There is an episode of the West Wing, a political drama from the early 2000s that I love.
Titled Isaac and Ishmael, it was filmed in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks in New York City.
The episode synopsis was that the White House had been locked down following another suspected terrorist attack, and members of senior staff found themselves with a group of high school kids who had come to visit on a school excursion.
Bunkered down together for hours, the staff was grilled about the nature of terrorism and religious extremism by the inquisitive teens.
Highlighting the apparent religiosity of some of the senior staff, one of the teen girls remarks that Toby, the White House communications director and an observant Jew, had a “nice beard.”
“My choice, sister,” he replied. “And by the way, there’s nothing wrong with a religion whose laws say a man’s got to wear a beard or cover his head or wear a collar. It’s when violation of these laws become a crime against the State and not your parents that we’re talking about lack of choice.”
In a nation still reeling from such a shocking act of terror, the show’s writers were trying to make a distinction between religious belief and religious extremism.
The distinction was that religious extremism involves an element of coercion, such that these beliefs result in a lack of free choice, either for believers themselves who are not free to act contrary to the religious teachings without state-sanctioned punishment (which, in its most extreme form is a theocracy), or for non-believers, who are at risk of violence or other forms of harm by those seeking to impose their religion on others (in its most extreme, terrorism).
Debate in Australia over the last decade or so has been dominated by the latter, that is, the intersection between believers and non-believers.
Whether it was the plebiscite on same-sex marriage and the resultant religious freedom issues, the progressive legalisation of euthanasia and decriminalisation of abortion and the consequent battles about conscience and funding, or the push for sex self-identification, the arguments have focused largely on religious beliefs colliding with secular laws and the ever-expanding definition of what constitutes religiously-perpetrated ‘harm’ to non-believers.
More recently, attention is increasingly focused on a slight variation of the former: the debate isn’t about whether we should have a state-imposed religion, but rather whether there are some religious beliefs and practices that the State should intervene and prohibit.
We had our first taste of this with the prohibitions on so-called conversion practices which, in addition to outlawing harmful practices like electroshock therapy, have also banned consensual prayer in some cases.
The result is that a person who wants to abide by their religious beliefs on sexual ethics is banned by the State from seeking prayer or counsel from a religious leader to do so, with the threat of the religious leader being imprisoned if they try to help.
Now we have the Victorian inquiry into cults, the parliamentary hearings on which you will read about in this week’s edition of The Catholic Weekly. While purportedly aimed at ensuring no one is coerced into religious practice, the terms of reference are so broad that they capture even mainstream Christian teaching.
The potential outcome of this inquiry would be laws that would prohibit certain religious beliefs or practices, and that’s where we get into very dangerous territory.
For example, those who allege a religious group is a cult will often talk about hierarchical structures, male-only leadership, traditional sexual ethics and a demand for modest dress.
But an orthodox view of all the major religions would reveal similar complaints, would it not?
Should millennia-old leadership structures or teachings on sexual morality now be seen as indicative of a cult, simply because the last 50 years has seen many in our society throw away these norms?
Even more basic teachings are under the spotlight.
As one of the witnesses at the inquiry noted, talk about sin and its eternal consequences could be judged as coercive, especially if a religious leader is bold enough to warn people that certain activities done in rejection of God and his plan for us could send them to hell.
While some members of the parliamentary committee would consider such language to be archaic and even harmful, and would readily seek to see such teachings banned, we need to be very careful here.
Even though Catholics are the largest religious grouping in the country by far and feel safe from the “cult” label, the bigger principle at play is the extent to which the State should be allowed to prohibit religious belief or practice because they know better than the believers themselves about what might harm them.
