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.

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.”

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.

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.

Let me first begin by explaining what I mean by a “worship paradigm.” In his interesting book Desiring the Kingdom, Professor James K.A. Smith draws on Augustinian anthropology to argue that humans are inherently and primarily worshiping, desiring creatures.[1] Our institutions reflect this nature, and so they too inherently involve worship. These institutions are constantly shaping our desires and prodding us to worship different things by engaging us in certain practices (or “liturgies”).

For example, Smith points us to the mall where mannequins (Smith calls them icons of a sort) frequently appear in store windows and thus subtly bombard us with a vision of the good life: buy this, look like this, value this, desire this, and you’ll be happy. The point is that the mall is structured in such a way to promote a practice (gazing upon the displays) that appeals to and shapes our desires. The same is true, Smith argues, about educational institutions. Schools are not simply communicating ideas and knowledge. They are forming the desires of students and prompting them to worship certain values through practices that occur in the classroom, in the dining hall, and in the dorm spaces. Thus, Smith claims, our educational institutions are not primarily about conveying information but about transforming our hearts and desires.

So this is what I mean by “worship paradigm”: it’s simply the idea that we can re-conceptualize the culture and institutions around us in terms of worship, rather than think in exclusively cognitive terms or limit the worship concept to stereotypical “religious” settings (e.g., a church building). Under this paradigm, we can, like the apostle Paul, tell the members of the Athenian Areopagus (the Academy) that they are in fact “religious” in every way.

Now, if we view educational institutions under this “worship paradigm,” the activities of Christians at educational institutions become vitally important, not simply because they communicate true ideas but because they are a set of practices (liturgies) that reshape the desires of those who participate in and observe them. Thus, by distributing literature on a university campus or by gathering to study the bible or by meeting to pray, Christian student groups conduct activities that others can see and/or participate in and in turn be shaped by. Somewhat like the window display in the mall, the Christian groups are encouraging others to value, desire, and worship certain things and worship in certain ways. And this witness is quite powerful because it arises in the context of a larger worshiping community (the university itself) that is engaged in an alternative set of liturgies — a worship of an alternative set of values.

Well, great. Christian practices are valuable in the educational context partly because they shape people’s desires and counter the worship promoted elsewhere in the educational system. But how does this idea relate to the legal context? Well, does this idea not suggest that it is extremely important to protect the ability of Christian groups to engage in these worship forming practices? — practices of gathering together, choosing their leaders, praying together, etc. And does it not suggest that we need to protect these activities even if others find no cognitive value in them?  And does it not suggest that efforts to undermine the legal protection of these activities are a grave threat? Unfortunately, I will need another post to explore these ideas in the concrete legal context. But there is no better place to begin this exploration than New York City’s 18 year effort to prevent churches from “worshiping” in public school buildings after school, even though other “secular” groups can “worship” in these buildings.

After recounting Pastor Giglio’s wide-ranging ministry, Ruth Malhotra and Jennifer Keeton describe just how “tolerantly” leftists treats those who disagree with them:

The extreme opposition to Giglio was yet another example of a tragic lesson we learned firsthand as students at public universities.  And that lesson is this:  unless you embrace, applaud, and advocate for the homosexual lifestyle and same-sex marriage, your views, your voice, and even your work on behalf of the poor and suffering are not welcome in the public square.

Despite all the sacrificial efforts one may have invested into humanitarian causes for the greater good, there is this rabid insistence that in order to do anything in the civic arena—including offer a prayer at a monumental event for our nation—you must not have, at any time in your history, spoken in a way that is disagreeable to a certain group of activists.

As they explain, this extreme intolerance of those who hold Biblical views extends from high-profile events like an inaugural benediction to university campuses, where it is pervasive.  And it involves a range of tactics:  “Sometimes—as in the case of Giglio—the tactic of the far-left involves attempts to shame and shun those they disagree with, and other times they actually use the force of law to silence those who do not share their worldview.”

For Ruth and Jennifer, this effort to purge the public square of any viewpoints the left deems “offensive” or “intolerant” is far from theoretical.  Instead, they speak from personal experience, as they have both stood courageously to defend their convictions and freedoms at Georgia Tech and Augusta State University:

We were repeatedly censored, threatened, and condemned for our refusal to conform to a narrow agenda regarding human sexual behavior.  We were told by administrators and professors that we must change our Biblical beliefs, follow impossibly vague speech codes, and undergo comprehensive programs of thought reform.  Our cases, filed by Alliance Defending Freedom, defended the freedom of Christian and conservative students to speak on matters of public importance and to pursue our fields of study without compromising our convictions.  In response to our lawsuits, the Tolerance Inquisition unleashed its fury.  We faced everything from snide insults to false attacks on our character to threats of rape and murder so serious that Ruth was put under police protection.

Sadly, Pastor Giglio’s experience illustrates how the mindset so typical on university campuses is beginning to leech into the rest of society.  The only way for this to change is for Christians—whether on campus or off—to ignore the social stigma and stand up for their beliefs.  When they do, we stand ready to assist them and to insist that their freedom to exercise and proclaim those beliefs be respected.

Update:  Ruth’s and Jennifer’s column is also available at The Atlanta Journal Constitution and The Christian Post.

The leftist ideologues cared nothing for that and scoured the Internet until they found a recording of an old sermon Giglio recorded in the mid-1990s, in which he taught that the Bible defines marriage only as one man and one woman, and therefore, homosexual behavior is sinful.  Even though Giglio has rarely preached on this subject and focused on helping the needy in the world, the lefties went bonkers, and demanded his ouster from the inaugural platform.  Louie Giglio gracious acquiesed to the officials’ pressure and stepped down.  His statement explains what his current work has focused on, and carefully avoids repudiating the Biblical view on marriage.  Louie Giglio is seeing the bulk of his life’s work ignored and the totality of his decades-long ministry distorted by those who summarize it by one sermon he preached 15-20 years ago.  This is a tragic slander, because Giglio’s Passion City Church is no Westboro Baptist.

Christian college students encounter the same ideological pressures on most campuses.  It does not matter whether you devote your time to fight sex trafficking, build shelters for the homeless, or help eradicate disease in Third World nations, if you also hold to the wrong view on marriage and homosexual conduct.  But then, is not the reason sex trafficking is wrong is because it violates God’s design for marriage and treats shamefully those, male and female,  made in the image of God?  The Bible’s doctrine on marriage has many applications.

We must recall Christ’s words that there is an irreducible offense of the Gospel, even among advocates of tolerance and diversity on college campuses.  Sometimes, Christians say and do things that invite understandable scorn or criticism from others, but not always.  Many times, people who simply oppose the Gospel will irrrationally hate those who believe it.  Louie Giglio and every college student derided for believing in Christ can be encouraged by His words (Matthew 5:11-12): “Blessed are you when people insult you and persecute you, and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of Me. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward in heaven is great; for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”

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Alliance Defending Freedom is an alliance-building legal ministry that advocates for the right of people to freely live out their faith.
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Additional commentary on the Louie Giglio situation:
Albert Mohler
Russell Moore
Joe Carter

Years ago, Abigail Thernstrom described universities as “islands of repression in a sea of freedom.”  More recently, several columnists have highlighted how the effort to indoctrinate students pervades virtually every aspect of campus life.

Last month, George Will’s Washington Post column outlined how campus speech codes actually train students to support censorship.  In so doing, universities stifle the robust debate and exchange of ideas they claim to support.  And because these speech codes affect every aspect of student life—from the classroom to the dorm room—they are a particularly pernicious method for suppressing unpopular ideas.

Just today, Thomas Sowell’s column, The Role of ‘Educators,’ highlights how this indoctrination occurs in the classroom.  After all, far too many professors see them­selves as “agent[s] of change” who are “strategically placed, with an opportunity to condition students to want a different kind of society.”  Of course, some openly ad­mit this.  For example, Richard Rorty—a long-time philosophy professor—explained that he “like most Americans who teach humanities or social science in colleges and universities . . . try to arrange things so that students who enter as bigoted, homo­phobic religious fundamentalists will leave college with views more like our own.”  He even warned parents that he and his colleagues “are going to go right on trying to discredit you in the eyes of your children, trying to strip your fundamentalist re­ligious community of dignity, trying to make your views seem silly rather than dis­cussable.”  As Sowell notes, having discarded the job of teaching people how to think, these professors seek to undermine the values that made America great.

Last week, Jeremy Tedesco’s column at Townhall.com trumpeted Julea Ward’s victory against indoctrination efforts cloaked as practicum assignments.  After she took an unpopular stand for years, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit affirmed her conviction that she should not be forced to endorse behavior she considered immoral by ruling that public universities “cannot compel students to alter or violate their beliefs . . . as the price for obtaining a degree.”  This is a tremendous victory for religious freedom, one that will benefit students far beyond just Eastern Michigan University.

Last month, Mike Adams critiqued the Supreme Court’s unfortunate ruling in Christian Legal Society v. Martinez, which extends indoctrination efforts into the extracurricular arena.  In Cleaning Up After Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Mike highlights some of the flaws of the decision, but he also describes how his university has stretched Martinez to violate the freedoms of religious and political student groups.  In A Queer Need for Rejection, he explains how Martinez exposes some student groups—such as a Christian group that expects its leaders to live by Biblical principles—to harassment and the constant threat of discrimination charges.

Of course, if you have experienced any of these avenues of indoctrination, please contact us.  Your rights may well have been violated, and you may be in a position to secure not only your own freedoms but—like Julea Ward—those of countless others as well. 

Julea Ward – As Jeremy wrote recently, Julea Ward scored a big victory when she settled her case against Eastern Michigan University.  Her case shows that the freedom to believe is still a critical component of our constitutional liberties.  As Jeremy said, the appellate court ruling in her favor “will have a lasting impact on the right of college students to live out their lives according to the dictates of their faith.  It clearly sets out that public universities ‘cannot compel students to alter or violate their belief systems . . . as the price for obtaining a degree,’ which is precisely what EMU was demanding Julea do.”

OSU Student Alliance – The Ninth Circuit handed down a resounding victory for independent student press on college campuses in OSU Student Alliance v. Ray.  Public universities cannot relegate these papers to second-class status and expect to get away with it.  This case will continue in 2013, so watch for updates.

Bronx Household of Faith – While not technically a university case, several Alliance Defending Freedom university lawyers are working on this case to protect equal access to government facilities.  New York City has a no-worship policy that it is trying to use to block a church from renting its facilities after school hours, like all other community groups can.  A federal district court struck down the policy in June, finding that it violated the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment.  This case is more than a decade old and was recently argued to the federal appellate court in New York City, so stay tuned for what happens next.

Florida Christian College – Just last month, Florida Christian College settled its suit against the State of Florida over a tuition grant program.  The state refused to allow FCC students to participate in the tuition grant because the state viewed FCC as “non-secular” and “too religious.”  In other word, FCC students lost out on the tuition assistance, while everyone else did not.  That is no longer the case.

Texas Aggie Conservatives – A group of conservative students at Texas A&M University thought it was unfair that they could not access student organization funding simply because they were part of a political group, but virtually all other student groups could access those funds.  They sued A&M and got the university to remove its discriminatory ban on funding religious and political student groups.

Young Americans for Freedom – Another group of conservative students, this time in Florida, were restricted from distributing flyers on campus.  They successfully settled their case this year, which enabled spontaneous student speech, removed speech zones on campus, and limited a college speech code.

Nationwide Letter Campaign – We also sent letters to over a hundred public universities from coast to coast detailing unconstitutional speech policies on their campuses.  As of today, we received 27 favorable responses indicating that those universities revised their policies to protect student speech.

Aside from these critical wins, we were successful countless other times in situations you may never hear about.  But those victories were just as critical for preserving the religious liberty of the individuals involved in them, and for that we are thankful.

We hope and pray that 2013 brings more victories for student speech on campus.