How deep are your religious convictions?  Are religious beliefs merely a colorful veneer decorating the exterior of an individual’s life, or are they more akin to a rudder guiding the course and direction of the whole person?  Questions such as these might be ones that we ask ourselves individually as we wrestle with the role of faith in our own lives.  But they are also being debated at a societal level.  And the worldview of government officials specifically on these questions affects their willingness to either protect religious freedom or to disregard it.  Stated simply, our leaders believe either that religious faith is something that shifts and changes with the times like uneducated opinions, or they believe that religious faith forms the very identity of who we are as individuals and must be protected at any cost.

This issue surfaced with a ferocity unseen in American history when the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) mandated that religious organizations and employers provide coverage for birth control and abortion-inducing drugs in their health plans.  As most of you are aware by now, the “HHS Mandate” as it is popularly known, has sparked a defiant outrage among people of faith who are being forced by the government to violate their deeply held religious beliefs. For many religious organizations and employers, there is no escape from this mandate.  They either comply or are punished.

The starkest example of the worldview of our governmental leaders was on display in the remarks of Kathleen Sebelius, the head of HHS, when she announced the implementation of the HHS Mandate.  Ms. Sebelius stated: “Nonprofit employers who, based on religious beliefs, do not currently provide contraceptive coverage in their insurance plan, will be provided an additional year, until August 1, 2013, to comply with the new law….  This additional year will allow these organizations more time and flexibility to adapt to this new rule.”

Did you catch that?  According to the head of HHS, religious beliefs can simply be adapted if given enough time.  Put simply, Ms. Sebelius is telling religious organizations that they have a year to drag their timeless and unchanging religious beliefs into the 21st century and to change them to fit the times. But what she really means is that religious beliefs must conform to a government official’s view of the world; that religious beliefs must evolve to fit the times as the government sees them.  Her message was unmistakable – either get with the program and make your religious beliefs flexible or we will mandate this on you anyway.  Either comply or be punished.

Such blatant disregard for the depth of religious convictions has not been seen in American history.  Never before has government attempted to force people of faith to either violate their religious beliefs or be monetarily punished if they choose to abide by them.  The framers of our Constitution, who made the free exercise of religion our “first freedom” by placing it in the First Amendment, would be appalled at the utter disregard shown to people of faith by Ms. Sebelius and the HHS Mandate.

This is where the Church in America must speak out.  Our government is experimenting with actions that, if left unchecked, will result in the destruction of the free exercise of religion.  John Murray, a Presbyterian preacher of the 20th century once stated, “The church lives in the world and it lives within the domain of political entities. If it is to be faithful in its commission it must make its voice heard and felt in reference to public questions.”  The greatest public question facing the Church today is whether government will respect religious freedom or exercise its power to destroy it.  The importance of the outcome of this debate cannot be overstated.  The future of religious freedom in America depends largely on the Church making its voice heard loudly, clearly, and forcefully on this important issue.

Although the HHS Mandate does not directly affect churches because churches are exempted from the mandate, it does affect every church member and most religious ministries and organizations.  The Church must protect those within its ranks subjected to the mandate.  If the Church is the conscience of the nation, which it is, then it must stand against this unconscionable act.

One way that can happen is by participating in Pulpit Freedom Sunday.  On October 7, 2012, hundreds of pastors will unite their voices against the government’s desire to control religion.  Pulpit Freedom Sunday is an excellent opportunity for the Church to come alive and speak boldly to government.

The Church must stand united to protect religious freedom.  Faith is timeless and forms the bedrock foundation of our lives.  It does not change with the culture or by the whim of the government.  And that’s a message our governmental leaders need to hear loud and clear.

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If you are a pastor, go to www.pulpitfreedom.org and sign up to participate this October 7.  The website contains resources and answers to questions you may have regarding Pulpit Freedom Sunday.  And if you are not a pastor, please get the information about Pulpit Freedom Sunday to as many pastors as you can.

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.

A recent column in USAToday titled “5 rules for faith and politics 2012” proposes rules the authors say would avoid both theocracy and hostility toward religion. But all they succeed in doing is marginalizing people of faith who have the audacity to think their most cherished beliefs about God and morality should affect all aspects of their lives - including how they vote. A review of their “5 rules” indicates what the authors really want is for people of faith to keep their religious convictions to themselves. Their fear of a theocracy is completely unfounded.  Virtually all of the Founding Fathers had a political philosophy that reflected their Christian beliefs and nobody would argue they set up a government that established a theocracy. I suspect what the authors are really afraid of is people of faith waking up to the fact that we must have moral, God honoring leaders if we expect to have a moral, God honoring country.  Their proposed rules attempt to shame religious voters into closing their eyes to a candidate’s moral convictions (or lack thereof).  Moreover, they ask people of faith and their churches to sacrifice the religious freedom that is the foundation of our country.

Their first rule advocates that the wise constitutional provision prohibiting the government from imposing a religious test for office  should apply to individuals also.  They say, “Voters should evaluate candidates based on their policies, their values and their character but not on whether or how they choose to worship.”  Of course, one’s values and character are heavily influenced by religious beliefs.  Not to consider them would be foolhardy.  And I highly doubt the authors themselves would vote for someone whose religious beliefs include child sacrifice (which recent tragic reports demonstrate is not merely an implausible hypothetical).

The next rule would prohibit the Catholic Church from denying communion to politicians who fail to abide by and uphold the Church’s beliefs.  The authors think churches should not hold their members accountable when members act in a way that is contrary to what they say they believe. This effectively encourages hypocrisy. Under this rule, politicians can say they believe abortion is murder on Sunday but vote to allow it (and force all taxpayers to pay for it) on Monday – and their church is absolutely prohibited from taking any action to correct them.  This asks churches to forfeit a long established right to govern themselves and their members without governmental interference.

“Candidates should refrain from citing religion as the exclusive authority for their position on issues,” is the authors’ next proposal and it also restricts religious freedom.   The rule is really just a restatement of part of the Supreme Court’s Establishment Clause Lemon Test which requires all government actions to have a secular purpose.  Putting aside whether Lemon is a good test or not, it only applies to the government, not a candidate.  Obviously, if they are elected to office, candidates will want to be able to articulate reasons for their policies that aren’t necessarily based on religious conviction in order to persuade their colleagues that don’t share those convictions.  But when a candidate is running for office, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with saying something like, “my deeply held religious beliefs prohibit me from voting for laws imposing the death penalty.”  This creates no constitutional crisis and many voters are interested in what’s underlying a candidate’s views on a particular issue.

The fourth proposed rule, as explained by the authors, appears to be relatively benign.  As I understand it, they believe politicians should avoid alienating anyone who does not share their religious beliefs, but they should be free to express their personal religious beliefs.  They use former President George W. Bush’s reference to Christ as being the most influential political philosopher in his life as being acceptable.  To the extent the authors are saying they think it’s smart for politicians to avoid offending people of different faiths, that makes sense.  But the idea that this can be accomplished by not using references to God, and instead saying “the Creator,” “the Almighty,” or “Divine Providence” is naive.  These terms may offend any number of groups, including atheists and polytheists.

The final proposed rule is fraught with danger and inaccuracy. It reflects the current law (the “Johnson Amendment”) which prohibits pastors from preaching to their congregations about how a candidate’s platform lines up with scripture. The authors claim this law is necessary to avoid election fraud.  But pastors who preach sermons and apply Scripture to political candidates are not making an “end-run” around campaign finance laws.  They are exercising their right to freedom of religion.  The tax code restrictions that prevent churches and pastors from specifically discussing how their faith applies to a particular election and the candidates in that election trample the First Amendment.  (Click here for an excellent article by my colleague Erik Stanley summarizing the constitutional problems with the Johnson Amendment).  Other tax-exempt organizations, such as veterans’ groups, are allowed to endorse or oppose candidates and remain tax-exempt while giving their donors a deduction for contributions.  Why single out churches and religious organizations for discriminatory treatment?Further, whether such endorsements or oppositions are “deeply problematic from a religious perspective” is a great question for churches to debate but not for the government to mandate. Those who believe their faith requires that they apply Scripture and its teachings to specific candidates and elections are prohibited from doing so by the Johnson Amendment.  The government, in effect, has mandated a winner in what is a quintessential theological debate:  namely whether churches should apply Scripture in a way that opposes or endorses a candidate.  The Johnson Amendment allows government to act as a type of “orthodoxy police” to enforce its own view of how religion should apply to candidates and elections. That is not only offensive from a religious perspective, it is blatantly unconstitutional.

Professor Carl Esbeck is fond of saying, “The government does not establish religion by leaving it alone.”  But the authors’ “5 rules for faith and politics” have the opposite effect.  For the most part, they meddle in the religious affairs of churches and individuals, requiring them to check those beliefs at the door whenever the realm of politics is entered.  This misguided attempt to “cleanse” politics of religion is a bad idea because it tramples religious freedom, and would make politics a completely secular, amoral undertaking.  God knows it’s bad enough already!

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An Egyptian court is reported to have sentenced a man to three  years in jail and hard labor because he ”intentionally insulted the dignity of the Islamic religion and attacked it with insults and ridicule on Facebook.” No mention is made of exactly what the man said, or what his religion is, but it’s likely that he wasn’t a Muslim because the court observed that ”all members of religions are obligated to tolerate the others’ existence.”

Egyptian law prohibiting insulting another’s religion in an attempt to protect religion obviously has the opposite effect.  If merely criticizing Islam can land you in jail for three years, you will very likely refrain from saying anything that remotely appears to view other religions negatively (such as ”Jesus said, No man cometh to the Father but by me.”)

The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life published a study on August 9, 2011 that directly ties laws prohibiting the defamation of religion to an overall decrease in religious freedom.  We need to do all we can to assist Christians in places like Egypt by pressuring their governments to adopt laws that protect freedom to believe and to express those beliefs – even if they might be deemed critical of others.  Moreover, we must diligently defend religious freedom in our own country by resisting all efforts to characterize speech critical of other religions as “hate speech” that is somehow less deserving of full constitutional protection.

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There’s an increasing willingness in the U.S. to categorize any speech critical of a particular religious belief as “hate speech” that is some how not worthy of First Amendment protection.  But the Supreme Court held over 70 years ago in Cantwell v. Connecticut that pointing out the errors of the religious beliefs of another is exactly what the Free Speech Clause was designed to protect. If it’s not protected, everyone’s freedom suffers because one never knows when their particular religious views may be deemed critical of some else’s.  For instance, merely holding a sign in a public park stating, “Jesus: there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved.  Acts 4:12″ seems innocuous enough.  But it might be considered offensive to, and defamatory of, religions who believe there are many paths to salvation.

The danger of not protecting speech that defames or criticizes a particular religion is dramatically demonstrated in other countries that have started down this slippery slope.  The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life published a study on August 9, 2011 that directly ties laws prohibiting the defamation of religion to an overall decrease in religious freedom.

“Globally, countries that have laws against blasphemy, apostasy or defamation of religion were more likely to have high government restrictions or social hostilities than countries that do not have such laws. A solid majority (59%) of countries that enforce such laws had high or very high restrictions on religion (government or social) as of mid-2009. Among countries that do not have such laws, by contrast, 58% had low restrictions or hostilities. Not only were government restrictions and social hostilities involving religion generally higher in countries with laws against blasphemy, apostasy or defamation of religion, but restrictions also rose in many of these countries.”

The Pew report observed that laws criminalizing defamation of religion are often touted as means of protecting religion.  In reality, the numbers show they have the opposite effect. These laws are the proverbial wolves in sheep’s clothing.  Giving government the power to say what religious speech is acceptable is a lousy way to protect religion. It simply doesn’t work.

It is vital that we continue to resist efforts in this country to categorize speech critical of a particular religion or religious beliefs as “hate speech” that is somehow unworthy of full constitutional protection. Another 1940s Supreme Court case said it best. “If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official,  high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein.” West Virginia State Bd. of Educ. v. Barnette.

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