used by the Nazis to mark them. In the 1960s and ‘70’s, scores of African Jehovah’s Witnesses were slaughtered by members of <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=FuXPkCVjzasC&pg=PA204&lpg=PA204&dq=jehovah%27s+witnesses+malawi&source=bl&ots=9xqA2f9eJf&sig=DjaxtZd9I_cN7CKRfe_IUH39S8U&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjgs7vM69HTAhVI7oMKHZ8_C5k4FBDoAQgyMAM#v=onepage&q=jehovah's%20witnesses%20malawi&f=false">The Youth League of the Malawi Congress Party</a> for refusing to support dictator <a href="http://www.economist.com/node/107513">Hastings Banda</a>. Many Witnesses fled to neighboring Mozambique, where they were held in internment camps.</p>
<p>Now it is Russia. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/167953/original/file-20170504-27085-1fmcbx2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/167953/original/file-20170504-27085-1fmcbx2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=369&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/167953/original/file-20170504-27085-1fmcbx2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=369&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/167953/original/file-20170504-27085-1fmcbx2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=369&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/167953/original/file-20170504-27085-1fmcbx2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=464&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/167953/original/file-20170504-27085-1fmcbx2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=464&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/167953/original/file-20170504-27085-1fmcbx2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=464&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Russia’s Jehovah’s Witnesses in a courtroom after a decision in Moscow that banned them from operating in the country.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Ivan Sekretarev</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Russian Supreme Court maintains that the country needs to be protected from disloyal religious fanatics. </p>
<p>But given their commitment to God above all things, Jehovah’s Witnesses see themselves as being persecuted by those who value loyalty to country over any other principle. They also believe that the Russian government has “<a href="https://www.jw.org/en/news/legal/by-region/russia/minjust-claim-to-ban-20170316/">trampled on the guarantees of their own laws</a>.”</p>
<p>Many Jehovah’s Witnesses still attach a great importance to dates. Many Jehovah’s Witnesses are filled with <a href="https://jwitness.wordpress.com/2017/04/27/on-hitlers-birthday-175000-prisoners-of-conscience/">foreboding</a>, as April 20, the day the Russian Supreme Court first ruled against them, is also the <a href="http://www2.stetson.edu/%7Epsteeves/relnews/170425b.html">birthday of Adolf Hitler</a>.</p>
<p>Their memories of persecution have not faded with time.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/77077/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mathew Schmalz does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>There are over eight million Jehovah’s Witnesses in 240 countries worldwide. They have no political affiliations and they renounce violence. However, they have been easy targets for many governments.Mathew Schmalz, Associate Professor of Religion, College of the Holy CrossLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/456512015-08-05T00:55:17Z2015-08-05T00:55:17ZJehovah’s Witness hierarchy means child sex abuse goes unreported<p>In 1941, during the second world war, the Menzies government <a href="http://www.flinders.edu.au/sabs/fjhp-files/2008/JaynePersian2008.pdf">banned Jehovah’s Witnesses</a>. This gave them the distinction of being the only Christian religious body to be banned in Australia during the 20th century. </p>
<p>Over the past week, Jehovah’s Witnesses have again appeared in news headlines after the <a href="http://www.childabuseroyalcommission.gov.au/media-centre/media-releases/2015-07/public-hearing-into-the-jehovah%E2%80%99s-witnesses">Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse</a> cross-examined their leaders and scrutinised their policies. </p>
<h2>Who are Jehovah’s Witnesses?</h2>
<p>Jehovah’s Witnesses are mostly known in Australia as suburban door-knockers. They grew out of an American Protestant Bible study group established by Charles Taze Russell in the early 1870s. Some of his adherents had arrived in Australia by 1896. </p>
<p>Russell stressed a particular belief that the end of the world was near, and that Christ would destroy all worldly kingdoms and replace them with a paradise earth. </p>
<p>Russell believed that this paradise was open to all who would accept the message. Thus, the sect had a moral and spiritual obligation to spread the word to as many people as possible. </p>
<p>As the end of the present system was imminent, Russell advised the Witnesses not to vote, hold public office or serve in the military. Jehovah’s Witnesses are therefore known as politically neutral, “separate to the world”, and as enthusiastic preachers of God’s Kingdom.</p>
<p>Since that time, the organisation has <a href="http://www.jw.org/en/jehovahs-witnesses/activities/ministry/how-many-jehovahs-witnesses-2014/">grown</a> to around eight million active members worldwide, including 65,000 in Australia. All members are subject to a strict patriarchal (and insular) hierarchy, led by an all-male “Governing Body” in New York. </p>
<p>Children are subject to parents; women are subject to men; ordinary male members are subject to local bodies of elders. These elders handle any issues of sin or dissent in their congregations. They form what is known as a “judicial committee” (or church court) <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=38SYXalMLeQC&hl=en">in cases of serious wrongdoing</a>, like an allegation of child sexual abuse.</p>
<h2>Why the system fails victims of child abuse</h2>
<p>Jehovah’s Witnesses do not report child abuse to authorities. Instead, they convene an in-house judicial committee, which is fraught with difficulty because they rely on a “two-witness rule” (based on the Bible’s book of Deuteronomy, 19:15). </p>
<p>This means that two eyewitnesses must be produced for every allegation of child molestation. As royal commission chairman Peter McClellan <a href="http://www.childabuseroyalcommission.gov.au/case-study/636f01a5-50db-4b59-a35e-a24ae07fb0ad/case-study-29,-july-2015,-sydney.aspx">put it</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>The girl or woman would have to confront ultimately three men in the presence of the abuser and without moral support.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The elder’s handbook – a secret document tendered to the royal commission – notes that if the accused denies any wrongdoing, much thought must be given to questions such as:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>What is the level of his [sic] spirituality? Do all the elders on the body believe that he can be trusted with children?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>As to the victim, questions deemed to be relevant include:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Is the child or his parents known to be serious, mature? Is his memory consistent, or is it intermittent, or does it involve repressed memories?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In a worst-case scenario for the accused, he/she would be disfellowshipped (excommunicated), with still no general announcement to the congregation or reporting to the police. </p>
<p>If an abuser is <a href="http://www.childabuseroyalcommission.gov.au/case-study/636f01a5-50db-4b59-a35e-a24ae07fb0ad/case-study-29,-july-2015,-sydney.aspx">“repentant”</a>, they will be “reproved” – meaning effectively that nothing is made public or reported, but that the elders “keep an eye on” the abuser. In many cases, nothing at all is done.</p>
<p>Ex-Jehovah’s Witness activists, including abuse victims, have begun speaking out over the past decade, particularly in Australia. In 2002, Channel Nine’s current affair programme Sunday aired an expose of Wollongong’s Robert Souter, who had abused boys in the 1980s. One victim <a href="http://www.silentlambs.org/Souter.htm">recalled</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>My parents approached the church elders and told them what had happened. They were told they shouldn’t go to the police but should pray more and leave it to Jehovah.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The royal commission has shown that nothing has changed since that time in Jehovah’s Witness policy. Of the 1006 case files submitted to the commission this year, <a href="http://www.childabuseroyalcommission.gov.au/case-study/636f01a5-50db-4b59-a35e-a24ae07fb0ad/case-study-29,-july-2015,-sydney.aspx">not one perpetrator</a> was reported to authorities by the church.</p>
<p>In 2012, a survivor of child sexual abuse was <a href="https://www.revealnews.org/article/california-court-guts-child-abuse-ruling-against-jehovahs-witnesses/">awarded</a> US$23.8 million in punitive and compensatory damages against the legal entity of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society, in California. The Jehovah’s Witnesses fought this ruling and the damages have been reduced on appeal. But, an increasing number of lawsuits continue to be filed.</p>
<p>The Jehovah’s Witnesses organisation needs to re-think its two-witness rule and begin reporting child sexual abuse to the proper, secular authorities.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/45651/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jayne Persian does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Jehovah’s Witnesses do not report child abuse to authorities. Instead, they convene an in-house judicial committee, which is fraught with difficulty because they rely on a “two-witness rule”.Jayne Persian, Postdoctoral Research Associate in History, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.