(ANALYSIS) In the complex landscape of 21st century America, the concept of religious freedom often finds itself at a crossroads, perceived through vastly different lenses.

On one side, it's viewed with skepticism, often dismissed as a cause championed solely by the fading remnants of the religious right, associated with outdated and bigoted beliefs, particularly regarding human sexuality and women's autonomy.

Conversely, among progressives, religious freedom is advocated for under various guises, from protecting religious minorities to preserving sacred sites and fighting against hate crimes. These causes, while typically associated with the left, are deeply rooted in the principles of religious freedom, highlighting its multifaceted nature and broad implications in today’s society.

Despite the often polarized views on religious freedom, its essence remains timeless and profound, particularly for Christians. For believers, religious freedom finds its most profound expression in the image of a God baby born over two millennia ago to a virgin. This freedom is not just about the ability to practice one’s faith openly but also to cultivate a personal relationship with Christ and to navigate the intricate tapestry of His church and the world. It's about recognizing our brokenness and bondage to sin, yet finding solace and redemption through the freedom granted by Christ's sacrificial love.

This freedom extends beyond mere tolerance of different beliefs; it calls us to make room in our spiritual lives for contemplation, empathy and understanding. This is epitomized in the Lenten season, a time of introspection and preparation, where Christians make space in their hearts for God’s presence. As we journey through Lent, stories like Laura Alvary’s “Make Room: A Child’s Guide to Lent and Easter” remind us of the importance of creating that sacred space for reflection and connection with the divine. In this way, religious freedom is not just a legal or political concept; it's a deeply spiritual practice that invites us to make room for the sacred in our lives and in the lives of others.

Making room to love all God’s creatures

Several years ago, at the start of the pandemic, my husband and I decided to read through “Wild Hope: Stories for Lent from the Vanishing” by Gayle Boss during the Lenten season. We were captivated by Boss’ storytelling, particularly how she interwove narratives of nonhuman creatures. At the time, we had one baby and hoped Boss’ journey through Lent with animals would help us imagine how we might start to form family traditions in our own young family.

Boss recounts her own struggle to engage her two boys when they were young during Lent. She discovered that, historically, Christians had likened Lent to Noah’s Ark, viewing the ark as a symbol of the church — a community that carries us through life's challenges. However, when Boss tried to share this insight with her sons, they were more captivated by the animals’ excitement in the story. As Boss reflects: “They wanted to talk about the shark’s screeching, leaping, hissing, slithering animals. Alas, the church gave no instruction on the animals’ symbolic value. The animals were merely animals.”

Boss also reflects on how our evolving understanding of climate change reaffirms what her sons understood as children: That we must make space in our contemplation of God's wonders and sufferings to include the beauty and suffering of all of God's nonhuman creatures. She writes, “Attention to the amazingness of our arkmates routes us directly to the heart of Lent.”

Contemplation to Earth’s biodiversity embodies the essence of Lent, awakening us from self-centeredness to appreciate other creatures’ beauty. This awareness exposes the devastation we've caused, rapidly depleting resources through daily choices affecting animals and humans alike. Lent prompts us to make space for others and other perspectives, acknowledging the interconnectedness of all life and the suffering we inflict.

As Boss observes, St. Paul’s recognition of creation’s groaning echoes this, suggesting that by heeding other creatures’ plight, we can embrace compassion. As Boss writes: “They suffer sacrificially, because of and for us. If we’ll hear them groaning, they’ll midwife our birth into new lives of unbounded compassion — what Paul called ‘the glorious liberty of the children of God.’ Then our freedom will be their freedom.”

Boss brings to life animals on the brink of suffering and extinction as a contemplative practice that draws us into the embodied suffering of others: “Born into a larger compassion, these people see turtles and birds, apes, insects, fish, and amphibians as kin.”

The Lenten journey, illuminated through the stories of nonhuman creatures, opens us to make room in our souls for Christ’s suffering on the cross by empathizing with the suffering of all God’s creatures. This “precarious and pregnant moment,” as Boss calls it, opens space within us for the healing and full communion of Resurrection, where we “like children again … feel the suffering of any creature as our own.”

Could curiosity about the spiritual expressions of animals be an early aptitude — so common among children — toward making room for their own human family in all our diverse cultural and religious expressions?

Perhaps, in a small way, helping children connect to their natural capacity for love and compassion for animals around them is a precursor to cultivating their abilities to make room for the diversity of sacred expressions of love in all in their own human family. It is my prayer that the Lenten journey for our family can be, paradoxically, filled with emptying ourselves to the experiences and suffering of others, human and nonhuman alike.

Despite dedicating my vocational life to advancing all dimensions of religious freedom for the past 15 years — from the legal structures that uphold it to the spiritual imagination required to nurture our capacity for embracing all people’s journeys toward the sacred — nothing has perhaps challenged me more than the questions of my toddler.

“How does a butterfly say God?' she asks.

I realize that while she may not understand the intricacies of the First Amendment, my daughter has already embraced the spiritual freedom that is an innate gift from her Creator. I hope that our small family rituals during Lent, our “ark” passage, will prepare her heart for the spiritual practice of making room for religious and spiritual compassion, allowing all to embark on their own spiritual journeys within the arc of their lives.

“I don’t know,” I reply. “But God does.”

Opening ourselves fully to our interdependent suffering and flourishing as God’s creation lies at the core of Lent. Boss urges parents to let their children hear, feel, and embody the entire story of the animals, from birth to death. Just as our Christian tradition encourages us not to dwell only on the joy of Jesus’ birth but to also walk the challenging path to His death and resurrection. She writes, “A Suffering Love beyond us can birth, through us, a new world.”

In the complexity of our modern world, religious freedom stands as a beacon, its meaning and significance often debated and redefined. Yet, for Christians, it is deeply intertwined with the freedom found in Christ’s sacrifice and resurrection — a freedom that calls us not only to practice our faith openly but also to make room in our hearts for understanding and compassion towards others.

This call to make room extends to all of God’s creation, as seen in Boss’ poignant reflections on the interconnectedness of all life. Through her stories, we are reminded to embrace the suffering and beauty of nonhuman creatures, to recognize their kinship with us in God’s creation. As we walk through Lent’s contemplative path, may we truly absorb this message, allowing it to transform us from within.

Let us open our hearts to Christ’s suffering and resurrection, experiencing a profound sense of compassion that extends not only to our fellow human beings but to all living creatures that share this Earth. In embodying this compassion, we live out the essence of religious freedom, which empowers us to love and care for the world, mirroring the love and care that Christ shows us.

Chelsea Langston Bombino is a believer in sacred communities, a wife and a mother. She serves as a program officer with the Fetzer Institute and a fellow with the Center for Public Justice.