Skip to main content

Is Freedom of Religion a 'natural right'? Here's an interesting article that tries to answer this question.

In that notable letter, so characteristically terse, and yet with it all, magnificent, George Washington remarked to the Hebrew Congregation in Newport that "it is now no more that toleration is spoken of as if it were the indulgence of one class of people that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights." The "natural rights" here were the rights of "the children of the stock of Abraham who dwell in this land" to live their Jewish lives with their rituals of worship. And in a biblical image, "every one shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree and there shall be none to make him afraid." Several years earlier James Madison invoked a comparable notion of the freedom of religion as nothing less than a natural right. In his "Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments" (1785), Madison insisted that "this right [of religious freedom] is in its nature an unalienable right." 
 Click on the link below to read the entire article.

Right Reason

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Good will to all men? Not from the grumpy atheists! (Thank God not all atheists are grumpy but there sure seems to be a lot of them)

Why is it that so many in the atheist community cannot bring  themselves to get past their anger whenever they engage in discussions? The language of many of their contributions in public debate is laced with invective and dripping with sarcasm and bile. There are exceptions of course, but they tend to fall more into the category of being the 'exception that proves the rule' when compared to the hostility of many of today's atheist posters. Comment offered by the theists in the public square is often depicted as being 'malicious' or 'venomous' and intended to enslave the 'feeble minded and weak' by those who post. Nothing could be further from the truth. Venom is something that is oriented to death. Christians are oriented in a 180 degree different direction. We speak not to the culture of death  that grips our world but rather for the culture of life and light which ends with the gift of eternal life. For example, the Catholic Church in its hum...