Welcome to the
"Liberty Insider."
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This is a program
bringing you news, views
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and commentary on
religious liberty events
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in the United
States and around the world
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as up-to-date is
the daily headlines.
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My name is Lincoln Steed,
Editor of Liberty Magazine
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and my guest in the
program is Kim Peckham.
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Among many other
things communication--
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lead communication person
for the Review and Herald.
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A multifaceted publishing
house that did many things
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for the whole history
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of the
Seventh-day Adventist Church
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but is in the
process of being dismantled.
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But that's another
story that I might talk about.
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Other story, yeah.
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I worked there too
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so I have a great sensitivity
for what the Review did
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and has done right
up till the present.
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Let's talk a little bit, I
know you are a good talker,
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in fact I visited
your Sabbath school class
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that Willow Brook
Seventh-day Adventist Church
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a couple of times and--
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you can keep the
discussion going.
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And lot of what we do
with the religious liberty
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is very cerebral,
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you know, you got to
think through these contexts.
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And what is
religious liberty itself?
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What do you think
as religious liberty?
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And I get my paper
out, you know, this is--
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I will grade you on
one to ten, you know.
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So there is a right answer
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because you make
a multiple choice.
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Well, we hope
there is a right answer.
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Well, as I always
understand religious liberty
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I always think of it in...
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context of my religious liberty.
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What will people let me do
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what I want to do
in religious context?
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You know, my beliefs well,
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they let me exercise them freely
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in the marketplace or in a job
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or in my home or
in my neighborhood
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and I would fear
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that maybe some of my
beliefs would offend people
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or might cut me off
from certain opportunities,
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economic opportunities
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and at work or
that sort of thing.
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And so it's always been a--
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And these are real fears
because these sort of things
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do happen in some countries.
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In fact, I just
heard the other day
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from one of my associates
in the religious liberty work
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that where is a
couple of years ago
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a Pew Forum survey found
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that 70 percent of
the world's population
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lives under severe restrictions
of religious liberty.
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That figure has risen
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I think they said it
was about 78 percent.
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I don't know the source of it,
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I know Pew is
the source of the 70.
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So things are getting worse
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where people are
being restricted uniformly.
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But that's an
interesting description you give
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because that can
also set people up
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for being insensitive
for other peoples faith.
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Yeah. If you say--
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And probably it's a
very selfish point of view.
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Its not really
thing about well, this--
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my other neighbor who
may have different beliefs
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maybe they need to
be protected as well.
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Maybe they are minority religion
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or coming from a practice
that we don't understand.
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And then am I my
concerned about them
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probably not as
much as I should be.
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Because like this
figure that I said
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side of the originally--
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I better stick
with the 70 percent.
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I don't know where
the other one came from.
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I do believe its getting worse.
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But when it was 70 percent
of the world's population
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said by Pew which
is very authoritative
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and responsible organization.
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Seventy percent of
the world's population
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living under severe
religious liberty restrictions
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that doesn't mean all
those people feel that.
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Most of the those
countries the majority
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have a certain
religious view point
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that's supported and
they are untroubled in it
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but if someone in
their midst thinks otherwise,
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they will be
instantly marginalized
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and perhaps imprisoned
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or release their
livelihood and so on.
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So its this dynamic at work.
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In fact, tell the story
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that I've
repeated on this program
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but many years ago I think
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since last I heard
the minister of Maldives,
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the foreign minister
giving an interview on BBC
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and they were asking
for that religious liberty
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and he said, "Oh, I have
absolute religious liberty
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in this country."
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But he says, "it's not
really a problem for us
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since nearly 100
percent of the population
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is a certain
religious view point."
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I don't need to say what it is
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because it's not
really relevant to the logic
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and that was fine and
then the interviewer said,
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you know, "I'm a Christian."
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He says, "if I
came to your country,
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would I be allowed
to practice my faith?"
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And he said, "Certainly not."
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He says, "We might was well
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allow Al-Qaeda
into our country."
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I thought that's
very interesting.
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If everyone is untroubled
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because their
religion is supported,
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they see that as
religious liberty
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and very often I know,
even in your church and mine
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I've heard people pray that way.
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We thank the Lord that we
were able to worship untroubled.
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That is true but
that doesn't in itself
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mean that there
is fully functioning
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religious
liberty in that country.
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Should look around a little bit
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and even in the United States
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it's a very much
lower level of problem.
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But you know, we are
often with Liberty Magazine
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and our church
religious liberty representative
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some of the
lawyers were often allied
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with groups like the Sikhs
and others to get accommodation
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for some of their
religious practice
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that's restricted in
the workplace and so on.
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You know, most people are
not gonna worry about that
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or even realize that.
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They could lose employment
because of head covering
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or a face covering or something.
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Yes, it's can't be--
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it's gonna cut back to
like maybe the puritans
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coming to America
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who escaped
religious prosecutions.
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Now you are getting
to the real underbelly
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that we don't
like to talk about.
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Yeah, they were
not very tolerant.
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No, its like they
suffered under intolerance
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and you would think that okay,
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there would be more--
allow more variation belief
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but not at all that was--
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They were people
compelled by conscience
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but they were not informed
by principal in my view.
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They didn't really have a
vision of religious liberty,
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not when they
came to this country
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and not as they existed
in the United-- in England.
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And I returned to a lot--
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maybe in another
program I will enlarge them.
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I've always thought
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that the
puritan story in England
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which eventuated in a civil war
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and full control by the puritans
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through religious dictatorship
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and forms a lot of what happened
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here in those settlements
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and even today in American
exceptionalism for example,
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it's a narrow view
or religious practice.
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It isn't really a, you
know, live and let live
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and even to
facilitate other faiths.
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I think we
probably have a hard time
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understanding the
mindset of that time
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where it seemed to be
that the expectations,
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everybody within a community
needed to be on the same page,
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you know, religious sort of way
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that all the homonyms
had to be the same color
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in this
community and if they left,
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you know, Europe
to come to America
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they would
create a new community
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where everything
would be the same
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just as the attempt
was being made in Europe.
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What you are getting close to
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what maybe this is
something we should talk about
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on this program.
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There's something that
is not usually recognized
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and it's the source I
think of much of the problem.
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In the medieval times and up
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even through and
past the reformation
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religious identity really
kept the community together
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and that's why
it was so important.
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You know, eventually
in the religious wars
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that troubled Europe
there were Protestant countries
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fighting Catholic countries.
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Their religious
identity need to be defended
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and sometimes advanced...
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where we moved beyond that now.
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At least in the west,
we don't define our country
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by religion per say.
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And in fact,
America and Australia
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where I'm from originally like--
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they like to say
they are melting pot.
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Absent religion
then the other thing
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that heeds a country
together very well is patriotism
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a central point
of national identity
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which the US has been
very good at developing.
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And ironically,
one of the things
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that in the religious
liberty circles we debate
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as the Pledge of
Allegiance big part of it
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but yet from a
religious liberty point of view
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its problematic to
require people to recite that
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because it has implicit that,
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you know, God and
country are together
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but that's it,
patriotism is substituted
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for the melding
power of religion
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and I think that's
reasonable in a civil society.
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But when you have
a group of immigrants
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as we have seen
recently in Europe and Australia
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that have such an
inflexible religious identity
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that can't easily
embrace national identity
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if it doesn't include
their religious identity,
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you've got a problem.
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I think that's...
part of what's going on
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and at the very least
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you will have a
fragmented country or a culture
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and the US has a
little bit of it.
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You know, where I live
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and you live in Maryland
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its up near Pennsylvania
the Pennsylvania Dutch
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not that German's are there
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and then the Amish
and Mennonites and so on
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they are very
exclusive communities.
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No, they are not a
threat to the United States
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but they have
not really integrated
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and joined the larger
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cultural identity in my view.
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Yeah, and when there--
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when there is
like political pressure
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that can become a problem
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like when we had the
outbreak of World War I
00:10:18.65\00:10:21.05
or World War II
and there is a lot of,
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of lot of patriotism
welling up in the country
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and then these
communities like the Mennonites
00:10:25.65\00:10:27.69
are good example and
they were noncombatants.
00:10:27.72\00:10:30.06
Then there they get into trouble
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and their beliefs
are not respected as much
00:10:31.63\00:10:33.83
because of the up
welling patriotic feeling.
00:10:33.86\00:10:35.60
Right, so you see it, yeah.
00:10:35.63\00:10:37.17
And the US has
survived that very well.
00:10:37.20\00:10:38.97
It was no existential threat
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but I think it
illustrates what I'm saying
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but within low
tolerance you can absorb that
00:10:43.51\00:10:47.08
but it does work
against the substitution
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offensive
nationhood and national culture
00:10:50.35\00:10:55.65
to tie a country together
instead of religious identity.
00:10:55.68\00:11:00.29
So many of these new immigrants
00:11:00.32\00:11:03.86
and I know this
I'm an immigrant,
00:11:03.89\00:11:05.69
I still hop back to Australia.
00:11:05.73\00:11:07.26
I have good thoughts about it.
00:11:07.30\00:11:09.96
I might go back if
given half a chance.
00:11:10.00\00:11:13.13
Let's find, that's not
alley, that's-- it is alley.
00:11:13.17\00:11:16.54
You know, all aliens think that
00:11:16.57\00:11:19.24
but when that's tied
to a religious construct
00:11:19.27\00:11:22.94
that you will not give
up, you're just basically camp
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in this other
country with a loyalty
00:11:26.92\00:11:29.18
to another system totally
and I think its attention.
00:11:29.22\00:11:32.42
And I'm not saying those people
should give up their religion
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but it's a
little different model
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than we've had in the past.
00:11:37.59\00:11:39.26
And the United States
is characterized itself
00:11:39.29\00:11:42.66
as being a country of
great religious sentiment
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which it is more than some
00:11:45.80\00:11:49.17
but I really
think that the religions
00:11:49.20\00:11:52.27
have been subsumed by
enlarged to a national identity
00:11:52.31\00:11:55.78
certainly after the civil war.
00:11:55.81\00:11:57.78
I don't know if you
have thoughts on that.
00:11:57.81\00:11:59.65
No, its not an observation--
00:11:59.68\00:12:01.68
Well, the civil war
as Abraham Lincoln said,
00:12:01.72\00:12:05.35
you know, both sides pray to God
00:12:05.39\00:12:07.56
and it casted as
a spiritual struggle
00:12:07.59\00:12:11.89
and the US got pass
this it was seen as sort of
00:12:11.93\00:12:16.10
a passage of fire and the
God had punished the south
00:12:16.13\00:12:19.80
perhaps for their
sins but here God now
00:12:19.83\00:12:22.60
is blessing this joint endeavor
00:12:22.64\00:12:24.34
and it sort of
sanctified the nation
00:12:24.37\00:12:27.24
and we came out of that
even more strongly believing
00:12:27.28\00:12:29.91
that, you know,
God had a destiny
00:12:29.94\00:12:31.88
for the United States.
00:12:31.91\00:12:33.45
So while it's not
a religious country
00:12:33.48\00:12:38.52
it really has the
sense of divine appointment
00:12:38.55\00:12:42.69
and divine authority
00:12:42.72\00:12:46.53
which in many
ways flies in the face
00:12:46.56\00:12:48.93
of what true religious liberty
would demand of the society.
00:12:48.96\00:12:53.77
And on that note
we will take a break.
00:12:53.80\00:12:57.14
So come back with us
00:12:57.17\00:12:58.51
and we can
discuss little bit more
00:12:58.54\00:12:59.87
what religious
liberty is and how it relates
00:12:59.91\00:13:03.08
in any country
00:13:03.11\00:13:04.45
but particularly
in the United States.
00:13:04.48\00:13:05.98