Participants: Lincoln Steed (Host), Kim Peckham
Series Code: LI
Program Code: LI000274A
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00:16 Welcome to the "Liberty Insider."
00:18 This is a program bringing you news, views 00:20 and commentary on religious liberty events 00:23 in the United States and around the world 00:26 as up-to-date is the daily headlines. 00:28 My name is Lincoln Steed, Editor of Liberty Magazine 00:32 and my guest in the program is Kim Peckham. 00:35 Among many other things communication-- 00:40 lead communication person for the Review and Herald. 00:43 A multifaceted publishing house that did many things 00:47 for the whole history 00:49 of the Seventh-day Adventist Church 00:50 but is in the process of being dismantled. 00:52 But that's another story that I might talk about. 00:54 Other story, yeah. 00:56 I worked there too 00:57 so I have a great sensitivity for what the Review did 01:01 and has done right up till the present. 01:03 Let's talk a little bit, I know you are a good talker, 01:05 in fact I visited your Sabbath school class 01:09 that Willow Brook Seventh-day Adventist Church 01:11 a couple of times and-- 01:13 you can keep the discussion going. 01:15 And lot of what we do with the religious liberty 01:17 is very cerebral, 01:22 you know, you got to think through these contexts. 01:24 And what is religious liberty itself? 01:27 What do you think as religious liberty? 01:29 And I get my paper out, you know, this is-- 01:33 I will grade you on one to ten, you know. 01:35 So there is a right answer 01:37 because you make a multiple choice. 01:38 Well, we hope there is a right answer. 01:42 Well, as I always understand religious liberty 01:44 I always think of it in... 01:46 context of my religious liberty. 01:48 What will people let me do 01:49 what I want to do in religious context? 01:53 You know, my beliefs well, 01:54 they let me exercise them freely 01:56 in the marketplace or in a job 02:01 or in my home or in my neighborhood 02:04 and I would fear 02:06 that maybe some of my beliefs would offend people 02:09 or might cut me off from certain opportunities, 02:12 economic opportunities 02:14 and at work or that sort of thing. 02:15 And so it's always been a-- 02:17 And these are real fears because these sort of things 02:18 do happen in some countries. 02:20 In fact, I just heard the other day 02:23 from one of my associates in the religious liberty work 02:27 that where is a couple of years ago 02:29 a Pew Forum survey found 02:30 that 70 percent of the world's population 02:34 lives under severe restrictions of religious liberty. 02:38 That figure has risen 02:39 I think they said it was about 78 percent. 02:41 I don't know the source of it, 02:43 I know Pew is the source of the 70. 02:44 So things are getting worse 02:46 where people are being restricted uniformly. 02:49 But that's an interesting description you give 02:51 because that can also set people up 02:54 for being insensitive for other peoples faith. 02:57 Yeah. If you say-- 02:59 And probably it's a very selfish point of view. 03:01 Its not really thing about well, this-- 03:04 my other neighbor who may have different beliefs 03:06 maybe they need to be protected as well. 03:09 Maybe they are minority religion 03:10 or coming from a practice that we don't understand. 03:15 And then am I my concerned about them 03:18 probably not as much as I should be. 03:19 Because like this figure that I said 03:21 side of the originally-- 03:23 I better stick with the 70 percent. 03:24 I don't know where the other one came from. 03:26 I do believe its getting worse. 03:28 But when it was 70 percent of the world's population 03:30 said by Pew which is very authoritative 03:34 and responsible organization. 03:37 Seventy percent of the world's population 03:39 living under severe religious liberty restrictions 03:41 that doesn't mean all those people feel that. 03:44 Most of the those countries the majority 03:47 have a certain religious view point 03:48 that's supported and they are untroubled in it 03:52 but if someone in their midst thinks otherwise, 03:55 they will be instantly marginalized 03:57 and perhaps imprisoned 03:58 or release their livelihood and so on. 04:02 So its this dynamic at work. 04:03 In fact, tell the story 04:05 that I've repeated on this program 04:06 but many years ago I think 04:07 since last I heard the minister of Maldives, 04:12 the foreign minister giving an interview on BBC 04:15 and they were asking for that religious liberty 04:18 and he said, "Oh, I have absolute religious liberty 04:20 in this country." 04:22 But he says, "it's not really a problem for us 04:23 since nearly 100 percent of the population 04:27 is a certain religious view point." 04:31 I don't need to say what it is 04:32 because it's not really relevant to the logic 04:35 and that was fine and then the interviewer said, 04:38 you know, "I'm a Christian." 04:39 He says, "if I came to your country, 04:41 would I be allowed to practice my faith?" 04:44 And he said, "Certainly not." 04:46 He says, "We might was well 04:47 allow Al-Qaeda into our country." 04:51 I thought that's very interesting. 04:53 If everyone is untroubled 04:55 because their religion is supported, 04:56 they see that as religious liberty 04:59 and very often I know, even in your church and mine 05:02 I've heard people pray that way. 05:03 We thank the Lord that we were able to worship untroubled. 05:07 That is true but that doesn't in itself 05:10 mean that there is fully functioning 05:13 religious liberty in that country. 05:15 Should look around a little bit 05:16 and even in the United States 05:18 it's a very much lower level of problem. 05:21 But you know, we are often with Liberty Magazine 05:25 and our church religious liberty representative 05:28 some of the lawyers were often allied 05:31 with groups like the Sikhs and others to get accommodation 05:35 for some of their religious practice 05:36 that's restricted in the workplace and so on. 05:40 You know, most people are not gonna worry about that 05:42 or even realize that. 05:44 They could lose employment because of head covering 05:48 or a face covering or something. 05:49 Yes, it's can't be-- 05:53 it's gonna cut back to like maybe the puritans 05:56 coming to America 05:58 who escaped religious prosecutions. 05:59 Now you are getting to the real underbelly 06:01 that we don't like to talk about. 06:03 Yeah, they were not very tolerant. 06:06 No, its like they suffered under intolerance 06:09 and you would think that okay, 06:11 there would be more-- allow more variation belief 06:14 but not at all that was-- 06:15 They were people compelled by conscience 06:18 but they were not informed by principal in my view. 06:21 They didn't really have a vision of religious liberty, 06:25 not when they came to this country 06:27 and not as they existed in the United-- in England. 06:32 And I returned to a lot-- 06:35 maybe in another program I will enlarge them. 06:37 I've always thought 06:38 that the puritan story in England 06:40 which eventuated in a civil war 06:42 and full control by the puritans 06:45 through religious dictatorship 06:47 and forms a lot of what happened 06:50 here in those settlements 06:51 and even today in American exceptionalism for example, 06:55 it's a narrow view or religious practice. 06:58 It isn't really a, you know, live and let live 07:03 and even to facilitate other faiths. 07:06 I think we probably have a hard time 07:08 understanding the mindset of that time 07:11 where it seemed to be that the expectations, 07:15 everybody within a community needed to be on the same page, 07:20 you know, religious sort of way 07:21 that all the homonyms had to be the same color 07:24 in this community and if they left, 07:28 you know, Europe to come to America 07:30 they would create a new community 07:31 where everything would be the same 07:34 just as the attempt was being made in Europe. 07:36 What you are getting close to 07:37 what maybe this is something we should talk about 07:40 on this program. 07:42 There's something that is not usually recognized 07:45 and it's the source I think of much of the problem. 07:48 In the medieval times and up 07:51 even through and past the reformation 07:55 religious identity really kept the community together 07:58 and that's why it was so important. 08:00 You know, eventually in the religious wars 08:03 that troubled Europe there were Protestant countries 08:06 fighting Catholic countries. 08:08 Their religious identity need to be defended 08:10 and sometimes advanced... 08:15 where we moved beyond that now. 08:17 At least in the west, we don't define our country 08:20 by religion per say. 08:24 And in fact, America and Australia 08:26 where I'm from originally like-- 08:27 they like to say they are melting pot. 08:31 Absent religion then the other thing 08:33 that heeds a country together very well is patriotism 08:37 a central point of national identity 08:42 which the US has been very good at developing. 08:45 And ironically, one of the things 08:47 that in the religious liberty circles we debate 08:49 as the Pledge of Allegiance big part of it 08:52 but yet from a religious liberty point of view 08:55 its problematic to require people to recite that 08:58 because it has implicit that, 09:01 you know, God and country are together 09:03 but that's it, patriotism is substituted 09:07 for the melding power of religion 09:11 and I think that's reasonable in a civil society. 09:13 But when you have a group of immigrants 09:16 as we have seen recently in Europe and Australia 09:18 that have such an inflexible religious identity 09:22 that can't easily embrace national identity 09:28 if it doesn't include their religious identity, 09:31 you've got a problem. 09:33 I think that's... part of what's going on 09:36 and at the very least 09:38 you will have a fragmented country or a culture 09:43 and the US has a little bit of it. 09:44 You know, where I live 09:47 and you live in Maryland 09:49 its up near Pennsylvania the Pennsylvania Dutch 09:53 not that German's are there 09:55 and then the Amish and Mennonites and so on 09:59 they are very exclusive communities. 10:01 No, they are not a threat to the United States 10:03 but they have not really integrated 10:06 and joined the larger 10:10 cultural identity in my view. 10:14 Yeah, and when there-- 10:15 when there is like political pressure 10:17 that can become a problem 10:18 like when we had the outbreak of World War I 10:21 or World War II and there is a lot of, 10:23 of lot of patriotism welling up in the country 10:25 and then these communities like the Mennonites 10:27 are good example and they were noncombatants. 10:30 Then there they get into trouble 10:31 and their beliefs are not respected as much 10:33 because of the up welling patriotic feeling. 10:35 Right, so you see it, yeah. 10:37 And the US has survived that very well. 10:39 It was no existential threat 10:40 but I think it illustrates what I'm saying 10:43 but within low tolerance you can absorb that 10:47 but it does work against the substitution 10:50 offensive nationhood and national culture 10:55 to tie a country together instead of religious identity. 11:00 So many of these new immigrants 11:03 and I know this I'm an immigrant, 11:05 I still hop back to Australia. 11:07 I have good thoughts about it. 11:10 I might go back if given half a chance. 11:13 Let's find, that's not alley, that's-- it is alley. 11:16 You know, all aliens think that 11:19 but when that's tied to a religious construct 11:22 that you will not give up, you're just basically camp 11:26 in this other country with a loyalty 11:29 to another system totally and I think its attention. 11:32 And I'm not saying those people should give up their religion 11:36 but it's a little different model 11:37 than we've had in the past. 11:39 And the United States is characterized itself 11:42 as being a country of great religious sentiment 11:45 which it is more than some 11:49 but I really think that the religions 11:52 have been subsumed by enlarged to a national identity 11:55 certainly after the civil war. 11:57 I don't know if you have thoughts on that. 11:59 No, its not an observation-- 12:01 Well, the civil war as Abraham Lincoln said, 12:05 you know, both sides pray to God 12:07 and it casted as a spiritual struggle 12:11 and the US got pass this it was seen as sort of 12:16 a passage of fire and the God had punished the south 12:19 perhaps for their sins but here God now 12:22 is blessing this joint endeavor 12:24 and it sort of sanctified the nation 12:27 and we came out of that even more strongly believing 12:29 that, you know, God had a destiny 12:31 for the United States. 12:33 So while it's not a religious country 12:38 it really has the sense of divine appointment 12:42 and divine authority 12:46 which in many ways flies in the face 12:48 of what true religious liberty would demand of the society. 12:53 And on that note we will take a break. 12:57 So come back with us 12:58 and we can discuss little bit more 12:59 what religious liberty is and how it relates 13:03 in any country 13:04 but particularly in the United States. |
Revised 2015-09-03