A Wall of Containment?
The American Myth of Religious Freedom
by Kenneth R. Craycraft, Jr.
Dallas, Texas: Spence Publishing Co., 1999.
(226 pages; $27.95, cloth)
by Gerald J. Russello
The experience of reading Kenneth Craycraft’s The American Myth of Religious Freedom is much like that of the characters in the recent science-fiction movie The Matrix. In the film, a group of computer hackers discover that the “real” world in which they live is actually an artificially created construct, designed to deceive humanity into believing in a world that does not in fact exist so that humans do not revolt against the computers who have assumed control.
In this controversial book, political theorist Kenneth Craycraft outlines a world that he contends is also false and designed to enforce compliance with its masters. Craycraft’s argument, in a nutshell, is that the United States is living under a mythical belief called “religious freedom,” which is protected by a First Amendment drafted to protect that freedom. The truth, Craycraft contends, is far different—and far worse. Religious freedom is, in fact, a myth because “[r]ather than protect authentic freedom of religious thought and practice . . . [t]he American myth has given rise to a set of symbols, rites, and institutions which always subject religion to itself, and often positively hinder religious practice” (original emphasis). Rather than protect something called “religious freedom” from governmental power—as the myth has normally been understood by those under its spell—the First Amendment instead shields state power from interference from religious belief, and reduces religious faith to opinion.
To support this powerful critique of a bedrock of the American system, Craycraft examines the work of four figures, three of whom are of importance to the contemporary understanding of religious liberty: John Locke, James Madison, and Thomas Jefferson. The fourth figure is the Jesuit political theorist John Courtney Murray. Murray was largely responsible for the Roman Catholic Church’s Declaration on Religious Liberty, which was issued during the Second Vatican Council and which, it is thought, “modernized” the Catholic Church’s views concerning religious freedom. Craycraft argues instead that the views expressed by Murray and the Declaration, properly understood, provide a different and stronger basis for religious freedom than the American “myth.”
Through a close reading of several key texts, such as Locke’s A Letter Concerning Toleration and Madison’s Memorial and Remonstrance, as well as a discussion of the controversy surrounding Virginia’s adoption of its statute on religious freedom, Craycraft argues that Jefferson and Madison, following Locke, recast the understanding of religious faith in order to align it with an emerging secular liberalism derived from the Enlightenment. This altered understanding, by maintaining outward signs of adherence to the traditional understanding, was able to eliminate any possible opposition from religious believers to liberal thought, and it deprived religion of grounds on which to oppose it.
Locke, Jefferson, and Madison made the following two crucial alterations to the traditional Western understanding of religious faith. First, they shifted the focus of religious belief from the Church—understood as an institution ordained by God to spread the divine message—to the individual; and second, they advanced the view that toleration, not dogma or fidelity to God’s Word, was the defining feature of any “true religion.”
These two moves, especially the second, may not be all that harmful; who can argue against toleration? Yet, as Craycraft convincingly demonstrates, this toleration moves only one way, from religion toward liberalism, and not the other way around. That is, liberal thinking, such as that expressed by the First Amendment, will tolerate only those religions that already accept (or are made to accept) liberal premises about the meaning of toleration, the nature of faith, and the basis for individual rights. Those that do not are simply not acceptable within the liberal state.
The first shift, from church to individual, arises from Locke’s view of freedom of conscience as a “pre-political” right, i.e., a right that can be asserted against any other individual, and even against a church or God himself. This “freedom” in turn, has resulted in the intensely individualistic understanding characteristic of religion in America, especially in American forms of Christianity. “In the American religion, whatever grace is available is given in an inward experience of illumination, apart from community. Any sense of corporate identity is simply the serendipitous coming together of those who have had a similar individual experience.” Since there can be no “teaching authority” due to the individualistic nature of faith, churches are therefore accidental, and can serve no real doctrinal or corporate function. They are merely congeries of individuals who happen to believe the same way, and not institutions separate and apart from their members that are imbued with a sacred trust.
This secularized understanding of faith has a political complement. Churches can have no independent juridical or political existence apart from what the state wishes to grant them for its own purposes, such as moral education or helping to keep civic peace. Only individuals have freedom, and their freedom to believe has no connection whatsoever to churches as corporate entities. Therefore, no church can correct the beliefs of its members, because it has no separate right or ability to teach “truth.” While the state also cannot enforce particular beliefs, it can constrain or restrict the expression of beliefs, or the behaviors predicated on them. Thus, Craycraft argues, Locke allows the Church no power to influence the polity, while granting the state power over both churches (since they have no rights or independent existence) and individuals (insofar as their beliefs occasion conduct deemed injurious to the state).
Locke’s second innovation concerns the content of belief. Locke establishes tolerance as the central doctrine of Christianity, rather than doctrinal purity or clear theological teaching. Locke denies the possibility of there even being any such thing as a “true opinion” concerning matters of faith. Thus, freedom of conscience cannot be questioned by secular or ecclesiastical authority. “Locke removes the possibility of religious truth from the equation, and thus, of course, makes all religious belief irrational except religious belief which says that religious belief is irrelevant.” Toleration, therefore, becomes only a mask for a pronounced agnosticism about the existence of truth. The force of this attack against traditional Christian notions of church sovereignty and the importance of doctrine was hidden by Locke’s rhetoric, which seemed to present its argument along lines compatible with Christian orthodoxy.
Gerald J. Russello is Editor of The University Bookman and a Fellow of the Chesterton Institute at Seton Hall University.
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