Author Archives: Cameron Montgomery

The Impossibility of Religious Freedom by Winnifred Fallers Sullivan: A Review

07 Tuesday Jun 2016

Posted by in Critical Religion, University of Ottawa

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Winnifred Sullivan’s The Impossibility of Religious Freedom addresses her involvement in and observations of the legal case study of Warner v. Boca Raton concerning the decoration of gravesites in a Boca Raton cemetery. The author is both an academic and a lawyer, and she probes the case from a predominantly sociological viewpoint rather than by articulating a legal argument.

The highlight of this book, in my opinion, is that it is so rich with detail. The photos, the uncomplicated narrative and the comprehensiveness of information tell a complete story well-presented. Sullivan makes the characters come to life; I was moved by the grief of her diverse interviewees who were being treated so pitilessly by the cemetery authorities. It is a very interesting and important book. The Impossibility of Religious Freedom is an account that was well worth putting together.

That said, the author could have developed the theoretical analysis further for a more instructive conclusion. She is saying that “Freedom of Religion” is impossible, but, problematically, never clarifies what exactly “Freedom of Religion” is. In the case of Jacobellis v. Ohio (1964), Justice Potter Stewart writes “that “hard-core pornography” is hard to define, but that “I know it when I see it”. Similar approaches have been made in defining the Freedom of Religion in law. Phillip Griego notes that the Sun-Worshipping Atheism case before the Fair Employment and Housing Act was dismissed for similar reasons. Without giving any clear explanations, Sullivan seems to be relying on the ‘I’ll know it when I see it’ approach, which is the cause of the ‘impossibility’ she critiques in the book. Applying a critical theory approach would yield a conclusion other than “this is impossible”.

‘Freedom of religion’ is protected by law; it stands trial on a regular basis, proving it not to be “impossible”. Every day in America, the country featured in The Impossibility of Religious Freedom, citizens (and corporations like Hobby Lobby) are operationalizing laws concerning Freedom of Religion to their benefit. In March 2016, North Carolina passed a bill that requires gender-segregated washrooms and seven other states are discussing following suit, in April 2016, Tennessee legislators passed a bill to allow therapists and counselors to abstain from treating people they think are gay, and in April 2016 Mississippi signed a Religious Freedom bill into law that allows businesses to discriminate against LGBT people. Religious Freedom works. What Sullivan has not distinctly explained in her book is who is producing the discursive norms of ‘religion’ protected by Religious Freedom, who is excluded or marginalized by this ‘domination of knowledge production’, and how the totalizing category of ‘religion’ is produced to protect particular interests—in short, she has not pointed to who is benefitting from this arrangement. The author sees that unclear definitions of religion lead to discrepancies between sociologists and lawyers, but where does that take us in terms of theoretical understanding or social justice? The Warner v. Boca Raton case study provides the opportunity to deconstruct the colonial, sexist, homophobic and coercive aspects of Freedom of Religion legislation, but Sullivan stops at “impossible”. (This is not to devalue her overall critique of ‘religion’ as a legal category. Such critiques are incredibly valuable).

Throughout the book, Sullivan notes that judges, lawyers and legal professionals of various kinds are puzzled and annoyed by her need to explain that there are innumerable definitions of religion, and these are all highly contested. They are confused that she can’t describe what she is an expert of, or what she studies. The effect is that her position as an expert witness is undermined, and she is unable to use her knowledge and position to bring justice to people in need. This is not her fault, but it points to a serious problem which Religious Studies scholars hoping to be public intellectuals need to address. The Religious Studies scholars in the book may be a confused bunch, but the theologians know exactly who they are. A rabbi and a priest are also called to be expert witnesses in Warner v. Boca Raton, and they had great confidence in their abilities as authorities.

In Boca Raton, Sullivan could have stood up for the rights of individuals in the face of corporate interest, she could have sparked a debate about private expression and public sterility, or she could have embarked on a fascinating contemporary analysis of burial culture and the legal context. In the book, Sullivan places great emphasis on her background in law, and so she could have used this case as the foundation of a rectification of the legal system to respond to the “impossibilities” which she is identifying. In the end, after the discussion about the indefinability of religion, Sullivan concludes that if people say that what they are doing is religion, they should be allowed to do it as long as it ‘looks like’ religion. There is nothing particularly harmful in this conclusion in this case, but as a qualified specialist the potential to do more was there. For example, Sullivan asks “[c]an “lived religion” ever be protected by laws guaranteeing religious freedom?”. If she is engaged in challenging the construction of religion in freedom of religion laws, perhaps a better question would be “can the freedom of expression protect the rights of these people to decorate graves?” That might be a more productive line of questioning.

Another important legal take on ‘religion clauses’ is Micah Schwartzman’s thorough article “What If Religion Isn’t Special?”, referring to ‘religion’ as a special entity within law. The implications of Schwartzman’s work are that ‘religion clauses’ foster divisions rather that solidarity, encouraging people to fight for small “accommodations” for their in-group instead of guaranteeing rights for society at large through freedom of assembly and freedom of speech legislation.

A fear that is sometimes voiced by my colleagues in Freedom of Religion discussions is that while the construction is problematic, something will be lost, or something important and indescribable will be left vulnerable if the problematic Freedom of Religion were not there. As expert witnesses, scholars need not convince lawmakers that religion is some enigmatic confusing thing they’ll just never quite understand; they need to lend their knowledge to constructive ways of ensuring that the behaviours classified as ‘religious’ that are worth protecting (or at the very least worth studying) are protected by other means.

The Impossibility of Religious Freedom is an interesting and insightful book which stimulates great thought and debate. It has potential, perhaps in a supplementary chapter with reference to Schwartzman’s suggestions, to push the theory further, but it provides a great introduction to the difficulties and challenges associated with Freedom of Religion in law.

Conference Report: Women in Secularism 2

07 Tuesday Jan 2014

Posted by in Critical Religion, University of Ottawa

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Washington, D. C., May 17-19, 2013

Washington, D. C., May 17-19, 2013

Washington, D. C., May 17-19, 2013

October 2013:
Note on Critical Religion: It is my assumption that scholars engaged in critical religion are essentially the atheists, feminists and de-colonists in the field of Religious Studies. I had dinner with a group of Religious Studies majors a few nights ago, and I was interested and somewhat disappointed to note that they generally defined ‘the religious’ as those who self-identified in that way. While Religious Studies departments can be replete with scholars drawing lines around ‘religious’ art or ‘religious’ clothes, implicitly using the adjective as an analytical category rather than as data itself, to my understanding, ‘Critical Religion’ particularly is a meta-religion-studies, looking at what people are calling ‘religion’, who is employing this label and for what reasons they are doing so. Critical Religion means examining the modern social attitude called ‘religious’, rather than apologetically calling human behaviour ‘religious phenomena’, something which does not exist, so naturally it is impossible to track or even define. Feminists have challenged and reconstructed history with a place for women within it, and de-colonists have given voice to a historically silent subaltern perspective. A large and contemporary body of work in Religious Studies is in many ways surprisingly still engaged in writing histories as (patriarchal, colonizing) Cultural Christians. Feminist and de-colonial theory, devoted to revealing and questioning unexamined systems of power, are the avenues which lead to Critical Religion. This seems to produce atheism, which is why the Women in Secularism conference series is relevant to Critical Religionists.

Atheism & Feminism

On May 17, 2013, some 50 core participants gathered at the Downtown Marriott Centre in Washington D. C. for the second annual conference about women’s involvement in secular movements. Up to 200 others attended for the keynote speakers. The conference was organized by the Centre For Inquiry, a not-for-profit organization which mobilizes on a variety of issues surrounding ‘secular’ concerns, such as scientific education in public schools, grief services for nonbelievers, and the demystification and de-vilification of all things contraceptive.

Over the course of the weekend, women engaged in atheist feminist activism had the opportunity to meet and discuss their work. Some women were best-selling authors, others scientists in the academy, and others were leaders in support groups within their communities. It is important to note that most of these women were and are actively engaged in journalistic activism via online blogs, Twitter, and other social media. (For a list of all the speakers and their lectures, click here.)

Toxic Religion and Toxic Patriarchy are the Same

Many of the activist-oriented conference speakers and panelists encouraged a coalition between the feminist movements and the secular ones, both to get more feminists to be atheists and to make the secular movement less elitist and oppressive. Essentially the secularists were engaged in convincing the feminists of the toxicity of religion and religion’s interference with the state, and the feminists were convincing the secularists that the fight to empower women is the keystone in reducing religion’s political influence. The result was feminists getting equipped with a more detailed understanding of the role of Christianity and Islam and patriarchy, and the secularists gaining a deeper appreciation for the role of feminist struggles in working towards secularism. Secularists and feminists were engaged in a process of seeing the dismantling of toxic masculinity and the dismantling of toxic religion as the same endeavour.

CFI Washington D. C.’s president and conference organizer Melody Hensley said that “issues of secular movements are issues of women’s safety and freedom.” The anti-feminist thrust of the predominant atheist movements, led by Richard Dawkins and others, suggests this is not a universal notion. Atheist groups consisting largely of wealthy, educated white males are focused on the science of anti-God-ness. Dawkins calls himself a “cultural Christian”, supporting ‘traditional marriage’ and other Christian constructions while intent on disproving the existence of an all-powerful God, male or otherwise. It follows that Dawkins supports ‘traditional’ gender roles and the idea of the father as head of the household. In this way, atheist movements may protect and inscribe oppression of women; they can erode Grand Narratives in one way, and perpetuate them in others. While I see feminism and atheism as part of the same project, it troubles me that this Dawkinsian atheism, disproving God with science, could potentially be the extent to which the secular movement goes. It is incredibly important to demonstrate the connection between the cultural institutions of Christianity and the cultural institutions of patriarchy. As Kathlyn Pollitt said, “religious texts are the rulebooks of misogyny.” Radio personality Sarah Moglia pointed out that statistically speaking, all social movements that do not reach the working classes (and women make up 70% of the world’s poor) are doomed to fail as they do not reach the institutionalization phase. The conference made clear that secularism as a social movement will not take root until it is inclusive, pervasive and skeptical, deeply penetrating not only the imaginary god but the system which both creates and is created by notions of it.

Another important discussion at this conference was that of nomenclature. There were many discussions and disagreements about what the movement should be called, how people should self-identify, and other issues which can be (and were) paralleled to the gay rights movement. I got the sense generally that although there were a few people who disliked the ‘secular’ title and preferred out-and-out atheist, there was an acceptance of allies in the movement. It was noted that as the term ‘feminist’ often precipitates a strong counter-reaction, so the word ‘atheist’ denotes criticism of the hegemonic paradigm and can’t be softened. This makes me think of Richard Cimino’s definition of atheism, which is “an oppositional identity in a culture of theism.” This oppositional identity creates many apologists, and potential allies of the secular (and women’s liberation) movements often focus on religion as a notion of ‘The Good’, or the positive effects of religions rather than the endemic oppression they inscribe. There has also been a great deal of ‘historical’ focus on religious persecution and religious freedom, and church-related abuses and violence are called ‘situational’, or ‘representative of the times’. Pollitt remarked that one need only read the Bible itself for an account of human rights abuses. The pervasive desire to imagine religion as ‘The Good’ results in a social forgetfulness that obscures the modern and political projects deploying God in state and in law. God went on the money and in the Pledge in the United States in the 1950s, and in contrast, France separated church and state in 1905. Investing the state with God-the-Father, and pretending he was always there is both anachronistic and political. Speaker and writer Jennifer Hecht notes that the feminist atheist movement needs to “establish a long history of secular women because the Christian world can be overwhelming,” and that “we have to be the ones to cultivate this memory.” When asked what the future would look like if atheist and feminist movements were successful, Pollitt responded that it would look as though atheism and feminism had always been popular. Whether or not that is the case remains to be seen, but every story told and every voice that speaks moves the discourse forward.

Critical Religion

One of the most interesting parts of this conference was that scholars of Religious Studies were not invited. The doctors of Science, Political Studies, History and Women’s Studies seemed to recognize that much of the work in Religious Studies, while likely well-intentioned, is apologetic and somewhat evangelical. Ultimately, Religious Studies scholars seem to be more committed to their subjects of study than to human rights, or perhaps conventional Religious Studies departments do not offer the anti-oppressive theoretical education which has become typical in some Social Sciences.

Critical Religionists are often adept at pointing out the flaws of our peers, but the work which is crucial to developing the movement lies in constructing better theoretical frameworks than the ones which exist currently in the field of Religious Studies. Work like Goldenberg’s Vestigial State Theory move beyond “standing in the conceptual space carved out by theistic religion” (Sam Harris, 2007). Indeed, scholars of religion are only beginning to have the language with which to describe “vestigial states called ‘religion’”. Feminist and post-colonial academic and activist circles are a fantastic place to see these developing frameworks in action; these are the frameworks that Critical Religion needs.

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Videos of the entire conference can be found here.

[Editor’s note: This article was modified on 11 April 2016 at the author’s request]