I bring it up because it's interesting, but also because it illustrates the distinction between freedom of worship and freedom of religion -- and our State Department has recently switched from defending the latter to the former. First Things first noted the switch back in February, in speeches from the President and Sec. of State Clinton.
If the swap-out occurred only once or twice, one might appropriately conclude it was merely a rhetorical accident. However, both the President and his Secretary of State have now replaced “freedom of religion” with “freedom of worship” too many times to seem inadvertent.Obama did this at Ft. Hood, and then repeatedly on his trip to Asia. And then Hillary Clinton acquired the habit. This is a very troubling linguistic change, especially if you're following the subject:
The reason is simple. Any person of faith knows that religious exercise is about a lot more than freedom of worship. It’s about the right to dress according to one’s religious dictates, to preach openly, to evangelize, to engage in the public square. Everyone knows that religious Jews keep kosher, religious Quakers don’t go to war, and religious Muslim women wear headscarves—yet “freedom of worship” would protect none of these acts of faith.Naturally this has enormous implications for foreign policy and whether the US is prepared to defend genuine freedom around the world. If freedom of religion is reduced merely to freedom of worship, then the US must fall silent before the claims of the Moroccan ambassador. And those of the Saudi and Chinese ambassadors as well.
In April the US Commission on Religious Freedom issued its annual report, which shows religious persecution on the rise worldwide, and the Administration in retreat as a force against it. Here's how they summarize their complaint against our policy at their website:
The 11th annual report by the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom says Obama's recent call for nations to respect "freedom of worship" rather than "religious freedom" allows regimes to claim they are not oppressing certain religions if those faiths exist in a form acceptable to the regime.It's clear the President believes we have to find some way to deal with Islam and this is meant to be conciliatory to Muslim nations. But this is a bad move. Bad for the persecuted, bad if we hope to help radical Islam moderate itself, and bad at home too as the idea spreads. This is the position of those who would arrest Christians (and orthodox Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, too) for saying they don't believe there's such a thing as homosexual marriage. Oh, you're free to believe it...quietly, in your own home...but you may not speak it. We've already seen such prosecutions in Europe and Canada. And it is now a "finding of fact" in the decision overturning Prop 8 in California that the Pope harms homosexual persons (remember, the judge put on trial the interior intentions of Prop 8 organizers). HHS is trying to force Catholic hospitals to perform abortions.
"When you start narrowing the discussion, the signal the administration is sending to the international community is that as long as they prop up a few churches or houses of worship (of minority faiths), there isn't going to be a problem," Leonard Leo, the chairman of the commission, told USA TODAY.
"Freedom of worship" is no actual freedom at all. It means the state can compel you to do or prevent you from doing or saying anything it wants and is a mere nod to the reality that it has no actual control over what you secretly actually think.
