Freedom-loving Christians
The Battle for Religious Freedom
Religious freedom is not secure in any country in the world, not even in the United States. So the fight for religious freedom goes on, as Chief Justice Earl Warren of the United States Supreme Court recently said: “The fact remains that we do have a battle today to keep our freedoms from eroding, just as Americans in every past age were obliged to struggle for theirs.” Who have won a great number of battles in this struggle? Who have become molders of constitutional law more than others? Writers are more and more discussing the matter.
Molding Constitutional Law
“Seldom, if ever, in the past, has one individual or group been able to shape the course, over a period of time, of any phase of our vast body of constitutional law. But it can happen, and it has happened, here.” So said The Bill of Rights Review, published by the American Bar Association. “The group is Jehovah’s witnesses,” continued the Review. “Through almost constant litigation this organization has made possible an ever-increasing list of precedents concerning the application of the Fourteenth Amendment to freedom of speech and worship.”
Advancing the Cause of Religious Freedom
In 1950 Harper & Brothers published Anson Phelps Stokes’ three-volume Church and State in the United States. In volume three, page 546, the author says: “It would not be fair to dismiss this brief survey of the troubles of Jehovah’s Witnesses with the State without referring to the service to the cause of religious freedom under our Constitution which has been rendered as a result of their persistence. In recent years they have taken the time of the courts more than any other religious group, and they have appeared to the public to be narrow-minded, but they have been true to their conscientious convictions, and as a result the Federal courts have rendered a series of decisions which have secured and broadened the religious-freedom guarantees of American citizens, and have protected and extended their civil liberties. Some thirty-one cases in which they were involved came before the Supreme Court in the five years from 1938 to 1943, and the decisions in these and later cases have greatly advanced the cause of the freedom of the Bill of Rights in general, and the protection of religious freedom in particular.”
“The Debt of Constitutional Law to Jehovah’s Witnesses”
An article under the above title appeared in the March, 1944, issue of the Minnesota Law Review. It was written by Edward F. Waite, a retired Minnesota district court judge. “It is plain that present constitutional guarantees of personal liberty,” wrote Judge Waite, “are far broader than they were before the spring of nineteen thirty-eight, and that most of this enlargement is to be found in the thirty-one Jehovah’s witnesses cases.”
‘More than Any Other Group’
On page 173 of his book The Republic Charles A. Beard says: “Whatever may be said about the Witnesses, they have the courage of martyrs. . . . As a result, in recent days they have made more contributions to the development of the constitutional law of religious liberty than any other cult or group. Believe me, they are making it fast.”
Helpful to Other Nations
The legal battles won by Jehovah’s witnesses, which have advanced religious liberty, are not limited in value to Americans. As the Watch Tower Society’s booklet Defending and Legally Establishing the Good News points out: “The court decisions in the United States, where the issues have been thoroughly litigated, should be helpful and persuasive precedent to assist courts and judges in other nations. . . . It is recognized that American decisions are not binding and do not force the judges to the same conclusions in countries outside the United States, yet there can be no question that they are of persuasive value and should be used to assist the courts in reaching a reasonable conclusion.”