Back in 1990, the Supreme Court decided that laws prohibiting use of the hallucinogenic drug peyote did not violate the freedom of religion of Native Americans who ingested it as part of their religious ceremonies. Many outside of the legal community thought this was the right result because of concerns that drug abusers might pretend to have religious beliefs in an attempt to circumvent bans on illegal drugs. But most religious freedom lawyers were very concerned about this case (Employment Division, Dept. of Human Services of Oregon v. Smith) because of the rationale the court used to justify its decision. In brief, the Court determined that as long as a law neutrally applies to everyone, the fact that it doesn’t make exceptions for religious people or churches doesn’t violate the Constitution – even though the law may prohibit them from doing something their religious beliefs require.

This rationale seems to work fine in extreme cases like use of illegal drugs or human sacrifice. But it would also allow local governments to prohibit use of wine for communion if alcohol consumption was outlawed in a particular town or county. A neutral law could even require a church to refrain from discriminating based on sex when hiring clergy members.

So when a Christian school in Redmond, Michigan fired a teacher who was a commissioned minister, the federal government sued the church. (You can learn more about the facts of the EEOC v. Hosanna-Tabor Church case here). Government lawyers argued that a Christian school is no different than any other community group like the Lions Club or Jaycees. And as long as laws prohibiting discrimination based on disability or some other protected class neutrally apply to everyone, the fact that the Christian school is also bound by them doesn’t violate that school’s religious freedom. The federal government relied on the Smith peyote case to support its position, and a court of appeals in Cincinnati agreed.

But the Supreme Court reversed that opinion in a remarkable 9-0 decision. It severely limited the holding in Smith and said that even a neutral law violates the religious freedom of a parochial school if it results in “government interference with an internal church decision that affects the faith and mission of the church itself.” Because the Christian school in that case treated its teachers as ministers responsible for the spiritual health of students, the government could not apply laws prohibiting discrimination to the school. Doing so would have affected the faith and mission of the church itself.

This is a very positive development for religious freedom and churches. Government officials have increasingly subjected churches and their various ministries such as schools, daycares, and homeless outreaches to more and more restrictions. They’ve attempted to enforce secular laws against churches in an effort to interfere with how they carry out their religious mission, who is responsible for doing so, and whom they will serve. For instance, a local government sued a religious homeless shelter in Idaho because it required those taking advantage of its free services to attend Bible studies and other religious activities. And New Jersey government officials are attempting force a church to allow its facilities to be used for same-sex “marriage” ceremonies.

Till now, government officials have relied on the Smith peyote case to support restriction of freedom because the laws they are enforcing neutrally apply to everyone. They can no longer do that now that the Supreme Court has handed down the Hosanna-Tabor decision. Any law that interferes with a church’s internal decisions about its faith and mission is unconstitutional as applied to that church. If your church is being subjected to enforcement of such a law, contact us here at the Alliance Defense Fund – 1-800-TellADF, or speakupmovement.org.

When I was in NYC last weekend, I learned about a huge inconsistent way that NYC public schools treat churches.    Churches may not meet in public schools, but public schools can meet in churches!   As you know, NYC does not want churches and other religious groups meeting in public schools because they are concerned that impressionable youth will be confused and wrongly think that the public school endorses the church meeting there on Sunday mornings.

So it greatly surprised me to learn last Sunday that the NYC Department of Education rents Roman Catholic schools to hold public school classes!  On Sunday morning, I learned about P.S. 133 in Brooklyn, a public school that meets in a Catholic parochial school building.  I was so surprised to learn of this, that I walked over to the school to see it for myself. This building has large crosses extending from the edges of the roof, yet NYC public schools hold classes there for children of all faiths.  I talked to the priest at the Catholic church next door, St. Thomas Aquinas (I was there as Mass was ending on Sunday).  The priest told me that the archdiocese rents many Catholic school buildings to the NYC public schools because they need additional space to conduct public school.

During the march, I mentioned all of this, and a woman in the march said that she has worked as a substitute teacher in P.S. 182 in Jamaica-Queens, and that public school conducts classes not only in a Catholic school, but in a Jewish yeshiva!  I was not able to confirm that as I was with P.S. 133, but I have no reason to doubt her words.

I want to be clear that I think it is perfectly fine for the NYC public schools to rent private buildings, even from religious groups, to conduct public schools.  I do not object to that.

What I do object to is the school officials inconsistent reactions:  They oppose a church meeting in a school for a few hours on Sunday morning because a child who happens to be walking by might be confused.  These same officials have no problem with busing school children to a building with crosses on top of it (and who knows what other architechtural features inside that indicate it is a Catholic school).  I am sure the school officials explain to any “confused youth” that the public schools are merely renting the Catholic or Jewish buildings, and that the government does not endorse Catholicism or Judaism by meeting there.  Those children are required by state law to attend public school, which is far more significant than a child wandering by a public school on a Sunday morning when he or she is not required by state law to enter the building.

The school officials are blatantly ”straining the gnat, and swallowing the camel.”  And we could point to further inconsistency over the fact that NYC school policy allows students to conduct worship services in public schools during the school day when students are there.  NYC knows how to accommodate private religious expression in other context, and seems to forget all that it knows when a church seeks to rent a school building on the weekend.

Thousands of Christians, pastors, other people of faith joined together Sunday afternoon to walk across the Brooklyn Bridge to express their opposition to Mayor Bloomberg’s plans to evict the churches meeting in the public schools after February 12.  People began gathering around 3:00 pm at Cadman Plaza Park, near the Brooklyn (southern) end of the Brooklyn Bridge.  And they were a diverse lot.  The Hispanic Pentecostal pastors arrived together wearing their distinctive white windbreakers.  Pastor Dimos Salebarrios from Infinity New York Church in the Bronx brought many from his church that meets in a community center connected to a housing project.  Pastors from the Park Slope area of Brooklyn and from lower Manhattan came with members from their church.  But they were all dwarfed by the large contingency of Koreans who came from New Frontier Church in Chelsea.  It was like a large number of reinforcements had come, like when the Elfish soldiers arrived at Helm’s Deep in The Two Towers to help the soldiers of Rohan. Reporters and television camera crews set up impromtu interviews all over the park.

Councilman Fernando Cabrera and several of the pastors held large yellow banners urging support for equal access to the government buildings, as they started down the hill towards the walkway across the Brooklyn Bridge.  The weather was sunny but cool, and the winds picked up as we walked across the bridge.  Curious joggers and strollers stopped to see this group chanting and holding signs saying things like, “Don’t Make My Church Homeless.”

The walk ended with a rally set up on a stage right next to City Hall in lower Manhattan.  A worship band led everyone in Christian songs.  People cheered as pastors and City Councilmembers spoke about how the churches have been good neighbors meeting in the schools and have helped both the schools and people in the surrounding neighborhoods.  One pastors explained how churches had preached the Gospel to gang members who came to Christ and left the gangs.  Whether one agrees or not that people need to give their lives to Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord, all should agree that it is a good thing for the community when gang members leave their lives of crime and turn to become law abiding citizens.  The pastors and politicians told more stories of churches aiding the poor, helping children with their studies in after school programs, etc.  The government cannot duplicate with a tax-funded program a highly-motivated group of Christians that want to help their neighbors of the community where they meet.  It does baffle me why Mayor Bloomberg and school officials would prefer empty school buildings to allowing these Christians to help the City.

For much of the march across the Brooklyn Bridge, I walked with Bob and Jeannie Hall, one of the pastors of Bronx Household of Faith, and his wife.  They were some of the founding members of Bronx Household of Faith, who moved to the University Heights area of the Bronx 40 years ago to start the church.  As we gazed across the many marchers in front of us passing under the towers of the Brooklyn Bridge, Pastor Hall commented that he never dreamed that his little church and the decisions that they made to pursue the lawsuit, would result in this effort that is affecting all of New York City.  We are still praying that on Sunday, February 19, churches and other religious groups will still be meeting in the public schools of New York City.

I recently explained the importance of the Supreme Court’s decision affirming a church’s right to control whom it employs as a teacher in its religious school in a post you can read here. Unfortunately, the vital protection this case provides for religious freedom has largely been lost on the mainstream media. Instead, they’ve often focused on how this decision may affect teachers at religious schools. One AP article went so far as to assert that a teacher of Jewish Studies at a Jewish school should be seen as a “teacher whose subject is religion, not a religious teacher.” In the context of a religious school, this is completely at odds with the concept of religious freedom.

The Court of Appeals in the Hosanna-Tabor case made a similar argument (which was thankfully rejected by the Supreme Court). It opined that the teacher who sued the religious school wasn’t a minister because she spent six hours a day teaching secular subjects like math, social studies, and music.  Only an hour or so was spent on exclusively religious instruction. The fact that the teacher also lead weekly chapel services, taught a 30-minute religion class four days per week, lead prayer three times per day, and taught a morning devotional was considered to be largely irrelevant.  So the school was prohibited from firing the teacher, even though she violated church teachings regarding mediation of disputes among believers.

The appeals court (and the Associated Press) failed to recognize something even Christians sometimes forget – our biblical worldview and Christian principles affect all aspects of our lives.  That certainly includes how we teach our children all subjects – even those that don’t appear to be “religious” – such as music and social studies.  It even includes math, as demonstrated by the great mathematicians Sir Isaac Newton and Rene Descartes. And it certainly includes religious classes like Jewish Studies at a religious school that has as its purpose inculcating the religious theology and values of a particular religion.

Saying the Hosanna-Tabor case undermines the rights of teachers is like saying the desegregation case Brown v. Board of Education wrongly ignored the rights of teachers who wanted to only teach certain kids. The larger, more important, principle of elimination of racism – or protection of religious freedom in this case – is being missed. Thankfully, all nine Justices of the Supreme Court aren’t influenced by the misguided opinions of the Associated Press.

The Washington State Legislature is considering passing a bill that would allow same-sex couples in the state to “marry.”  This bill is the latest, of course, in the homosexual agenda’s march to abolish the definition of marriage.  Normally a bill legalizing same-sex “marriage” would be bad enough.  But this bill goes a step farther and poses a clear and present danger to the religious freedom of churches.  Section 7 of the SB 6239 says the following:

Consistent with the law against discrimination, chapter 49.60 RCW, no religious organization is required to provide accommodations, facilities, advantages, privileges, services, or goods related to the solemnization or celebration of a marriage unless the organization offers admission, occupancy, or use of those accommodations or facilities to the public for a fee, or offers those advantages, privileges, services, or goods to the public for sale.

Let me break down this legalese.  What this bill says is that if a church rents out its facilities for non-members to use for weddings, then it will be forced to allow a same-sex couple to use its facilities for a same-sex “marriage” ceremony.  Many, if not most churches, will rent their facilities to members of the public who want to use the church building to get married.  Most churches will generally ensure that the people who are using the facilities are not going to use them in a way that is inconsistent with the church’s religious faith and mission.  But the State of Washington is considering forcing churches to open their sanctuaries to same-sex “wedding” ceremonies.

Lest you think this is an isolated occurrence, a judge in New Jersey recently ordered that a church must allow its facilities to be used for same-sex “wedding” ceremonies despite the church’s religious beliefs against such relationships.  The Judge’s rationale in ordering the church to open its facility to same-sex “weddings” was that  the Constitution allows “some intrusion into religious freedom to balance other important societal goals.”

All of this might sound surprising and troubling – and it is.  But for those who understand the inherent and unavoidable conflict between the radical homosexual agenda and religious freedom, the Washington Legislature’s bill and the New Jersey church case are simply sad reminders that we face a culture and a society increasingly willing to trample religious freedom in the name of sexual liberty.  Consider Chai Feldblum, President Obama’s appointed head of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (the EEOC).  Ms. Feldblum heads the agency tasked with eliminating discrimination in the workplace.  When she was asked what should happen “when push comes to shove, when religious liberty and sexual liberty conflict,” she admitted, “I’m having a hard time coming up with any case in which religious liberty should win.”  For those like Feldblum, the New Jersey judge, and the Washington State legislators in favor of SB 6239, the church’s freedom to follow its own religious beliefs simply do not matter.  As the New Jersey judge put it, the Constitution allows “some intrusion into religious freedom to balance other important societal goals.”  Put simply, religious freedom takes a back seat to sexual liberty.

It’s not too late to stop this radical attack on religious freedom.  As one court put it, the freedom of religion contained in the First Amendment is our “first freedom.”  The Washington State Legislators in favor of SB 6239 need to be reminded of this fact by a vocal populace that is tired of having sexual liberty foisted on society at the expense of religious freedom.  Speak Up now before it is too late.  And stand with ADF as we fight these battles in New Jersey and elsewhere.