Oh, To Build a Mosque
John Doane (from whom I received my unusual middle name) arrived in the Plymouth Colony in 1630, having just fled Hingham, England. He was a Puritan, of course, and like the several thousand other Puritans who came to New England during the “Great Migration,” he was fleeing persecution.
England was experiencing a lot of turmoil in those days, as the State Religion was changing as frequently as the short reigns of its monarchs. Each new regime would send the pendulum swinging back and forth between Roman Catholicism and Calvanism, with a number of different shades of what would become Anglicanism in between. If the Catholics weren’t burning Calvanist clergy, it was only because the Anglicans were beheading the Catholics. Good luck organizing a church pot luck in that environment. Differences in beliefs regarding such topics as priest’s attire and communion wine could easily result in death – because to differ on matters of religion from the State was, in effect, a rebuke of the monarch himself.
So Doane and his fellow Puritans arrived in New England, relieved to be free of the oppression of stained-glass windows and transubstantiation. We are told in school that this migration is the origin of our “freedom of religion,” that these humble immigrants, fleeing persecution, passed down a tradition of religious tolerance that we now have enshrined in our Constitution. But Doane and his neighbors were far from tolerant. In fact, they refused to tolerate any ideology that differed from their own at all. So when Quaker and Baptist meeting houses began popping up, the magistrates would quickly initiate banishment proceedings. And God help a Roman Catholic who would set foot in Connecticut, let alone try to celebrate a “popish mass.” That heresy would bring death. Catholics were public enemy number one. Their very existence conjured up reminders of Bloody Mary’s relentless persecutions and the destruction of their government and all of the things most dear to them.
Surely the authors of the Bill of Rights had the madness John Doane experienced in mind when they penned the first amendment. The government would never support any specific faith, nor prohibit any person from practicing their own faith. It’s probably fair to say that these authors would never have imagined the arrival of Joseph Smith or L. Ron Hubbard, but the concept they established has endured, and has allowed immigrants to flourish in our country, worshipping (or not worshipping) however they please.
Islam is unfortunate enough to share the same perception among Americans as Catholicism did 400 years ago. Whether a Muslim person is a patriot or a terrorist in hiding (a category that is undoubtably quite tiny), he will have to bear the punishment for the crimes committed by the most vile members of his faith. Indeed, the very existence of his house of worship can be linked to the global advance of murder and oppression by a population caught up in a frenzy of fear. Religious toleration is suddenly reduced to those faiths that don’t have the unfortunate disadvantage of having adherents who are also psychopaths.
The authors of the First Amendment remembered the lessons of brutality and distrust that their grandparents passed down. They knew how easily the public could become an angry mob. They remembered how easily entire congregations could be dispatched by the dominant faith: “Not in this town – go elsewhere.” So they removed the ability of the government to influence faith at all. The freedom they established has endured to become one of our most hallowed (a word that gets a lot of use these days).
How sad then, it is to see public officials forgetting their obligations to defend the freedoms in our Constitution. How strange to see a political party with such an “originalist” view of the Constitution add an addendum to the First Amendment. And how unfortunate it is to see a public, so fearful and angry, that it would discard a core value in favor of exacting misguided revenge.
