DELIGHT, FRIGHT OR SPITE AS HUTTERITES ARE NOT RIGHT IN RIGHTS FIGHT?

Um, OK, I don’t have a budget for a proper headline writer person.
Sue me.

Some Hutterites think that photos like this are sinful. Most people agree.

In a 4-3 decision, the Supreme Court of Canada has determined that Alberta’s law requiring photographs on drivers licences is valid even for Hutterites who argued that it violated their religious rights. They said that the photographs were contrary to the Ten Commandments that forbids the making of images and associated idolatry.  See here for the Lethbridge Herald’s news story. The Globe and Mail has a detailed story too.

Alberta’s Hutterites had been excused from the requirement to have photos on the licences since 1974. In 2003, the provincial government began entering all of the licence photos on a common database. They required the Hutterites to take part in this although the photos would not be put on the licences themselves. Two colonies complained to the courts and won. The Alberta Government appealed and now the earlier decision has been reversed.

According the Globe and Mail story, Justices Beverley McLachlin, Ian Binnie, Madam Justice Marie Deschamps and Mr. Justice Marshall Rothstein decided in favour of the Alberta government.

“The goal of setting up a system that minimizes the risk of identity theft associated with driver’s licences is a pressing and important public goal,” Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin wrote for the majority.

“The universal photo requirement is connected to this goal and does not limit freedom [of] religion more than required to achieve it.” (Globe and Mail)

Beverley McLachlin

The nay-sayers were pretty strenuous in their disagreement.

Judge Abella attacked Alberta’s case in a passionate dissent, the principles of which Mr. Justice Louis LeBel and Mr. Justice Morris Fish supported.

In her view, the security benefit of mandatory photos is slight compared with the impact on the Hutterites. She noted about 700,000 Albertans who don’t have driver’s licences aren’t in the security database either.

“There is no evidence that in the context of several hundred thousand unphotographed Albertans, the photos of approximately 250 Hutterites will have any discernible impact on the province’s ability to reduce identity theft,” she wrote.

“The mandatory photo requirement is a form of indirect coercion that places the Wilson Colony members in the untenable position of having to choose between compliance with their religious beliefs or giving up the self-sufficiency of their community, a community that has historically preserved its religious autonomy through its communal independence.”

Judge Abella went further, saying the majority’s approach let the Alberta government off the hook without adequately proving religious rights were justifiably infringed. The result “imperils and contradicts human rights jurisprudence.” (G&M)

According the Herald, Abella’s decision read,

“The harm to the constitutional rights of the Hutterites, in the absence of an exemption, is dramatic. The serious harm caused by the infringing measure weighs far more heavily on the scales than the benefits the province gains from its imposition on the Hutterites,”… “This makes the mandatory photo requirement a form of indirect coercion that places the Wilson Colony members in the untenable position of having to choose between compliance with their religious beliefs or giving up the self-sufficiency of their community, a community that has historically preserved its religious autonomy through its communal independence.” (LH)

The Hutterites’ lawyer, Greg Senda said,

 

“This was not a frivolous lawsuit. They sincerely believe the second commandment prohibits them from willingly allowing their picture to be taken and now they are forced with a situation of what they are going to do,” (L.H.)

 

Moses, looking around to see if the paparazzi are trying to
sneak a graven image of him.

 

Senda continued, saying,

“It’s not like a normal situation where I, as a lawyer, can make recommendations on my clients based on the law because this is longer based on the law.* This is based on their religious beliefs, so it’s totally up to them to determine what the response is going to be.” (LH).

*sic? Should it read “no longer”?

The Canadian Civil Liberties Association is also opposed to the ruling. Their lawyer, Nathalie Des Rosiers, said that the ruling was “a setback for religious beliefs in Canada.”

“Essentially, the majority opinion gives a lot of deference to the government in designing administrative systems – and that’s worrisome. Traditionally when freedoms were at stake, we were asking big questions of government. (G. M)

Now, Dr. Jim is usually a pretty liberal guy, but I have a hard time disagreeing with this decision and mustering any sympathy whatsoever for the Hutterites in this regard. Am I just a bigot? I sure hope not, but I’m still glad they lost. For one thing, while I do agree that it is important to maintain the freedom of religion, I do not see freedom of religion as amounting to a freedom from common obligations. Why should freedom of religion trump all else?

Jakob Hutter

The Hutterites really catch a lot of crap deal and have done since the beginning. They had their origins in the early 16th century with the rise of the Anabaptist movement. Jakob Hutter, from Tyrol, had a lot success preaching passivism, communal wealth and adult baptism in German speaking regions, but in the end he paid for his heresy with his life. His followers migrated here and there in Eastern Europe and finally in the 19th century to North America where they flourished.

Hutter’s Bill of Impeachment

They live their lives their way and I’m usually sympathetic to letting them just get on with it. Like every other identifiable minority, the faults of a few are attributed to the collective, resulting in a good bit of discrimination. If one steals they are all thieves, if there is one case of a Hutterite letting another, unlicensed colony member borrow his or her drivers’ license, then they all do it every day. The whole colony structure is designed to ensure that their conspiracy to take over all of the country’s farmland goes off without a hitch, like having to have their pictures taken. I would really hate to advance the cause of such discrimination.

That being said, I do think that the ideal of a common, shared law is important to maintain. While I do agree that religious exceptions should be granted in some instanced, I’m wary of a free-for-all, but more on that below. More important at the moment is the justification for the request in this case, that the Ten Commandments forbids submitting to photography.

First of all, not all Hutterite colonies are so picky about photographs. There are lots of photos of Hutterites on the web, for instance, and they were not all taken without the knowledge of the people in the viewfinder. That some seem fine with pictures is no reason, however, to ignore the concerns of those who do not. Each colony has its own perceptions of right and wrong, just like other congregations of believers in diverse religious traditions.

The abridged version. Presumably the stones did not come from a bridge.

For the same reason, one could not challenge the photophobic Hutterites on their interpretation of the Bible. As is well known, God is “image maker”, supreme in Bible, creating humanity in his image. People must not return the favor.

But will God indeed dwell on the earth?
Behold, heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain thee;
how much less this house which I have built! (1Kgs 8:27)

The “Ten Commandments” are purportedly divine laws written by God on two stone tables (Exodus 20:1-17, repeated with some differences in Deuteronomy 5:6-21). In the Protestant way of counting the commandments, the second bans images of anything in heaven or Earth, and especially the worshipping of such images. Reinforcing this ban are a large number of biblical passages from the Law of Moses, the prophets and more.

Golden Calf. BAD. Spiritual Pornography.

Brown Cow. GOOD. Dinner

According to the story, when Moses came down from Mount Sinai with the first tablets of the Ten Commandments, he found the Israelites worshipping a golden calf that they had made. Needless to say, Moses was not amused. He smashed the tablets, lots of Israelites were smitten, and Moses had to go back up the mountain to get another copy of the rules.

Complicating the issue, however, is that the Bible (Exodus 25:18-20) describes how the Ark of the Covenant, the container for the tablets of the law, was decorated with figurines of two winged angelic beings.

Ungraven Image

In Exodus 25-28 more ritual objects are decorated with images of flowers and pomegranates. King Solomon is never criticized for decorating his temple and palace with images of palms, lilies, lions, oxen and more (1 Kings 6-7). In Numbers 21:8-9 God commands Moses to make a bronze serpent as a cure for snake bites. According to 1 Kings 18:4, this figure had become the object of worship and so was destroyed by King Hezekiah.

Hey, its OK, just don’t worship it!

But if the Bible orders some images to be made, while forbidding the worship of any image, how can some modern religious groups say the Bible forbids photography of people? It would seem that they have not got a leg to stand on. Yet, I think it is wrong for outsiders to tell any believer of any tradition what their own religious rules mean to them.

Every one reads things into texts even as we are trying to read something out of it.

Alone apparently isn’t always lonely.

Scripture-based religions pass on not only their scriptures but subtly-evolving teachings about what those scriptures mean, how they apply to contemporary situations, and who has the most authority or influence in interpreting them. They might not be aware of these structures guiding them, but they are there all the same.

Religious communities sometimes regard their own interpretations to be obvious, self-evident, or even divinely inspired. Another community, however, may be just as convinced of an alternative interpretation. These interpretations can carry tremendous authority and influence.

 

“Sola Scriptura” The Protestant doctrine of
“The Bible and this book of mine that you should buy“.

To be somewhat provocative, it can be argued that no faith community is purely “Bible-based”. Rather, they create a perception of the Bible in the community’s own image: how they interpret the Bible is based on their religious beliefs as much as their beliefs are based on the Bible. To read “scripture” means to read sacred writings according to a “script” that guides the reader to find some things and not others.

“I see your puny “sola scriputura’ and raise you one Death Star, muwahahaha!
I’ll teach you reformers to reject tradition!”

No faith community is free from such scripts. The Hutterian brethren who object to photographs of themselves are working within one such framework. Other Bible-believing groups have their own. Catholic and Orthodox Christianity—rich in centuries of theological thought and layers of tradition—place differing levels of religious value on images of saints.

The Russian Orthodox Mary would NEVER appear in a cheese sandwich.

These churches understand this to be fundamentally different from actual worship of images. Many Protestant Christians stress what they claim are “literal” interpretations of the Bibles and are extremely wary of associating images with their worship. Yet, these Protestants do not have issues with paintings, drawings, sculptures, plastic figurines, movies or cartoons of Jesus and other significant figures.

Hey, buddy, got a licence? With a picture on it?

The origin of these frameworks for belief, practice and interpretation are actually outside of the biblical text itself. They arise within the historical experiences of the different communities in which the scriptures were transmitted over the centuries. For as much as some Christians like to think that the content of their faith is determined by scripture alone, this is hardly the case. History and tradition shape everything.

There are many difficult questions confronting religious groups trying to be involved—but not entangled—in the modern, secularized world. For many Bible-based traditions these discussions are often not about “what the Bible really says”. Rather, they are about how the members of each faith community have come to understand themselves and their congregation, their god and their relationship to the wider world. Just as there is no purely “Bible-based” community, there is no perfectly objective position from which an outsider can tell a faith community that they are not practicing their own religion correctly.

Who are we to judge how others get messages from God?

So where does this leave these two Hutterite colonies? And were does that leave me? I’m very wary of telling these people what their religion should be. I certainly would not draft them into an army against their pacifistic beliefs (well, I would have to be pushed pretty far to draft anybody!). But the question of photographs I think is rather different. Regardless of how serious these people take their interpretation of the second commandment, no one is expecting the images to be worshipped. Manufacture of the image is not worship in and of itself. I think the government has a way to negotiate some kind of understanding with those concerned.

Hutterite girls at the Lethbridge Farmers Market. Not of the world, but still in it?

More importantly, there are other principles that I am concerned with. Yes, our courts must defend individual freedoms and ways of life. Yet, they cannot be expected to create contrasting systems of obligations for the citizenship as a whole. Should we permit Muslim women to be photographed for their passports while wearing a burka? If we extend religious rights to one group, we should extend it to all.

I am informed that this is very traditional, but not for Hutterites.

Another issue here is that if exceptions to basic rules are allowed on religious grounds, then the government will have to develop some way of keeping track of just who is, or is not a member of which religious community so that they know who is expected to do what. I really don’t want to have people register their religions with the government. Who would control the membership rules in a tradition? Perhaps it would be easy for Hutterites: residents of the respective colonies would be easy to identify. But what if someone leaves the colony? At what point does their license become invalid? It would be better in the long run to risk being seen to trample on a few “little” rights rather than open a horrific can of worms that will violate a lot of big ones. No system is perfect, and the courts cannot be expected to create such a climate for one group.

On a different, but similar note, the Court of Queen’s Bench in Saskatchewan has recently upheld a ruling by the provincial Human Rights that a marriage councillor, Orville Nichols, had violated the rights of a gay couple by refusing to preside over their wedding. Nichols was required to pay $2500 to the couple.

A computer generated image of Saskatchewan

According to the Regina Leader Post:

But in her 36-page decision, rendered July 17, Justice Janet McMurtry said “Nichols, in his capacity as a marriage commissioner acting as government, is not entitled to discriminate regardless of his private beliefs.”

Needless to say, Nichols is the poster boy for the religious right’s martyrdom in the service of the Culture War campaign. The Christian Heritage Party is committed to “Defend against Human Rights Commission attacks on free speech” and “Protect conscience rights.” http://www.chp.ca/en/policy/platform.html

Cartoon shamelessly lifted from Slap Upside the Head.
Visit for lots more on Dipwit Nichols.

At issue is whether we are one society or many. Certainly the law must allow people to live as they please, but when it comes to institutions and laws governing everyone, then there should a willingness on the part of people to compromise. Where the line is to be drawn is often hard to tell, but I think in the case of the Hutterites and Mr. Nichols, they were not even close.

Back when the legal debate was heating up in Alberta courts, I wrote a short piece for the Lethbridge Herald (“Commandments at root of photo debate”, May 12, 2006). Parts of the above is adapted from that piece.