Our understanding of religious freedom is the foundation of all other human freedoms, journalist Mollie Ziegler Hemingway said Tuesday night at a speech sponsored by the Dow Journalism Program in Dow A&B.
“The first amendment begins with religious liberty,” she told the audience of students and faculty. “Even our crazy founders, who may or may not have been in any sense traditionally religious, understood that all freedom of expression, of speech, press, assembly, is rooted in the importance of determining truth.”
According to Hemingway, this misunderstanding of the source of human rights leads to the continued attacks on religious freedom by the administrative state and the mainstream media in America.
Hemingway is a longtime journalist known for her sharp reporting and insightful writing on religion and the mainstream media’s crimes. Her op-eds, reviews, and columns have appeared in various publications, including The Wall Street Journal, National Review, USA Today, The Washington Post, and Christianity Today. Currently, she is based near Washington, D.C., and writes most often for the online magazine The Federalist, where she is a senior editor.
Hemingway’s speech, “God is not Dead, But the Government is Trying to Kill Him,” began with specific instances of recent religious liberty violations in our country. She told the story of a florist in Washington state who was sued by her state attorney general for refusing to provide the flowers at a gay couple’s wedding. This, to Hemingway, is an example of how the administrative state’s supposed protections of religious liberty often extend to clergy and religious institutions but not to the lay man.
“People who aren’t protected are the people like the florists, the vendors, who might somehow be running businesses where they’re going to come into conflict with this,” she said.
According to Hemingway, the mainstream media’s dreadful coverage of religious liberty contributes to the persecution of religion in this country. Too often, she said, the media over-simplify religious issues, unfairly define the terms of the debate, and fail to understand the history of legislation.
“When our media do such a bad job covering religious liberty, I don’t think they really realize what is going to be sacrificed along with it,” she said. “They keep pounding this idea that they’re on the right side of history, but they’re completely ignorant of how our understanding of natural rights developed our history, basic civility, all these types of things.”
Despite the seriousness of her subject, Hemingway delivered a lively, enjoyable speech, with a full room of people responding well to her quips and witty remarks. She sprinkled her talk with the biting insights and sarcastic wit characteristic of her writing style.
The biggest laugh of the evening occurred when she summarized her former view of the relationship between libertarians and Christian conservatives with the witty phrase, “I help you get your drugs, you help me keep my God.”
Students who attended appreciated Hemingway’s insights.
“It helped me connect everything we’re learning here at Hillsdale with what’s going on right now,” freshman Stephen Nus said. “How studying the past and studying history and our Western heritage is important because it helps us understand why things are wrong in our government, and also gives us an idea of how they should be.”
Near the end of her speech, Hemingway gave her thoughts on the future of religious liberty in America.
“We’re a pretty cool country and we’re a bunch of different people who are trying to work things out — that’s probably more realistic,” she said. But with her characteristic wit she added, “But if you’d like to talk about how bad things are, I would love to join you, because I find that really fun in a bad way.”