National Secular Society Podcast

If you haven’t had the time and would have an interest in some of the great audio content produced by the secular communities around the world, and if your time has opened more with the coronavirus, then you may want to check out some of the great content produced by the National Secular Society or the NSS.

They have released a podcast with conversations with leading secular personalities around the world including, recently, in Episode 25, Andrew L. Seidel from the Freedom From Religion Foundation who is a U.S. constitutional and civil rights lawyer.

Alastair Lichten and Andrew talk about some of the important issues of the day for the separation of church and state. One of these is the idea of religious exceptionalism and the warped idea of religious liberty in a society in which it, like others, remains embroiled in a fight against a pandemic. How does a concept of religious exceptionalism and religious liberty fit into this picture?

When a religious permits exceptions for itself, then, in a manner of (faux) rights speaking, then it provides for itself the exception to the rules for everyone else based on the fact fo it being a God-given right to enter a place of worship or to pray in public spaces, etc., while in a pandemic, when the most prudent actions have been recommended by medical (scientific) authorities, including lockdown, physical distancing, and wearing of masks, etc.

With one case being the lack of access to places of worship of holy days, these restrictions…