Cross-posted from
The Nation
President Obama echoed the sentiments of the essential founder of the American experiment in his response to Sunday's horrific killings at the Sikh Temple of Wisconsin.
"As we mourn this loss which took place at a house of worship," said Obama, as the nation learned of a shoooting spree by an alleged white supremacist
at a place of worship in suburban Milwaukee, "we are reminded how much
our country has been enriched by Sikhs, who are a part of our broader
American family."
That notion of the Sikh community as "part of our broad American family" is not a new one. Sikhs have been a part of the American religious fabric for the better part of two centuries.
The members of this religion, which preaches tolerance and places
high emphasis on the protection of the religious and political rights of
all people, fit comfortably within the Jeffersonian ideal of religious diversity and regard for genuine religious freedom.
Thomas Jefferson, who knew that the essential protection of religious
freedom involved a national commitment to guard against threats to
worshipers, would surely have been aghast at the level or hatred and violence
that has been directed at the roughly 500,000 American Sikhs in recent
years. Though the Sikh faith is the fifth-largest religion in the world,
its followers are sometimes confused for Muslims and targeted with the
same sorts of discrimination and violence that has afflicted followers
of Islam. Since September 11, 2001, the Sikh Coalition,
the largest civil rights group for Sikhs in the United States, says it
has received thousands of requests for assistance from members of the
Sikh community related to employment discrimination, hate crimes and
school bullying. That this violence has now shaken not just one
community or state but the nation should be recognized as a particular
affront to the ideals espoused by Jefferson -- and to the hopes of the most
enlightened founders.
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Jefferson's gravestone makes no mention of his service as the
nation's first secretary of state, second vice president or third
president. But it does, at Jefferson's behest, recount that he was "author" of the Statute of Virginia for religious freedom."
Jefferson never wanted there to be any doubt that religious freedom
extended to those of all faiths, and that the essence of that freedom
was the liberty to worship without threats or fear of violence of the
sort that on Sunday left seven dead (included the white male shooter,
who has since been identified as an Army veteran with ties to the white supremacist movement) at the Sikh temple in suburban Milwaukee.
In the Virginia stature that would serve as the underpinning for the
constitutional protection of religious freedom, Jefferson wrote: "Be it
enacted by the General Assembly that no man shall be compelled to
frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry
whatsoever, nor shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious
opinions or belief; but that all men shall be free to profess, and by
argument to maintain, their opinion in matters of religion, and that the
same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil
capacities."
In Jefferson's autobiography (still the finest record of the
influence of Enlightenment thinking on the founders), which the founder
penned decades after the debates that established religious tolerance
first in Virginia and then as an essential component of the federal
Constitution, he was specific about the original intent of the
protections that he fought to establish.
"The bill for establishing religious freedom. I had drawn in all the
latitude of reason and right. It still met with opposition; but with
some mutilations in the preamble, it was finally passed; and a singular
proposition proved that its protection of opinion was meant to be
universal," wrote Jefferson.
"Where the preamble declares that coercion is a departure from the plan
of the holy author of our religion, an amendment was proposed, by
inserting the word 'Jesus Christ,' so that it should read 'a departure
from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our religion.' The
insertion was rejected by a great majority, in proof that they meant to
comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the
Gentile, the Christian and Mahometan, the Hindoo, and infidel of every
denomination."
As Americans mourn the killings at the Sikh gurdwara in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, it is vital to remember the real history of religious freedom in America.
And to embrace it.
This is about something very different from the cheap sloganeering of
those who would blur lines of separation between church and state and
use the promise of freedom to worship as an excuse to discriminate
against others. The vision advanced today by right-wing politicians -- who
cloak themselves in a Constitution they do not seem to have read very
closely -- often imagines America as "a Christian nation." But that
characterization is at odds with the ideal of the founders, who enacted
religious freedom protections "meant to comprehend, within the mantle of
[their] protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and
Mahometan, the Hindoo, and infidel of every denomination." Jefferson
was fascinated by the great religions of the world. He was not just
aware of them. He searched out copies of the holy texts of Islam,
Judaism, Hinduism and other religions, and he consulted them when
preparing core documents of the American experiment. He and the most
enlightened of his comrades wanted America to protect and welcome the
practitioners of those faiths.
Of course, Jefferson wanted future American presidents and political
leaders to share his recognition that the "wall of separation" between
church and state was designed to prevent favoritism for one doctrine or
faith over another.
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