|
|
 |
  |
| Sunday, 10 October 2004 |
 |
|
 |
Features |  |
| News Business Features Editorial
|
Politics of conversion : A personal reflection (Continued from last week) by Rev. Dr. Shanta Premawardhana, Associate General Secretary, National Council of Churches, USA Guarantee of Religious Freedom by the State is Essential for the Proper Practice of Religion. I will take the example of the United States, simply because it is my adoptive country and apart from Sri Lanka, the land of my birth, it is the country I know best. Two interconnected principles - the guarantee of religious freedom enshrined in the Bill of Rights and the separation of the church and state - have provided an environment conducive for religions to thrive. Separation The Anti Conversion Bill or anything like it would not be entertained as a public policy in the US, because of the high value given to these two principles. The guarantee of the freedom of religion means that religious groups are free to propagate their faith however they see fit and people are free to convert however they see fit. The separation of church and state assures that the government will not interfere in religion, even to support or defend. I must state for the record, that I deeply disagree with both the foreign and domestic policies of the present US government and worry about the steady erosion of civil liberties and human rights that have taken place in the past four years. But this period in US history is not unique. Its short 230-year journey has been a bumpy ride. At each bump, though, Americans have consistently looked to those ideals enshrined in the Bill of Rights, which include freedom of thought, expression, assembly, religion and the press. Despite claims by some, the United States is not a Christian country. The founders never intended it to be. It was founded and remains a steadfastly secular country. But religion has flourished in the United States. Professor Diana Eck of Harvard University, who directs its Pluralism Project, and is one of the foremost authorities on religion in the United States, claims that today, the United States is the most religiously diverse country in the world. According to a recent Gallup poll, 92% of Americans say that they believe in God (s) or a higher power and 85% say that they have prayed in the past week. Spiritual They may not regularly attend a place of worship, but they are spiritual. Interestingly, considering the wide variety of Buddhist groups from Theravada to Nichiren Shoshu (a sect that originated in Japan), establishing temples in the US and gaining adherents (census data indicates that those who identified themselves as Buddhists in the US increased 170 per cent between 1990 and 2000), and considering the decline of Protestant Christianity (now below 50per cent) Professor Eck also suggests that if anything, the US might be called a Buddhist country!. It is interesting that Baptists in the United States were in the forefront of the struggle to establish the two principles of religious freedom and separation of church and state. As dissidents in England (because they did not want to belong to the king's church by virtue of birth, but by virtue of conviction), Baptists were persecuted and came to what they considered a "new world" in the 16th century. The new colonies were not hospitable to them either. Bastion The story of how the pioneering Baptist Roger Williams was driven out of the Massachusetts colony for his "radical" ideas together with his Baptist co-religionists, and how he established the city of Providence as a bastion of religious freedom, is legendary. Later they would exert significant political influence on the framers of the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights on establishing the principles of religious liberty and the separation of church and state. In those debates, they were very clear that they were not seeking religious tolerance, because, tolerance implies an attitude of superiority of the majority religion, which condescends to tolerate the minority religions. They insisted that nothing less than religious liberty would suffice. (To be continued) |
|
| News | Business | Features
| Editorial | Security
| Produced by Lake House |
