jackie comes to share this paper, the black church enacting the biblical mandate for religious freedom. dr. jackie rivers. [ applause ] >> good evening. i'm truly honored to be here with you, and i'm absolutely wowed by the museum. my congratulations go to those who have put it together, and it's wonderful to have something like this right here in the heart of washington, d.c., the nation's capitol. and professor, wilkins talked about having walked up the street or 0.8 miles. i flew from jamaica. so i am very glad to be here with you tonight. i do want to take a little bit of a different tack, though, in talking about religious freedom, and the connection, its biblical roots. in the two excellent presentations we've heard there's really been a focus on something which is fundamental and which i agree with wholeheartedly, which is it's an inalienable right, that it is intrinsic to being human that we have the right to follow our conscience, and out of that closely relatedrçÑ that, fundamental to that, the right for religious freedom, but from the perspective of the black church, it's really about what has happened over the course of history. and in fact, if you think about it god doesn't just declare that we have religious freedom. he demonstrates it, and it starts with the story of exodus. think about it. moses goes to meet with pharaoh, and what does he do? he says god has commanded us to leave and to go to a place to worship him, and when pharaoh refuses to allow them to go, he's not merely disobeying god, he's abrogating their right to religious freedom. he's denying them the right to religious freedom because religious freedom is about the right to follow god, and it's not just about the right to freedom of worship that we can in our churches and in our bedrooms and in our homes worship, it's about the right to act in response to our understanding of god's calling on our lives. it's about the right to do it not just in private but also to do it in public, so god starts with an action that demonstrates the importance, the power of religious freedom, and for the black church that is a central motif that runs throughout our history, the idea of the exodus because for us, the civil war was an exodus. it was a crossing over from slavery to freedom. it was an act of judgment by god, and it's rooted really in the understanding of biblical faith because those black and white abolitionists who worked to bring about that exodus, they were largely people of faith, people who believed the bible and who lived it out. sojourner truth, an itinerant teacher, a whom who was an abolitionist herself, who argued for the rights of women long before our current focus on equality. came and all of this came out of her powerful faith, out of her understanding of the biblical meaning of what it was to follow god. the same is true of john brown who takes on harpers ferry. john brown's actions are about his understanding of god's absolute judgment on the horror of slavery. again, rooted in his exercise of his religious freedom and growing out of biblical faith. the same is true for harriet tubman. harriet tubman saw herself as on a mission guided and protected by god himself. rooted in her biblical faith, she has the courage to go back into the south after escaping from slavery, she goes back into the south to free 300 other enslaved people on 19 trips. the power of religious freedom being exercised and in action. but that's not the only exodus event in the history of the black church. think about the civil rights movement, an exodus from disenfranchisement and terror in the southern united states into full citizenship, and in the words of reverend dr. martin luther king, there is nothing greater in the world than freedom. i would rather die in abject poverty with my convictions than live in inordinate riches with lack of self-respect. for him, religious freedom was expressed in all of the work of the civil rights movement. we were talking about this earlier today, the fact that the importance of king's faith in his role in the civil rights movement, the importance of the church, the black church, in the civil rights movement is fading from view, perhaps being blotted out, and the focus is on dr. king rather than on reverend king. but this was a man driven by his faith, strengthened by his faith. he endured death threats, bombings of his home, endangering his wife and children based on the strength of his faith. see, early in the campaign, the bus boycott in montgomery, king is terrified by the rising violence, and in the middle of the night he's sitting in his kitchen trying it figure out what do i do? and he has a revelation. he hears jesus speaking to him and telling him that he must have faith and that he must stand up for righteousness and that he must do what is right. and as he hears this, it becomes a mantra that he goes back to time and time again when he faces crisis in pursuing the civil rights movement, he's strengthened by the memory of that experience. in fact, david garrow who as far as i know was not a man of faith at all writes a powerful biography of king, which doesn't come from a religious perspective. i mean, it's completely secular, but the theme keeps coming back, even through the eyes of a secularxd writer how important that revelation was to king's having the strength to do what he did. but king was not the only one. there was reverend fred shuttlesworth, ralph abernathy, joseph lowry, all of them it was the black clergy, it was men of faith acting on their religious freedom, exercising religiousoz freedom who led the civil rights movement, but let us not forget that without the tens of thousands of black church going people, people of faith who took to the ñrñrstreets, those leade could not have done anything. and the power of the church in this movement is indicated when king is involved in naming the southern christian leadership conference, which was going to be called the southern leadership conference, but king says no. this has to be the southern christian leadership conference because he knows that black people are rooted in biblical faith. he knows that it is going to take those all night prayer and praise and singing and preaching sessions in black churches the night before they hit the streets for them to have the strength to withstand police truncheons, police dogs, fire hoses without retaliaing with violence. the story of the civil rights movement, the victories of the civil rights movement is the victories of the black church of religious freedom being exercised, and it's very appropriate that we talk about this tonight because just yesterday we celebratedñr reverd dr. martin luther king's day. but even today, the exercise of religious freedom is so critical in the black community because -- oh, i do want to say one other thing, and that is i want you to have a sense of how important this biblical interpretation is to king because he bases his passionate advocacy for the struggle for civil rights in a biblical understanding, and you see it in the "i have a dream" speech. he quotes isaiah 40 in describing his vision for african-americans, i have a dream that one day every valley will be exalted, every hill and mountain made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together. this is our hope. so king is explicitly championing the responsibility of every christian to follow his or her conscience and obey god's calling when any conflict arises between the two, between god's calling and the duty to civil society, which professor wilkens was talking about earlier that religious freedom takes precedence. so in his sermon titled paul's letter to american christians, he says be not conformed to the world, but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind. so this is an imaginary letter. he imagines paul writing to american christians and paul goes on to say in this imaginary letter, you are a colony of heaven. this means that although you live in a colony of time, your ultimate allegiance is to the empire of eternity. you have a dual citizenry. you live both in time and eternity, both in heaven and earth, therefore your ultimate allegiance is not to theb■/lóñ government, not to the state, not to the nation, not to any man made institution. the christian owes his ultimate allegiance to god, and if any earthly institution conflicts with god's will it is your christian duty to take a stand against it. this is a perfect expression of religious freedom and its grounded in his understanding of the biblical mandate. he also -- this was reflected also in the final speech that king gives,xd his mountain top oration, which was actually made the night before he's murdered, and he's talking about having been to the mountain top and seen the promised land, but like moses he may not cross over with us. it's as though he knew what was going to happen the next day. he likens his journey to that of moses and the entire movement is in his eyes, a minor exodus of the southern black person from terror and disenfranchisement to full citizenship. but more than that, king saw the whole t(strategy, the non-viole strategy of the civil rights movement, this winning strategy as consistent with biblical teaching. he said violence creates many more social problems than it solves, and as i've said in so many instances, the negro in particular and colored peoples all over the world in their struggle for freedom, if they succumb to the temptation of using violence for their struggle, unborn generationsñr will be the recipients of a long and desperate night of bitterness, and the biblical source he's using is matthew's words, jesus's words in matthew, in the 5th chapter of the gospel as recorded by st. matthew, we read these very arresting words flowing from the lips of our lord and master, you have heard that it has been said, you shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy, but i say unto you, love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate Ñiyou, and pray for those that despitefully use you, that ye may be the children of your father, which is in heaven. his entire strategy is seen as coming from the lips of jesus as recorded in matthew. so for the black church, religious freedom, yes, it's an inalienable right, but even more, it is exercised. it is freedom. it is our exodus. and so religious freedom and its biblical roots are essentialr8j the faith of the black church. [ applause ] >> okay. wow, that was a good session, i have to say, one of the best i've been a part of, and we have about 15 minutes for questions and answers, and we're going to start -- these are facebook questions that are coming in. with technology i'm seeing this, so rhonda has a question for dr. rivers. has the interpretation of what freedom of religion means changed over the last 300 years? that if you'd like, too, but this one is dr. rivers. >> so i don't feel that i have the historical chops to really take that on, but i think what has been demonstrated by the three talks is, in fact, that there is a thread that runs right through, and that is consistent. does that mean it's never been interpreted differently, i think that that is clearly not the case, but starting from the biblical times, this notion that the right to respond to god's calling is every single person, whether they choose -- and this was something that i didn't get to because of time -- whether they choose to acknowledge that calling by expression of faith, christian faith, muslim faith, buddhist faith, hindu faith, whether or not someone chooses faith, the right to respond is inalienable, and so if you are an atheist you still have that right. no one has a right to force you into an expression of faith if in your heart you respond to that calling by saying god does not exist. >> great. okay, karen has a question for dr. shah. did jefferson apply his philosophy towards religion when writing the first amendment? >> well, jefferson, of course, did not write the first amendment. the first amendment was drafted primarily by james madison but working with a committee so jefferson was in france at the time of the drafting of the bill of rights, so did not play a direct role on that, but i think it's understood that the virginia statute for religious freedom played a major role in shaping the first amendment, particularly the two first clauses of the first amendment namely the religion clauses, congress shall may no law respecting an establishment of religion nor abridging exercise thereof. >> i thought you did that very gracefully without pushing bacì% hard at all. so this is a question for dr. wilken from wes. how does the idea of separation of church and state relate to freedom of religion? >> can i first just speak to the question -- >> go back to the first one? >> the most profound change that has come about you can hear from reading what we read from jefferson and madison, they assumed a world in which people believed in god. we now are living in a world in which many people do not believe in god, and our public life has excluded god. so with each passing decade, it's going to be harder to make a case for religious freedom because it looks like special pleading. in fact, a man wrote a book a few years ago, why couple months ago, what's so special about religion. that is the profound challenge of our own time. now back to the question. idea of separation of church ank state relate to freedom of religion? >> well, separation means that the religious communities have the right to determine howÑi th are going to worship god and how they are going to live and practice. and that is something that the government has no say in. so unless you have the distinction. the whole struggle for the religious freedom was to get beyond the assumption that the king, the prince the magistrates determined what people were as a community to believe and there was a saying, a latin saying in the 16th century, whoever is the king, the ruler, he is one who determines what the religion should be. so the whole development of religious freedom was to break free of that assumption and to say that there are two rounds çó and they inevitably interact, but one cannot determine the other. i'm going both ways. >> great. this is a question for dr. rivers from kristen. how would you encourage people to think through where they stand when religious and civil liberties seem to clash? >>> i think that that is a very important question, and i think what i like about the question is the acknowledgement that we have to balance those two, and so i think the difficulty is how profound an infringement on the sense of conscious is being enforced. are people prepared to pay the price.ñrñr i mean, king exercises religious freedom, but he believed that in doing so you had to pay the price. and so then we need to look to the courts of the land to help us with that question of balancing because everyone should have the right to live out their religious freedom. some external arbiter needs to balance those rights and then we as each of us exercises our kaup conscious needs to be prepared to pay the price as king did with it not willing to pay bail in cases where he felt it was unjust. >> great. this is a question that i think ñhis is a question that i think your presentations. it's addressed to dr. willcon but i think dr. shaw can answer it, too. what are some of the earliest examples of freedom of religion around the world? >> well, let's take england because that's a case where so much of the influence on this country. in the 17th century england went through a great struggle because the puritans did not want to conform to what was the publicly acknowledged religion. and over the course of several generations, they were able to make a case and basically the english rulers sided with the act of toleration that there had to be space for those who were not church of england people. so that would be one very clear example and it has repercussions. there are others in the netherlands and in france and the english example for us is the most important. >> yeah. >> just to note one early example which is often forgotten in these kind of discussions and that is we have a very early example in the roman empire at the beginning of the fourth century. robert has written expertly about this. namely the so-called edict of milan which was co-authored by the co-emperors at the time, constantine in 313, and it is sometimes misunderstood that what milan did was grant toleration to christians. in fact, that had been done two years earlier in 311 in the edict of galarius and the so-called edict of milan, so-called because it wasn't published as an edict, but the historical detail. the document, though, and the policy was one of genuine freedom of religion, the text of that edict makes it clear that that granted freedom for all citizens of the roman empire to follow that form of religion or that understanding of god that a case can be made and robert and i have both tried to make the case that that early policy was a reflection of the early arguments of the church father, such as tortolian, who we mentioned earlier and a part of the court of constantine as early as the first decade of the fourth century. now that story can be told in a book that's conveniently located in the back. it is only 340 days until christmas. you don't have much time so get over there. >> i think we are just about out of time, if i'm not mistaken. is that correct? should i take a few more questions? two more. okay. some silly person out there in the facebook world has asked me a question. the question is what are some of the greatest challenges facing prisoners in terms of religious liberty. i do a lot of research in that area. there are challenges, but the reality is that we've made a lot of progress with allowing religious freedom for inmates to attend religious services and institutions. if you want to visit a prison you'll find religion there. you'll find worship services there, and unfortunately, we live in a time when a lot of prisons have cut programs and in some prisons, the only programs they have are religious. so we can at least be thankful for that and i will say there was a court case before the supreme court just a few years ago where a muslim inmate wanted to have a beard but was not allowed to have a beard in arkansas. so he sued the department of corrections for the opportunity to have religious freedom and have a half-inch beard. so the department of corrections contended that it was a security risk. no telling what you can hide in that beard. it's a half inch in length and so interestingly enough, the supreme court decided the case 9-0 in favor of the muslim inmate that used a lot of the research that we'd conducted on christians to make the case that religion actually helped reduce recidivism and was a good that comes to society, and so with that in mind, maybe we'll take one last question and this one is from the members of the audience. it's tagged for dr. shaw. many clergy from all walks of faith came to the aid of the black church, everyone from rabbis to catholic priests, episcopal preachers to baptist clergy. what's that do to the biblical mandate alone? your thoughts on the motivation although this would probably go to jackiee that? >> what did that do to the biblical mandate alone and your thoughts on the motivation.Ñi >> well, i think the biblical mandate was very powerful for a lot of the clergy through cane, whether they were jewish and xd roman catholic or anglican. but we also have to recognize that a lot of people also came just out of that sense. you know, this idea that we have an innate sense of god's calling. a lot of people came out of their sense of what was right and wrong and not necessarily explicitly religious, at all. so there was the two things were at work which i see as both being very much a part of the right defended by the first amendment and the right to religious freedom because there were college students who came from the north in particular in response to the civil rights movement. we're not necessarily motivated by religion at all. so, yes, i think the biblical mandate was a powerful force. but it wasn't the only thing at work. the innate sense of god's calling, i think that w