The Richard O'Sullivan: Memorial Lecture A New Great Awakening of Religious Freedom in America

Twenty years ago, American religious freedom was in trouble. The United States Supreme Court had weakened the First Amendment considerably, and religious freedom claims were often subordinated to sexual liberty and other rights claimants. States routinely denied funds and benefits to religious parties and removed traditional religious symbols and ceremonies from public life. Leading academics castigated religious group rights claimants given recent charges of sexual abuse and financial fraud in some churches. In 2000, religious freedom was a second class right. No longer! The past decade has seen a great awakening of American religious freedom, led by the United States Supreme Court. In more than two dozen cases since 2012, the Court has strengthened the First Amendment to strike down public regulations and policies that discriminated against religion. It has granted religious individuals and groups exemptions from general laws that substantially burdened religious conscience, and strengthened the autonomy of religious groups to govern their own polity and property. The Court has underscored traditional protections against religious coercion and state hostility toward religion. And it has built strong new protections for the religious worship of prisoners, students, and teachers, and against state efforts to remove religious symbols, ceremonies, and statuary from public life. This Article maps this new great awakening of religious liberty, but also warns about some of the ample challenges that remain. In particular, it argues that religious freedom is precious gift of God to protect, not a prerogative of one political party to brandish, and people of faith would do well to use this religious freedom wisely to love and serve all their neighbors, not least those of different faith.