The principle of separation (Erin)

The Texas Supreme Court has ruled that a young woman who claimed to have been harmed by an exorcism the Pleasant Glade Assembly of God church performed on her over a decade ago can't sue the church:

The 2002 trial of the suit never touched on the religious aspects of the case, and a Tarrant County jury found the church and its members liable for abusing and falsely imprisoning Schubert, who was 17 at the time. The jury awarded Schubert $300,000 for mental anguish, but the 2nd Court of Appeals in Fort Worth shaved $122,000 from the verdict for loss of future income.

But the church raised the question of whether the Fort Worth appeals court erred when it said Pleasant Glades' First Amendment rights regarding freedom of religion do not prevent the church from being held liable for mental distress triggered by a "hyper-spiritualistic environment."

A majority of the court agreed, with Justice David Medina writing that while Schubert's secular injury claims might "theoretically be tried without mentioning religion, the imposition of tort liability for engaging in religious activity to which the church members adhere would have an unconstitutional 'chilling effect' by compelling the church to abandon core principles of its religious beliefs."

Among the three justices who dissented from the majority opinion was the chief justice:

Chief Justice Wallace Jefferson was among the justices that disagreed with the majorities ruling, and in a dissenting opinion states that a church will simply have to claim a religious motive to deny a church member from bringing a claim against it.

"This sweeping immunity is inconsistent with United States Supreme Court precedent and extends far beyond the protections our Constitution affords religious conduct," Jefferson wrote. "The First Amendment guards religious liberty; it does not sanction intentional abuse in religion's name."

Don't get me wrong: I'm quite sympathetic to the young woman who brought the lawsuit against the church, for reasons that are outside the scope of constitutional questions. But Chief Justice Jefferson's view of the matter seems to go too far, to me. One reason that it is a good thing the Constitution takes such a hands-off approach to religion is that conduct that can seem extremely dubious to people outside of a faith tradition can often be an important ritual for believers. For example, many people are beginning to refuse circumcision of male infants as there is a controversy about whether this is necessary for medical or health reasons; if that ever became a cultural standard, then the Jewish practice of performing circumcisions on male babies might seem potentially harmful to members of a society that have generally rejected this practice. Similarly, those churches who practice full-immersion baptisms either of children or adults (or both) might be criticized or investigated on the grounds that this is dangerous and, at least as far as children are concerned, frightening. In my own Catholic Church there have been voices calling for an alternative to wheat used in the communion wafers so that those with celiac disease may receive Holy Communion--but the Church has said that it has no power to consecrate materials other than wheat bread in some form. Society could decide that this is mentally harmful to Catholics who suffer from celiac disease.

There are probably dozens of other examples of how the customs, rituals, or practices of a church could seem harmful; but as the majority in Texas said, the principle of separation of church and state goes both ways. The state does not have the power to interfere unduly with the church, and though that may sometimes lead to situations like the one in the lawsuit where this young woman may not have much recourse to hold her faith community responsible for the mental suffering she experienced following the exorcism attempt, in principle if we believe that the church and state are separate, we should understand the gravity of the danger of the loss of the church's relative freedom from undue interference by the state.