Who Decides Your Rights?

My beliefs would have received no more welcome in the Massachusetts of 1640 than they do in the Massachusetts of today. The Puritans of 1640 were a moralistic crew who had little tolerance for dissent unless it was their brand of dissent.

[[For a discussion on the New Puritans, go to this link.]]

This hardy band was forced from England because of their dissenting ways, but once they established their own hegemony they forced all who would not conform to leave the colony. Roger Williams, Anne Hutchinson, the Seventh Day Baptists – all sought refuge in a small colony called Rhode Island in a quest for religious liberty.

Not long ago I was engaged in an interesting discussion on the internet regarding the concept of the role of religion in American history. Was the United States ever really a Christian nation? It became apparent to me that the real concern among the secularists goes straight back to the experiment at Massachusetts Bay where an attempt to bring a theocracy to the American continent resulted in inflexible intolerance and loss of liberty. Whereas some of us may view the term “Christian Nation” as generic shorthand for a kind of syncretism of a civil and religious ethic of behavior and thought, many view it in terms of the Inquisition and the Salem Witch Trials. Who can blame them?

In fact, I would not want to go back to a society of Blue Laws and other subtle forms of discrimination against my brand of religion, while at the same time I bemoan and mourn the loss of the basic moral ethic that has its roots in Judeo-Christian thought. But then again, my contact with the Evangelical Right does not inspire worries about their agenda, nor do I have a concern about a return to expulsions from the body politic.

I am concerned, however, about the new Puritans, the Puritans of the left. They seem to have an entirely different ethic and even religious fervor that has its own non-negotiable rules of morality. The debate is over, they tell us, on global warming, carbon (dioxide) emissions, same sex marriage, illegal immigration, free speech rights, and whatever else that is a part of the new orthodoxy. Dissent is good, they say, even patriotic as long as they are the dissenters, but now the questions have all been decided. They won the election! Game over!

In this we see a new intolerance born of the misunderstanding of the origins of our liberty. Thomas Jefferson wrote, “Can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are the gift of God?” If one does not believe in universal, inalienable rights endowed by one’s Creator (for in the world of secularism, there is no Creator) then from where do your rights come?

My internet interlocutor offered the case that the people get to decide which rights we have. But if that’s the case, the people by a majority vote or a majority vote of their representatives can decide that no one has a right to be Jewish and can initiate an Inquisition. They can decide that homosexuals can be strung up and beaten with rubber hoses. They can legislate or even prohibit religious beliefs and enforce compliance. Why not? They won the election! Game over!

Inalienable rights endowed by a Creator is a more sure road to freedom. As for me, I prefer that worldview whether this is a Christian nation or not.

Lenny C.