Welcome to the Liberty Insider.
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This is your program
designed to bring you
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up to speed on
religious liberty in the US
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and around the world.
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My name is Lincoln
Steed, for 22 years editor
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of Liberty
Magazine and almost as long
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the guide on this program.
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But thereby hangs a
tale because the guest
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on this program
is Bettina Crouse,
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the relatively newly minted
editor of Liberty Magazine
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following my notification
that I would be beginning
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the retirement process,
not yet from this program.
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So welcome, Bettina.
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It's a privilege to
be with you, Lincoln.
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Yes, and at the risk
of alienating or perhaps
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a calculated risk,
they won't even know
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what I'm talking about.
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I'll say that this is my
Myra Breckinridge moment,
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testing to see if you know.
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You're the first female
editor of Liberty Magazine.
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Correct. And
also important, I do.
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The second Australian,
but the first woman editor.
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Correct.
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As I said before, I
was 22 years in the job
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and before me, Cliff
Goldstein only 7 years,
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but before him,
Roland Hegstad, 34 years.
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So like me, you're
not likely to equal that.
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No, I don't think so, Lincoln.
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And I don't know
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what your plans
are for the future,
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but I remember shortly
after I started editing,
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the then associate,
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she said to me one day early on,
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she said, "I guess you're going
to be retiring in this job."
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It was like she
punched me in the mouth,
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I'd never even
thought about retiring,
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but it turned out to be correct.
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So you've got a great history
in this magazine behind you,
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you've got the
world ahead of you.
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I'm drifting into John Milton's
Paradise Lost, you know,
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as the angel bids
the guilty pair farewell,
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it says, "The
world before them."
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What to do?
Providence their guide.
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And I'm sure
providence will guide you
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as you lead out in
a very difficult time.
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What I'd like to do
on this first program,
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let's talk a bit
about where you're from
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and what you
bring to the program.
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And I'll say one
thing before you get to it,
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I do remember 20 years ago
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you interviewed
to be the associate
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on Liberty Magazine.
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That's right.
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So I know you
have a long interest.
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I do have a long
interest in Liberty Magazine,
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you're so right.
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And you've mentioned that
we share a similar accent.
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Right. Which is pure
chance as you well know.
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It's got nothing to
do with your selection
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and I'm very happy
for Liberty and for you,
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but I had nothing to do with it.
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Yeah, but I am a
fellow Australian.
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Yes. Sorry, what was that?
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A fellow Australian.
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A fellow Australian, indeed.
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And again, that's probably not
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going to be understandable
to too many people.
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But, you know,
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I have been living in
this country for 24 years
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and would you
believe we came to America,
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my husband Gary and
I, for intending to stay
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just for one or two years.
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But as these things do, it grew.
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The adventure grew
and we're still here today
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and very much at home.
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My husband is Gary Crouse,
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he is director of Adventist
Mission for the Seventh-day
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Adventist World
Church and together,
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you know, we've
made our home here,
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but we still travel back
to Australia to visit family,
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as I know you do too, Lincoln.
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Yes. Yeah.
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What stimulated your
interest though in religious
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liberty generally?
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And like I say, I know
it goes back 20 plus years.
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It's interesting
because in growing up,
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I grew up in a
strong Christian home.
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But really, religious
liberty wasn't on my radar
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until I got to law school.
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Now, I attended
law school in Australia
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and I remember sitting
in constitutional law class
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and becoming absolutely
fascinated by the concept
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of constitutions because
here you have these blue prints
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for how societies should operate
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and constitutional law
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really became my
love when it came to law.
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In fact, you know, it
is complete coincidence,
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but when I came to choose
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my research thesis for my
honors year at law school,
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I actually chose to compare
the Australian Constitution
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with the US Constitution.
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And much of the Australian
one is modeled on the US,
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of course.
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Well, yes. Exactly.
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I mean, word for word
they are very, very similar.
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Section 116 of the
Australian Constitution
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and the religion clauses
in the American Constitution,
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but in Australia, religious
freedom protection is very,
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very different,
it's very, very narrow.
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It's perceived as a
restraint on government,
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rather than a positive,
individual human right and,
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of course, that has impacted
the jurisprudence around
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religious freedom
compared to the US,
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where it is much more a dynamic,
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alive area of legal study.
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So, you know, Lincoln,
maybe that was a little bit
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of foreshadowing as
to where my interests
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would lie in the future,
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but I chose to explore
that aspect of constitutional
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law at law school.
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So that is where my interest
in religious freedom began.
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But when it got to the
US, that's when it really
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started to take off.
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And, of course, it's
part of the founding narrative
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of the United States
about religious liberty
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and how important it is.
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I was about to
say myth, but myth
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is inappropriate
because it's true,
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but yet it has been
mythologized I think beyond
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the law in some ways
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and that's going to be your
job to keep it on the straight
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and narrow.
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Yes, most certainly.
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To walk in your
footsteps, Lincoln.
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Well, you know, I
follow the law closely,
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but I'm not a
lawyer, but I love history
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and I've read and still
read an awful lot of history.
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And, you know,
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I judge it a
little more than just law
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and in some ways I think
the Australian experience
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and the American experience
are not that dissimilar
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because they both derive
from the English experience.
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And, of course, even after 9/11,
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the lawyers were quoting
the Magna Carta at Runnymede,
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and Thomas Jefferson, of
course was quoting English
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common law for
arguing its connection,
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even though I remember Justice
Scalia just boohooing it,
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nothing to do with it.
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But, you know, I
think he was being
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facetious because it
has everything to do with
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how you see even
the American law today.
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But you have to see US,
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the political and the
legal landscape in the US
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is unique in the way
that it has viewed religious
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freedom and the way it has
become embedded in the culture.
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I mean, there is really no other
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parallel around the world.
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And that makes...
And that makes us...
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It's a guiding light
for religious freedom,
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even if it's not
always kept well.
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The mere existence
of the Constitution
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and the experience that
lies behind it is powerful.
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It encourages many
people in many countries
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toward emulating it.
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Right.
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And, you know, more recently,
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just in the past
couple of decades,
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religious freedom
as an active part of US
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foreign policy has
become very important,
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you know, with the passage
of the International Religious
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Freedom Act back in the 1990s.
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Protecting and promoting
religious freedom abroad
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is actually one
of the core mandates
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of the US State Department.
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Yes.
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Lot we can talk about
and you will be writing
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about this and
maybe on this program
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talking about
them in the future.
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I've got to tell you one thing
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and I'd like
your response to this.
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I know law is vital
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and government's run
by lawyers by and large,
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but at times I've
been troubled that even our
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church in
analyzing religious liberty,
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we tend to judge
it on legal precedent
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or legal increments,
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when my judgment
is, even in countries
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of established law,
like England, Australia
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and the US,
it's social movements
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and grand swirls of shifting
public opinion that have
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greater and more
sudden effects than,
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you know, continuing litigation
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or legal actions.
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You know, it's interesting,
Lincoln, because there was
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a study recently on
the US Supreme Court
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and its track record in
regard to how it decides
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First Amendment cases.
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And it looked at
all the decisions over
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the past 70 years,
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you know, right from
Chief Justice Burger,
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right through to the current
Chief Justice John Roberts
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and it found this sort of
trajectory of pro-religion
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cases or decisions.
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So back in the
1950s and 60s about 41%
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of the Supreme Court
cases were decided in favor
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of religion and
today it's near 75, 80%
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of the cases are
decided in a pro-religion way.
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But if we were looking
just at that, we would say,
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"Oh, religious freedom is
alive and well and protected."
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But as you were
saying, it's not just,
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you can't just
look to the courts,
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you can't just look
to the legal structures,
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you have to look at the
culture that is underlying
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those structures
because they are important,
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not just for religious
freedom now, but as a predictor
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of how religious
freedom will be understood
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and protected in the future.
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And the way that
I've described it lately
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and I'm sure you'll be writing,
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if not using the same term.
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I say that we're entering
an era of religious entitlement
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for particular
religious view points,
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which explains a
lot of those cases
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of the Supreme
Court and other courts
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that look positive,
but if you examine them,
00:11:18.44\00:11:21.74
since the collapse
of the Soviet Union
00:11:21.78\00:11:24.51
and the fall of the
Berlin Wall, in my view,
00:11:24.55\00:11:26.98
we've narrowed our application
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of religious
liberty mightily toward
00:11:28.98\00:11:31.19
the Christian nationalism
in the United States.
00:11:31.22\00:11:36.29
It's not all
Protestant, not all Catholic,
00:11:36.32\00:11:37.99
but it's a
coalition of the so-called
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religious right.
00:11:40.20\00:11:41.53
And yes, they're
getting privileges
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and mark outs in an amazing way,
00:11:43.90\00:11:46.84
but I don't see that
on the periphery religious
00:11:46.87\00:11:49.87
liberty is strengthening
in the US, the contrary.
00:11:49.90\00:11:53.84
No.
00:11:53.88\00:11:55.21
You know, in many
ways religious freedom
00:11:55.24\00:11:56.95
as a value has become devalued,
00:11:56.98\00:12:02.42
it's become entangled
with partisan politics.
00:12:02.45\00:12:05.55
You know, there
was another study
00:12:05.59\00:12:07.82
looking at this actual
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idea that politics
and religious freedom
00:12:12.49\00:12:16.77
have become entwined.
00:12:16.80\00:12:18.13
So if you are on
the Conservative side,
00:12:18.17\00:12:20.34
you have a more positive
view of religious freedom,
00:12:20.37\00:12:22.34
if you're on the Liberal side,
you have a more negative side.
00:12:22.37\00:12:25.01
And for me, that bodes
poorly for the future because
00:12:25.04\00:12:29.58
if you cannot discuss religious
freedom as a transcended
00:12:29.61\00:12:32.55
overarching concept,
you have lost something
00:12:32.58\00:12:37.02
vital from the
concept of religious freedom.
00:12:37.05\00:12:39.92
And this is what I
noticed recently with liberty,
00:12:39.95\00:12:43.76
more of the feedback
00:12:43.79\00:12:45.13
than I ever
noticed before from people
00:12:45.16\00:12:47.26
were those angry
that we were or me,
00:12:47.30\00:12:51.23
particularly sometimes,
00:12:51.27\00:12:52.63
I was apparently sympathetic
to the religious rights
00:12:52.67\00:12:56.47
of groups that
they found abhorrent.
00:12:56.50\00:12:59.71
And this is the
irony of religious liberty.
00:12:59.74\00:13:02.98
Unless you grant
the most full freedom,
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the same as you would
want to the most objectionable
00:13:06.68\00:13:10.05
religious
expression, it means that nobody
00:13:10.09\00:13:12.72
really has religious freedom.
00:13:12.75\00:13:15.52
It's fascinating.
00:13:15.56\00:13:16.89
I was, as you know
Lincoln, I represented
00:13:16.93\00:13:19.33
the Adventist Church in my
previous job on Capitol Hill
00:13:19.36\00:13:23.47
and in their capacity
attended various meetings
00:13:23.50\00:13:26.20
of advocacy groups.
00:13:26.23\00:13:28.20
And I remember one
particular meeting,
00:13:28.24\00:13:31.37
when an advocate for
a Muslim group stood up
00:13:31.41\00:13:36.01
and said, "In India
our rights are abridged,
00:13:36.04\00:13:39.58
we are discriminated against
as a religious minority for,
00:13:39.61\00:13:44.75
you know, just simply existing."
00:13:44.79\00:13:47.32
And then the very next person
00:13:47.36\00:13:49.09
who got up was a member
of a Hindu advocacy group,
00:13:49.12\00:13:53.26
who said, "In Pakistan,
00:13:53.29\00:13:55.56
the Muslim majority oppresses us
00:13:55.60\00:13:58.23
and we're discriminated against,
00:13:58.27\00:13:59.83
we don't have basic rights."
00:13:59.87\00:14:01.67
And so there's just
grand irony that in one context
00:14:01.70\00:14:07.24
a group is oppressed
and then another group,
00:14:07.28\00:14:09.88
another context that
same group the oppressor.
00:14:09.91\00:14:14.12
And, you know,
00:14:14.15\00:14:15.48
unless we start to recognize
that even in ourselves,
00:14:15.52\00:14:18.92
even in a
country such as America,
00:14:18.95\00:14:21.96
which is, you know,
profoundly respectful
00:14:21.99\00:14:24.79
of the idea of religious
freedom for all people,
00:14:24.83\00:14:27.20
we can start to drift
into this idea that religious
00:14:27.23\00:14:29.86
freedom is for me
and not for anyone else.
00:14:29.90\00:14:33.97
But, Lincoln,
you're absolutely right.
00:14:34.00\00:14:36.91
You know, unless we
are prepared to extend
00:14:36.94\00:14:39.24
the same freedoms to
others, then religious freedom
00:14:39.27\00:14:42.41
as a concept has been destroyed,
00:14:42.44\00:14:44.51
it no longer exists.
00:14:44.55\00:14:46.05
Absolutely.
00:14:46.08\00:14:47.42
It's a good
point to take a break,
00:14:47.45\00:14:49.18
where you're saying I'm right.
00:14:49.22\00:14:51.75
I will frame that, I
didn't hear it very much.
00:14:51.79\00:14:54.79
Let's take a short break
and I'll be back to continue
00:14:54.82\00:14:57.23
discussing with the new editor
00:14:57.26\00:14:58.99
of Liberty
Magazine Bettina Crouse.
00:14:59.03\00:15:01.20