The following text was originally delivered as a lecture by Chelsea Langston Bombino on September 17, 2019 at Mount St. Mary’s University for the 2019 Constitution Day Lecture.
By Chelsea Langston Bombino
Today, I would like to suggest that the Constitution's First Amendment is both deeply personal and communal. I will start by sharing how the different elements of the First Amendment reflect something fundamental about what it means to be human. As humans, we ask ourselves the same questions: Why are we here and where are we going? Is there a Divine creative force in our universe? And if so, what does that mean for us individually and collectively? What is best for our own well-being as individuals, and as a society? How ought we structure relationships so as to maximize human flourishing? What is the source of our identity, and how does identity shape our beliefs and actions? What does it mean to give and receive love? These are questions that, as college students, are particularly poignant at this moment in your lives. About a decade ago, I was where you are, and I was considering these questions from the vantage point of a college student at a large secular state university. I'll let you in on a secret: I'm still considering these questions, and they have equally poignant resonance at the stage I'm of life I am at now: married, expecting a baby and fully engaged in my vocation as a religious freedom advocate at a Christian civic organization. These questions are answered ultimately by what I call our sacred animating belief systems. These animating belief systems, or worldviews, can be totalizing, so that everything we do is shaped by certain fundamental identities we have, whether these identities are explicitly religious or not.
There are some animating belief systems that apply to a specific segment of our lives. For example, my husband is a social worker. He often discusses the paradigms that social workers and psychologists use in working with a client on a mental health challenge. These paradigms reflect different central core beliefs on animating theories about how humans are wired and how they are empowered to change. Even within one field–social work in this case–there are different therapeutic and clinical approaches stemming from different originating modalities of operation around how to help someone.
Many of us have core animating beliefs that are explicitly shaped by our spiritual values or by what we hold sacred. It is true that not every belief system is explicitly religious in nature. One can be vegan, for example, and have his or her core animating beliefs shaped about animal ethics, environmentalism and/or human health. An ethical vegan may or may not hold explicitly religious beliefs that impact their veganism, yet this may be a deep and central part of their identity and shape their personal actions, from what they eat, to the products they purchase, to the medications they take. This can also include their civic actions: how they vote, what types of political activity they engage in, their community service actions, and where they choose to donate their time, skills or money.
Examining the First Amendment
Let's now turn to the First Amendment. The First Amendment protects a series of fundamental freedoms and human exercises: freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religion, freedom of assembly, and freedom to petition the government. Let us unpack each of these freedoms and fundamental human exercises. Each of these activities reflects a core element of our humanity. In the Christian tradition, we believe that humans are created in the image of God. That means that Christians believe that we see a bit of our Creator in every living human being. We learn something of God by observing the fundamental activities of humans. Humans have human dignity because they were created in God's image and they bear His image in how they live every element of their lives. Therefore, we can look at human activities and the various roles humans play and learn something about the various roles our Creator plays. Being an image bearer does not mean just fulfilling one monolithic role in your life. In the Christian tradition, we are called to have different roles and responsibilities in different spheres of life. It is not only possible, but common and expected, that we bear the image of God in the different roles that we play. For example, you may be a student, a daughter, an employee, a church member, and an athlete all at the same time. Each of these roles is played out in the context of a certain community. You are not a student or a family member in a vacuum, but those identities only fully come to life in the context of the specific communities of family and campus, respectively. Therefore, in the Christian tradition, we can see that when humans fulfill their God-given roles in the different communities in their lives, they are fulfilling God's design for them and we also learn something about what it means to be created in God's image.
I am biased because I am a Christian, and I think these ideas make the most sense in the context of the Christian faith. But one need not be a Christian, nor an adherent of any explicitly religious tradition, to believe that humans have inherent dignity and that humans are called to different and multiple roles in their lives, depending on the life stage they are in. We also know that there are certain fundamental communities that we see again and again in societies and cultures across history and across geography, although the exact norms and structures of these communities can vary drastically. We see that humans need each other in different types of communities to fulfill their inherent roles. Communities that are fundamental to the experience of being human include, but are not limited to, families, communities of worship, communities of business, as well as communities around cultural formation, such as art, athletics, leisure and social services.
I believe that to truly protect human rights and human flourishing, we have to protect not just the individual rights, but the capacity of these communities and their varied and different natures, especially in our pluralistic society, to continue to flourish. You'll notice that each freedom protected in the First Amendment represents a fundamental human activity that has both an individual or personal element and a communal or institutional element.
Freedom of Religion
Freedom of religion is perhaps the most fundamental human freedom. It's taken to mean freedom for individuals to determine what is sacred to what animates their belief systems, whether that is adherence to an explicit religious faith or denial of religion altogether. For freedom of religion to flourish, individuals must be able to believe and live out their religious belief system, or none at all. But beyond individual belief, humans must be able to exercise what they believe to be true in ways that are about how their sacred animating beliefs call them to live, serve and participate as citizens. So for example, it is not enough that an atheist is simply allowed to deny the existence of God and his personal belief system. To fully live out his faith, he must be able to engage in speech activities, and potentially press, service, assembly, and government petition activities that also reflect his core beliefs. The protection of his individual right to be an atheist in the context of his private activities is not enough to fully protect the spectrum of his humanity and how he expresses a core animating belief. He must also be allowed to live out that belief in the context of the communities he's a part of. There needs to be freedom for individuals who share his beliefs about atheism to come together and to also act together, whether that involves petitioning the government or engaging in certain acts of service or education in their communities. As a Christian, I need to be prepared to defend the rights of my neighbor who is an atheist to fully express humanity by having his beliefs shape both his personal actions and communal actions. Therefore, freedom of religion is not fully embodied unless religious freedom is protected for both individuals and for institutions; for acts that are both explicitly religious like worship, fellowship and the reading of sacred texts and acts that are shaped by sacred animating beliefs like service to others and forming groups of affinity and educating our children, and yes, also in engaging government.
Freedom of Speech
Each of the four other fundamental freedoms protected in the First Amendment also has individual and institutional elements. Freedom of speech is important for the individual to be able to proclaim their fundamental beliefs even when those beliefs aren't popular. But it's important that organizations that come together around a common purpose and shared mission can also express their fundamental beliefs through free speech activities. The legal and ethical nuances of conversations around the limits of free speech for organizations, and especially for for-profit corporations, go beyond the spectrum of my remarks today. What is important to remember is that humans, by their own nature, are social beings. To fully exercise our humanity, it is not enough for us to exercise our rights as individuals–as if we exist in a vacuum. Just as with our religious freedom, our freedom of speech must be applied to the fundamental communities that make up our lives. We must be able to come together with those who share a common mission and purpose who share our fundamental belief systems and worldviews to articulate and express those ideas together as an institution. Whether it is a Shambhala Meditation Center, a Jewish Day School, or a political organization, each of these groups needs free speech to express its unique and distinctive beliefs and how those beliefs shape how they call people to live.
Freedom of the Press and Freedom to Assemble
Freedom of the press reflects the same needs, and in fact specifically applies to the press or the media in their institutional capacities. Freedom of assembly relates to a fundamental aspect of humanity in that we need to be able to come together with those to assemble, and associate with, those with whom we agree or share common purpose. In fact, freedom of assembly presupposes coming together with more than one other individual; it is a right that cannot be fully lived by an individual, but indeed has a group element built into its very nature.
Freedom to Petition the Government
And lastly, freedom to petition the government speaks to the importance and distinction of the roles and responsibilities we share in promoting the common good. Government needs to be held accountable to citizens, and citizens to government. I believe, as a person of faith, that for someone to fully live into their human potential and into their God-given sacred nature, they are called to engage fully with civil society institutions and also the government. There may be disagreement about how to engage, or with whom to engage, but each citizen is made in the image of God. This means each citizen brings his or her own circumstances, skills, capacities and specific experiences that bring invaluable insight to government officials who shape policies that will ultimately impact their lives in one way or another.
Chelsea Langston Bombino is the director for Sacred Sector and for the Institutional Religious Freedom Alliance, both of which are initiatives of the Center for Public Justice.
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