What’s Wrong with the World

The basic tension is between the domestic policy conservatives and foreign policy hawks. Those two factions are not exclusive in practice, even though they are in theory, as I have evangelical friends who thought proselytizing to Muslims was an important reason to invade Iraq.

The basic tension is between those two groups, provided that the latter encompasses the corporatist, "business is the business of America" types, whose interests overlap significantly with those of the hawks. None of my evangelical friends and associates are quite so odd as yours, but the tendency is pronounced in certain quarters of evangelicalism, as witness this piece of geopolitical innocence, discussed here. There is an anticivilizational undertone in certain strains of evangelicalism, let it suffice to observe.

Note to all commenters: Discussion of any issues broached in this thread, or in the linked threads, is welcome. Comments straying from these issues will be policed.

I'm willing to believe that the open letter to Pat Robertson embodies innocence/ignorance about the Muslim motives, the dangers of an independent Kosovo, etc. In fact, that sounds about right.

But I do have this feeling knocking about in my head that at one point I knew some things I wished I didn't know about Bishop Artemije. There was a controversy in First Things, and I believe he was the bishop (correct me if I'm wrong) who was on one side of it. There were allegations that I had no way of verifying or falsifying, on both sides, but it left me taking an agnostic stance at least to his take on things. (Again, if he is the Orthodox bishop I'm thinking of.)

And it certainly is true that the Orthodox have been complicitous in oppressing evangelicals in some of those countries over the years. My dissertation director was Orthodox (an adult convert from Anglicanism) and he was very frank about this and thought a great thing. He expressly told me that he doesn't believe in religious freedom and thinks that evangelical churches should be suppressed in Orthodox countries! I think sometimes people who have historically had one sort of problem tend to take the position that something different is bound to be better. This, of course, may be radically false, but it's the kind of human error I can imagine people's making.

So I'll grant you naivete about the good intentions of the Muslims, but I wouldn't say that this letter manifests an anti-civilizational undertone. I just think these guys really think their observations on the ground indicate that they would be better off in terms of religious freedom in an independent Kosovo.

I think Mr. Larison and you are most certainly correct. Mr. Sullivan places policy prescriptions as the final end of the Christianist, and policy prescription can never be a final end. The only unity the various policy positions express is opposition to on-demand abortion and, more importantly to Mr. Sullivan, gay marriage.

I think what is commonly be described as marginality of Christians is in fact the lack of cohesion or the disparity of opinion among Christians. Christians for the most part have abandoned the final ends, and they have instead sought policy prescriptions. One need not look further than the responses to Anna Quindlin's piece on having legal recource against mothers who abort their children.

Well, I intend 'innocence' as a pejorative; there is simply no legitimate excuse for ignorance of the nature of Islam, and its history in the region of the world in which one proposes to spread the Gospel. Still less is there a reason to place the interests of one's sect above the interests of one's faith, and above the interest of one's civilization.

I am not conversant with the controversy, whatever it may have concerned, in which Bishop Artemije figured. What I know is that you are correct that there exists an enormous reservoir of resentment among the Orthodox over the activities of evangelicals in the Orthodox world. But this is not ungrounded resentment, resentment arising from nothing more substantial than contempt for the other. Now, my father has supported, since time immemorial, evangelical missions work in the former Soviet Union, so I speak from firsthand experience, knowing both the missionaries and their methodologies.

And they lie. Their deceptions may not be culpable, owing to sheer ignorance. But they know nothing of Church history, save the caricatures of it that they read in Protestant polemics, let alone the specific history of the Orthodox world and its peoples. And so they spread the Gospel - as they understand it - in much the same manner that a bull browses for dinnerware in a china shop, "deconstructing" the history of the only Christianity many of their marks know as fraudulent, the product of cynical, dissembling prelates bent on dominating the masses (recapitulating, in effect, if not intent, earlier Communist agitprop), portraying the lot of it as a perversion of Christianity, and often enough, a broad road leading to perdition. This sort of mutilation of history has an effect utterly other than it would have here in the West, where we are accustomed to theological diversity, had the Reformation, and so on. The Orthodox world never experienced those historical traumas, and so Orthodoxy is implicated in (what remains of) the civilizations of that part of the world in a way that no form of Christianity quite is, any longer, in the West. We, in the West, can accept religious diversity in large part because it is an aspect of our past; our past is differentiated; but for many in the Orthodox world, being informed that the formative influence upon their civilization (other than the immediate communist past) is illegitimate is to be informed that there is something defective about their civilization - and Protestantism does engender a completely different civilization.

There are also the material inducements that evangelicals often offer, which seem charitable in the abstract, but exploitative in the circumstances. Oftentimes, the parents will be targeted through the children.

Given the circumstances, it is a bit rich for American Christians, of whatever confession, to expect that Orthodox religious authorities should respond as their counterparts in America would respond. When a nation is laid low by decades of communist tyranny, its heritage partially extirpated, a campaign of evangelism as enticement and delegitimation is morally reprehensible. Evangelicals should be ashamed of such things.

Those missionaries on the ground in Kosovo may have grounds for thinking as they do, but as I said, I don't believe that their reasons are legitimate excuses for supporting geopolitical folly. Their position reduces to the contention that because the Orthodox are mean to their sect, another Islamic state should be created in Europe. Regardless of their degree of culpability, their demand is objectively anticivilizational.

And yes, I do intend to argue that absolute religious liberty is not a categorical good.

Well, so how far would you take that? Should they be forbidden to gather to worship? Should they be thrown in prison if they do so or if they are ministers or other officials of such evangelical churches? Should their churches be nailed shut? Should they be fined for evangelizing?

The more I think about it, the more unreasonable the whole line of reasoning here strikes me as being: It's okay for the Orthodox bishops to try in various ways to shut down the evangelicals, but the evangelicals are supposed to place the greatest priority on Christian comity and interdenominational unity in the face of the Islamist threat when it comes to their stances on policy? Isn't that asking rather a lot? I can certainly agree that they don't have a strong enough sense of the seriousness of the Islamist threat, but to defend in one breath the bishops' being "mean" to them while at the same time demanding that they think of the Orthodox as their Christian brothers and place Christian unity first hardly seems fair.

It isn't just that culturally it's the way we do things in the U.S. that we don't try to outlaw (for example) fiery Baptist anti-Catholic rhetoric. It sounds to me like the kind of rhetoric the evangelicals are using against the Orthodox church bears a lot of resemblance to that. Calling someone's Church the "Whore of Babylon," accusing Catholics of idolatry, and opining that they are all going to hell is hardly historically informed or tactful, and it certainly isn't true, but it _shouldn't_ be illegal. It's one thing to outlaw the teaching of jihad, and I'm all for it. It's quite another to outlaw intra-Christian squabbles about who is and isn't going to heaven!

You say that Russians and others in those regions have trouble with religious diversity. Well, they should get over it. Meanwhile, the Orthodox shouldn't just ask that the evangelicals suck it up and shut up when the Orthodox try to pass anti-cult laws to force them to close down shop. The evangelicals in that letter are obviously being short-sighted. But that's what we should criticize them for, _not_ for failing to have a sense of profound Christian unity with prelates who--apparently quite blatantly and with the full rhetorical support of their brethren here in the U.S.--are trying to have them persecuted.

One issue here is the lack of information that the Orthodox in Russia have on these various groups. They don't know the difference between the Children of God and the Assemblies of God, and why should they be expected to, when the American evangelists of whatever stripe, either cultic or non-cultic, make little or no effort to communicate or work with them?

More often than not they move into an area, set up shop, and the attempts at bovine larceny begin without so much as a 'by your leave.'

That may be regrettable, Rob, but it is no excuse whatsoever for seeking legal repression of any sort whatsoever. None. No excuse, no repression. Not fines. Not outlawing store-front churches. Not telling people they can't "proselytize." Not trying to prevent youth activities and Sunday schools. None of it. It's all inappropriate. I really don't have that much sympathy. Sheep-stealing or cow-stealing, if indeed it is "stealing," just isn't this horrific thing such that we should start passing anti-proselytization laws and anti-cult laws against little sects that engage in it. Not even a little bit close.

Unconditioned religious liberty is neither a universal human right nor a dictate of the natural law. There cannot obtain a natural right to proselytize individuals, without limitation, on behalf on one's fundamentally communal commitments; to argue that such a right does obtain is merely to argue a specific form of the case that the preferences of the individual are categorical trumps for the common good of the community.

This should be patently obvious from a consideration of the extreme example of Islam; this is not, by any means, to argue that Islam and evangelicalism are in any way comparable; it is merely to note that there can be no universal claim to absolute religious liberty, that religious liberty is therefore circumstantial. As regards the specific case of evangelicals in the Orthodox world, well, frankly speaking, they are violating more than a few Christian precepts. They bear false witness against their brethren, disseminating all manner of falsehoods about their doctrine, history, and motivations. They poach believers from other confessions, on the basis of those falsehoods and slanders. They abjure the biblical model of evangelization by targeting children, as opposed to heads of households, employing the children as props to induce materially impoverished and vulnerable adults into their communions. They often utilize other material inducements to encourage attendance and more. And, as the letter from the naifs in Kosovo indicates, they insinuate themselves into political matters which are entirely beyond their limited spheres of competency, and which, moreover, they have no legitimate business pronouncing upon. No missionary has anything authoritative to say about the status of Kosovo, or Russian policy in Chechnya - something I have personally heard from time to time.

The reality is that, substantively, the evangelicals are wrong about the sacramental churches, and are not entitled to take umbrage when members of those churches take offense at their misconduct and absence of charity. If they wish to propagate their doctrines, let them do so without guile, without deceit, without historical and theological fabrications, and let them preach to the heads of unchurched households. This, and nothing less, is what Christian charity mandates.

Nevertheless, this is merely what one Christian confession is entitled to require of another in the land of the former's pre-eminence. As for legislative considerations, if the members of a community judge that a sect is injurious to the common good, they are entitled to circumscribe, or proscribe, its activities. Imprisonment is not the appropriate response, prudentially or otherwise, but the levying of fines and such is acceptable. The American settlement of religious pluralism and Church-state relations is not ordained by natural law, and enjoying such conditions is not a natural right, so the evangelicals who will not hew to the straight and narrow of charity should suck it up and deal with it. They sow intolerance of other Christians, and should not marvel when it is requited. That which a man sows, so also he reaps.

There are many problems as Maximos has pointed out. From my reading, evangelical missionaries really got themselves into trouble in Russia when they targeted the State. If you undermine the State who gives you the pleasure of evangelizing it, don't be surprised when you're kicked out.

While Russia has been proactive about the matter, the Vatican has given indications that it would have no issue with Brazil targeting the Pentecostal and Evangelical sects. The Maronites in Lebannon weren't too kind to some Bapists who set up shop either. The bigger picture is that for the rest of the world religion is instrinsic to the culture, and in America religion is really seen as sub-cultural. Having a different religion makes ne a member of a different culture in other places. Despite calling ourselves a Christian nation, we wouldn't say that St. Louis Catholic and a St. Louis Lutheran were in two different cultures.

Yes, when evangelicals become flacks for some or other form of political liberalism - which is what it is, objectively speaking - contrary to the policies and interests of their host nation, then they have conflated the Gospel with some strange gospel Christianity does not recognize.

Maximos, I disagree profoundly. Now, I never said there was a right to absolute religious freedom in one sense of that phrase. If people engage in human sacrifice as part of their religion, they should be stopped. If they engage in or urge others to engage in acts of murder (as in the case of jihad) as part of their religion, they should be stopped.

But without ever using the word "right" nor assuming such an abstract concept I can and do say that it is definitely _wrong_ to impose legal sanctions for the supposed crimes against charity that you have listed--for evangelizing children rather than "heads of households," for not confining evangelistic activities to the otherwise unchurched, for teaching what are in fact falsehoods about ecclesiastical history, for teaching that members of other Christian denominations are not going to heaven. I don't even agree that "Christian charity" mandates against every single one of these, particularly not the bits about not evangelizing children and confining one's activities to the unchurched. There are, of course, some sorts of "bearing false witness" that are rightly susceptible of legal redress in the form of suit for libel. But I doubt very much that the "bearing false witness" in these cases is of that sort.

And there's not just a difference of degree between these things--even the ones that I would agree are in some sense morally wrong--and the sorts of things that are legitimately proscribable. There is a difference of kind.

I doubt that the evangelicals would mind someone's "taking umbrage" (great phrase). What they mind and speak out about are the legal sanctions you support.

And I suppose the political issues in question are _not_ beyond the competence of Bishop Artemije? That may be true, in fact. He might be right, and they might be wrong. But aren't you being more than a bit patronizing? Stupid low-Protestant rubes vs. learned and reverend bishop? And the outrage: That they should _dare_ to write a letter to a U.S. evangelical leader giving their opinion of the situation on the ground! Well, Pat Robertson can make up his own mind. I think they're wrong about the danger of Islamism and probably wrong about whether Kosovo should be independent. Probably they are even wrong to think that this would ultimately be best for their own flocks. But I'm certainly not going to use this fact as part of a larger argument that dummies like this who have the gall, inter alia, to write letters to America giving their opinion on public policy deserve to be fined for existing as Christian denominations!

There can be no disputing the fact that we disagree quite profoundly. If the desired liberty of evangelicals to proselytize by means of sins against charity is not a right, or not grounded in some fundamental right, what, precisely is it? It would appear that it is nothing more than a judgment that these particular Christians, in these circumstances, should be permitted to do as they will; perhaps, as with so many evangelicals I know, this is a matter of that 'tic' many Americans simply possess concerning the Orthodox and the Russians, etc.

I find literally incomprehensible the notion that it can be licit to evangelize children as means, employing children of God who have not yet attained reason and judgment as props to lure adults into churches they might otherwise shun, or to pilfer the flocks of other confessions, something one does only if one regards them as somehow sub-Christian - a manifest sin against charity. Various forms of bearing false witness, if this is considered equivalent to libel, may not be susceptible of redress by means of the courts, but this is to presuppose that the Anglo-American settlements on religion and public authority are normative, and that it cannot be licit for another nation to structure that relationship differently. Perhaps, in certain Orthodox nations, they might not permit such matters to be brought before the courts; perhaps they simply legislate against them. Ultimately, this is merely an argument that Orthodox nation X must be wrong because it is not like America, because it effectively and substantively privileges one confession publicly and authoritatively. That, it seems to me, can only be wrong if it is wrong by natural law - which, I think I am fairly safe in contending, it is not. If there obtains no natural right to the set of religious liberties enjoyed by all Americans, then nations failing to instantiate this set of liberties cannot be reproached for neglecting to do so.

The distinctions of kind are assuredly real, viscerally so, in fact, as we are reminded daily. Unless, however, the distinctions yield a duty, such that public authority is obligated not only to recognize the distinctions, but to enshrine them in law, thus bestowing rights upon those who might commit those minor, private offenses unworthy of the notice of the law, they cannot generate the condemnation you tease out of them. Unless public authority is under a natural obligation to enforce the distinctions, and unless individuals possess a natural right - an entitlement - to that enforcement, they possess no normative force. Essentially, the argument that such distinctions entail certain policy consequences is an argument that modern Western doctrines of church-state relations, and of the relationship of the individual to the community, are in some sense universal. Adjudging a policy wrong, and discriminating between the things the policy proscribes and something qualitatively worse, do not constitute a dispositive proof of injustice.

One might argue that the Orthodox are in error, prudentially speaking, that they misapprehend the circumstances for which they legislate; but this seems rather patronizing. As does the notion that Orthodox nations are obliged to replicate Anglo-American traditions, legal norms, structures, and principles, and the religious sociology of North America.

I'm going to keep this brief, as I've gotta go do some other stuff. Maybe more later.

I do think some Western notions of religious liberty are normative, but not because they are Western, just because they are right. Similarly, e.g., I think Western notions of the way husbands should not treat wives are normative, but not because they are Western, just because wife-beating is in fact wrong. The Western notions of religious liberty I would endorse are what I guess were approximately those of Roger Williams of Rhode Island or some of the American founders, though I can't say I've done an in-depth historical investigation with original sources into his views. I'm going here on the standard history textbook line. Basically, yes, these do enshrine in law a distinction between activities properly religious which are hence not the place of the state to proscribe and activities which, while someone may call them religious, are indeed the proper sphere of government restriction. And I would draw that line somewhere close to that "difference in kind" already discussed. This isn't to say there might not be grey areas. But Vacation Bible School classes for children, to which no parent is obligated to allow his child to go, don't even come remotely close to the line! Certainly I would agree with those Westerners who I think were around at the formation of our country who would have said that it isn't the proper sphere of the government to, in essence, give one Christian denomination what amounts to a government-protected monopoly on religion in a geographical area. And a "religious liberty" that is simply a liberty to think thoughts privately in your house or perhaps teach them to your own children and doesn't extend to being allowed to persuade others of them (unless perhaps they are unchurched heads of households) is not jolly much religious liberty.

Really, I think you ought just to say, with Dr. W., "I don't believe in religious liberty." The term "absolute" added there only serves to make your hearer think you don't believe in religious liberty to blow people up or something outrageous like that.

As for rights talk, I feel I'm being given a Catch-22: Conservatives shy away from rights talk. To some extent understandably so. So I try to cast what I think in terms of wrongs rather than rights. But then I'm told that unless I assert that a person "has a fundamental right" to do X, I can't consistently assert that it's wrong to forbid him to do X. Basically, I'm being told that if I use rights talk, then that's no good, because we're not supposed to believe in such abstract things as rights. But if I don't use rights talk in this case, I can't say that it's wrong to fine people for it!

As for the supposed "tic" Americans have about the Russians, I don't think this is an instance of that at all, assuming such a "tic" to exist. In fact, what your ideas of where evangelicals should be in Orthodox countries reminded me of explicitly, before I ever read this most recent post, is the status of Roman Catholics under Queen Elizabeth, with the major difference being the severity of the punishments involved. But there, too, they were allowed to believe privately in their minds, allowed to teach their own children privately, but not allowed to hold public services or to evangelize others.

I think what is underappreciated is that Russia actually respects religious liberty. Islam, for example, operates rather freely in the Caucuses. Even Lutheranism operates relatively freely in the urban centers. The Vatican has had numerous documents on religious freedom, but openly condemns the activities of evangelicals and presbyterians.

In short, I think both Catholicism and Orthodoxy are saying faith is not religion. The formation of sects is inherently destabilizing and divides the communities and even families.

Now, why would I go and abjure belief in religious liberty, when the abjuration would be insincere? I believe in religious liberty in the same sense, and to the same degree, that I believe in virtually any other temporal liberty, which is to say that I believe in it as one good among many which must be balanced if a community is to preserve the common good. The qualifier, "absolute", though possibly hyperbolic, is an expression of the qualified status of the good of religious liberty; it cannot be affirmed unconditionally - we all concede this, I believe - and so what we are disagreeing about is the location of the lines to be drawn. I believe that a community is entitled to circumscribe that good more narrowly if its members believe such limitations to be essential to the preservation of a given communal substance, ethos, atmosphere, tradition, what have you. Hence, my indifference regarding such institutions as the established churches in certain American colonies and, in later history, states, as well as my relative coolness towards the doctrines of Roger Williams.

Your association of my notions concerning the proper place of evangelicals in Orthodox nations with the status of Catholics under Elizabeth is most unfair, inasmuch as I would not, ideally, restrict their liberties to the household; I would request only such conditions upon their exercise as I have already mentioned, conditions oriented only to the exclusion of manipulative techniques of proselytization. I don't really comprehend the seeming fixation upon the child in Bible school; a child ought not be in Bible school unless the missionaries or ministers are already involved with the parents, because the authority of parents must at all times be honoured. And if it should happen that various benefits are extended to families, either with conditions attached initially, or with the conditions being imposed gradually, as is often the case, then this is simply illegitimate; the Gospel should never be perverted by comingling it with various conveniences and benefactions evangelical missionaries, often supported by wealthy American Christians, are able to disburse.

As regards rights-talk, I am sceptical of rights-talk that is utterly divorced from reference to duties, either those with which the ostensible right is convertible, or those correlative with it. Too often, in my judgment, discussions of religious liberty are theoretically loose, presupposing a normative status for peculiar Western settlements and traditions, few of which are grounded in anything like the natural law; they are mere assertions of the "way we do things and would prefer that they be in all places", mere expressions of desires or wishes. As I have indicated, I do not believe that there can exist a natural right to the enjoyment of/duty of public authority to recognize and secure a religious liberty that overthrows the settled traditions of a people, causes public discord, sows confusion and enmity, or otherwise injures the common good. Private judgment is not a fundamental good of human flourishing, while integration into an ordered, just community is such a good. The difference between those religious bodies that are granted freedom for their operations in Russia, and those that are denied such freedom, is precisely respect for the obligations of charity and the common good.

a manifest sin against charity

When "truth" is the topic, quite a few questionable behaviors can easily be justified. Who isn't guilty?

MZ Forrest,

So it's meritorious for a government to allow a greater degree of religious freedom to Islam than to Christian "sects"? I think that's fairly outrageous, and it certainly flies in the face of all the concern here that the nasty evangelicals are putting more emphasis on resisting Orthodoxy than resisting Islam. Apparently they aren't the only ones who put more emphasis on resisting fellow Christians than resisting Islam! I cannot possibly agree with the sheer emphasis here on _size_, either, or even length of existence, so that groups that are small or recent are called "sects" and hence somehow justifiably have fewer legal religious liberties than larger and older groups like Lutherans. (This implies nothing against Lutherans.) "Faith is not religion" sounds clever, but here what it clearly means is, "We're not going to give your group the label 'religion' unless you have a long enough history and a big enough membership, and that is then going to be used to restrict your religious liberties." If "the Vatican has given indications that it would have no issue with Brazil targeting the Pentecostal and Evangelical sects," then too bad for the Vatican, and for the umpteenth time, I thank God I'm not Catholic!

Maximos,

Of course if missionaries are _kidnaping_ children or in some other way literally forcing parents to send the children to their meetings, this is wrong. But of course they aren't. Ironically, I'm sure that most such countries have compulsory school attendance laws, so that the very government showing such solicitude for the rights of parents not to have their children wickedly enveigled into listening to evangelicals nevertheless gives government agents (public school teachers) the power to coerce contact with the children even if this is definitely against parents' wishes! It certainly isn't true in the sense that I think you mean it that the missionaries must be _involved_ with the parents first or else they are dishonoring the parents. Parents permit children to attend all manner of things run by people with whom they are not personally involved. And some parents (perhaps unfortunately) choose to let their children run around fairly freely with friends and do not monitor everywhere they go. No doubt they find out that they are involved with these classes run by the missionaries and could then put a stop to it if they disapproved. In fact, in order for them to be offered these inducements you mention, they _have_ to know. At that point, I think it's their business and that it's _you_ who want to interfere with parental prerogatives by removing the option of their children's being exposed to the classes and the parents to the "inducements."

I understand that you have not explicitly and in so many words endorsed outlawing the establishment of public churches and the holding of public meetings by the evangelicals, but as you've given fairly wide latitude to countries who adjudge that a sect is (in some indirect way) "injurious to the common good" and who wish to preserve a communal "substance or ethos" to "circumscribe or proscribe [the sect's] activities," I find it very difficult to believe that you would roundly and loudly condemn laws that said, on these grounds, that evangelicals could not open churches in these countries and hold meetings therein, at least if the punishments were kept to fines.

The business about using children who have not attained the age of reason as a means to an end seems to me a very invidious and uncharitable attribution of motives. (Perhaps the evangelicals about whom all these things about "using children" and "tricking people" are being said should scream that the Orthodox are "telling lies" about them and should try to have the Orthodox legally punished on those grounds!) I have known many, many people who evangelize children directly--at camps, VBS, Sunday School and Christian school. Of course they hope that the whole family will be drawn in as a result of the contact with the children, but they love the children very much as individual and valuable souls and wouldn't do it if they didn't. This is no more "using the children as a means to an end" than it would be using the parents as a means to an end if they happened to make contact with them first and hoped thereby to reach the rest of the family. As for "not having reached the age of reason," parents and other religious teachers constantly convey religious and spiritual content to young children. Since when do we conservatives think you have to have full use of your reason before religion can be taught to you? And parents can and often do permit this communication to take place from people other than themselves.

No, the real truth is that you're treating evangelical Christianity as if it were some sort of harmful substance, like drugs. Hence, it shouldn't be "marketed" to anybody, and it is even more heinous to "market" it to innocent children.

One of the reasons I don't use "rights" talk for every statement that government should not outlaw something is that I believe it has an odd sound to say that one has a right to do something that is wrong. Now, to give an example, I think it is wrong to believe irrationally in weeping icons. I still recall Dr. W's telling me with an amazing amount of credulity in one so intelligent about some of the Orthodox girls in his students' group who, at camp, had found their icons of the Virgin weeping tears of myrrh. This was only one such instance. But it certainly should not be _illegal_ to promulgate such tales. For that matter, even if the girls were tricking the good Professor, this _should not_ be illegal. But to say, "The girls have a right to make up silly stories about weeping icons, and Dr. W. has a right to be foolishly credulous and believe such things" sounds as though it is saying that people have a right to do wrong. Now, _I_ might be willing to use such terminology, but I realize why it has an odd sound. Hence, I stick with saying that it would be _very wrong_ for the government to try to prohibit people to be religiously credulous or even to play on other people's religious credulity by telling them silly stories.

Perhaps an even better example would be this: I think it's wrong for parents to lie to their children and tell them that Santa Claus exists, but I would fight tooth and nail any attempt to outlaw it, because I believe such outlawing would be wrong. Does this mean that I should say, "Parents have a right to lie to their children about Santa Claus"? Okay, if I have to say that, I will. But I don't see why I should have to.

Mind you, this doesn't mean that I necessarily accept the statement that the evangelicals are lying about the Orthodox. While I often defer to Maximos w.r.t. matters of fact in these debates of ours, in this case the partisanship is _so_ strong that I am somewhat skeptical. And I suspect that many of these issues are of such a murky and controversial nature (e.g. what church is the true one, what the private motives of various people are) that charges of _lying_ are apt to be impossible to substantiate.

No, I am not patronizing the Russians by disagreeing with them on this, any more than M Z Forrest and Maximos are patronizing me by disagreeing with me. Nor does this have anything to do with disdaining non-Westerners. I have a very similar disagreement with my fellow Anglo John Locke who, if I recall correctly, argued several hundred years ago that all Protestant sects should have full religious liberty but that Roman Catholics should be restricted!

All of these scenarios you paint - of children being permitted by their parents to associate with whomever they wish, or being permitted to attend certain religious functions which the parents themselves would eschew - are quite beside the point. The legal mechanism utilized to exclude sects of the types that tend to employ techniques of proselytization deemed illicit and undesirable defines them by the duration of their presence in the country, sometimes by their size. It does not directly address the techniques themselves, nor necessarily any discrete instance of misconduct, but circumscribes prospectively the activities of the suspect groups. Any actual misconduct results in an adjustment of status. The point is that the communities involved, and the civil and ecclesiastical authorities involved, have determined that certain practices are deleterious to the common good, that it is, for example, invidious and manipulative to offer poor parents free schooling for their children if only they will attend a sectarian church. There may not exist a positive right to engage in such practices, but neither is there a claim right to be left alone to engage in them. And so the authorities look askance at groups that consider such things licit.

I think that you are getting carried away by your disapproval of the stance of the Orthodox on this matter of the targeting of children. Of course the evangelicals love the children, and are concerned for their immortal souls. However, the Gospel should be embraced for itself, and not on account of, or in conjunction with, benefits disbursed through the contact of the evangelicals with the children. Are the parents converting to Christianity, or to a more convenient mode of existence? When both my Church and the Vatican concur in deeming many of these techniques and strategems contrary to Christian charity, I tend to side with them, and not with judgments that people simply should be permitted to engage in these behaviours.

The root of the controversy lies in the dogmatic certitude of many evangelicals that the history of the Church and her doctrine is a history of falsification and dissimulation. Nevertheless, while I would never countenance a public inquisition with the object of purging such beliefs from the public, there is an objective substance to the history of the Church, just as there is an objective Shakespeare, who wrote certain things and not others, who intended certain things, and not others, whether those other things be the hegemony of a phallocentric discourse or the subversion of such a discourse. This really has nothing to do with the theological question of the location of the True Church, at least not directly. It is, to penetrate to the heart of the matter, objectively false that the primitive doctrine of Christianity was something akin to the teachings of evangelical Protestantism, as this has existed in America; consequently, it is objectively false that this alleged "true doctrine" was suppressed, its adherents repressed, by an ecclesiastical system which is itself a perversion of primitive Christianity. If the Orthodox and Catholic Churches support the circumscription of the activities of groups whose public behaviour is oriented by these falsehoods, well, I then say, "Good for them!"

As for unsubstantiated miracle stories - we Orthodox tend to demand verification, just as do the Catholics - and the fairy tales about Santa Claus, these things are disanalogous with the actual behaviours that bring evangelicals to the attention of the law. And whatever could you mean by stating that you do not necessarily accept the statement that evangelicals lie about the Orthodox? They don't propound falsehoods about the historicity of the Orthodox Church, and about her alleged conspiracy against the truth and the people? Please. These convictions are the reasons they comport themselves as they do!

The root of the controversy lies in the dogmatic certitude

Well, yes, of course. Who isn't guilty?

In my experience as a member of an evangelical church, there is a disturbing propensity on the part of some of these good and godly people to simply assume that the sacramental tradition -- Catholic and Orthodox -- is not authentically Christian. I recall a Sunday school class we took on church history, which treated the 7th through 15th centuries as simply pagan. From Gregory the Great until Luther, it was if there were no Christians on earth. Now I do think there has been some rapprochement between Catholic and Protestants in America in recent decades, a development for which I praise the Lord, but these are baby steps.

The other complication is that so many of the historically Catholic and Orthodox lands are oppressed by nihilism and rigid, complacent unbelief. Obviously evangelism is needed, and if it can't or won't come from the native branch of the great Christian tree, perhaps it will come from a more distant ones.

I'm going to go a different route and say it isn't about truth claims per se. We also need to distinguish between a right against harm owing to religious belief and a right to propogate religious belief. The former is fairly established owing to the reciprocity necessary to ensure peace between peoples. The latter is almost inviolable in the context of the family, but in the context of society can be subjugated under other rights. (I could rephrase these in duty and obligation talk, but I'm feeling lazy at the moment.)

When the pagan tribes of Europe were converted, the missionaries went to the leaders. Maximos can help me with the history, but Russia's entry into Christianity occured when Tsar Nicholas invited the Greeks and Romans to Moscow and choose the Greeks. At another time period, a tsar invited Lutherans and that is how they ended up with Lutheran communities in Moscow and some of the other cities.

I'm not certain that 'dogmatic certitude' is something of which one is guilty, independent of the content of that certitude. In fact, I would argue that guilt adheres to dogmatic certitude only in cases of substantive claims which are knowably false on other grounds, such as that jihad is wicked and unjust, that all non-Protestant Christianities are conspiracies against the people, and so on.

Prince Vladimir was the man.
More history here: http://countrystudies.us/russia/38.htm

Maximos, I know all about the caricatured and silly church history promulgated by evangelicals. I graduated from a college where there was no course in church history but everyone was required to take a class called History of Baptist Beliefs! My 7th-grade Sunday School teacher gave us a course in church history in which every single doggoned weirdo group throughout history was seen as the forebears of the Baptists.

But when it comes to legal sanctions of any sort whatsoever, SO WHAT? I mean, to my mind it's perfectly fine to say, "Gee, these guys have an extremely confused and very incorrect view of history." But it's just plain _nuts_ to say, "Therefore, it's all right to restrict their ability to evangelize." I cannot even begin to see the connection. These are matters of scholarship, not matters for suppression.

It is not a matter of suppressing the scholarship, or pseudo-scholarship, as the case happens to be; it is a matter of suppressing undesirable conduct which evangelicals will justify, ultimately, by reference to such fraudulent scholarship. They regard these behaviours as licit because, in their mind, the Orthodox Church is no church at all, and so it becomes licit to do what one must in order to snatch souls from the maw of hell.

"All of these scenarios you paint - of children being permitted by their parents to associate with whomever they wish, or being permitted to attend certain religious functions which the parents themselves would eschew - are quite beside the point. The legal mechanism utilized to exclude sects of the types that tend to employ techniques of proselytization deemed illicit and undesirable defines them by the duration of their presence in the country, sometimes by their size. It does not directly address the techniques themselves, nor necessarily any discrete instance of misconduct, but circumscribes prospectively the activities of the suspect groups."

This is supposed to be a good thing?

If the points I've made are irrelevant, then it is also irrelevant to talk in high outrage about how terrible it is to "evangelize children as means, employing children of God who have not yet attained reason and judgment as props to lure adults into churches they might otherwise shun, or to pilfer the flocks of other confessions..." In other words, if it is relevant for you to say why you think child evangelism, rather than evangelism very carefully limited to "unchurched heads of households," is so bad, it's relevant for me to say why I think it's not so bad--maybe even good--and why your rhetoric concerning an abrogation of parents' rights seems to me inaccurate.

The bottom line is that, no, I don't see the "undesirable conduct" you've listed as anything remotely justifying legal sanctions. Even giving free schooling to members of particular churches seems to me on its face legitimate. I'm extremely wary of all the talk of "bribing" people to join particular confessions. That's exactly what the Muslims and Hindus say in India when justifying anti-proselytization laws used against Christian missionaries there. The heck with it. It's not wrong to give special help to members of one's own religious group, and the question of whether this will result in people's joining one's group for the wrong reason is (ahem) a _prudential_ one that the group should be permitted to make for itself. If anything, the most serious question there is a spiritual one: Have these people really had a genuine religious conversion experience brought about by God, are their new associations of value to their eternal souls, or are they merely joining the evangelical group for temporal benefits? The government absolutely should _butt out_ of such issues.

And by the way, it's not obvious to me that just because someone is "churched" in some huge, ethnically-defined state church, he really is securely going on his way to heaven and that it is therefore "sheep-stealing" to get him involved in a different sort of church. I may be an Anglican, but I still believe in a personal relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ. It's important.

Well, at least they're not impaling heads as Zippy would do to pornographers, letting their unsanitary heads float in the moats of his castle.

I have a lot more sympathy for Zippy's position. Pornography really is an utterly inexcusable poison of the mind.

Lydia. Dear Lydia. You're putting me in a bind here. Paul put his finger on the thought that has been plaguing me in attempting to follow this thread. I don't pretend to know the "facts on the ground" of the geographical area under discussion (I'm assuming that Jeff does). But as one who is often stricken with admiration for the zealousness of certain evangelicals on American soil (they are my allies more often than not), might the case not be different somewhere else? Since Protestantism was born of a rebellion against (some would say reformation of) Catholic Christianity, whatever these evangelicals are for, they must certainly be against a sacramental understanding of the faith. If this is the nearly uniform and treasured tradition of some country (as it is not here), such that they would hardly know themselves to be who they are without it, why is it wrong for them to take measures to preserve it? There is a lot of room to move here in terms of proscriptions and such, but I don't see it as evil that there should be any at all. As I've told you before, I believe that the state has a duty to Truth, but I worry that your position does not take cognizance of that fact.

On the other hand, a populace that doesn't really treasure its tradition is one not worthy of it. If this is a matter of laws being enacted to hinder proselytization, I say put it to a vote. Let the people decide.

Apologies if I've over-simplified your position.

Yes, with sorrow, Bill, I have to say that I have a stronger opinion here on the importance of religious liberty than I'm inferring you do. No, I don't think you're oversimplifying my position, so don't worry about that. And I would say the same of a Protestant country that took similar steps to preserve its Protestant traditions by restricting Catholic freedoms, as England did for many years, when it was Catholics who eventually benefited from the spread of the notion of religious liberty, or a Roman Catholic country who took similar steps to keep out the Protestants.

I think religious liberty is important in itself, that this includes the liberty to evangelize (though "proselytize" sounds more unpleasant, somehow), and that it's actually not all that hard to see which things lie within the normal sphere of religious liberty and which don't. In fact, I give Jeff a good deal of credit for not trying the tactic of saying that it would be impossible to tell what sorts of things would and wouldn't fit under the rubric of religious liberty as I'm conceiving it. Again, there might be grey areas: For example, the case of the peyote-smoking Indians is probably somewhere near the line, though I'd put it on the side of those things that can legitimately be proscribed.

But, again, offering material "inducements" to people to join churches, evangelizing initially to children, teaching falsehoods about church history: _These_ are supposed to be such grave evils, such matters of public decency and order, that the state is legitimated in proscribing them and fining people for them? This is really nearly beyond my comprehension. It seems to me that any even moderately robust concept of religious liberty as an important good would make it clear that these things are properly speaking strictly _religious_ issues and not matters for punishment by the civil authorities.

The state has a duty to Truth. Well, yes, insofar as that is relevant to those things that are properly functions of the state, it does. But as I've already pointed out, we can easily think of lots of examples where I think we'd all agree that the state shouldn't be messing about enforcing the teaching of truth rather than falsehood. Do you want the state, for example, coming into your local Catholic school and telling the teachers what they must and must not teach in every class as part of upholding its duty to truth? Of course not. Do you want the state telling your Catholic priest that he may not teach that homosexuality is abnormal, because the state has a "duty to truth" and the elected officials believe that statement to be false? Of course not. So the state's duty to truth cannot mean that it is the proper role of the state to go around monitoring the things everybody says to make sure everybody is teaching truth (as conceived by the state) all the time. I would say that the same applies to evangelical teachings on the Sacraments or church history! Why should it not?

I'll get back to you. It's late and I'm working on something utterly unimportant.

Lydia, my statement concerning the irrelevance of positive scenarios and portrayals was intended only to emphasize that the Russians have already determined that the negatives outweigh them. In other words, they will remain irrelevant unless the Russians reconsider their policies.

'...it's not obvious to me that just because someone is "churched" in some huge, ethnically-defined state church, he really is securely going on his way to heaven and that it is therefore "sheep-stealing" to get him involved in a different sort of church.'

But you see, to the Orthodox it's not a matter of simply being in a "different sort of church." The ecclesiology that you as an Anglican accept (some variation of the branch theory, I imagine) the Orthodox don't; to them, leaving the Orthodox Church for another denomination is not just switching communions, it's apostasy.

Likewise, the Orthodox Church doesn't teach that one goes to heaven simply by virtue of his being Orthodox. But the Evangelical's implication is that the Orthodox believer is not a real Christian, therefore he's game for proselytizing.

Finally, the Russian Orthodox Church isn't "ethnically defined." One need not be Russian to be Russian Orthodox...

Maybe I should have said that the state has a duty to actually know the truth, or to at least take protective cognizance of the spiritual heritage that gave it birth.

Do you want the state telling your Catholic priest that he may not teach that homosexuality is abnormal, because the state has a "duty to truth" and the elected officials believe that statement to be false?

I don't know how close we are to this in America, but I've heard of such incidents in Europe. Such a scenario is what is likely to transpire under the current regime of religious liberty. It is exactly the kind of thing that a genuine duty to truth would try to prevent. Here, our government should seek to protect not a particular church but the Judeo-Christian heritage, by force of law when, and only when, necessary. For example, I would be copacetic with a law inhibiting Muslims from "evangelizing" on the basis that that religion must be, by our lights, false. I would permit freedom of worship, but not attempts to spead it. (I'm not even talking about jihad and sharia, just your basic, supposedly bona fide religion of peace.) In another country with a different founding tradition, the proscriptions might be different. If England had been evangelized by Protestants, I would not blame them for restricting Catholic efforts to free them from their error. (Obviously, I'm not in favor of beheading.)

I say this because the state will always stand for something, and I'd rather it stood with its people than with some concept of neutrality that treats all religions as one.

I'm not finished but I have to go to the airport to pick up the child. Be back.

Rob, I note this: "To them, leaving the Orthodox Church for another denomination is not just switching communions, it's apostasy." So, to the Orthodox, evangelicals are sub-Christian?

Well, I suspected that very strongly. But if Christian charity is the watchword here, then I think it's worth noting that if the Orthodox consider the evangelicals sub-Christian, it's a bit silly to complain that the evangelicals appear to think _them_ sub-Christian, and to act accordingly. What we are then talking about is all-out intra-Christian religious war, in a sense. The Orthodox think it's apostasy to become an evangelical, so they use the power of the state to try to suppress evangelicalism. The evangelicals think it's heresy to be Orthodox, so they...offer free schooling to the children of people who become evangelical, tell people a simplistic version of church history, and evangelize children. ???? But the evangelicals are the ones using illicit _methods_ against their fellow Christians? The evangelicals are the ones at whom we're supposed to be outraged for having their actions guided by the assumption that the other guys aren't real Christians? I ask you--who is pulling out the big guns here and behaving with less-than-Christian charity in religious warfare?

Re. Bill's idea about Muslim evangelism--

I would not prevent a religious group from evangelizing per se on American soil, unless evangelism meant trying to incite people to commit things that were otherwise crimes in themselves. But if we're just talking about (say) believing in Hinduism or Buddhism, then even though I think those religions completely false I can't see that it's right for the government to have laws telling them they can't try to convince others of their truth. I think it's artificial to separate freedom to hold a religious belief from freedom to tell others about it and try to get them to accept it.

That being said, coming to the United States in the first place is not a right but a privilege. And there I can certainly see religious "discrimination" as being a good thing in immigration. This not because our elected officials think Christianiy true and other religions false (they may or may not think so), nor because I think Christianity true and other religions false, but because the people designated to protect us should be smart enough to see that Muslim immigrants have a distressing tendency to engage in behaviors otherwise rightly illegal--blowing people up, supporting terrorist groups, beating wives, honor killings, polygamy, and so on and so forth. Why import crime? And if some group that claimed to accept the Nicene Creed came from a culture such that that group tended to do those same things, they should be excluded from immigration too.

A clarification to my last comment: The phrase "sub-Christian" was just quoted from Maximos. I'm trying to point out a tu quoque. (In fact, more than a tu quoque, as the Orthodox tactics against the evangelicals are meant to be directly coercive--to stop the spread of evangelicalism by force of the civil government.) I myself am quite used to the fact that some evangelicals think Catholics and Orthodox not Christians and that some Catholics and Orthodox think evangelicals not Christian. This doesn't get me terribly het up, but Maximos seemed to be implying that it was an outrageous thing for the evangelicals to think and that it explained their ostensibly dastardly behavior in offering inducements, evangelizing families through children, etc.

Leaving aside the question whether the Orthodox consider evangelicals sub-Christian (the question itself presumes an evangelical understanding of the thing), the difference is that the evangelicals are going into Orthodox "territory" and proselytizing, something which the Orthodox themselves would not do in a reversed situation. The Orthodox limit their evangelistic efforts to the pagans and the unchurched -- they do not actively evangelize other Christians, for the simple reason that they do not consider other Christians' souls to be in jeopardy simply because they aren't Orthodox. To do so would thus seem uncharitable, and this is a strong reason why the Orthodox don't like it done to them -- because they wouldn't do it themselves.

I've also indirectly answered the above question: Orthodox, as a rule, do not consider evangelicals sub-Christian; otherwise, they'd be evangelizing them.

"Maximos seemed to be implying that it was an outrageous thing for the evangelicals to think and that it explained their ostensibly dastardly behavior in offering inducements, evangelizing families through children, etc."

And I agree with him, although I'd not necessarily describe the behavior as dastardly, just as ignorant and uncharitable.

But, Rob, I thought you just said that the Orthodox regard joining an evangelical body as apostasy? If that's true, how can they not consider the souls of those engaging in apostasy to be in jeopardy?

Of course, evangelism needn't necessarily follow. There are all sorts of people whose souls I regard as being in jeopardy whom I don't try to evangelize. Perhaps it seems like it would be hopeless, or there's no good opportunity, etc.

But I find your parsing of the Orthodox position a bit confusing. On the one hand, I'm supposed to understand how upset they are when friends and family members become evangelical by understanding that, to them, joining an evangelical body is apostasy. On the other hand, I'm apparently supposed to think of them as broad-minded and tolerant in contrast to the evangelicals because I'm being told that _they_ wouldn't try to evangelize _evangelicals_, that _they_ don't regard evangelicals' souls as being in jeopardy, and so forth. This doesn't seem to jibe.

And, I repeat: You appeared to be defending the Orthodox approach to the evangelicals in part on the grounds that the Orthodox regard converting to evangelicalism as apostasy. But the actual content of their approach, including legal sanctions, makes it pretty hard for me to feel their broad-mindedness. I'd _much_ rather someone thought of my soul as being in danger and tried verbally to evangelize me than that he fined me for witnessing to other people!

Most Orthodox would argue that while it is possible to identify the Church, it is not possible to identify where it is not. To move from where the Church is known to be to a place less certain may be described by some as an 'apostasy', but this is not understood in the sense that it would be re: moving from the Church to Islam.

even though I think those religions completely false I can't see that it's right for the government to have laws telling them they can't try to convince others of their truth.

Obviously, the existence of such laws is a discretionary matter, born most likely of exigent circumstances, not of immutable necessity. But I don't think you've really answered my question about the state's duty to truth. What I'm getting is that you think the state should hold a position of absolute neutrality on all matters of religion, that it should not care whether its citizens follow Christ or Muhammed, nor inhibit one in preference to the other. As I've said, I believe the state will always stand for something, some ethic whether codified or not. Always. If Americans believe that adherence to Islam entails the unpleasant likelihood that such adherents will either support or engage in those crimes you mentioned, and that the participants see these crimes as following from their religious beliefs, why is this relegated to the domain of an immigration problem rather than a religious liberty problem? It's not obvious to me why the essential problem (a particular belief system) could not be attacked from both angles. I'll repeat here what I said via email: that the only thing I'm defending is the right of a people to protect what has always been theirs against those who would dismantle it.

And so I'll ask again: do you want the state to stand for anything?

Also, re this: I think it's artificial to separate freedom to hold a religious belief from freedom to tell others about it...

Therein may lie the real difference between us. I don't think that distinction is artificial at all.

"What I'm getting is that you think the state should hold a position of absolute neutrality on all matters of religion, that it should not care whether its citizens follow Christ or Muhammed, nor inhibit one in preference to the other."

"And so I'll ask again: do you want the state to stand for anything?"

The former statement is very strongly worded, and I'm wary to assert it because I can imagine that there might be convoluted counterexamples that are hard to think of right off. Just for example, would it be a case of the state's not "holding a position of absolute neutrality on all matters of religion" if the U.S. Congress were opened by Christian prayers more often than by prayers connected with some other religion? I'm certainly not going to advocate some sort of weird affirmative action for religious gestures by public bodies, nor would I say that there should never be any such gestures. And recognition of holidays (for example) might fall under the rubric of public gestures by the state. I'm certainly not bothered, and in fact think it's instrumentally a good thing, if these sorts of things have a bent towards the religion that has historically been dominant in our culture--namely, Christianity.

But when it comes to laws that "inhibit" various religions directly, not merely inhibiting their otherwise illegal activity (as in the case of outlawing the teaching of jihad), that's a rather different matter. I do think that freedom of religion has to have a strong connection to, well, giving people freedom to believe and practice their religion. And it seems to me perfectly understandable and reasonable that the practice of religion should include the presentation of that religion to other people as a desirable thing for them to adopt as well. After all, if you think something is true and is an important truth, and you care about other people, you understandably want them to believe that important truth as well.

Do I want the state to stand for something? Certainly: I want the state to stand for all sorts of things, like the protection of the innocent, for example. But do I want the state *in laws directly inhibiting purely religious practices on American soil* to stand for a particular religion? Then, no. By "purely religious practices," I mean religious practices like praying and talking about one's religion that have no otherwise illegal aspects to them.

Why do I treat the issue of Muslim cultural problems as a matter of immigration rather than as a call for the government to inhibit Muslim conversions directly on U.S. soil? Because people on U.S. soil are supposed to have freedom of religion. That's part of what our country stands for. That's one reason not to open our doors in the first place to people whose religious beliefs appear to have the consequence of leading them into criminal activity. Because once they're here, we can only get them on the criminal activity or on incitment thereto. If the criminal activity or incitement is tightly enough tied to their religion--as in the doctrine of jihad--then fine, we can get them for teaching that "doctrine." But it's another matter altogether to say that we're going to try by some direct law to stop someone from teaching that Mohammed is the prophet of God.

Perhaps an analogy would be this: Suppose you believe in second amendment rights. But suppose it were to turn out that people of Swedish descent are particularly likely to commit gun crimes. This might quite justly modify immigration policy with respect to Swedes. But it shouldn't cause us to go around and register American citizens by whether they are Swedish or not, throw the second amendment out the window for them, and take away all the Swedes' guns.

I'm certainly not bothered, and in fact think it's instrumentally a good thing, if these sorts of things have a bent towards the religion that has historically been dominant in our culture--namely, Christianity.

I think you're dancing a bit, but I could be wrong, so don't be offended. It is a vexing problem that may not admit of certainty. Nor do I think I'm going to get you to say that the state should not only bend in this direction, but positively swear allegiance to it and to its protection. And I don't want you to say it if you don't believe it. Peace, again.

Yes, but those are _ceremonial_ and symbolic kinds of things. We're not talking about outlawing anybody, telling anybody he can't preach such-and-such a purely religious doctrine, etc. I think that makes a big difference. So if swearing allegiance to a religion and its protection means outlawing other religions per se or outlawing attempts to convince people of other religions, then of course I'm not going to say that.

Honest, I don't mean to dance at all. If every single prayer opening Congress is offered by a Christian minister to Our Lord and includes tons of doctrinally rich Christian content, I say, "Hurray!" But if Congress passes a law saying you can't try to convert people to Buddhism, I say, "Boo!" That should be pretty clear.

Yes, it is clear. What is also clear is that you think the state should officially stand for nothing except a principle of unfettered religious liberty ( a notion probably Christian in its origin), as though it were some atomistic, utterly disinterested arbiter that cares not whether its populace is pagan or Christian.

If the notion of religious freedom is Christian in its origin, it can't be all bad. :-)

Seriously, I want the state to stand for enormous amounts of ethical content, regardless of where these originated, so I think that characterization is rather unfair. Moreover, the only way in which I've said I definitely don't want the state to "stand for" Christianity is by way of passing laws directly outlawing other religions or outlawing attempts to convert people to other religions.

There are even grey areas. I don't know what I think about army chaplains, for example. What if Congress passed a law that all army chaplains must be either of some Christian denomination or Jewish? I don't know whether that would be, in terms of consequences, a good or a bad idea, but it's not clear to me that it would be wrong. And it might be a very good idea. That, however, is because it's not a matter of telling anybody that he can't try to convince somebody else to believe or do something that it isn't otherwise criminal to do. In other words, I think it could be plausibly argued that, whatever inconvenience it might cause the member of this or that religion to be in the armed forces but to have no chaplain available of his religion, it isn't per se a violation of his religious liberty. This is all the more true given that we have an all-volunteer force!

It strikes me that the attempt to draw a bright line between religious belief and evangelism is an instance of the attempt to privatize religion. We conservatives are known for recognizing that religion isn't just a private matter of believing something in your head. It would seem to me that telling other people about your beliefs and trying to convince them to adopt them is a relatively _mild_ form of public religious practice. It isn't trying, for example, to make your religion public in the sense that you're trying to get laws passed against other religions! It's just getting your religion outside your own head and presenting it to other people. Once we admit that religion isn't intrinsically a private matter, how can we say, "We offer you religious liberty. We just don't offer you the liberty to try to spread your religion to other people"?

I can't help feeling that all those who disagree with me here think of religious liberty as having no value in itself at all, as being merely a matter of convenience--you grant as little of it as you can get away with, because it's much more important to promote truth with a strong hand if you can. It's as though y'all are saying, "If I _could_ force everybody to attend my type of church, I would. But in _our_ country, you can't do that, because the type of society we're in wouldn't tolerate that. So I'll adopt some degree of religious liberty as a working principle insofar as I'm forced to by my present cultural circumstances." I realize that may sound a little harsh, but I think some comments here seem to support it.

If the notion of religious freedom is Christian in its origin, it can't be all bad.

My saying this was an attempted irony that apparently missed its mark. Related to that is:

Seriously, I want the state to stand for enormous amounts of ethical content, regardless of where these originated...

And from where is the state to derive this content? Seriously.

how can we say, "We offer you religious liberty. We just don't offer you the liberty to try to spread your religion to other people"?

I would be most pleased that some evangelical came to my kid's public school to talk to the students in assembly about his relationship with Christ, in an attempt to instill some of that zeal in his listeners. But the fellow who summons Beelzebub in his private rituals should be prevented by law from doing the same. Surely you can go with that.

Moreover, the only way in which I've said I definitely don't want the state to "stand for" Christianity is by way of passing laws directly outlawing other religions or outlawing attempts to convert people to other religions.

So tell me what you want it to do rather what you don't.

I can't help feeling that all those who disagree with me here think of religious liberty as having no value in itself at all...

If you think this of me, I'll consider it a matter of ill will, as though I'd force Lydia into a Catholic Church if only I had the wherewithal.

"And from where is the state to derive this content?"

From the natural law, which can be known either through religious teaching or by the natural light.

"I would be most pleased that some evangelical came to my kid's public school to talk to the students in assembly about his relationship with Christ, in an attempt to instill some of that zeal in his listeners. But the fellow who summons Beelzebub in his private rituals should be prevented by law from doing the same. Surely you can go with that."

I don't think there should be public schools, so let's get that complicating factor out of there. I think you should be careful enough not to send your kid to a school that is going to invite a Satan worshiper to speak. As, of course, you would be. Suppose a bunch of Yezdis (who worship the "fallen peacock angel," I'm sorry to say) get together with their own money and start a school. Do we prevent them by law from having someone teach the kids whose parents send them to the school their religion at assembly time in the school? It's a form of evangelism.

"So tell me what you want it to do rather than what you don't."

I already said I'd cheer if the positive public religious gestures were all Christian, and that I think it may well be a good idea to have all armed forces chaplains be Christian or Jewish.

And I want the government to keep out Muslim immigrants or immigrants from other religions or cultures (even if ostensibly Christian) that have similarly criminal consequences. That's pretty hard-line, all things considered, I think you'll have to grant.

Now, okay, you object to the business about religious liberty's having no value in itself. I realize that was a strong statement. So let me go back here: "If this is the nearly uniform and treasured tradition of some country (as it is not here), such that they would hardly know themselves to be who they are without it, why is it wrong for them to take measures to preserve it? There is a lot of room to move here in terms of proscriptions and such, but I don't see it as evil that there should be any at all. As I've told you before, I believe that the state has a duty to Truth..."

So then, the question is, _how far_ is it okay to move in terms of proscriptions to "preserve" the sacramental tradition? And why is it not okay to move farther than that? Let's take Lydia and transport her to some hypothetical country that has a nearly uniform and treasured Roman Catholic tradition for hundreds of years past. And let's suppose that the government doesn't burn people at the stake or anything, but that there's some sort of Protestant Reformation going on in the world as a whole and that the government has taken measures to preserve that tradition as follows: 1) Everybody must pay taxes to support the state church. 2) Everybody's child must go to state schools, which explicitly promote the state religion. 3) Nobody is allowed to "proselytize" to anyone other than, perhaps, his own biological or legally adopted children against Catholicism in favor of the new Protestant ideas. People will be fined if caught distributing literature or even talking with others to this end. 4) You can't gather together for Protestant meetings. All religious bodies must be registered with the state and be able to show that they are Catholic in nature. People convicted of being officials in non-approved religious bodies will be fined, and somewhat lesser fines will be levied on attendees at unsanctioned religious meetings. 5) Everybody has to attend Mass at least once a week, if physically able to do so, though they need not receive Holy Communion.

Now, I gather that you endorse 3, or at least qualifiedly endorse it--think that it might be okay if the people decided it was necessary. I know you are offended at the implication that you would ever endorse 5. But do you consider that the rest of them might be okay depending on whether the people of the country in question considered them necessary to preserve its treasured tradition from invasion by the Protestants?

Even if the suggestion that you might endorse 5 was an overstatement--and I hereby withdraw it given what you say--I still think it's worth asking what you would mean by "religious liberty" and whether you consider it to be a valuable thing, *even when granted to people who are seriously wrong*.

From the natural law, which can be known either through religious teaching or by the natural light

If the state gets its understanding of natural law through religious teaching, it seems reasonable to assume that it might protect that teaching against encroachments. (Outside of More's Utopia, I'm not aware of very many societies that have done a good job of discovering the natural law by natural light. It's certainly not how our society came upon it.)

I don't think there should be public schools, so let's get that complicating factor out of there.

Okay, the evangelical can come to my private Catholic school and say the same stuff, as long as he doesn't preach against my religion. But you didn't answer whether we ought to prevent by law the Satanist from doing the same, in any public venue, but instead switched to the peacock religion.

Do we prevent them by law from having someone teach the kids whose parents send them to the school their religion at assembly time in the school?

In a country that cared about truth, maybe so. In our country today, probably not, not knowing in advance if the peacock religion will turn out to be, like Mormonism (and after much persecution by the state), relatively benevolent. It may be that some religions, like atheism, are just silly and stupid, but that others are so corrupting they should not be tolerated.

I already said I'd cheer if the positive public religious gestures were all Christian...

But you just finished disparaging these things as merely symbolic and ceremonial, and I'd say with O'Connor, if it's only a symbol, to hell with it.

Regarding your hypothetical Catholic country strawman you say, "I know you are offended at the implication that you would ever endorse 5." Actually, I'm offended that you think I'd endorse 4. Number one strikes me as something that would be going on with or without an attempted Protestant usurpation, and I find it no more objectionable than the fact that I paid taxes to support America's public schools even though my kids spent very little time in them. Number three (in that country, not this one) is a definite go, with, as you say, qualifications. But I get the sense you're trying to make a caricature of my position, which is that this country ought to take a favored stance toward a particular religious heritage (not a church or denomination); an amendment to the constitution laying out that stance would no more offend me than the phenomenon of some early state constitutions inhibiting no man from holding office as long as he could swear allegiance to the "Christian religion."

I can't go with number 4 because I stand less for this free market notion of religious liberty than for a belief in liberty of conscience: that a man not be made to say that he believes what he does not. In your hypothetical Catholic country, I would not lay this burden upon the Protestant. Let him worship as he sees fit, and educate his children likewise. But he is to understand that he lives in a Catholic country which intends to remain that way. His freedom to worship does not naturally entail a right to spread his heresy abroad. If you, a Catholic, want to join him, go to his church and be converted.

Like Jeff, I'm having trouble seeing how your notion of religious liberty derives from natural law. I get more a sense of religious license, or chaos, a free-for-all in which the fittest might survive, but the truth might not, devil take the hindmost. That's pretty much what we have going right now.

"Most Orthodox would argue that while it is possible to identify the Church, it is not possible to identify where it is not. To move from where the Church is known to be to a place less certain may be described by some as an 'apostasy', but this is not understood in the sense that it would be re: moving from the Church to Islam."

Right, Maximos. I think that the vast majority of the Orthodox would say that there is a distinct difference in being a non-Orthodox Christian than a non-Christian of any sort. This is reflected in Orthodox practice by the fact that we, in general, do not rebaptize converts who've been baptized as Catholics or Prostestants, except where the trinitarianism of the original baptizing group is suspect. As I said above, one's salvation is not jeopardized by the bare fact that one is not Orthodox.

And I'm not saying the Russian approach to evangelicals is correct; it does seem to be heavy-handed in some aspects. But I don't agree that the evangelicals should be free to do whatever they want proselytization-wise there, either. Western evangelicals seem to be going into Russia carrying with them a distinctly American idea of religious liberty which can't be applied there as it is here. Along with Maximos and Mr. Luse, I don't believe religious liberty can be a 'one size fits all' concept.

Rob, since the notion of "apostasy" here is so mild, I don't think it's very relevant to the argument. Maximos's original argument was not that it's okay to suppress evangelicals because they're trying to get people to apostasize but that it's okay because they use methods of evangelism that are supposedly bad/tricky, etc.

Bill, my point about the "fallen peacock angel" is that he sounds a lot like Lucifer, so arguably these guys are Satan worshipers. So that wasn't intended to be a change of subject. The only change was that I was imagining that this was a privately-run school to which no one was obligated to send his children.

Bill, I'm not trying to caricature your position regarding our country but rather to show that your position regarding countries in general does involve the endorsement of relatively greater--even, to my mind, pretty draconian--curtailments of religious liberty in countries that have a stronger religious tradition than ours.

I think it's rather hard to distinguish "proselytizing" from "holding services," since one's services even in one's own church might be evangelistic. But I suppose practically speaking what one would do in this hypothetical Catholic country to keep a line between meeting to worship and evangelizing would be to forbid the Protestants to invite non-Protestants to their churches or to advertise their services anywhere. Then they'd only get a chance to try to convert people within the four walls of their church if people *very accidentally* happened to wander in or sought them out with extreme diligence. But however you try to make sure that they don't spread their Protestantism abroad, to me any such attempt to force them to keep it as some kind of near-secret private club is just bizarre. And wrong.

The metaphor of a marketplace is one that _can_ be used of various religions, but it's one I have deliberately avoided, as I don't believe it's essential to the argument. What I would say instead is that if you think something is very important to other people's ultimate well-being and happiness, perhaps even to the fate of their souls, then it's perfectly understandable that you should try to tell them about it.

Now, if what some twisted person thinks is important to other people's well-being and happiness is blowing up innocents, then fine, we tell him to bag it. He can't try to incite people to do that, because we've already got laws against that, it's criminal in itself on normal, ethical, natural-law grounds. But if we're talking about my Baptist relatives who think (quite wrongly) that if you believe in the Sacrament you are prima facie trying to "earn your salvation by works" and hence may even be going to hell, then *obviously* (to my mind) it's wrong to try to tell them to keep this to themselves, never to witness to other people, and to treat their religion as some sort of super-private club that just meets quietly and keeps to itself. And it's wrong *even if* they are in a country with a strong sacramental tradition such that the people "wouldn't know who they are" without it.

'...since the notion of "apostasy" here is so mild, I don't think it's very relevant to the argument. Maximos's original argument was not that it's okay to suppress evangelicals because they're trying to get people to apostasize but that it's okay because they use methods of evangelism that are supposedly bad/tricky, etc.'

This is true concering Maximos's original argument; my introducing of the term 'apostasy' had to do with the idea that when an Orthodox Christian leaves the Church to join an evangelical group, from the Orthodox POV this is more than just a mere switching of denominations. This is one reason why the Russian Church takes it seriously.