I’m old enough to remember when religious-liberty lawyers were a quirky, somewhat cool, and tiny (very tiny!) subset of the legal profession. They were the guys who’d skipped out on the law-firm bucks and instead spent their days making sure that the faithful folks on the fringes of American life didn’t get a raw deal. They kept the dominant American cultural Christians honest.
Did a Native American group need the liberty to build a sweat lodge? Was a quirky home-school family getting harassed by state education officials? Did a Sikh need help to keep his dagger? In each case, the religious-liberties bar was there to help, and with broad public approval.
Few things symbolize the transformation of American politics more than the transformation of the religious-liberty dispute. Remember all the way back in 1993, when the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act passed with only three dissenting votes? It was introduced in the House by Chuck Schumer, in the Senate by Ted Kennedy. Bill Clinton signed it, with great fanfare. Now the very thought of introducing state versions of this federal legislation brings national condemnation, corporate boycotts, and media scorn.
In the early 1990s, you could almost fit the entire religious-liberties bar in a single mid-sized hotel conference room. Now conservative religious-liberties lawyers are the virtual Seal Team Six of the culture war, with multiple organizations raising collectively close to $200 million annually to do battle in courtrooms from coast to coast.
What changed? America changed from a largely single-faith culture to a two-faith nation — sacred and secular — and it will be a two-faith nation for the foreseeable future. That’s why religious liberties are so controversial. That’s why they’ll be a flashpoint in 2020 and in 2024. No longer is a Christian nation urged to protect the small and politically insignificant faiths in its midst. In 1993, there was no real perceived public cost to basic religious tolerance. Now, the Sunnis are asked to tolerate the Shiites. The Hindus are asked to tolerate the Muslims. And in the zero-sum game of two-faith power struggle, when one faith wins, the other takes a loss.
