Abstract

It is no longer obvious that religion ought to be in the public sphere. Law has become ideology and religion has lost respect, despite being close to the centre of how we understand justice and the common good. Instead, forced conformity under ‘equality’ or ‘nondiscrimination’ is used to monitor the public and private places of religious activities. Liberty is now presumed to be a grant from the state and any public license for religious activities must follow the state, as seen in the Trinity Western University law school case.

Religious freedom rights are not solely private and individual but communal. Much depends on the context. Religion is an equality right and to suggest it is at odds with equality rights is simply inaccurate. Further, to suggest that ‘secular’ means ‘non-religious’ is to imply that that ‘secular’ people have no ‘faith’. That is also untrue. Everyone has faith; the question is what is believed. When ‘secular’ is read as non-religious, then the beliefs of atheists and agnostics are accorded representation but ‘religious’ beliefs are not. That is neither representative nor fair. Only through an inclusive approach can accommodation and diversity have their proper application and meaning. The term ‘secular’ must not be used when speaking of the public sphere and religion's role in it.

Once we grasp the importance of religion to culture and to the continued understanding of moral rights and duties, our approach to the law of charities – and our understanding of the public benefit of religious charities – ought to bolster the role religions play in relation to ideas of conscience and justice in open societies. Charitability towards religion will lead to benefits from the charitable dimensions of religion.

Introduction

A version of the paper upon which this conclusion is based was given elsewhere, and when originally presented, styled itself as ‘a cookbook of ways to dissolve the freedom of religion’. It was written in the style of C. S. Lewis's The Screwtape Letters in the sense that it purported to give advice from a senior devil to a junior devil about how one opposed to religion might wish to minimize the place of religion in the public sphere. It was intended to be somewhat humorous.