Cassidy will face Landrieu in a runoff election next month. And two days into that campaign Cassidy gave the Family Research Council what it wanted. “Religious freedom and our First Amendment rights are being increasingly attacked,” Cassidy announced. “We all oppose physically violent acts. We should also oppose using the long arm of the state to intimidate people of faith.”
Welcome to the new culture war, this time rebranded as a battle over religious liberty or freedom. There are the same longstanding debates about sexuality and gender at the center of it. But this time, Christians – often business owners – are cast as the downtrodden victims of secularized government encroachment. And the rhetorical strategy, replete with references to liberty and the desire to have a debate, sounds downright progressive.
“Nobody is against religious liberty,” observed Jay Michaelson, who wrote a report for a progressive think tank on the phenomenon. “Liberals like it, conservatives like it.”
But the new definition of religious liberty is far broader than the right to practice a religion as commonly understood. Its proponents stretch it so broadly that all kinds of secular activities affecting the general public are religion, too.
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