Blasphemy!
Where Free Speech and Freedom of Religion Must Meet--Friday Freethought Perennial #12, 21 April 2023--Repeated on 13 September 2024
About the Friday Freethought Perennials in general: This subset of my blog is to answer questions, nearly always already answered by me and by many others but posed again and again—over many years and in many places—on freethought, atheism, secular humanism, secularism/church-state/”This is a Christian Nation,” and similar topics. These answers are mostly not intended to be original analyses, breaths of fresh air, so much as just putting a whole series of things on the record (I’d say “forever,” except I know better). One source for many of these answers is the 2012 Prometheus Books book by me and my son (Michael E. Buckner), In Freedom We Trust: An Atheist Guide to Religious Liberty. It’s available in many libraries and pretty readily in the used book after-market. I’ll cite writings of others that answer these things in more depth if I’m aware of them when I post these.
This Letter is based on a chapter in that book, In Freedom We Trust but includes only a little documentation. The book chapter is carefully footnoted as to sources, in case that is of interest.
Why Isn't It Reasonable to Outlaw Blasphemy and Heresy?
Blasphemy, in one sense, has probably been around as long as humans have had anything like religion. Heresy, a related “crime” or “sin,” is equally old. Religions are better than most other human ideologies at developing cultural mechanisms to protect themselves from criticism or disagreement. The focus here is on the stark conflict between secularism and any attempt to control blasphemy or heresy in society at large, as well as to comment briefly on attempts to control either within a religious organization. In this sense, blasphemy means saying or writing things that are considered to be irreverent towards or slanderous of God or religious ideas or institutions. And heresy means holding and especially publicly professing ideas which are contrary to those proclaimed as true by a particular religion or sect. In another sense, real blasphemy and real heresy do not exist, since—I argue—there are no gods available to defame, no “true” religions available to violate. But concerns about these matters are not just for atheists.
Among the many works on the subject, the two best are Leonard W. Levy’s Blasphemy: Verbal Offense Against the Sacred, from Moses to Salman Rushdie and Edwin F. Kagin’s Baubles of Blasphemy, Second Edition. Levy’s almost 700 pages provide a thoroughly comprehensive reference work on the subject, detailing every aspect from ancient Egypt to the burning at the stake of Michael Servetus for the crime in Geneva in the 1500s, to Thomas Jefferson’s extensive opinions on the subject, and more. Levy writes as well extensively about heresy, including detailed discussions of the distinctions between “blasphemy” and “heresy.” The latter is, he notes, “not a Hebrew term at all, and no equivalent for it appears in the pre-Christian era.”
Kagin’s book deals with many subjects, much of it satire, some of it likely to be considered blasphemy by some, and with blasphemy as one of his subjects: “Blasphemy is the crime of making fun of religious beliefs someone else holds sacred.”
Modern Americans are likely, thanks to taking for granted living under a Constitution and First Amendment that guarantee freedom of speech and of religion, to find the idea of blasphemy a little quaint, perhaps just a matter of being polite, or a matter for academics and historians to study, rather than a serious threat to liberty. But there are people in prison under the death penalty for blasphemy today in more than one part of the world:
Even relatively progressive Islamic countries, such as Malaysia, retain and enforce blasphemy laws. The rigor with which blasphemy laws are enforced in these countries varies greatly, but prosecutions are frequent enough and penalties severe enough to present a grave danger to freedom of conscience. For example, since 1986, when its current blasphemy law was adopted, more than four thousand people have been accused of blasphemy in Pakistan. Some have been convicted and sentenced to death (although no death sentence has been carried out). Iran has the most intolerant regime, with hundreds of individuals convicted of blasphemy since the Khomeini revolution of 1979; dozens have been executed. (Ronald A. Lindsay in his entry on “Blasphemy” in The New Encyclopedia of Unbelief [2007]).
Many contemporary examples show that serious threats to basic freedom are inevitable if the law is expected to protect religious sensibility. Even in the midst of the “Arab Spring,” instances such as the 2012 conviction of Adel Imam, an Egyptian comic actor, for “insulting Islam,” make it clear that satirizing religion is a crucial part of free speech. And there are still those who would like such satire criminalized in the United States, if only to help promote Christian Nationalism and to consolidate the power that would give a few (notably Donald Trump if elected on 5 November 2024).
Why, from a religious perspective, is blasphemy considered so dangerous that it deserves the ultimate punishment, that it is even the one unforgivable sin according to the New Testament? (“And so I tell you, every kind of sin and slander can be forgiven, but blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven.” Matthew 12:31.) Christians differ, it should be noted, about the nuances of the biblical meaning of blasphemy and about whether it is in fact “unforgiveable.” Some theologists have even, with what seems to an outsider like tortured logic indeed, declared the particular unforgivable sin allegedly described by Jesus as in fact impossible to commit in the modern era.
The justification offered by theologians such as John Calvin (the driving force behind Servetus’s horrific execution in October 1553 CE) is that blasphemy is poisonous, that it can lead others—especially young and innocent others—into errors that will cause them to be punished by God for all eternity. Modern theists, especially Muslims, sometimes imply that blasphemy laws are needed to protect believers from being offended by all manner of acts—including, famously, depictions, even innocent ones, of Mohammed. Satirical rather than innocent depictions are of course more likely to lead to rioting, but anger over depictions of Mohammed, while most uneven over Islamic history, is not at all new. For a thorough discussion (and for publication of some of the “offensive” cartoons) of relatively recent (2005-2006) controversy and rioting over cartoon depictions of Mohammed, see Tom Flynn’s essay in Free Inquiry. For many illustrations and much more information on this subtopic of blasphemy, see the Mohammed Image Archive on the Internet which includes an extensive set of depictions, some controversial, others apparently not. Among the ones that have caused mild controversy is a depiction of Mohammed in the frieze in the main courtroom at the US Supreme Court Building in Washington, DC—a sculptural figure that has been there since the building opened in 1935.
And more recently, adjunct instructor Erika López Prater famously lost her job over this at Hamline University. See, for example, https://www.minnpost.com/glean/2023/01/hamline-in-controversy-over-academic-freedom-islamaphobia-over-decision-not-to-renew-instructors-contract/?
While devout believers may continue to see blasphemy as dangerous, as the worst of sins, there are thousands of examples of just how dangerous to human beings differences in religious understanding are. Montesquieu summed this up succinctly in 1721 CE: “There never was a realm in which so many civil wars have broken out, as in the kingdom of Christ.”
Lest anyone misunderstand and think that blasphemy declarations and punishments have not in the past been extraordinarily dangerous and destructive, consider Leonard Levy’s description:
Sixteenth-century Europe was hostile to religious toleration. On both sides of the Reformation, political and religious leaders believed that the safety of the state and the preservation of the faith required the execution of obstinate and blasphemous heretics. They saw nothing un-Christian in punishing capitally for a crime against the majesty of God. Had an epidemic among livestock annihilated as many pigs and sheep as the number of people slaughtered for their religious opinions, governments would have bemoaned the loss. But they would have thought themselves traitors to their faiths if they had not rid the world of its Servetuses.
And read a description, though not if you are prone to nightmares, of the execution of one of the victims of a government intertwined with a religion and not restricted by secularism—for example, a description of the horrific death of Michael Servetus himself. Out of the Flames (2002) by Lawrence Goldstone and Nancy Goldstone is a fascinating book and it begins with a gut-wrenching description of Servetus’s death.)
The declaration by governments of acts as “blasphemy” is a longstanding practice but not at all one restricted to the Old World or to other cultures. John Adams and Thomas Jefferson exchanged letters on the subject near the end of their lives (they both died on Independence Day, 1826). They agreed that attempts to regulate free speech and open criticism of religion by labeling these attempts “blasphemy” was dangerously wrong. Jefferson had earlier (in 1814) famously declared in a letter to bookseller N. G. Dufief about attempts to outlaw a particular book as blasphemous (emphasis Jefferson’s),
I am really mortified to be told that, in the United States of America, a fact like this can become a subject of inquiry, and of criminal inquiry, too, as an offence against religion; that a question about the sale of a book can be carried before the civil magistrate. Is this then our freedom of religion? And are we to have a censor whose imprimatur shall say what books may be sold, and what we may buy? And who is thus to dogmatize religious opinions for our citizens? . . . Is a priest to be our inquisitor, or shall a layman, simple as ourselves, set up his reason as the rule for what we are to read, and what we must believe? It is an insult to our citizens to question whether they are rational beings or not, and blasphemy against religion to suppose it cannot stand the test of truth and reason.
Jefferson’s anger and mortification, which he emphasized as explicitly American anger with his italics, should be shared by all Americans.
Though my focus is primarily national, on the need for the federal government to be strictly secular, it is worth remembering that the Fourteenth Amendment, passed in 1868, protects the rights of all US citizens from infringement by state (and by extension, local) governments as well. Some states still have blasphemy laws on the books, but “once the Supreme Court began to apply the Bill of Rights to the states . . . blasphemy laws effectively became dead letters.”
Even those who may think religion deserves protection from offensive utterances or acts should oppose blasphemy laws. There is quite literally no way to know how far to take such laws. Shall this phrase or that word or that idea be included or excluded? Who shall decide? A Muslim might consider it blasphemous to assert that God can beget a son; a Christian might consider it blasphemous to deny it. If any government agent has, directly or indirectly, the power to enforce respect under law for any religious idea, then that agent has essentially unlimited and arbitrary power over anyone he comes across.
And, by the way, the prohibition against government agents trying to protect anyone from simply being offended extends to atheists, too. Under our secular form of government, under the First Amendment, ridiculing and satirizing atheism or atheists is—and must be—protected. The false idea that church-state separation is designed to protect atheists’ sensitivities is often used to attack secularism. Atheists, like all other Americans, should of course be deeply offended if anyone is attempting to use the government to promote religion. But all ought also to be offended at parallel attempts to use governments to attack religion. And liberty, not protection from offense, is the purpose of separating government and religion.
There can be no meaningful freedom of religion or freedom of speech where blasphemy (or heresy) laws are in effect. Social customs, which change with time and situation, can be brought to bear to discourage speech or behavior that some consider rude or offensive. Religious bodies can regulate behavior among adherents with penalties up to expulsion from the group—though not with penalties for anyone not in the group. Penalties even within a group cannot, in a secular society, include depriving an individual of his civil rights. And law and government cannot be used to stop blasphemy or heresy, however defined, without trampling on liberty.
Note: Anyone may copy and publish what I or my guests write, provided proper credit is given, that it’s not done for commercial purposes, that I am notified of the copying (you can just leave a comment saying where the copy is being published), and provided that what any of us write is not quoted out of context or distorted.
Thanks for reading Letters to a Free Country! Subscribe for free (always) to receive new posts and support my (our) work.