mc 498 paper

Mikaela HaleyFebruary 20, 2015MC 498-Response Paper

Religious Discrimination in a Free CountryThere is significant religious freedom in the United States, but the average public

policy continues to favor majoritarian Christian beliefs, such as Protestants, Baptists, and Catholics.

America provided the impression that minority and “new religions”, sometimes referred to as cults,

would have the same rights as majoritarian religions. In contrast, during recent decades America has

turned their back on these religions and stripped them of their moral and individual rights. R.

Stephen Warner claims that disestablishment of American religions has promoted religion by

creating a free market system in the new paradigm in his study, “Work in Progress Toward a new

Paradigm for the Sociological Study of Religion in the United States”. However, despite the

withdrawal of state recognition for a religion, the majority of Americans still choose majoritarian

Christianity, thus leading to favoritism for those religions.

The amount of people enrolling in churches skyrocketed during 19th and 20th century,

a time of modernization in America, leading to religious-based societal norms (Warner, 1048-49).

One example of this is the tradition to close businesses on Sundays, as that is the majoritarian

Christian day of rest. Favoritism for majoritarian religions has the negative consequences of

creating a society, in which lives set around those religions become they are the norm, thus

promoting a tendency to discriminate or disregard minority religious practices. James T. Richardson

points out the numerous court cases in which minority religions have been kept from practicing

their faith in the way which they felt fit in his article, “Legal Status of Minority Religions in the

United States”. Richardson draws light to the many instances in which the United States has

withdrawn the religion rights of minority religions:

We have seen limits placed on religious freedom such that, for instance, freedom of religion cannot be a defense for violating a law against using poisonous snakes in a worship service, use of illegal drugs such as LSD is not allowed as the basis of a religious faith…Groups taking these actions are not defined in American society as having a right to maintain their religious practices, legally and openly (Richardson, 252).

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Religious Discrimination in a Free Country

Recent changes have threatened individual and group rights and rules were set into place to bar

religious minorities from practices that would not hurt anybody: “…those important precedents

which have defined religious freedom until recently in America have been overruled, seriously

eroded, or jeopardized in recent times by the US Supreme Court, using cases involving members of

minority religious groups” (Richardson, 253). Limitation of individual rights has limited individual

choice of religion in the most obvious ways, stripping away Warner’s disestablishment thesis.

Richardson cites the following examples as how the United States has discriminated

against minority religions: Hare Krishna and Jews for Jesus organizations have faced restrictions

when attempting to raise money in public forums, which is directly against the right to proselytize

and raise funds without governmental interference (Richardson, 252-53). Also, areas in which

people gather are not for use to all groups that want to promote political or religious messages

because the areas are considered private property and the owners may choose which groups are

allowed to speak, most likely to be majoritarian Christian groups (Richardson, 253). There are

multiple cases in which discrimination against minority religions is apparent, such as when the

federal government forced the application of the Fair Labor Standards Act onto the Alamo

Foundation, a “new religion”, banning group members from volunteering their labor in exchange

for shelter, food, etc. Another example is when the Supreme Court ruled that an Amish person who

hired Amish workers, has to pay taxes into Social Security (Richardson, 254). Christian Scientists

have been held criminally accountable for deaths of children that were being treated for illnesses

using traditional spiritual healing methods instead of modern medicine, however, many times

parents won on appeals due to the fact that they had not received a fair warning that they were

violating the law (Richardson, 255).

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Religious Discrimination in a Free CountryNative Americans have also faced hardships by the federal government due to their

religious practices. One example of this happening is in Employment v. Smith, in which two Native

American church members, who were also drug counselors in Oregon, got fired from their jobs for

using peyote in church ceremonies. Then men were also denied unemployment benefits. The 1991

Supreme Court ruling banished any special treatment for religious practices. Since the court ruling,

Oregon has decriminalized the usage of peyote in ceremonies, but the damage of the original ruling

remains. This case is especially troublesome for minority religions because it reveals the special

treatment for majoritarian religions: “If a government entity wanted to outlaw alcohol use, Smith

could have applied against use of sacramental wine in ordinary churches” (Richardson, 255). If the

usage of alcohol was prohibited in the United States, majoritarian churches would most likely still

drink wine without falling into trouble because so many people in the United States participate in

those religious practices. Majoritarian churches in that instance would win by numbers.

There are obstacles that minority religions have to face by the federal Immigration

and Naturalization Service (INS). The INS has attempted to stop minority religious groups from

bringing in members and leaders from other countries by refusing to process applications

(Richardson, 257). The federal government also developed a policy that does not prosecute

“deprogrammers” that kidnap church members in order to reverse whatever “brainwashing” they

suspect had risen in order to convert such member into the church. Deprogrammers who kidnap

members of minority religions have not been punished because the government viewed these

happenings as “family matters”. However, if someone were to kidnap a protestant in order to

“deprogram” them, than they would be sent to prison for such crimes. Richardson sums up his

argument as such:

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Religious Discrimination in a Free CountryNo longer is freedom of religion considered a paramount right in America, and a

move toward more management and control of religion by the state seems to have developed along the lines of the European model described elsewhere…management and control of minority religions by political authority seems the new order of the day in the US (Richardson, 259-60).

Richardson provides a unique perspective concerning the treatment of minority religions; in recent

times treatment toward minorities has been at best unequal and at worst blatantly unfair and

inconsiderate. Without full, unrestricted freedom of religion, there cannot be true competition of

religion in the United States as Warner has hypothesized. Although minority religions have

opportunity to practice their religion in its entirety, their chances are bleak. This is further shown by

Anjali Sakaria’s “Worshipping Substantive Equality over Formal Neutrality: Applying the

Endorsement Test to Sect-Specific Legislative Accommodations”.

Sakaria begins her article with imagery that draws the reader to the center of the

problems that many practitioners of minority religions face:

What happens when a traditional Hindu or Muslim girl, whose religion requires her to cover her legs in public, is required to attend a gym class where the mandatory dress code is gym shorts? After the Supreme Court holding in Employment Division, Department of Human Resources of Oregon v. Smith, the Free Exercise Clause no longer requires officials to excuse the girl from exposing her legs” (Sakaria, 483).

Minority religions must petition their state legislator in order to seek exemptions from rules and

laws, or seek a sect-specific legal accommodation that may be permissible under the Establishment

Clause (Sakaria, 484). This fact in itself already establishes favoritism toward majoritarian religions

because majoritarian Christians would rarely, if ever, have to appeal to legislators asking for

exemptions to rules simply so that they could practice their religion.

Some sociologists find the practice of seeking accommodations problematic because

of the repercussions that are possible if those accommodations are granted:

Several commentators… fear that minority religious groups will not benefit from legislative accommodations by a majority-elected legislative…accommodations will mainly serve the interests

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Religious Discrimination in a Free Countryof followers of majority religions, since democratically elected legislatures are more likely to be aware of…majority or mainstream religious groups (Sakaria, 486). It is difficult for minority religions to be recognized by legislators and if they are, there is always

the possibility that it would offend other religion or even harm their practices, which is why Sakaria

thinks that legislators should follow the endorsement test that focuses on whether or not an

accommodation would symbolically endorse one religion over another, sending a message to the

religions that are not accommodated that their religion is disfavored (Sakaria, 488,492). It is also

possible that any accommodations could be perceived as government support, which is a direct

violation of the Establishment Clause under the endorsement test (Sakaria, 490). The key to the

endorsement test is that the government should look at each possibility through the lens of the

people that could be alienated (Sakaria, 493).

Sakaria promotes a government that upholds extra accommodations for minority

religions in order to establish an equal society because majoritarian religions are so frequently

favored: “Given that laws are enacted through a democratic process that advantages majority

religions, treating majority and minority religions unequally might be the only way to achieve equal

religious liberty in society” (Sakaria, 502). Pretending to be blind to all religions in a society in

which most people are majoritarian Christian would only provide the appearance of a hostile and

actually intolerant environment, much like the “separate but equal” buildings that Civil Rights

activists fought against. Separate but equal has never been truly equal, because the group that is the

majority always tends to be favored. The fact that Sakaria acknowledges the fact that America, as a

democracy, favors majoritarian religion reveals that it is not possible for America to be distinctly

competitive as Warner describes (Warner, 1051) because the only true competitors are majoritarian

Christians.

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Religious Discrimination in a Free CountryWarner claims that disestablishment of religion has promoted religion by creating a

free market system in the new paradigm in his study. However, most of America continues to

choose and practice majoritarian religions. According to Warner, religion is no longer based on

tradition and rather based on individual needs, making it so that churches can no longer take for

granted their local followers (Warner, 1054). Yet, not many people are converting to minority

religions despite the free market system. In fact, megachurches, mostly Christian Protestant, are

becoming increasingly popular (Senior Seminar Social Relations, 1/20/15).

Warner states that majority religions no longer hold a monopoly on American

society as they once had, but that simply is not true if so many people are concentrated to Christian

religions. American religion has been rooted in tradition in the old paradigm. Now the age of

tradition is over, making way for an age of individualism and choice, yet the choice most

Americans make tends to be majoritarian, and those who choose minority religions are likely to be

minorities in other aspects of their lives and treated as peculiar or exiles in American society

(Senior Seminar Social Relations, 2/5/15).

In conclusion, the United States favors majoritarian religion at such excess that

Warner’s thesis does not stand. The United States does not only favor majoritarian religions, but

also has been discriminating against minority religions that have faced unnecessary hardships, as

illustrated by Richardson. Sakaria revealed that the only way to achieve equal religions in the

United States was to set up special accommodations for minority religions, but that even doing that

presents the obstacles of perceptions of disfavoring one religion over another as well as the negative

connotations of “government support” that could arise. The United States is simply too rooted in

tradition to achieve full religious competition or equality.

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