Episode 47: The Freedom of the Church - A Conversation with Steven Smith

Peter Leithart and James Wood sit down with Steven D. Smith for a conversation on natural law, religious freedom, the First Amendment, modern paganism, and the freedom of the church.

Smith is the Warren Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of San Diego and co-director of its Institute for Law and Religion. His books include Law’s Quandary, Pagans and Christians in the City, and The Rise and Decline of American Religious Freedom.

The conversation begins with a problem in modern legal reasoning: judges often speak as though law rests on moral realities that their stated assumptions cannot explain. Smith discusses the loss of natural law in American jurisprudence, the resulting suspicion that judicial decisions are simply political, and the possibility of recovering a more coherent account of law. Leithart and Wood also ask whether contemporary secularism is genuinely neutral or whether it functions as a competing form of religious belief.

Turning to the First Amendment, Smith argues that its religion clauses originally marked a limit on the national government’s authority rather than establishing a comprehensive theory of religious freedom. He explains how later Supreme Court decisions changed that arrangement and why disputes over church and state cannot be settled by appeals to religious neutrality alone.

The episode concludes with the freedom of the church. Smith traces the idea from medieval conflicts between spiritual and temporal authorities through the American founding and into modern cases concerning church autonomy. Leithart, Wood, and Smith consider why churches must be free to govern their own affairs—and what society loses when the church is made to conform to the demands of the state.

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