Legal experts gathered on Monday at a virtual panel event hosted by the Washington, D.C.-based Religious Freedom Institute (RFI) to discuss how the religious freedom landscape is evolving, expressing deep concern about how the country's increased religious disaffiliation on the First Amendment is impacting Americans across the nation today.
Titled "Religious Liberty: Where We Are and Where We're Going," the event gave an insight on America's current state of religious freedom and how it had shifted throughout the last few decades, encouraging a "sex over religion" mindset, especially amongst the youth.
According to the Christian Post, the gathering was the inaugural event by the RFI's "Courtrooms to Classrooms," a program that invites judges and attorneys to middle school and high school classrooms to enlighten the youth about the history of the Constitution and engage with them through moot court activity.
The discussion was moderated by RFI Senior Fellow Andrew Graham and featured speakers such as U.S. District Judge Matthew J. Kacsmaryk of the Northern District of Texas and James A. Sonne, a law professor and director of Religious Liberty Clinic at Stanford Law School.
Kacsmaryk, an appointee of former President Donald Trump to the federal bench in 2019, argued that there are several factors that contributed to the legislative changes in religious freedom in the last two decades.
The primary factor, he said, is how the Democratic Party changed from what once was a "sanctuary for religious minorities and those among persecuted religious groups" who pushed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act in 1993 into today's Democratic Party that supports the restriction of the application of the aforementioned legislation.
Kacsmaryk argued that legislation such as the Equality Act and No Harm Act are sponsored by Democratic leaders who are further driving the change in views of religious freedom through religious disaffiliation. He also cited a recent Gallup Poll that found how American's membership in churches continued to decline in 2020, decreasing as low as less than 50% for the first time in 80 years. There was also an increase in those who admitted they did not belong to any religion.
Kacsmaryk blamed the diversion by the legal and legislative trends away from religious freedom, arguing that "law flows downstream from politics and politics flows downstream from culture."
Another factor that impacted the change in views of religious freedom is the sexual revolution that sparked in the mid-20th century, during which the cultural upheaval caused the deregulation of sex. Kacsmaryk believed that when sociological, theological and theoretical factors come together, it creates a culture in which "expressive individualism, self-definition and therapeutic affirmation" are at its center.
"It combines to create a politics that prioritizes expression over free exercise, prioritizes sex over religion and safe spaces over debate and dialogue," Kacsmaryk declared. "In the law, you see a shift in emphasis away from hard rules of damages, case and controversy."
Sonne has the same sentiments on the change in views of religious freedom, saying that religious liberty had been diminished over the years for the sake of equality. But he remains optimistic that "work can be done" to reverse its course.
