Freedom of belief

Culture

Freedom

Freedom of Belief

20 September 2023

8 min read

Why religious liberty? Love, actually

Claims for religious freedom can be controversial. Nathan Chapman weighs up approaches to accommodating them, not just legally but in the light of love.

Nathan S. Chapman

Nathan S. Chapman is a scholar of constitutional rights, religious liberty, and Christianity and the law. He is a Professor of Law at the University of Georgia.

A montage of people praying with hands held together.

A detail of Norman Rockwell's 1943 Freedom of Worship illustration.

Norman Rockwell, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Religious liberty is a cornerstone of liberal democracy. The freedom of religious belief and practice is enshrined in human rights instruments, national constitutions, and legislation. Usually, those rights are uncontroversial. Only when someone claims a right to do something that threatens the rights of others – such as a right to decline to bake a cake for a same-sex wedding – do most observers take notice. Unfortunately, in controversial cases the values underlying both of the competing rights claims tend to get lost in political rhetoric. The arguments against the religious liberty claims may be obvious - concerns about security, or public health, equal treatment of LGBTQIA+ persons - but for many it is harder to see the value of allowing dissenters to peacefully practice their religion.

So, what is the point of religious liberty? Several justifications have deep historical and philosophical roots. Top of the list is reducing conflict: from the view of believers, God demands one thing, society another. Best to let believers have their way so long as they are peaceful about it. Concerns about political conflict were one of the key reasons for the rise of religious tolerance in the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries.

This reason goes only so far, though—only far enough to prevent actual conflict. It does nothing to justify freedom for groups or individuals who pose no threat to political stability, perhaps because they are small, or because they are politically withdrawn. And focusing exclusively on conflict is intellectually unsatisfying; it considers only the effects of religious difference instead of digging into why people adhere to unpopular religious practices. For that, we need an insider's point of view. We need to see why believers have often supported religious liberty not only as a political expedient, but because they have believed religion required religious liberty for everyone.

Consider two Christian statements of rationale for religious liberty that have become canonical among western democracies. The first comes from John Locke:

“true and saving religion consists in the inward persuasion of the mind, without which nothing can be acceptable to God.”

Such “persuasion” must be free, and it must be sincere. Under this view, compelled religious belief is an oxymoron; it doesn’t work, and even if it did, it would do the believer no good--salvation requires voluntary belief. Therefore, says Locke, the “civil” jurisdiction and the “spiritual” jurisdiction are strictly separate, with the civil magistrate having no say over spiritual matters. This argument went a long way toward justifying the government’s toleration of dissenting assemblies, preaching, and worship. But toleration goes only so far. It does not include freedom from any legal duty that is rightly within the domain of the civil magistrate. For instance, a religious pacifist--Christian, Buddhist, or otherwise--who objects to mandatory military service is out of luck.

James Madison, the architect of the U.S. Bill of Rights, was more sympathetic to dissenters. When Virginia tried to make taxpayers pay tithes to their local churches, Madison pointed to the Virginia Declaration of Rights (1776):

“Religion, or the duty which we owe to our Creator, and the manner of discharging it, can be directed only by reason and conviction, not by force or violence.”

At first glance, this may seem to restate Locke’s position: true religion requires intellectual freedom. But it goes much further than Locke did. Madison defines religion as the duty one owes to God and “the manner of discharging it.” And, crucially, Madison jettisons Locke’s binary view of “civil” and “spiritual” jurisdiction. Only one jurisdiction matters for determining the scope of religious liberty: God’s. When we have a duty to God, the civil government should get out of the way. Under Madison’s view, religious liberty resolves inconsistent commands of rulers with overlapping jurisdictions in favor of those issued by the higher authority, God.

This view does not satisfy everyone (including some believers). In the first place, it relies on premises that many reject: the notions that there is a knowable God, that people owe duties to God, and that others should respect those (perceived) duties. In the second place, in religiously pluralistic societies, it often seems like each person claims different duties to different gods. Religious liberty facilitates religious diversity, which proliferates inconsistent claims of divine “duty," thereby diluting each of them. At the same time, it makes accommodating every claim more costly, because there are more of them, and they seek accommodations from a wider variety of laws.

To make matters worse, the divine duty rationale implies that religious liberty has no limits. The person who believes that God demands human sacrifice has as much a claim to religious liberty as the one who simply doesn’t want to be made to attend a church service. The rationale also rests on a notion that is increasingly difficult for those in secularized societies to view sympathetically: the idea that the Creator of the universe exacts obedience, and that society should honor the individual's perception of that duty, in exchange for... what, exactly?

A more thoroughly Christian view of religious liberty depends on grasping why believers want to obey God. Locke’s answer was straightforward: fear of eternal damnation. What ought to motivate religious tolerance, Locke insists, are differences about what constitutes “true and saving religion.” Here, Locke was understandably a creature of his times, when western Europe and North America were divided by doctrinal disputes about Christian salvation. Although the promise of eternal life through faith in Christ is the core of Christian doctrine, Scripture surely teaches that those who have already acknowledged Christ as their Savior should obey God not out of fear of damnation, but out of love. Jesus said the greatest commandments were these: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength” and “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Whatever duties we owe to God and others, from the most sublime form of corporate worship to the most mundane task of changing a diaper, flow from love. Love is the framework, the backdrop, the engine for Christian duty.

Where does such love come from? For Jews and Christians alike, such love is a proper response to God’s love for all of creation, and especially for humankind. Consider the evocative imagery of the ancient songwriter/poet known as the Psalmist:

“How precious is your steadfast love, O God! The children of mankind take refuge in the shadow of your wings. They feast on the abundance of your house, and you give them drink from the river of your delights. For with you is the fountain of life; in your light do we see light.”

For Christians, God’s love is shown most thoroughly in the teaching, life, death, and resurrection of his son, Jesus Christ. As the Apostle John wrote,

“By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers.”

All too often non-believers seem to appreciate the core of Christian ethics better than many self-proclaimed believers: Christian duty ought to be not merely a private act of personal piety, but an active, self-giving, others-oriented love that mirrors the gentleness, kindness, and sacrifice of Christ.

It turns out that love, actually, is the root of the Christian duty that can sometimes generate conflicts with civil law. The freedom to love God and others according to one's best lights is the most thoroughly Christian basis for religious liberty. "According to one's best lights" is an important qualification. Although Christians agree on the requirements of love in many cases, they have from the beginning disputed whether some conduct is consistent with love. For instance, in the first century, they debated whether it was okay to eat food that had been sacrificed to the idols representing Roman deities. Some thought yes, some no. The Apostle Paul taught those who had no qualms with eating such meat to be understanding of those who did. Christians were to tolerate those with different interpretations of the requirement of love--at least as to matters that were inessential to the gospel.

What difference might love make for religious liberty? Most importantly, it might render claims for religious liberty more legible to those of any (or no) religion who disagree with the claim's morality. Not everyone has experienced fears about eternal salvation, but everyone has experienced a moral duty arising from affection, whether for a favorite sporting club, a family member, or country. Believers regard God as the source of all these good things, and many others besides, so God alone deserves our highest adoration. We may not be able to relate to a God who issues (seemingly) severe commands, but we ought to be able to relate to one who asks for, and merits, our love.

If love is the best motivation for observing a higher duty, we ought to think twice before we condemn those who say their religion will not allow them to follow the law. We ought to presume they have the best of motivations. To be sure, not every one who claims a religious exemption is motivated by love—no one is perfect, and some religiously-motivated conduct (whether in the name of Christianity or another religion) is decidedly unloving. Moreover, believers sometimes disagree about what love requires. In my own country (the U.S.), some religious claimants assert a religious duty to avoid funding contraceptive insurance on the ground that it facilitates abortions, while others claim a religious duty to facilitate an abortion. Those claims are morally inconsistent. If we assume that religious claimants in principle might be motivated by affection for what they take to be the divine, we ought to respect the dilemma that claimants find themselves in--even when the law does not, and should not, exempt their conduct.

Religious love is especially deserving of our respect and, when possible, accommodation. We should affirm our neighbors' attempts to follow the demands of divine love, even when we disagree with their understanding of those demands. And we should respect them even when that understanding cannot be squared with the needs of society in any given case. Love should not always be a trump card--no more than divine fear should be a trump card. Some religious freedom claims will not, and should not, win the day. There is no avoiding drawing lines according to law and public conscience. But love for God offers a richer, and perhaps a more attractive, justification for religious liberty in the first place.

Explainer

Culture

Film & TV

Identity

11 July 2025

8 min read

The old stories that shaped the Superman we know today

How much messiah is there in the Man of Steel?

Giles Gough

Giles Gough is a writer and creative who hosts the God in Film podcast.

Superman's stars and director research.

Warner Bros.

This month is sure to leave cinemagoers vibrating with excitement as we see the long-awaited release of James Gunn’s Superman film, starring David Corenswet as the titular last son of Krypton and Rachel Brosnahan as Lois Lane.

If the trailer is anything to go by, the film is going to be leaning into some of the more whimsical aspects of the character, which may well be a reaction against the darker, grittier interpretation we saw in Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel, Batman vs. Superman and Justice League films. Snyder was depicting a Superman with genuine pathos, one that emphasised the messiah parallels of a man with god-like abilities. Snyder may have leaned into the ‘Superman-as-God’ angle, but he didn’t invent that perspective. In fact, it’s an aspect that may well have been there from the very beginning.

So, before we watch the new film and once again believe a man can fly, let’s dive into his background and see how much messiah there is in the Man of Steel.

The first thing that we’re going to focus on is the idea of Superman as a Jewish superhero. I would love to say that I was the first person to spot this, but I am at best, the 6,289th person to spot this particular parallel. But it’s definitely not talked about enough. Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster were both Jewish European immigrants. Like Stan Lee at Marvel some twenty years later, they probably understood the feeling of looking the same, but being treated differently by people. Similarly, Kal-El looks just like a normal human man, but is anything but. There is a reason that the comic book industry at this time appears to have so many Jewish creatives in it, and that’s because the anti-Semitism of mid-twentieth century America created a strong barrier to getting any more prestigious jobs. You need to remember that at this point comic books and comic book creators were not considered special or valuable in any way. These days, a person would need to be exceptionally talented and phenomenally well connected to get a foot in the door at DC or Marvel. Whereas at that time, a high school education and the ability to write or draw were enough to get you a decent spot. Jewish people were not able to get jobs in advertising or publishing, and no one was really bragging about their work in comics. Comics back then were treated like they were disposable, like collecting newspapers. That’s why getting hold of a copy of something like Action Comics #1 or Detective Comics #27 (the first appearances of Superman and Batman respectively) is so rare. It would just not occur to anyone to keep a copy.

But the more we look at Superman, the more Jewish parallels we see. Let’s look at Moses, one of the most central figures in Judaism, who is also a key figure in Christianity.

Many of you will be familiar with Moses’s ‘origin story’. At the time of the story, the Hebrews are enslaved in Egypt, and the Pharaoh was controlling the population by killing every Hebrew baby boy at birth. So, the mother of one boy places her baby in a basket and hides him in the reeds along the banks of the Nile. The boy’s older sister watches over him from a distance. The basket is spotted by the daughter of the Pharaoh as she is going down to bathe. She speaks to the baby’s older sister, who cunningly offers the baby’s own mother as a wet nurse without revealing her parental connection. The Pharaoh’s daughter agrees and decides to raise him as her own son.

So what we have here is a baby being sent away by their parents from what would almost certainly be total destruction, and death. The baby is found by a prospective parent who then adopts them as their own. That baby then grows up to be the child of two worlds, at some points torn between a dual heritage, but nonetheless able to go on to achieve miraculous things. We are literally one spaceship away from Superman’s origin story.

Next, let’s consider Superman’s real name. No, not ‘Clark Kent’, I mean his real name; Kal-El. This made-up name sounds similar to some words in Hebrew. For example, the suffix El, means ‘of God’. This has led to some scholars interpreting the name Kal-El as ‘Voice of God’. ‘Clark Kent’ was said to be inspired by explorer William Clark, who along with Meriwether Lewis (‘Lois and Clark’, get it?) were the American explorers who discovered an overland route to the Pacific Ocean. Therefore as well as ‘Superman’, he has one name with significance in Hebrew, and another anglicised name that was a nod to American history. The idea that Superman has a real name and a public name is another Jewish element. At the time many Jewish people knew that they could be identified, and therefore persecuted, for their name. In Hollywood, ‘Bernard Schwartz’ became ‘Tony Curtis’, ‘Issur Danielovitch Demsky’ became ‘Kirk Douglas’. Even over at Marvel, ‘Stanley Martin Lieber’ became ‘Stan Lee’ (nice one Stan). This is a practise that continues to this day. You may not know the name ‘Natalie Herschlag’, but suffice to say she absolutely killed it as the Mighty Thor.

It is easy to read Superman as an immigrant’s desire to belong to their adopted society and make a positive contribution to it.

Some of the conscious influences for Superman came from characters like Zorro, or the Scarlet Pimpernel, and was said to be visually inspired by Douglas Fairbanks. But what is interesting is if we think about what things could have unconsciously inspired the creation of Superman. The term ‘Superman’ was used fairly commonly in the twenties and thirties to refer to men doing phenomenal feats. However, if we hearken all the way back to Friedrich Nietzsche’s first reference to the Ubermensche, this has sometimes been translated (quite poorly) into ‘Superman.’ Now, both Siegel and Shuster have denied that Nietzsche was an influence in the creation of Superman, but considering that the ubermensche was such a popular idea in 1930s Nazi Germany at the time, it’s fun to see Superman as a reaction against this. If you imagine that the strongest most powerful man alive is also Jewish, then I imagine Jewish readers might get a kick out of that.

As Christianity sprang from Judaism, there’s not always a clear delineation in terms of who is important to which religion. Since we’ve covered Moses, we need to look at another Jewish man who caused quite a stir; Jesus. It is not difficult to see the parallels between ‘the last son of Krypton’ and ‘the Son of Man’. Kal-El is sent to earth from another world by his father, to save the human race.

This parallel is particularly explicit in Russell Crowe’s incarnation of Jor-El in 2013’s Man of Steel when he says:

‘You will give the people of Earth an ideal to strive towards. They will race behind you, they will stumble, they will fall. But in time, they will join you in the sun, Kal. In time, you will help them accomplish wonders’.

Superman and Jesus are both raised in a humble setting (Clark is raised on a farm and Jesus is raised to be a tektōn, which is often interpreted as a ‘carpenter’ but could just as easily be ‘builder’). Neither Nazareth, nor Kansas were thought to be particularly glamorous places (sorry Kansas!) and yet, both grow up to become the saviour of the world. Superman spends time in his ‘Fortress of Solitude’ to learn from his father, Jesus spends time praying and fasting in the wilderness. Same principle, but very different aesthetic.

Jesus may have been the messiah, but he was not the kind of messiah high on first century Jewish people’s wish-list. Having been oppressed by the Romans for over 90 years at the time of Jesus’ ministry, the Jewish people were desperate for a messiah and to put it delicately, Jesus was not what most Jewish people were expecting. They expected a warrior, a champion who would throw off the oppressors of the Jewish people.

So it’s possible to consider that Siegel and Shuster are, in fact, creating the Jewish messiah. Superman uses force, his unrivalled physical strength and power, to protect people. When you consider the first Superman comic came out just before the start of the second world war, it adds real weight to this desire for a mighty protector. In fact, Superman is also compared to Samson, an Old Testament figure who is granted supernatural strength; and this is what the Jewish people were expecting from a messiah. Jesus is not this. He didn’t fight, he didn’t raise rebellions, he didn’t incite violence against the oppressors. His fight was in the form of the ultimate sacrifice. Any hero who dies to save his friends is an automatic Christ parallel right there, and Superman has died more than his fair share.

When all is said and done, it’s Superman’s unwavering morality, not his physical strength and power, that makes him most like Jesus. Superman is incredibly gentle and peaceful. He doesn’t want to dominate and he tries to avoid violence on the whole. It would take far too long to determine exactly what came from Siegel and Schuster and what has been added in the subsequent decades by other writers. But it is easy to read Superman as an immigrant’s desire to belong to their adopted society and make a positive contribution to it. Along with Batman, Spiderman and Wonder Woman, Superman transcends the comic book universe that he belongs to. He exists in the hearts and minds of every person who once loved him in any iteration, and it’s possible that his influence from the meta-narratives in Judaism and Christianity helped him to be embraced by society at large. Or it could just be the cape and the tights, who knows?

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