Story of My Books # 23 - Religious Freedom in a Secular Age

I am not a lawyer, I have no expertise in human rights legislation, but I do have an interest in religion, law, society, and promoting political pluralism!

For me, it all began in 2016 when the Catholic Archbishop of Tasmania, Julian Porteous, was scheduled to appear before a human rights tribunal for a leaflet his diocese produced explaining what Catholics believed about marriage and their opposition to same-sex marriage. This was during the heigh of the same-sex marriage debate in Australia. The leaflet itself was pastoral and not polemical and was an attempt to explain to parents with children at Catholic schools what the Catholic Church believed about marriage. The leaflet began by affirming that “every man, woman and child has great dignity and worth which can never be taken away. This includes those who experience same-sex attraction.” It also affirmed, “The Catholic Church opposes all forms of unjust discrimination.” However, one activist believed the leaflet was an attack on the LGBTI community, lodged a complaint with the state human rights commissioner, and the commissioner said the archbishop had a case to answer. Thus, we had a scenario where a Catholic bishop was being hauled before a tribunal because he did - with alleged malice of forethought - conspire to teach Catholic beliefs … to Catholics.

Well, that sent me down the rabbit hole of: What is the actual law about religious freedom in Australia? Which in turn led me to investigating international human rights laws on religious freedom. Then exploring secularism - oh boy, that was a surprise - I learned that secularism is six different things and, if done properly, is the friend of religious freedom not its adversary. How do we avoid weaponizing religion against sexual minorities? How do we avoid government forcing religious bodies to do things against their religious convictions in the name of “equality”?

That is why I wrote Religious Freedom in a Secular Age. I argue that:

• Secularism is a good thing. Secularism is about creating space for people of all faiths and none. Secularism means that there are some places where religion is not allowed to matter like in government. And there are places that are immune from government interference in religion. Secularism means that we don’t want to live in a theocracy and we don’t want the government telling us how to do our religion.

• When it comes to conflicts between LGBTIQ+ rights and Religious Freedom, both of which are good in themselves, we need to resolve those conflicts based on managing differences in diversity, rather than relying on a hierarchy of identities and rights.

• The biggest dangers we face are “civil totalism” whereby a government believes that it has the right to direct and control the consciences of its citizens towards ends congruent with its progressive ideals; but also “Christian nationalism” whereby the threat of progressive coercion in matters of religion is met by giving a vaguely Christian thug carte blanche to defeat and destroy his enemies and hopefully his enemies are yours and not you!

• We need strategies to help us contribute to the political pluralism of society and resist autocracies of the left and right, what I call the “Thessalonian Option.”

Unfortunately, the situation in Australia since I wrote this book has continued to deteriorate.

The federal government was unable to pass an anti-religious discrimination bill due to the legislation being watered down or even used to minimize religious freedom.

The Victorian government passed a law in 2021 against gay conversion therapy and gender suppression. Now the intention of the law is good and is supported by all major religious bodies, namely, to ban gay conversion therapy as cruel and inhumane. I support that too! However, the legislation gives a definition of gender and sexual identity suppression that was very, very broad that it explicitly criminalized certain types of prayers, the attorney general said that “informal conversations” can be used as evidence in a complaint/prosecution, and government officials have expressly said that any mention of “celibacy” in relation to LGBTI people can warrant complaint/prosecution. I have celibate gay Christian friends and if they share their story, their journey with others, outside the pulpit, they could be subject to a human rights complaint. To date, nobody has been prosecuted under this law, which means it is either doing its job as a deterrent, or, it was not needed in the first place.

Then in 2022 we had the Andrew Thorburn saga. The new CEO of a football club was asked to resign by his club, not for anything he said or did, but because the church he served on the board of had traditional beliefs about family, marriage, and abortion. It was employment termination by religious association. The club later apologized and made a payment to a charity at Thorburn’s request. What the club did was illegal!

Now, in 2023, the Australian Law Reform Commission has produced a report to the Australian government which in my reading is an attempt to circumvent Australia’s commitments to international religious freedom law.

At the moment, 90% of my invited speaking engagements are to talk about religious freedom, secularism, and church-state relationships. So, obviously, this book is meeting a need in both Australia and the USA!

My view is that Australia needs federal laws that include an anti-religious discrimination bill and a positive statement on religious freedom based on the international covenant of civil and political rights.

The situation in the USA is different, most religious freedom cases fair well before SCOTUS, but again, there is the same religious freedom vs. LGBTIQ+ debates which are regrettable, there is not yet a balance of rights to everyone’s satisfaction in the USA.

At the end of the day, my goal is this. Everyone, whether they are God-fearing, Gay, or both; whether they are Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Sikh, or “no religion,” everyone should be able “to sit under their own vine and fig tree and none shall make them afraid” (Micah 4:4).

There’s a terrific review of the book by Jordon Ballor from Religion and Liberty.

Otherwise, check out some interviews I’ve done about the book: