I think that the vision that Walter’s post offers of the legitimate sphere or religious community making is too narrow. The real debates in my mind are not about whether religions should dominate and infuse the state (I do not believe that it should) or whether the state should dominate and control worship communities (I do not believe that it should). Rather, the contested ground lies in the intermediate institutions of society — universities, businesses, hospitals, professional associations, social service providers, and so on. As I understand it, Walter, you tend to see these kinds of institutions as “public” or “secular” etc. This is by no means, however, self-evidently the case and often constituting such institutional spaces in “secular” or “public” terms requires the deployment of the coercive power of the state. They aren’t naturally or inherently “secular” or “public” unless we create norms and laws that require them to be so. I think that it is legitimate to think of such norms and laws as threats to religious freedom because they will tend to coerce, limit, and constrain the ability of religious believers and communities to generate such intermediate institutions and infuse them with religious values. Indeed, in the end I think that such moves will tend to weaken intermediate institutions in generally leaving individuals with fewer and fewer points of connection and association between the state and intimate associations such as the family and networks of friends. This would be a loss.

I think that same sex marriage is actually a poor site at which to debate such issues and resist the creation of norms and laws that will tend to homogenize intermediate institutions along broadly speaking philosophically liberal and secular lines. However, I don’t think it is unreasonable to see the entrenching of such norms and the laws they breed as threatening religious freedom and being worth resisting. One of the things that I find unattractive about the Dutch solution hat you describe is the relative weakness of intermediate institutions before the “public” norms of that quite properly govern the state.

This does not meant that I think intermediate institutions are wholly private or beyond the legitimate concern of the state. Ultimately for practical reason (Latter-day Saints are a tiny minority) and principled reasons (human flourishing requires the availability of a range of social options), I want the economy of intermediate institutions to be pluralistic. This may require careful regulation of institutions or communities that occupy “choke points” in the economy or in society. However, such regulation should be aimed at maintaining the conditions for pluralism rather than creating a homogenized world based on public norms of liberty, equality, and secularity. Generally speaking this is a negotiation that liberals and social democrats have handled badly and a set of concerns to which conservatives have been far more sensitive. Accordingly, it is the kind of thing that I worry about in moments of liberal triumph.

However, that type of freedom is still part of the collective definition of self of the denomination in question. When the denomination moves into the political sphere – which for part of the US churches indeed is a historical given – they are in a different arena, or field. The drive to extend one’s influence to national or international politics is religious, but the arena itself is political, and the freedom to operate in that field is a political freedom, a democratic one, to influence others of a different persuasion and try to make your minority voice a majority one. Then the values you have developed by grace of your religious freedom are transported into another debate, which is in principle not a religious one. In this arena you try to convince others or outvote them, but not convert them. So I do want to draw a conceptual line between the two freedoms. The reason to insist on this distinction is the huge emotional load that ‘religious freedom’ carries, and that hampers the debate. If Clarke (#14) is right, and the main debates are on public symbols, even more reason to distinguish between the two.

When the church takes a stand, such as on Proposition 8, it moves into a political arena, using its freedom in the political field. If I disagree with the church in that position, I still see myself as a loyal member of the church.

In this sense while part of the debate is over practical rights and government responsibilities the main debate is very much more over tokens and symbols continuing that debate that’s been ongoing for some time.

Let me suggest that there are possible historical reasons for what strikes me as the rather crabbed notion of religious freedom that you articulate. Europe developed strong institutions and norms of government control long before it developed strong norms of either individual freedom or democracy. For most of European history religion was an aspect of this administrative state. The traditions in the United States are quite different. We developed strong norms of democracy and individual freedom before we developed centralized government bureaucracies, and for most of our history religious institutions have been free of the state and those institutions that were arms of the state in our early history — Congregationalists, Unitarians, and Episcopalians — have been bit players in the religious economy compared to the disestablished sects, e.g. Methodists and Baptists. As a result of these divergent traditions, European administrative apparatuses are more efficient and rationalized that American administrative apparatuses. They are also more aggressive vis-a-vis those intermediate institutions of society that stand between the individual and the state. American churches have also tended to be far more vibrant than their European counterparts.

For what is is worth, I think that the Church should always think of itself as a minority religion in a tolerant but potentially hostile society. Hence, I think it should be politically modest and ought to aggressively support liberal institutions and practices. Hence, as a Latter-day Saint I agree with some of what you say. On the other hand, as an American lawyer, I’ll pass on freedom of religion as freedom of worship.

Cultural perception: read the reactions in the nineteenth century to the Mormon polygamous marriages. All over the world people thought it was a horrible joke and that Mormons had no understanding of the gravity of marriage…

Thanks, Walter, for an insightful and perspective-broadening post.