Photo Credit: www.freeamerica.org
Advancing a clear and consistent idea of religious freedom that covers the whole life of the believer is key to defending it against the current intense secularist assault, panelists generally agreed at a National Briefing on Religious Freedom, held at an annual apologetics conference sponsored by North Greenville University and Alex MacFarland in Charlotte, North Carolina, on September 28. The briefing was hosted by Lauren Green of Fox News and featured Timothy George of Beeson Divinity School, Jennifer Marshall of the Heritage Foundation, John Stonestreet of the Chuck Colson Center for Christian Worldview, Eric Teetsel of the Manhattan Declaration, and the Rev. Robert Sirico of the Acton Institute.
Green began by citing Ravi Zacharias’ observation that our understanding of human origin, life’s meaning, morality, and destiny are the four criteria determine the way we live our lives. “Disbelief in God is a belief about God,” she said. “America … was founded on the bedrock principle of freedom of religion.”
In introducing the first panelist, Jennifer Marshall, Green noted that the current application of religious freedom in America, practiced by the courts under the influence of left-wing activist groups, lacks basic consistency. Currently, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has filed suit on behalf of a man who believes that the biometric hand scans required by his employer involve him in the “mark of the beast,” at the same time the Obama Administration is advancing the HHS mandate that requires religious employers to pay for contraceptives and abortion inducing drugs.
Marshall said in response to this observation that with the “much more prevalent … pattern” of the Obama Administration has tried to “relegate freedom of religion to be merely freedom of worship … it’s not welcome into our public lives … where we’re engaging with other people, with other belief systems.” In the HHS mandate, the Administration “has gone out of its way to not allow religious liberty.” She referred in particular to the case of Hobby Lobby, which the Administration appealed to the Supreme Court after a lower court granted it protection against the mandate, “because they are so bent on proving this point, that religious liberty does not extend to how you run your employee healthcare plan.”
Green then asked Father Sirico if “being in a pluralistic society means you have to put some of your beliefs aside for us all to get along.” Sirico responded that there is more than religious liberty to appeal to in the public square, we also have a “right to our property … The right to religious liberty presumes that we have the right to extend what we believe to our institutions that we build.” He noted that this year is the 1,700 year anniversary of the Edict of Milan, which restored church property in addition to granting toleration to Christians specifically and persons of all religions generally. Natural rights that the government cannot dispense with are key in the controversy over religious freedom, Green suggested, in alluding to early Protestant legal doctrine, and its dictum of “lex rex” (or “law is king”). The current crisis in religious freedom is due to the fact that now “government is king, not law.”
George observed that “in the western tradition especially, there has been a distinction … between what came to be called secular and the sacred,” but in recent decades there has been an “encroachment increasingly of secular authority motivated and run by government over the sacred sphere.”
Stonestreet added that “we’ve been trying this [pluralism] for a long time,” but there is now a “collision point” between religious freedom and “sexual freedom.” Behind this is a “fundamental shift” in understanding of “the human person” and the four life determining criteria referred to by Green at the beginning of the panel (human origin, life’s meaning, morality, and destiny). Sexual identity is now, in contradistinction to the previous 250 years of American history, seen as central to personal identity. “The reason religious liberty, I think, was understood to be the first freedom is that it gives us such as big definition of what it means to be human, beyond our desires, beyond the moment, thinking about eternal things,” Stonestreet said.
Green then asked Teetsel if the church had not been good at speaking about sex, which was causing problems in its relations with millenials. Teetsel said of religious freedom in American history that “it’s complicated.” “Christianity became America’s de facto civil religion” for the 20th century, he said. While this was good for America, it was bad for Christianity. Millenials now are “most acutely aware” of the problems with the conflation of nominal Christianity and American life. This turns out however, to be a great opportunity for the church to identify again what it means to be Christian in a society that “is no longer dominated by Christian parlance.” However, this opportunity comes at the cost of loss of cultural acceptance and consequent legal protection.
Green referred to a ruling by a New Jersey judge the previous day that homosexual marriage is required by the dignity due to homosexuals, to which Marshall said that “if we are going to respect the needs of children” we must acknowledge marriage between one man and one woman, and the “needs of a child for a mother and a father.” Homosexual marriage based on the claimed dignity of homosexuals however, deprives some children of the right to a mother and a father as a matter of law and public policy. Sirico said “if you’ve found yourself tongue tied” discussing same sex marriage, “marriage is not and never has been primarily a political institution; politics – the law – recognized something that already existed in nature.” By raising the question of the meaning of marriage and the family, the President and politicians have become secular “pastors.”
On the other hand, George said “I do think there are non-religious reasons” to oppose same sex marriage, but “I don’t want to forfeit the right of religious people to bring their religious, moral convictions into the [public] argument, everyone does this,” he said. Marshall observed that since the recent Windsor Decision voiding part of the Defense of Marriage Act (and which directly attacked moral opposition to homosexuality), Christians are having to defend our right to speak and live our beliefs. The “freedom to live, to act, to organize, to run institutions and businesses consistent with these beliefs is now at stake and we need to raise our voices about that,” she said. Stonestreet observed in this regard that the Christian photographer in New Mexico penalized by the New Mexico Supreme Court for refusing to photograph a lesbian ceremony is being required to separate her beliefs from her actions, but not the lesbian requesting service from her. Teetsel observed that it is generally state and local laws which contain the civil rights ordinances requiring Christians to violate their consciences with respect to homosexuality, and this is an area the general public can influence through its elected representatives. These ordinances are often referred to under the term “sexual orientation gender identity” laws (SOGI). George noted that in Canada the penalization of Christian morality has moved from the public square to churches, and pastors are fined and threatened with prison; George called the nature of this threat “incremental,” but finally “totalitarian,” as the state proceeds to penalize opposition to homosexuality in more and more areas of life. It might be added, however, that key in defending religious freedom from this kind of totalitarian attack is that freedom cannot be set aside because others are offended, otherwise freedom is meaningless.
While the concept of “civil rights” is being used to destroy religious freedom, Sirico pointed out that neither the abolitionist movement of the nineteenth century nor the civil rights movement of the twentieth century would have been possible without religious motivation. He referred specifically to Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, bringing religious ideas to the public square, to illustrate his point. “Precisely at the time when we’re hearing calls for diversity and pluralism,” Christians are being silenced, he said. Asked about claims that Pope Francis’ comments seem to accept social liberalism and turn away from a clear articulation of Christian faith and morals in the public square, Sirico said that “the problem is with the media,” which has failed to note Francis’ appeal to the full teaching of the church (beyond moral questions), his enforcement of Christian morality within the church, and the preoccupation of the news media itself with moral issues in engaging the church.
Panelists then asserted that Christians seek in contemporary society equal access to the public square, not a favored position for Christianity. Teetsel claimed that “religious freedom is for everyone,” while Sirico said “we are not theocrats.” George said that it is important for Catholics and Evangelicals to act together. “We do not seek a naked public square … nor do we seek a sacred public square … but what we seek is a civil public square … authentic tolerance is not the acceptance of something you disagree with, it merely permits its expression.”
However, Sirico also noted de Tocqueville’s observation that when the moral tie is weakened, the political tie is strengthened; the less moral agreement there is among the populace, the more the coercive power of the law is needed. Marshall observed that the erosion of the “pre-political institution” of marriage and the family will lead to “further dependence on the state.”
Green then asks panelists to comment on the claim the movement for homosexual liberation is the latest civil rights movement, and is comparable to the struggle for racial integration in the 1960s. Sirico responded that the tendency to view sexual identity as the key to personal identity is modern, in the 19th century and previously same sex attraction was seen as simply a proclivity, not a community. Teetsel said that while “racism is a sin” because all human beings are created in the image of God, behavior that is harmful cannot be a natural right, and affirming such behavior does not respect their dignity. In terms of public engagement, however, such a position must be seen as supportive of persons, since “when you fight for people you win, when you fight for ideas you lose.” George observed that there is not majority support among African Americans for the idea that acceptance of homosexuality is the latest civil rights struggle.
In additions to threats from the sexual revolution, the panel also addressed the more general secularist attacks on religious freedom, involving prohibitions of religious displays in public, nondiscrimination rules on campus applied to religious groups, and campus speech codes. Teetsel expressed the hope that the Supreme Court would allow the issue of religious displays to rest with localities, while Sirico said this is another case which shows the importance for religious freedom of the right to use private property as the owner chooses. George said “we ought to advance a capacious public square, that makes as much room as possible for every expression conceivable that does not violate the common good.”
Stonestreet commented that as far as speech codes are concerned, there is a real legal difference between the rights of Christians at public and private universities. With the former, there are good results and good prospects for legal challenges; he noted particular the outstanding success of the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) in defeating speech codes at public institutions in court. Also successful have been legal challenges against attempts to have students endorse positions they disagree with as part of course work. But Sirico noted that it is especially Christian student groups that are targeted by university officials with nondiscrimination requirements. This is the result of a “radical pluralism” that views the Christian heritage with hostility. In general, Stonestreet noted that “government gets hungry when there is open space.” As private “mediating institutions” have abandoned the social space they once occupied, the government has moved into address the social needs they once addressed.
In conclusion, Marshall said that we should “good articulators of the value and beauty” of the Christian heritage, and attempt to “revive that where it has been blemished beyond recognition. Let’s restore that, that’s our call to be faithful, and we’ll leave the rest up to God. ”
As a last question, Green referred to a recent lawsuit against a Bible publisher charging that the Bible’s references to homosexuality were “hate speech.” While widely dismissed by commentators, Green asked if someday such a suit might be taken seriously by some judge, who might then rule the Bible to be “hate speech.” Teetsel responded by saying “be not afraid.” The principle of the Manhattan Declaration is for Christians to be “salt and light within your sphere of influence.” Stonestreet said that while many Christians view possible persecution as an opportunity for God to act and for Christians to be faithful to God, it is also true that religious freedom has been used to advance the gospel, and it is a good that should be defended. Sirico said that in the face of threats to religious liberty, we should be “confident, and joyful, and loving … to act in a way that is confident, that proposes the gospel of Christ to people, and builds institutions, and then fights the encroachment of the state – if we do that, we can tilt this culture.” Marshall admonished the conference “to be praying for our persecuted brothers and sisters.” But where “the law of the land denies the truth of the gospel … it is against the grain of the way God has created this universe [and] it cannot last.”
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