The Western civic tradition is a particular inheritance

It has become fashionable to speak of “values” as if they were a mood — kindness, diversity, being decent — rather than a demanding political tradition. The Western civic tradition is more definite than that. It includes the dignity of the person, the supremacy of law over rulers, freedom of speech and worship, and the American refusal to let the federal government write a creed.

Those goods have sources. They were argued out in courts, parliaments, churches, and pamphlets, in a civilization formed by biblical religion, classical philosophy, and the hard experience of sectarian conflict. The American settlement — no established national church, and no official penalty for worshiping differently — is not a declaration that religion is unimportant. It is a way of protecting both church and commonwealth.

To say this is an inheritance is not to say that only Christians can live by it. The promise of equal protection is a promise to every citizen. It is to say that the inheritance is particular, that it was not inevitable, and that it will not maintain itself if the people who received it cannot explain it.

A confident tradition does not need to caricature its neighbors. It does need to be willing to say what it believes: that civil law, not a religious legal code, is the law of the United States; that conversion, criticism of religion, and apostasy are rights, not crimes; that scientific inquiry and open debate are public goods; and that families and congregations are not obstacles to freedom but among its schools.

Liberty on the Line is an advocacy project in that sense. We are not neutral about whether this tradition should continue. We are obliged, even so, to be accurate, to be just toward persons, and to do our work in the open, under the same laws we ask others to honor.