Religious oppression, which can occur in a variety of ways, is something which justifiably concerns many people. There are both laws and constitutional provisions designed to prevent or at least inhibit the development of religious oppression. The best tool against oppression may be social rather than legal: oppression does not easily grow where power is spread most widely.

In Politics, Religion, and the Common Good, Martin E. Marty writes:

In the American circumstance, freedom of religion necessarily entails freedom for no religion at all. People who complain that secularists are already too much in the government's favor must remember that to the nonreligious, the culture is strongly biased in favor of religion as a motivator of individuals in the political order. Freedom for both sides best guarantees freedom for all.

One of the best protections against one ideology — whether religious or secular — coming to dominate society is the wide, and even wild, pluralism of American culture. In regions where one faith predominates (for example, in the Baptist South or in Mormon Utah), dissenting individuals — especially nonbelievers — may struggle to be heard. But the more that various groups speak up, the smaller the risk that one collective voice will monopolize public debate.

What Martin Marty is saying here is that the more groups which exist in a community and which have the self-confidence to speak out on issues, the less likely it is that any one group or any narrow coalition of groups will be able to completely dominate public discourse. Such domination effectively shuts out a myriad of options and possibilities, limiting debate and policies to just those deemed acceptable to the leading religious figures. This is a form of religious oppression, even if it isn't an oppression explicitly codified into the law.

The ability to speak out on an issue and be heard is a form of cultural and social power. What this means is that Martin Marty is describing and advocating the widest possible dispersal of this power in order to undermine the ability of any one group to monopolize that power. The larger the number of groups with the power to speak and be heard, the smaller the ability of any one group to dominate the stage. If you stop for a minute to step back to look at his, you'll notice that this is both an important principle for liberal democracy generally and an important principle which was explicitly incorporated into the American form of government.

The authors of the American Constitution sought to decrease the chances of one person or class acquiring tyrannical power by dispersing power as much as possible. Within the national government, power is dispersed among three branches, each of which has explicit authority over the actions of the other branches — the Senate has the authority to deny confirmation of people appointed to judicial posts by the President while the judiciary has the authority to strike down laws passed by the Congress and signed by the President. The power of the national government itself is diluted by giving power to state governments and by amendments which deny the government any authority over certain areas of people's lives — like speech or religion.

Even the separation of church and state itself, the unspoken topic of Marty's discussion of debates between secularists and their opponents, is a form of dispersing power. Separating church and state is, in essence, separating religious from political authority. Political leaders have authority over civil affairs like war or speed limits, but not over religious affairs like when to pray or what church to go to. Religious leaders have authority over religious matters like what gods want from people and how to communicate with gods, but not over civil affairs like how civil marriage is defined or what zoning will apply to some stretch of land.

The more religious diversity there is in a community, the less likely it is for any one religious group to dominate. This means that religious pluralism and diversity will help prevent religious oppression from developing. It's no coincidence that the growth of secularism and the decline of Christian privilege in America have been closely matched by the growth religious pluralism. At one time, Christians were the dominant (and often only) religious voice on the public stage. That dominance is declining as Jews, Muslims, Hindus, atheists, and generally non-religious people not only increase in numbers, but also increase in their willingness to assert themselves publicly.

Christians have noticed this and some are very unhappy about it. The decline in Christian privilege — labeled by some as the "de-Chrstianization" of society — is perhaps the most important driving force behind the Christian Right today. Just about every policy proposal they make can be explained as an attempt to reassert Christian control or dominance over some aspect of society: marriage, media, politics, etc. When people lose traditional privileges, they believe that basic rights are being taken away from them — they simply don't realize that the privileges were unjust to begin with. In the long run, religious diversity and religious pluralism is something which every supporter of church/state separation and secularism should encourage.

 

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