Activists are seeking to purge evangelist and pastor Greg Laurie of California from leading the National Day of Prayer event May 2 in Washington, D.C.  His offense?  Laurie has preached that the Bible defines marriage as one man and one woman, and that homosexual conduct is outside God’s design.

The National Day of Prayer was created by Congress and signed into law by President Harry Truman in 1952.  Its purpose is “to mobilize prayer in America and to encourage personal repentance and righteousness in the culture.”  The United States has a long tradition of presidents calling for days of prayer for the nation, and Congress formalized this practice to happen annually on the first Thursday in May. Mrs. Shirley Dobson is the chairman of the National Day of Prayer Task Force.

This year, the National Day of Prayer Task Force selected Greg Laurie as its 2013 Honorary Chairman.  Laurie is senior pastor of Harvest Christian Fellowship in Riverside, California.  Pastor Laurie has also lead many evangelistic rallies, called Harvest Crusades, where thousands of people hear him preach the Gospel of Christ at large stadiums.

But activists have ignored all of the good Laurie has done in his life and focused only on what they disagree with:  his preaching of the Bible’s views on marriage.  The activists are seeking to impose a theological litmus test on anyone who prays at public events.  Agree with our views, or we hound you to the outskirts of society.  So much for their alleged commitment to diversity and tolerance.

A similar uproar occurred earlier this year, when activists successfully banished Pastor Louie Giglio of Passion City Church in Atlanta from praying at President Obama’s Second Inauguration due to a sermon he had preached 15 years earlier on marriage and the Bible’s prohibitions on homosexual conduct.  Pastor Rick Warren of Saddleback Church in California also endured similar criticism when he was selected to pray at President Obama’s First Inauguration in 2009, but the President allowed him to pray, in spite of his views on marriage.

Pastor Laurie is standing resolute, and is expecting to pray at the National Day of Prayer gathering in Washington, D.C. on May 2.  And I am sure Laurie will be praying for God’s blessings on his opponents.

After over six years of litigation, Mike Adams has won the right to present his retaliation case to a jury of his peers.  Back in 2006, he was denied promotion to full professor at the University of North Carolina-Wilmington.  At the time, he had multiple awards and rave reviews from students for his teaching, he had published more peer-reviewed articles than all but two of his colleagues, and he had a distinguished record of service both on and off campus, culminating in earning UNCW’s highest service award.  But to his colleagues and department chair, all of this was inadequate, even though, for most of them, Dr. Adams’ accomplishments surpassed their own.  So—in a process replete with procedural irregularities, conflicts of interests, and vitriolic criticism of Dr. Adams’ Townhall.com columns and his conservative and Christian beliefs—they denied him the promotion he so richly deserved.

Shortly thereafter, Dr. Adams filed suit because it is unconstitutional for public officials, including UNCW professors and administrators, to retaliate against an employee for expressing his views on critical social and political topics.  And at first, his case faced some difficulties when the district court ruled that the First Amendment did not protect his columns.  But after Dr. Adams appealed, the Fourth Circuit disagreed, and not only did it rule that his columns qualified as protected, private speech, but it also ruled that the UNCW officials could be held personally liable if Dr. Adams ultimately won the case.

The Fourth Circuit then asked the district court to answer one question:  Was there evidence that Dr. Adams lost that promotion because of his columns and the views expressed in them?  And in a decision released last Friday, the district court answered that question with a resounding “yes,” setting the case up for a jury trial:

Here, plaintiff has brought forth evidence from which a reasonable jury could find that his speech was a substantial or motivating factor in the decision to deny [promotion] to plaintiff.  The court need not detail the evidence, but plaintiff has produced evidence which . . . shows the following:  (1) his internal evaluations declined after he began the speech at issue; (2) faculty attempted to stop or alter his speech; (3) the denial of his application to full professor was in temporal proximity to Adams’ columns openly criticizing the University on certain political and social issues; (4) the written comments of the faculty on the [promotion] decision committee show hostility toward plaintiff’s speech; and, (5) a faculty member who had accused plaintiff of harassment was allowed to participate and vote on the plaintiff’s application for promotion.

At trial this fall, a North Carolina jury will hear evidence supporting each of these points, plus several more.  And when it does, we are confident that it will uphold a simple principle articulated by Jordan Lorence:  “No university should refuse promotion to an accomplished professor simply because it disagrees with his religious and political views.”

Like my two earlier posts (here and here), this post will continue to build the case that we should re-conceptualize our educational institutions in terms of worship. But this post will extend the argument by answering the following question: is there a biblical justification for prioritizing the concept of worship and re-evaluating our institutions in terms of worship? The answer is an overwhelming yes.

A good guide to help us reach this answer is Greg Beale’s illuminating book We Become What We Worship: A Biblical Theology of Idolatry. In it, Beale argues that, what we revere we resemble, either for ruin or for restoration. Although Beale draws on numerous parts of scripture to substantiate this thesis, he primarily emphasizes Isaiah 6:9-10, and its inter-textual echo of Psalm 115:2-6. By telling Israel that it has “dull eyes” and “dim ears” in Isaiah 6, God is obviously judging Israel, but God is doing so by comparing Israel to the actual, physical idols  that really do not have physical hears or physical eyes, as described in Psalm 115. But why this comparison? Because God is judging Israel for its idolatry (a problem emphasized in Isaiah chapters 1-5, see, e.g., Isaiah 2:8). And so how does God judge Israel for idolatry? By turning Israel into the idols that they worship. Just like its idols that have no physical eyes to hear and no physical ears to see, Israel (says God in Isaiah 6) will no longer have spiritual eyes or spiritual ears to perceive God’s word![1] From examples like this, Beale biblically supports the principle that God turns us into what we revere, i.e. what we worship.[2]

Now, if this principle is true, the practical import of worship becomes much more apparent since worship determines what we become. For this reason, we desperately need to unearth the hidden forms of our worship to make sure we aren’t being transformed into idols. For example, on a micro-level, must I not now ask what am I worshiping and how is my current behavior merely reflecting the worship some idol? How am I being transformed subtly into the iPhone I spend all day on or the vacation I yearn for? And on the marco-level, must we not now ask what particular thing(s) is our society revering and how is our society revering these things? In what way(s) is our present culture the reflection of some idol it has worshiped or continues to worship?

But in asking these questions, what are really doing? We are merely perceiving ourselves and our institutions in terms of worship. We are recognizing that worship goes on all around us, that worship determines our character, our values, and our goals, and that we therefore need to think in terms of worship and evaluate things in terms of worship. And could there be any more important place to start this analysis than our educational institutions? The very institutions explicitly committed to shaping citizens’ values and minds? And could our freedoms in these educational institutions serve any more important purpose than to allow for and even model worship of the one true God? This last point is no mere ancillary one. Rather, this point explains why we should expansively protect the freedom to worship in the educational context. It explains why, for example, we should protect the right of Christian student groups to set religious qualifications for their leaders, contrary to the Supreme Court’s ruling in CLS v. Martinez. But that is the subject of my next and final post in this series on worship in the educational context.

In my last blog post, I proposed conceptualizing our educational institutions in terms of worship, i.e. through a “worship paradigm.” I suggested that doing so could help us better understand the value of Christian practices in the educational context and the need to protect these practices in the educational context. In this post, I want to shine the light of this “worship paradigm” onto a concrete legal example: Bronx Household of Faith v. Board of Education of the City of New York.

Bronx involves a New York City Board of Education rule that initially prohibited “religious services or religious instruction on school premises after school” but allowed the discussion of “religious material or material which contains a religious viewpoint.”[1] Thus, the Board was trying to distinguish religious worship services (prohibited) from discussion of religious ideas (permitted).[2] When a church challenged this rule, the Second Circuit accepted the worship service/discussion distinction and upheld the Board’s policy under the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment. Thankfully, Alliance Defending Freedom persevered on behalf of the church and later obtained an injunction against the Board’s rule, this time under the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment. The validity of this injunction is currently pending before the Second Circuit, with oral arguments held on November 16, 2012.

Now, setting aside the case’s present status, what are we to make of this worship service/discussion distinction advanced by the Board? What does our “worship paradigm” tell us about this distinction? Well, our worship paradigm deconstructs this distinction as both biased and incoherent. If humans are inherently worshiping creatures and if our educational institutions necessarily engage in worship practices (liturgies), then the Board is prohibiting churches from worshiping while it (and other groups using the schools) promote their own “worship” and engage in their own “liturgies!” To make matters worse, if humans inherently engage in worship, it makes no sense to distinguish “worship services” from “neutral,” non-worship activities. We’re always worshiping in a sense. We’re always engaged in a liturgy of sorts. The only question is how we’re worshiping, what we’re worshiping, and what kind of worship services we’re engaged in. Thus, by distinguishing “discussion” from “worship services,” the Second Circuit merely favored some kinds of worship over others and some kinds of liturgies over others. And this result obviously harms New York City churches enormously because they are the ones conducting the disfavored type of worship service — at least the type disfavored by the New York City Board of Education.

In this respect, our proposed “worship paradigm” highlights the importance of the Bronx case and reveals conceptual flaws underlying the effort to exclude New York City churches from school buildings after hours. With the Bronx decision liable to come any day now, it will be interesting to see whether the Second Circuit continues to perpetuate the worship service/discussion distinction. For those with eyes to see and ears to hear (i.e. those who adopt our proposed worship paradigm), the continued perpetuation of this false distinction strikes right at the heart of our religious freedoms.

I’ve never been in the military.  But I’ve known a few good men and women who have served our country.  And I know that when they are putting their life on the line, the comforting prayer or counsel from a military chaplain has made a huge difference.  That’s why I was disturbed to see last month that Americans United for Separation of Church and State sent a letter to the United States Military Academy at West Point.  AU wrongly claims the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment is offended whenever military chaplains solemnize an event with an invocation or benediction, which only occurs at a handful of events each year.  Alliance Defending Freedom responded by sending a letter to West Point on behalf of the Chaplain Alliance for Religious Liberty, confirming that West Point’s practice of solemnizing events with invocations or benedictions is completely constitutional.  Here’s why.   

The United States Army has offered soldiers the opportunity to hear solemnizing prayers since the Revolutionary Days.  General George Washington asked his chaplains to pray for the troops during those critical days at Valley Forge.  West Point has offered invocations and benedictions at important events in cadet careers since its founding in 1802.  In fact, before the ratification of the First Amendment, Congress authorized the appointment and use of commissioned chaplains, in part to offer solemnizing prayers at crucial moments in a soldier’s life and our Nation’s history.   If this tradition was established before ratification of the Establishment Clause, then the Founding Fathers clearly didn’t think it was a problem.  

The purpose of West Point’s prayers is to allow military chaplains to partner with the academy’s leadership in the development of future leaders of character and offer words of encouragement in support of the particular event’s intent.  The invocations and benedictions are opportunities to dignify milestone events in a cadet’s career, not moments to advance one religion over another.  Moreover, cadets are not compelled to participate in the prayers, or even listen to them.  But the prayers offer them time to reflect on the significance of their education and training.

One of West Point’s tasks is to help cadets learn how to celebrate the religious diversity in the Army.  This is done not by stripping “the public square of every last shred of public piety,” as a federal court of appeals said.  Learning to celebrate the religious diversity in the Army is accomplished by providing a positive view of America’s rich religious diversity.   West Point’s acknowledgement of religious and non-religious practices of various kinds aligns with the non-establishment philosophy embodied in the First Amendment.

We hope West Point doesn’t capitulate to AU’s demands, but continues this vital tradition for future soldiers.