The limits of religious freedom: America must come to grips with when faith groups limit personal liberty — “When Pastor Robert Jeffress, a member of President Trump’s Evangelical Advisory Board and the White House Faith Initiative, recently dismissed climate activist Greta Thunberg by saying that rainbows are evidence that polar ice caps aren’t melting, my heart sank…”
, October 19, 2019:
Freedom of religion and freedom of speech allow people to believe and say what they want in this country. But I know from firsthand experience that religiously driven myths reinforced by leaders can harm children’s lives and thwart their potential.
Editor: This article is presented to our readers to illustrate the fact that Jehovah’s Witnesses are not unique or alone in North America (and most other countries) when it comes to child abuse and enforced religious indoctrination. The reporter recounts her own experience of being such a child. All rights remain with the author.
Like many Christian children, my Amish upbringing instilled in me the belief that Jesus’ return would be preceded by devastating conditions including floods, earthquakes, droughts, tornadoes, crop failures, and fires — basically all the things climate change is unleashing. With no adequate education to temper these beliefs, fear of the coming apocalypse traumatized me. Had I stayed in the religion, recent weather patterns would no doubt have had me praying doubly hard.
When I escaped my community in Michigan in the middle of the night at age 15, I arrived in a mainstream society laden with fears that had been reinforced through a limited Amish education that ended at the eighth grade. I’d acquired little secular knowledge thanks to a 1972 U.S. Supreme Court case Wisconsin vs. Yoder, which found that Wisconsin’s compulsory school attendance law was unconstitutional because it violated Amish parents’ rights to exercise their religion. As a result, I had no knowledge of science, sex education, or any subject contrary to Amish religious views. Had I not escaped, the Supreme Court ruling would have sealed my fate: becoming an ignorant Amish housewife.
My hunger for empirical answers to allay my fear of hell drove me to earn a high school equivalency diploma and eventually apply to America’s top schools. Upon entering Columbia University, I was shocked to learn that many of my professors weren’t aware that the highest court in the country had set a precedent in favor of extremist religion over my basic rights. Over and over, I’ve seen how the system regularly protects religious sects as they harm children –– from a failure to educate them to a failure to physically protect them.
There’s something deeply disturbing, if not quite apocalyptic, about a society that again and again mistakes religious control over people’s lives for religious freedom. It’s time to turn the tables.
By TORAH BONTRAGERBontrager is the founder of the Amish Heritage Foundation.