Freedom of religion it turns out has its boundaries, like all other rights in society, it comes with attendant responsibilities. It used to be that only marginal cults like the Jim Jones People’s Temple or the early Jehovah’s Witrness’ issue with blood transfusion tested the boundary lines of religious criminality. However these days, distinguishing fringe cult from respectable religion seems that much more difficult.
JW’s have come out… (they like the SDAs can no longer be defined in Jamaica as marginal cult – statistics establish them (JWs) as the fastest growing denominational sector in the island with both Catholic, mainline and evangelical Protestant denominations all experiencing declining church membership….hmmm only US Mormons on the Religious Right took a stand against Trump’s public degeneracy…is ‘Born again’ Supremacy under review?)… along with almost every other religious branch in Jamaica as pro-vaccine, but in the past the courts rightfully took issue with their right to legally deny their children life-saving blood transfusions on the ground of religious beliefs prohibiting such measures. The state believed, rightfully so, that you forfeit the right of parental stewardship upon demonstrating that, for whatever reason, you are unable to provide proper care to your children.
The state has a countervailing right to protect its citizens from unfit parents, whether those persons’ religious beliefs motivate them to sacrifice their children on Satanic altars in exchange for demon power or watch them die from a perfectly curable disease because of some religious belief that elevates dogma over proven science.
It’s a very ticklish subject for most Christians who see themselves losing in an increasingly hostile, secular, post-Christian world, (tough…perhaps an eschatological rethink is appropriate?) but the issue is clear cut for me as I set out previously in The Politics of Religion, I have absolutely no sense of religious loyalty or deference, and not much tolerance for religious abuse. Religion killed Jesus Christ.
I agree with Jesus that when salt has lost its savor, it deserves to be trodden under the feet of men. Who was it that Jesus threatened with Mafia-style murder (what else do you call a millstone tied to the neck and death by drowning?) if they should harm children? I’d rather see Christianity purged by state persecution than live in an apostate culture where the Name of Christ and the meaning of true religion are routinely profaned.
Religious hypocrisy has never been criminalized, but perhaps it should. Then perhaps those who invoke sanctity of life in defense of the unborn fetus would at least be forced by law on pain of sanctions to assume similar disposition in preventing unnecessary child deaths rather than suddenly becoming concerned about their ‘rights of choice‘ being trampled by the state, with apparently no commensurate vocal concern for public health requirements and readily available statistics on increasing child hospitalization and death in the face of a constantly morphing and increasingly threatening global pandemic.
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YeKengalé 