This mandate sets a dangerous precedent. It will allow government
to dictate which religious beliefs are lawful and which are not. In a May 21
Editorial, The New York Sun contended “the Church is seeking shelter under both
the Constitution, which prohibits Congress from making any law prohibiting the
free exercise of religion, and a statute, the Religious Freedom Restoration
Act.” This Act was passed in 1993 – by an overwhelming voice vote in the House
and a 97-03 vote in the Senate – with the aim of protecting free exercise.
The Act requires strict scrutiny of laws, and prohibits the
government from substantially burdening “a person’s exercise of religion even
if the burden results from a rule of general applicability.”
It would seem as though, the case the Catholic Church has launched
against the government, has the potential to emerge as one of the great civil
rights lawsuits of our time. The implications are great, not only for Catholics,
but for all religious groups in this country.
In the wake of the Catholic lawsuits, leaders from a variety of
faith backgrounds, politicians and educators met last Thursday in Washington,
D.C. for the National Religious Freedom Conference. In attendance was former
Health and Human Services secretary, Michael Levitt. Levitt said of the
conference, “this is the uniting of the faith community to declare that we’re
going to fight back to defend religious freedom.”
The
conference outlined three major threats to religious freedom: The first is the
government mandate that religious institutions, such as hospitals and
universities, act contrary to their conscience by offering birth control
coverage to their employees.
The
second is what religious leaders say is a threat to the autonomy of religious
organizations to choose their own leaders.
The
third issue is religious principles in everyday life, like pharmacists who
object for moral reasons to carrying what believers equate to abortion-causing
drugs or religious student-groups being marginalized on school campuses.
One example of the latter is the fight at Vanderbilt University over its
non-discrimination policy, requiring student religious groups be open leadership
to anyone, even those who don't hold to their beliefs.
Like delegates at the conference, I am very uncomfortable about
government’s growing trend to marginalize religion in the marketplace. In a
major foreign policy address last December, before United Nations delegates,
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton identified
“deeply-held … religious beliefs” as among “the obstacles standing in
the way of protecting the human rights of LGBT people.” (LGBT – Lesbian, Gay,
Bisexual, Transgender)
This growing hostility is not American. The American founders
viewed churches as a central institution within American life. The founders saw
religion as providing the moral foundation of self-restraint and community
awareness for the success of self-government.
Churches have contributed to the success of America by encouraging
virtue. Research in Social Science has also shown that churches provide direct
and indirect economic and social benefits to communities. Churches provide community
volunteerism, education, civic skills-training and reduced levels of deviance.
In addition, churches encourage civility, instill hope contribute to the long-term health of communities. If it were not for churches, government would have to expand public funding to replace the community benefits that churches provide.
Be encouraged – the first intensive effort by the state to
eliminate Christian thought came after the burning of Rome during the reign of the
Emperor Nero in 64 C.E. Nero made the Christians the scapegoats for the
disaster, and they were savagely tortured and burned, at least in and around
Rome. Untold numbers of Christians died heroically for their faith. So
impressive were the many who died gladly for Christ that they were more than
replaced by new converts. The Christian writer Tertullian observed: “The blood
of the martyrs is seed.”
For this reason I am strong, and so should you. As a way of moving
forward, the National Religious Freedom Conference announced plans to create
religious freedom caucuses in every state, an effort designed to bridge the gap
between politics and religion. Remember, retreating is not an option.
1 comment:
Notwithstanding the bishops' arm waving about religious liberty, the health care law does not force employers to act contrary to their consciences. Contrary to bishops' assertions and the widespread belief of those who trustingly accept their claims, the law does no such thing.
Many initially worked themselves into a lather with the false idea that the law forces employers to provide their employees with health care plans offering services the employers consider immoral. The fact is that employers have the option of not providing any such plans and instead simply paying assessments to the government (which, by the way, would generally amount to far less than the cost of health plans). Unless one supposes that the employers’ religion forbids payments of money to the government (all of us should enjoy such a religion), then the law’s requirement to pay assessments does not compel those employers to act contrary to their beliefs. Problem solved.
Some nonetheless have continued clamoring for such an exemption, complaining that by paying assessments to the government they would indirectly be paying for the very things they opposed. They seemingly missed that that is not a moral dilemma justifying an exemption to avoid being forced to act contrary to one’s beliefs, but rather is a gripe common to many taxpayers–who don’t much like paying taxes and who object to this or that action the government may take with the benefit of “their” tax dollars. Should each of us be exempted from paying our taxes so we aren’t thereby “forced” to pay for making war, providing health care, teaching evolution, or whatever else each of us may consider wrong or even immoral?
In any event, those complaining made enough of a stink that the government relented and announced that religious employers would be free to provide health plans with provisions to their liking (yay!) and not be required to pay the assessments otherwise required (yay!). Problem solved–again, even more.
Nonetheless, some continue to complain, fretting that somehow the services they dislike will get paid for and somehow they will be complicit in that. They argue that if insurers or employees pay for such services, those costs will somehow, someday be passed on to the employers in the form of demands for higher insurance premiums or higher wages. They evidently believe that when they spend a dollar and it thus becomes the property of others, they nonetheless should have some say in how others later spend that dollar. One can only wonder how it would work if all of us could tag “our” dollars this way and control their subsequent use.
The bishops are coming across more and more as just another special interest group with a big lobbying operation and a big budget—one, moreover, that is not above stretching the truth.
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