A new Gallup poll shows how much confidence Americans have in their institutions.  The big news from the poll is the very low confidence rating Americans have in Congress – only a shocking 11% of those polled have great confidence in Congress as an institution.  But among the major institutions in American life, Americans ranked their confidence in the “church or organized religion” as fourth behind only the military, small business, and the police.  The poll shows that 48% of Americans have a “great deal of confidence” in the church.  That number was at 52% a year ago.

Yet despite the decline in percentage from a year ago, the poll shows encouraging results that nearly half of all Americans have “a great deal” of confidence in the church.  This is good news because it is the church that is the wellspring of religious freedom, and religious freedom necessarily restrains government and promotes liberty.  As Alexis DeTocQueville, a french political scientist who observed America from 1831-1832, stated about the role of religion in public life:

When the religion of a people is destroyed, doubt gets hold of the higher powers of the intellect, and half paralyzes all the others.  Every man accustoms himself to have only confused and changing notions on the subjects most interesting to his fellow creatures and himself.  His opinions are ill-defended and easily abandoned; and, in despair of ever resolving by himself the hard problems respecting the destiny of man, he ignobly submits to think no more about them.  Such a condition cannot but enervate the soul, relax the springs of the will, and prepare a people for servitude.  Not only does it happen, in such a case, that they allow their freedom to be taken away from them; they frequently themselves surrender it.

These are sobering words that remind us of the power and importance of the church in American life.  As DeTocqueville pointed out, as the church suffers and declines in American life, freedom declines correspondingly.  Archbishop Charles Chaput recently stated in his book Render Unto Caesar, that, “In America, people understood that to be free themselves, their churches must be free; but those churches must also be active in shaping virtuous citizens.”

Archbishop Caput and DeTocqueville are right.  The church must be free for freedom to flourish, but the church also has responsibilities to shape the virtue of the citizens for freedom to continue to flourish.  The Gallup poll is good news for the church in America, but it should also serve as a sobering reminder of the Church’s responsiblity in American life.

Recently, the Roman Catholic Church has come under fire after two of its schools, one in Massachusetts and one in Colorado, declined to enroll students who have same-sex parents. Not surprisingly, these decisions created a firestorm of public criticism and outrage, raising questions about whether churches should have the right to make these types of enrollment decisions.

A similar situation arose in California not too long ago. A Lutheran high school in California was the target of a lawsuit by two former students who were expelled for violating the school’s Christian Conduct policy. The policy prohibited students from engaging in immoral or scandalous conduct, including homosexual behavior, which these two students engaged in. The lawsuit alleged that the school violated California law by discriminating against the students based on their sexual orientation.

Most of the time, non-discrimination laws serve worthy goals that help strengthen our religious freedom. But they can be misused and overextended, especially when religious organizations are involved. When that happens, these laws are put on a collision course with religious freedom. And far too often, it’s religious freedom that is sacrificed for the sake of political correctness.

These situations are perfect examples. One of the most basic and fundamental principles of the First Amendment is that churches should remain autonomous and not have the government interfering with their internal affairs. But churches lose that freedom when the government imposes non-discrimination laws that intrude into religious matters, like operating a private school.

After all, the mission of a church-run school is not just to provide a good education, but to inculcate students with a particular set of values and beliefs. So it’s essential that we give churches wide latitude in deciding how to implement their educational system, including its enrollment criteria, to best carry out that mission.

Archbishop Charles Chaput of Denver, in defending the Colorado school’s enrollment policy, put it this way: “The main purpose of Catholic schools is religious; in other words, to form students in Catholic faith, Catholic morality and Catholic social values. … Our schools are meant to be ‘partners in faith’ with parents. If parents don’t respect the beliefs of the Church, or live in a manner that openly rejects those beliefs, then partnering with those parents becomes very difficult, if not impossible.”

By God’s grace, the Lutheran school in California ultimately prevailed in its lawsuit. ADF and the Christian Legal Society filed briefs in that case supporting the school on behalf of over 830 private religious schools throughout California who would have all been affected by a bad ruling in the case. And we will continue to fight to ensure that churches keep the right to set their policies based on religious conviction, not government mandate.

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Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi spoke last week at the Catholic Community Conference and urged Catholic priests and bishops to talk up immigration reform from their pulpits.  Pelosi reportedy stated, “The cardinals, the archbishops, the bishops that come to me … say, ‘We want you to pass immigration reform,’ and I said, I want you to speak about it from the pulpit.”  Pelosi went on to say that, “Some (who) oppose immigration reform are sitting in those pews, and you have to tell them that this is a manifestation of our living the gospels.”

This statement is amazing as it is usually those on the left that are the first to raise the tiresome chant of “separation of church and state” when a pastor speaks from his pulpit on any issue touching politics.

I wonder whether Pelosi would have approved of statements like those of Denver Archbishop Charles Chaput who commented on the health-care reform bill and stated that the Senate health-care bill does not meet minimum moral standards and therefore, doesn’t have the support of the Catholic bishops.  Or would Pelosi have approved of and encouraged statements like the one made by Bishop Michael Sheridan that politicians like Pelosi who go against the Catholic Church’s teaching on abortion should not present themselves for communion.  I wonder whether Pelosi would agree that pastors have the right to speak out against candidates for office who do not align themselves with Scriptural Truth.

To be fair, I don’t know what Pelosi believes about a pastor’s right to speak freely from the pulpit (I don’t think she is on record one way or the other on this issue) and, to be sure, her comments to the Catholic Community Conference suggest a willingness to include pastors and priests in the public debate on the important moral issues facing our country.  But, to borrow a phrase from our current President, “let’s be clear” about how far that goes.  For too long, pastors and priests have been told they cannot speak out on moral issues that touch on politics.  Indeed, the IRS has even gone so far as to say that a pastor can endanger their church’s tax exempt status by using “code words” during an election season.  (If you doubt whether that is true, look at page 345 of the IRS’ internal training materials on tax exemption restrictions on churches).

The point is that the government has been sending mixed messages for too long to our nation’s pastors.  On the one hand, politicians encourage pastors to speak from their pulpits when it is convenient, but on the other, the IRS comes knocking on the church’s door when a pastor speaks in a way that is not favored by those in power or crosses the IRS’ imaginary line between what is permitted and what is prohibited.

These mixed messages have gone on long enough.  It is time to bring clarity back to the law and get the government out of the business of censoring what a pastor can say from the pulpit.  That’s what ADF’s Pulpit Initiative is intended to do.  Pastors should be free to preach from their pulpit without fearing any government censorship or control.  And when a politician like Pelosi urges them to speak out on an issue, they should feel free to do so – even if that means opposing Pelosi or any other politician if the pastor believes that the politician or candidate for office does not align themselves with Scriptural Truth.

If you are a pastor, sign up for the Pulpit Initiative and get involved to protect the right of pastors to speak freely from their pulpits without any restriction.

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