Tim Schultz | The Genius of Religious Freedom

Walter: I want to get to this idea of this religious freedom that was being promulgated at that particular time in American formation. Why was it such a radical idea?

Tim: Well, it was radical because everybody that came with a religious commitment to the United States, especially before the Constitution, before the Revolutionary War, they were coming because of some discontent about what was happening with religion in Europe, right? It was dangerous to be on the wrong side in a religious minority in Europe. So the Puritans came to the United States fleeing religious persecution. So did the Quakers. So did, as I said earlier, the Marylanders, the Catholics who formed Maryland. Keep in mind that not just religious freedom was radical; our entire Bill of Rights was radical. Constitutional republicanism was radical.

The Bill of Rights and religious freedom was one piece of a larger set of truly radical and unprecedented arrangements in trying to govern people. I mean, this is part of the reason why if you look historically, how long have republics lasted? I mean, if you look at the previous century before the founding of America, what are the antecedents that would make you optimistic about a form of government like this? There just wasn't that much precedent for it happening. It was radical, because it was nestled inside of this larger idea about the dignity of the human person and about sort of democracy and constitutional republicanism itself, which we didn't have lots of examples of elsewhere in the world.

Walter: So as we approach the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, what are those lessons from the early centuries that seem especially important for Christians to remember about the gift, the responsibility of religious freedom in this moment that we're in right now if we are to have a robust future?

Tim: Well, I think that it's really important to get as Christians to kind of hold two things in tension, right? One of them is that our history of religious freedom and of our understanding of human nature that created the Constitution and created America. They're worth celebrating. America is an amazing place and has done amazing things. And our history of religious freedom, the principles enacted in the First Amendment, are right, and they are worth celebrating.

At the same time, we always should look at the ways in which human nature is also undefeated. Human nature hasn't changed since the Garden of Eden, Walter. It's the same. We are made in the image of God, but we also are broken by sin. We are capable, at our worst, of terrible things. That includes religious persecution, which is why we needed the free exercise of religion in the first place. If you look throughout our history, there are terrible episodes of religious persecution in American history, even after we enacted the wonderful Constitution. We obviously have other acts of extreme injustice, especially slavery, Jim Crow and other things, but those are to me, I think the two worst. And I think it's important to also have that chase and understanding that was shared by the founders about what human beings, at our worst, are capable of and not think that we have kind of transcended the darkest parts and possibilities of human nature. It's those two things that are in tension, but I think are worth both thinking about at the same time.

Walter: You know, as theologian put it, human depravity is the empirically verifiable doctrine of the Church, right? We have ample evidence for that. And how we could simultaneously hold the optimism of redemption in Christ, but the pessimism of a true understanding of the extent —devastatingly so — of human depravity is this tension, is this marvel.