Religious Freedom & Religious Authoritarians

Kudos to the churches and other religious groups that, believing religious liberty and conscience are sacrosanct, oppose the Obamacare HHS mandate compelling religious employers to subsidize contraceptives and abortifacients.

More battles are ahead. But yesterday’s Supreme Court ruling would have been impossible without the courage of Hobby Lobby’s Green family, who refused to subsidize abortifacients, and groups who backed them. They include Becket Fund, the Catholic bishops, the Southern Baptists, Orthodox rabbis, Missouri Synod Lutherans, National Association of Evangelicals and National Religious Broadcasters.

These groups contrast with the liberal religious groups that support the HHS mandate in that they are spiritually robust, doctrinally distinctive, aim for transcendence above the worldly clatter and generally aspire to share their faith in the free market of ideas.

Religious groups that support state coercion against traditional religious groups generally are theologically ambiguous, have dwindling memberships, support the prevailing secular sexual and atomistic zeitgeist, and act as handmaidens to constant state expansion instead of vessels of an alternative transcendent narrative.

Among religious supporters of the coercive mandate have been the United Church of Christ, Unitarian Universalists, Methodist Federation for Social Action, and abortion rights groups like Catholics for a Free Choice and Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, whose members include the Episcopal Church, Presbyterian Church (USA), and United Methodist Women.

“United Methodist Women has long affirmed the right of all women to have access to affordable birth control (including emergency contraception) and comprehensive family planning in consultation with her doctor,” UMW’s chief explained in reaction to the court ruling. “We also feel that no health care plan is complete or just without this access. … For this reason alone, the Hobby Lobby case is troubling.” UMW’s decades long hostility to unborn human life partly explains why it’s lost over 50 percent of its membership and is primarily a convocation of the very old.

One United Methodist ethicist urges boycotting Hobby Lobby until it exemplifies “moral consistency.” Other sanctimonious nags have derided Hobby Lobby’s supposed hypocrisy for opposing abortion while failing to have achieved full sanctification. Others dispute the company can claim to be Christian, although it is the owners who are Christian and wish to uphold their convictions. Supposed theological sophisticates claim only individuals can be Christian, not companies or other groups, except possibly churches. These critics are typically hyper individualist liberal Protestants who locate ultimate truth in the solitary, empowered self.

Critics of Hobby Lobby are supposedly VERY concerned about access to contraception. But contraception is cheaper and more readily available than ever, often free. The Green family didn’t object to subsidizing contraception per se, only several drugs that kill human embryos, i.e. abortifacients.

The HHS mandate and its zealous supporters of course are very well aware of these facts. But their actual agenda is wielding the sword of state power against traditional religionists who dare to defy the ongoing secularist Kulturkampf. They do not just want to insult traditionalists, they want to steal their liberty and break their will.

For the moment, the First Amendment still stands against these aspiring authoritarians who dream of a world sanitized of a religious counter narrative to their own power. Not every knee has bent to Baal, and Lord willing, liberty for all will yet survive the ambitions of these wannabe cultural dictators.