Religious liberty is often described as America’s “first freedom.” But according to the leader of the U.S. bishops’ committee on that issue, it’s also increasingly threatened in today’s intensely polarized political environment — which threatens religious liberty from both without and within.

Most believers know that threats to religious liberty can come from the outside, like when political groups push for laws and policies that force an individual to violate their religious commitments.

And according to Bishop Kevin Rhoades, chairman of the U.S. bishops’ Committee on Religious Liberty, these kinds of violations are certainly on the rise amid America’s intensely polarized political climate, from efforts to coerce Catholic doctors to participate in abortions to legal threats against faith-based charities offering aid to migrants on the southern border.

“When we are polarized, the only thing that matters is getting the best of our enemies,” reflected Bishop Rhoades in a July 11 address at Notre Dame Law School’s Religious Liberty Summit, which was attended by lawyers, academics and religious leaders of a variety of faiths. He shared his transcript with the Register.

But the Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend, Indiana, bishop also said that religion itself can get “drawn into” polarized politics, as concern for rewarding one’s political allies and punishing enemies takes precedence over a holistic commitment to the tenets of one’s faith.

“When I become polarized, the transcendent horizon that faith ought to present to my vision is eclipsed by the idol of polarized politics,” cautioned Bishop Rhoades in his address, noting that even religious symbols and language can be inappropriately attached to political causes, a possible warning about the rise of so-called Christian nationalism.

And when religion becomes polarized in this way, the bishop warned, the very concept of religious liberty runs the risk of being discredited, as it becomes seen by both its critics and some who cite it as a fig leaf for covering “an arbitrary will to power rather than reason seeking the common good.”

Bishop Rhoades’ antidote to both threats to and abuses of religious liberty in a polarized society? A fundamental re-commitment to religious freedom for all and to the pursuit of truth, something that the bishop said admittedly “sounds quaint” in today’s polarized environment, but nonetheless must serve as “the reference point” for political discourse and for religious-liberty protections.

“If we are to ‘depolarize,’ we must see politics as a space in which we seek the truth of what is good for the political community to which we belong,” said Bishop Rhoades. “It does not mean a kind of pragmatism in which we abandon our claims to truth. But it does mean that we approach those we are debating” with charity, while “arguing over the merits of the truth claims themselves.”

The Indiana bishop drew heavily from his experience as chairman of the USCCB’s Religious Liberty Committee to demonstrate the effects of polarized politics on religious liberty today, in which a calculus of “friends versus enemies” takes precedent over the truth. 

For instance, he pointed to a liberal commentator’s worries about the outcome of Tanzin v. Tanvir, a 2020 Supreme Court case that found that a group of Muslims could sue a federal agency for putting them on the “No Fly List” for refusing to be FBI informants against their religious communities. The commentator, Bishop Rhoades noted, did not complain about the specific outcome of the case, but that the precedent would benefit Christians.

“In other words, the principle of religious freedom for all is not what matters,” commented Bishop Rhoades. “Rather, there should be one set of rules for my friends and another for my enemies.”

But Bishop Rhoades claimed that the same kind of polarized mentality is also on display in attacks against faith-based groups that serve migrants on the southern border, which are often made by “organizations that are otherwise friendly to religious liberty.” The bishop said that rather than focusing on the truth of how these ministries operate, these attacks rely on “spurious claims and exaggerated rhetoric to inflame the emotions of their political tribe.”

The U.S. bishops, including Bishop Rhoades, have frequently spoken out against what they see as religious-liberty violations in the Texas government’s crackdown on Catholic charities that serve migrants, such as the El Paso, Texas-based Annunciation House, which recently had a lawsuit against it for “facilitating illegal immigration” thrown out by a federal judge.

Bishop Rhoades said that the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has tried to “depolarize religious liberty by refusing to be polarized ourselves.” He pointed to the Religious Liberty Committee’s first-ever annual report, which highlighted the top-five threats to religious freedom in 2024, including coercions to perform abortions or gender surgeries, threats to religious charities serving migrants, and attacks not just on Catholic churches, but other houses of worship.

Bishop Rhoades noted how these concerns defied the dominant political binary and how the bishops’ commitment to them witnessed to valuing the principle of religious liberty, grounded in human dignity, over partisan allegiances.

“While it may be the case that one political party has tended to be more helpful on issues related to abortion, we cannot look the other way when that political party attacks religious institutions in a different way,” said the bishop. “We must be faithful witnesses to the truth.”

Organizers of Notre Dame Law School’s fourth-annual Religious Liberty Summit chose to focus on polarization precisely to highlight religious liberty’s broad, nonpartisan appeal. Other discussions during the three-day conference focused on topics like the rise of antisemitism and Islamophobia and “the Black Church and religious freedom.” Attendees included not only Catholics, but Eastern Orthodox Christians, Mormons, Jews, Muslims and practitioners of the Bahá’í faith.

Throughout his keynote address, Bishop Rhoades drew from the Second Vatican Council’s teaching on human dignity and the recent papal magisterium, such as Pope Benedict XVI’s teaching that “fidelity to man requires fidelity to truth, which alone is the guarantee of freedom.” When describing the kind of religious-liberty violations common in the U.S., which are more subtle than they are in other places where religious liberty is opposed in principle, Bishop Rhoades referred to Pope Francis’ phrase “polite persecution.”

The former head of the USCCB’s Committee on Doctrine underscored that religious liberty exists not for the sake of individual autonomy, but rather to fulfill the God-given obligation to pursue the truth, including answering ultimate questions about life’s purpose and how to live it out. Polarization and a post-truth political culture, Bishop Rhoades said, threaten religious liberty precisely because they “shrink” the space needed to allow people to seek religious truth or reject the search entirely as a “a fool’s errand.”

Bishop Rhoades acknowledged that ending political polarization, which he said is animated by a rejection of persons, not just positions, won’t end the prevalence of deep disagreements in U.S. society. For that, he said, Americans would need a shared narrative and a common understanding of fundamental truths, which they currently lack due to the prevalence of relativism and subjectivism.

“A Christian understanding of where truth is found — that is, outside ourselves — starkly contrasts with the modern impulse to view truth as a matter of personal invention,” he said. “This impulse is partially the product of centuries of bad philosophy and will take generations, at least, to unseat.”

Nonetheless, overcoming polarization would allow Americans to at least have discussions about contentious issues like marriage and sex “on the basis of human dignity and what dignity entails.” At a minimum, depolarization would end the use of “power to coerce people of faith into participating in actions that they understand to be fundamentally unjust and violations of human dignity.”

In his conclusion, Bishop Rhoades acknowledged to the religious-liberty advocates present that “these are difficult issues to work through” in the present polarized environment. Nonetheless, their mandate remains clear.

“As we navigate these turbulent times,” he said, “I encourage you to make truth your guidestar.”