Magna Carta's freedom for the English church.

• Author: Duncan, Dwight G.
• Position: Faulkner Law Symposium: From the Magna Carta to the March from Selma to Montgomery

Have you heard the news? The royal couple in England is expecting a baby. If the child is a boy, what do you suppose the name will be? Here is some insider information you can take to Paddy Power: It will not be John. John is the simplest, strongest name in English, and yet it will not even be considered. The reason, oddly enough, has something to do with religious freedom.

King John the Only, who ruled England in the early part of the thirteenth century, left behind such a record of failures that no English monarch has ever wanted to take the chance that another English monarch with that name would become king. One of his legacies is getting himself in such trouble with the other nobles in England that they forced him to sign Magna Carta. One of the major flashpoints of Magna Carta was religion.

In the first chapter of Magna Carta, King John proclaimed that "we ... [i]n the first place have granted to God and by this our present Charter have confirmed, for us and our heirs in perpetuity, that the English church shall be free [quod Anglicana ecclesia libera sit], and shall have its rights undiminished and its liberties unimpaired." (2) Originally, this meant, "free under the papacy from control by kings or barons." (3)

This freedom of the English church was also recognized in the last chapter of Magna Carta, chapter 63, which states, "Wherefore we wish and firmly command that the English church be free." (4) In the alpha and omega of Magna Carta, the catalogue of rights vis-a-vis the sovereign, and the importance of religious freedom, at least in its institutional form, is highlighted.

Now, you may be asking, why does this matter? We are in America. Most Americans have never heard of Magna Carta. Most of those who have do not know what it is about. Most of those who have an idea of what it is about do not know exactly what it says. What effect does it have? The story of Magna Carta has a bearing on how we think today. It has helped influence our assumptions about how secular power ought to treat religious belief. Part of that story is how Magna Carta has been regarded through the past eight centuries.

English legal historian Frederic William Maitland called Magna Carta "the nearest approach to an irrepealable 'fundamental statute' that England has ever had." (5) He notes that "[t]he vague large promise that the church of England shall be free is destined to arouse hopes that have been dormant and cannot be fulfilled." (6)

While that may be true, at the beginning of English constitutionalism in the Middle Ages, there was a resounding affirmation that religious freedom as important and inviolable, much like that in the First Amendment of our own Constitution's Bill of Rights, which begins with religion. This symposium panel is entitled "Rights and Wrongs in Common Law." As we will see, freedom for the Church was a part of English common law from its beginning, as it was already recognized in Henry I's coronation oath of the year 1100. Of course, this does not mean that the rights of the Church were always respected throughout English history. There were plenty of historical wrongs to contradict the legal rights.

However at the time of the American founding, William Blackstone wrote in his magisterial Commentaries on the Laws of England that "Christianity is part of the laws of England" (7) in the context of discussing blasphemy laws. This is a view which Thomas Jefferson notably disputed. (8) But at the risk of baiting at common law and switching to constitutional law, this right of religious freedom was even more basic than the common law or statutory law.

Indeed, in this symposium, The Career of Rights in the Anglo-American Legal Tradition, we should recognize and pay tribute to the important role that religious freedom has played in vindicating civil rights more generally--from Magna Carta to the Montgomery March, on the occasion of the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta (June 15, 1215), and the 50th anniversary of the Selma-to-Montgomery March (March 7-25, 1965). One need only point to the indispensable role played by the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. in the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott. Additionally to his role in the bus boycott, King along with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference played a vital role in the 1965 Montgomery March, which culminated in President Lyndon B. Johnson's proclaiming on March 15, 1965 that, "We shall overcome," in proposing and having Congress enact the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

I would like to note that 1965 is also the 50th anniversary of the Catholic Church's Declaration on Religious Freedom, issued by the Second Vatican Council. The Declaration of Religious Freedom recognized, in spite of a somewhat uneven history on the part of the institutional Catholic Church, that "the human person has the right to religious freedom ... that all should be immune from coercion on the part of individuals, social groups and every human power so that, within due limits, nobody is forced to act against his convictions in religious matters in private or in public, alone or in association with others." (9)

Indeed, the very notion of religious liberty, founded in a notion of a transcendent deity that precedes nations and states and their laws but which calls for a free and loving response, was to prove a potent force for the recognition of civil rights in the laws of nations and states.

Why is that? Let us take an American example; Martin Luther King, Jr., King's connection to religion does not come primarily from the title "Reverend" before his name. Whatever his flaws, King was a believer and an authentic proclaimer, and his appeals to religious teachings to persuade Americans to accept civil rights were among his most effective. That is because at some level he and his listeners--even if they were also his opponents--spoke the same language. Religious beliefs gnaw at injustice over time, until the great tree falls with a thud.

Aside from civil rights, King was a believer in religious freedom, as are most Americans. How and why--even if we often disagree on the details--say a lot about who we are as a people.

Supporters of religious freedom come in two varieties. The first is the type that thinks all religion is hooey, so it does not matter what people believe and why not just let everyone do his own thing. The second is the type that finds religion true or at least valuable in some way, and therefore says it is vital that each person should be allowed to believe and worship in his own way. Both of these approaches agree on something fundamental, namely, that the dignity of each human being is so high that his freedom ought to be respected. Particularly when it comes to his conception of who he is, how he came to be, where he is going, and what (if anything) he needs to do to get there. That respect for freedom that most people have comes from the ultimate respecter of freedom--a personal God who never lets His...