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Natural Rights and Religious Liberty: The Founders’ Perspective

Natural Rights and Religious Liberty: The Founders’ Perspective
Johann Zimmermann painted the Pilgrim Church frescoes, often using a technique called trompe l’oeil, whereby objects are realistically rendered to appear three-dimensional. Joaquin Ossorio Castillo/Shutterstock
Vincent Phillip Muñoz
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Commentary
The meaning of religious freedom remains one of the more contested areas of our constitutional politics. The progressive left tends to emphasize freedom from religion, especially freedom from the influence of traditional religious sexual morality. Social conservatives, by contrast, emphasize the right to be religious, especially the freedom to live and act in the public square according to one’s religious convictions. With President Joe Biden’s recent tweet that transgender equality is the “civil rights issue of our time,” the conflict between these competing views of religious liberty will only be amplified.
Vincent Phillip Muñoz
Vincent Phillip Muñoz
Author
Vincent Phillip Muñoz is the Tocqueville associate professor of political science and a concurrent associate professor of Law at the University of Notre Dame. The founding director of Notre Dame’s Center for Citizenship & Constitutional Government, he is completing a book titled “Religious Liberty and the American Founding: Natural Rights and the Original Meanings of the First Amendment Religion Clauses.”
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