What the history of blasphemy laws in the US and the fight for religious freedom can teach us today
By Kristina M. Lee, University of South Dakota,
16 hours ago
Some 79 countries around the world continue to enforce blasphemy laws. And in places such as Afghanistan, Brunei, Iran, Nigeria, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, violation of these measures can result in a death penalty.
While the U.S. is not among those countries, it also has a long history of blasphemy laws. Many of the U.S. colonies established blasphemy laws, which became state laws. The U.S. Supreme Court did not rule that blasphemy was a form of protected speech until 1952. Even then, it has not always been protected.
U.S. colonies often developed legal protections for Christians to practice their religion. These safeguards often did not extend to non-Christians.
Maryland’s Toleration Act of 1649 , for example, was the first Colonial act to refer to the “free exercise” of religion and was designed to protect Christians from religious persecution from state officials. It did not, however, extend that “free exercise” of religion to non-Christians, instead declaring that anyone who blasphemes against God by cursing him or denying the existence of Jesus can be punished by death or the forfeiture of their lands to the state.
In 1811, the U.S. witnessed one of its most infamous blasphemy trials, People v. Ruggles , at the New York Supreme Court. New York resident John Ruggles received a three-month prison sentence and a US$500 fine — about $12,000 in today’s money — for stating in public that “Jesus Christ was a bastard, and his mother must be a whore.”
Chief Justice James Kent argued that people have freedom of religious opinion, but opinions that were malicious toward the majority stance of Christianity were an abuse of that right. He claimed similar attacks on other religions, such as Islam and Buddhism, would not be punishable by law , because “we are a Christian people” whose country does not draw on the doctrines of “those imposters.”
Several years later, in 1824, a member of a debating society was convicted of blasphemy by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court after saying during a debate: “The Holy Scriptures were a mere fable, that they were a contradiction, and that although they contained a number of good things, yet they contained a great many lies.” In this case — Updegraph v. Commonwealth — the court argued that it was a “vulgarly shocking and insulting” statement that reflected “the highest offence” against public morals and was a disturbance to “public peace.”
By the end of the 19th century, a prominent free thought movement that rejected religion as a guide for reason had begun to emerge. Movement leaders embraced the public critiquing of Christianity and challenged laws that favored Christians, such as blasphemy laws and mandatory Bible readings in public schools.
While it is unclear why Reynolds was offered leniency, historian Leonard Levy suggests that it may have been to avoid making Reynolds a martyr of the free thought movement by imprisoning him.
Protecting blaspheme as free speech
Growing calls for religious equality and freedom of speech increasingly swayed blasphemy cases in the 1900s.
In 1917, for example, Michael X. Mockus, who had previously been convicted of blasphemy in Connecticut for his free thought lectures, was acquitted in a similar case in Illinois.
While expressing dislike for blasphemy, Judge Perry L. Persons argued that the court’s job is not to determine which religion is right. He said “the Protestant, Catholic, Mormon, Mahammedan, the Jew, the Freethinker, the Atheist” must “all stand equal before the law.”
The high court ruled that states could not ban sacrilegious films. That would be a violation of the separation of church and state, it ruled, and an unconstitutional restriction on freedom of religion and speech.
Even after the Supreme Court decision, Americans continued to occasionally face blasphemy charges. But courts shot the charges down.
In 1968, when Irving West, a 20-year-old veteran, told a policeman to “Get your goddam hands off me” after getting in a fight, he was charged with disorderly conduct and violating Maryland’s blasphemy law. When West appealed, a circuit court judge ruled the law was an unconstitutional violation of the First Amendment.
Despite these rulings, in 1977, Pennsylvania enacted a blasphemy statute banning businesses from having blasphemous names after a local businessman tried to name his gun store “The God Damn Gun Shop.” It was not until 2010 that the Pennsylvania Supreme Court deemed this statute unconstitutional.
The decision followed a case in which the owner of a film production company sued the state after his request to register his company under the name “I Choose Hell Productions, LLC” was denied on the grounds that it was blasphemous. Citing the 1952 Joseph Burstyn, Inc. v. Wilson case, the judge ruled that the statute was a violation of First Amendment rights.
There has recently been growing attention to the rise of Christian nationalism , the belief that the United States is or should be a Christian nation. Amid this rise, there have been attacks on free speech , such as the increase in book bans and restrictions on public protests . I believe it’s important that we, as Americans, learn from this history of the fight for the freedom of religion and speech.
Kristina M. Lee is a board member for the Secular Student Alliance
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LJR1234567
15h ago
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