Good Social Sinners?

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof...

- U.S. Constitution, First Ammendment

I've always loved that the first things our founders decided to put in the Bill of Rights are the separation of church and state and religious freedom.

I've always hated how they worded it.

You see, written into the text of that amendment is an inherent contradiction. In order to protect religious freedom, Congress does, indeed, need to craft laws targeted towards particular religious establishments.

Let's consider that part of a religion mandates that religious organizations do something illegal. It's a big religion, let's say, 70-80% of the public, so Congress doesn't want to step on toes. In the name of freedom of religion, it exempts religious organizations from that law.

Nonsense? Churches are exempt from anti-discrimination laws, specifically because, well, most religions are fairly discriminatory. For instance, women cannot be priests (nor can, say, Jews, for that matter). If Christian churches (amongst others) had to obey the same laws on discrimination as the rest of the nation, plenty of people would be up in arms.

(Aside: I have to confess that I'd find it bizarrely fun to apply to a job opening for a priest as an atheist, then threaten to sue the church for discrimination when I got turned down.)

Most would say that this is no problem - all religious institutions are treated the same, regardless of religion, so it's not a law about Christianity. So why is this "respecting an establishment of religion?" Because while it applies to all religions equally, it was crafted specifically for one of them. There is no blanket exception from all laws, only those laws that are specifically inconvenient, yet somehow still socially acceptable.

And for good reason. Imagine if there were just such a blanket legal exemption and some silly religion had a commandment to stone sinners or kill infidels or some such.

So we can't give religious groups a blanket pass - that could prove tremendously destructive to our social contract. On the other hand, don't treat religious institutions as special cases and we will wind up inadvertently criminalizing tradition. Damned if we do, damned if we don't.

Instead, we've crafted laws to allow specific religions that we find acceptable to break laws in ways we find acceptable, on a case by case basis. The law might not mention specific "establishments of religion," but those exemptions were implicitly created for certain religions.

So what's the answer? Break the establishment clause or risk breaking the free exercise clause?

For what it's worth, I have no interest in deciding how the Catholic church is run (or in working for it). I also don't care about the words "In God We Trust" on dollar bills or the contents of the Pledge of Allegiance.

But I also have no illusions: we have decided that religion is so special that churches can do things that we find deplorable in any other context.