{"id":130577,"date":"2016-05-03T07:23:21","date_gmt":"2016-05-03T13:23:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2016\/05\/03\/religious-freedom-requires-defining-religion.html"},"modified":"2016-05-03T07:23:21","modified_gmt":"2016-05-03T13:23:21","slug":"religious-freedom-requires-defining-religion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2016\/05\/03\/religious-freedom-requires-defining-religion.html","title":{"rendered":"Religious freedom requires defining religion"},"content":{"rendered":"

Interesting article here (if not one I fully agree with) on municipalities looking more closely at facilities owned by organizations and trying to determine which ones are legitimate religious efforts, to be exempted from taxation, vs. which ones are simple commercial efforts, to be be treated (and taxed) like any other business.<\/p>\n

Protection of religious freedom has traditionally been strong in this country (if myopically focused mostly on Christian denominations) as part of the long memory of discrimination and state suppression of heterodoxy in Europe. The problem is how to define that intersection between church and state; what represents legitimate religious expression, and who gets to decide. Both parts of the equation — an avaricious or intolerant state, an unscrupulous or triumphalist believer — have an incentive to tilt the scales in their favor; or, if one is to be charitable, there may be a legitimate conflict of understanding over what is an integral part of property used for religious reasons and what is not.<\/p>\n

What's complicated things still further than municipalities scrambling for every last property tax dollar is the debate over religious freedom from other directions. The ACA and birth control coverage. Anti-discrimination laws against gays vs religious disdain for them. In all of these cases, the courts are getting dragged into defining what is a religious belief, and what religious beliefs are deferred to by the state. That carries dangers of overreach in both directions, requiring a delicate balancing act between the three parties involved: the believer, the one whose life is affected by those beliefs, and the state, and consistently applied balancing acts are not a strength of most human political systems.<\/p>\n

I have my own biases in the matter, tending toward the state limiting the impact of one person's religious beliefs on another, but what that limitation should be, and what rises to the level of sufficient impact for the state to intervene isn't always so clear, and when it's "simply" a battle between the state and the believer, it gets even more dicey, given the power the state has to oppress.<\/p>\n

I guess the last take-away here is that this is not just a debate between greedy city assessors and innocent faith communities; the overall religious freedom debate is being pushed forward in other ways by people pushing forward assertions about how religious freedom trumps any number of other social institutions and laws. The principles established in one branch of the debate will almost certainly come into play in the other, and folk who are boldly asserting how their religious freedom involves every action they take and every social interaction they have may be the ones themselves who force the courts to put stricter limits on that very freedom they claim.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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\n<\/a>
\nWho Should Define Religion: Believers or Bureaucrats?<\/a><\/span>
\nThe Massachusetts Supreme Court will decide whether a local shrine should be tax-exempt—a decision that could have broad implications for faith organizations in America.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

View on Google+<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Interesting article here (if not one I fully agree with) on municipalities looking more closely at facilities owned by organizations and trying to determine which ones are legitimate religious efforts, to be exempted from taxation, vs. which ones are simple commercial efforts, to be be treated (and taxed) like any other business. Protection of religious … Continue reading “Religious freedom requires defining religion”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[106],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-130577","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-plusposts"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":134717,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2017\/09\/16\/cakes-wedding-cakes-special-creative-efforts.html","url_meta":{"origin":130577,"position":0},"title":"Cakes, wedding cakes, and special creative efforts","author":"***Dave","date":"Sat 16-Sep-17 4:06pm","format":false,"excerpt":"One of the points I've heard made about the current SCOTUS wedding cake controversy was that this was no ordinary cake that was being requested, just something \"off the shelf,\" but a Personal Creative Effort, something that represented some highly individual personal crafting that, if forced to be created, would\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/wedding%2Bcake%2Blesbians.jpgimgmax%3D660.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/wedding%2Bcake%2Blesbians.jpgimgmax%3D660.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/wedding%2Bcake%2Blesbians.jpgimgmax%3D660.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":133891,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2017\/07\/19\/no-religious-freedom-is-not-absolute-and-it-shouldnt-be.html","url_meta":{"origin":130577,"position":1},"title":"No, religious freedom is not absolute. And it shouldn't be","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 19-Jul-17 1:26pm","format":false,"excerpt":"The Third Circuit has struck down an appeal by a trio of Orthodox rabbis that the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) means the government can't stop them from being paid by a wife to beat up on a husband who won't give her a divorce. This, they argued, was part\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":130428,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2016\/04\/14\/a-religious-freedom-ruling-that-is-perfectly-right-but-utterly-wrong.html","url_meta":{"origin":130577,"position":2},"title":"A religious freedom ruling that is perfectly right but utterly wrong","author":"***Dave","date":"Thu 14-Apr-16 7:20pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Pastafarianism was established as a satire of religion to show how people wanting to teach Intelligent Design were really kind of near-sighted dolts. As the judge in this case gives, as background:'FSMism is a riposte to intelligent design that began with a letter to the Kansas State Board of Education\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":26359,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2012\/02\/13\/the-martyrs-who-cried-wolf.html","url_meta":{"origin":130577,"position":3},"title":"The Martyrs Who Cried Wolf","author":"***Dave","date":"Mon 13-Feb-12 1:13am","format":false,"excerpt":"It occurs to me that the folks who are screaming in ever more shrill voices, pounding on tables with their shoes, and otherwise raising a humongous stink about \"religious freedom\" and discrimination, when what they really mean is their freedom to discriminate against people based on their own religious beliefs\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":135415,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2017\/11\/26\/religious-freedom-freedom-oppress-religious-opinions.html","url_meta":{"origin":130577,"position":4},"title":"When “religious freedom” is “freedom to oppress other religious opinions”","author":"***Dave","date":"Sun 26-Nov-17 11:51pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Yes, who is truly surprised that Donald Trump -- a man with few truly definable religious opinions -- is more than happy to garner political support by nominating a theocratic zany to the federal bench? \u201cReligious Freedom\u201d Proponent Jeff Mateer Is the Most Dangerous of Trump\u2019s Judicial Nominees Mateer defends\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/unnamed-5.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":137358,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2018\/10\/18\/religious-freedom-cuts-both-ways.html","url_meta":{"origin":130577,"position":5},"title":""Religious Freedom" cuts both ways","author":"***Dave","date":"Thu 18-Oct-18 10:57pm","format":false,"excerpt":"A man who claims that he is compelled by his religious and moral beliefs to help illegal immigrants passing by, even where such help violates federal law, is claiming that the same \"religious freedom trumps everything else\" arguments that Hobby Lobby and Masterpiece Bakery have used apply to his case\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130577","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=130577"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130577\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=130577"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=130577"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=130577"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}