Threats to Our Religious Liberty (Part 1)

Family policy matters and engaging and informative weekly radio show and podcast produced by the North Carolina family policy Council hi this is John Ralston, presidency, family, and were grateful to have you with us for this week's program is our prayer that you will be informed, encouraged and inspired by what you hear on family policy matters and that she will flow better equipped to be a voice of persuasion for family values in your community, state and nation, and now here's our house to family policy matters. Tracy Devitt brings thanks for joining us this week for family policy matters. It's no secret that religious liberty in America is under attack.

It's harder and harder for people of faith to live according to their faith anywhere outside of their home or church building. Thankfully, there are leaders stepping up to defend one of the most fundamental freedoms of the great American experiment that is religious liberty against. Today is one of those leaders. Luke Goodrich is vice president and senior counsel at the Becket fund for religious liberty where he has won numerous precedent-setting cases across the country, including multiple US Supreme Court victories for clients like the Little sisters of the poor and Hobby lobby's debut book is called free to believe the battle over religious liberty in America and it's a candid look at the current status of religious freedom in America today and he has some tangible recommendations for what we can all do to protect this very basic human right. Luke Goodrich. Welcome to family policy matters so much revenue. Religious liberty is being attacked by some these days as a guise for discrimination and sometimes people who say this don't seem to realize that we have had a right to religious liberty in our U.S. Constitution since nearly the very beginning, can you tell us why this important freedom is essential in our country's legal, political, and historical landscape bedrock value. And even if you're not a religious person. There are many reasons to stand up for religious freedom and one is that religious freedom benefit all of society because it allows religion to flourish and religion produces the moral virtue necessary for self-government, but also schools and hospitals and nursing homes and care for the most vulnerable in society.

Religious freedom also protects all of her other rights because the basic premise of religious freedom, is that there's something inside each one of us that the government simply cannot touch on when the government is limited in that way. It provides a foundation for all of her other rights. The most important reason to protect religious freedom, is that it is a fundamental human right, and who we are as human beings that we all have a thirst transcendent truth.

We all have a conscience that urges us to embrace truth and reject their very nature. We can't act on our conscience under compulsion, we can only embrace truth authentically if we embrace it freely. So when the government forces us to go against conscience it's violating who we are as human beings and violating a fundamental human rights. So are you surprised at the sometimes vicious attacks on religious freedom that were seeing, especially in considering the fact that it's been with us since the inception of our country. I'm troubled but I'm not at all surprised and I think if we were paying attention to what's going on in our culture, we can understand why religious freedom is under such pressure, and the reason for that is long-standing Christian belief about truth about human life about marriage are now increasingly viewed as a threat to modern culture and is no longer enough. For example, for abortion to be legal under Roe versus Wade also have to be acceptable and if you don't accept it or somehow discriminating against women and denying them access to healthcare the same attitude on same sex marriage is no longer enough for same-sex marriage to be legal under the Supreme Court's decision. It also has to be accepted and use of the traditional religious person. Don't accept it.

You are discriminating and the government should punish you almost are very real currents in our culture today and they are producing increased religious freedom conflicts in cases across the country are a lot of ways that we as Christians need to grow in our understanding of religious freedom. We sort of just taken religious freedom for granted, but a lot of Christians are now starting to wake up to the fact that religious freedom is under renewed attack and yet were in a reactive posture to some Christians tend to lean conservative. They basically view religious freedom as a way of protecting Christianity, protecting our Judeo-Christian heritage and keeping a privileged place for Christianity and society. I talk with other Christians in other tenderly more liberal the kind of reject the idea that religious freedom is under attack at all and they might even say well. Religious persecution actually could wake us up as a church, so bring it on, and I think of the error in both of those views is that we tend this Christians to treat religious freedom primarily as a political or legal issue, when in reality is much more than that it's a basic issue of biblical justice rooted in the nature of God and the nature of man and we need to recapture that understanding so that we can advocate for religious freedom and are an effective and holistic and persuasive with leading to possibly a shameless plug to your new book. How do we do that how do we begin to understand more what religious liberty is so that we can wield it in a way that's just and not like you said for keeping this privileged status. That's what I've written. Freedom leaders to help ordinary Christians understand why religious freedom matters. How is it today and what can we do to protect it and I think as Christians we need to start with Scripture. That's where start and go back all the way to Genesis 1, God created Adam and Eve in his image and that means a lot of things about one thing, it means is that were created with the capacity for relationship with God, a loving relationship with God.

We also see throughout Scripture that God is pursuing relationship with us. He ultimately sends his son to rescue us. We desire relationship of God. God is pursuing relationship with us, and yet God never coerces anyone into relationship with him. And so if God himself doesn't coerce us into relationship with him. How much less should the government when the government does that, when inserted coercive power in into that relationship between God and man is exceeding its God-given realm of authority and committing an injustice to a sense in which religious freedom is a basic issue of justice rooted in the nature of God and the nature of man that needs to inform how we advocate religious freedom in the public square sees things, and by simply understanding better the Scripture surrounding religious liberty is going to help us naturally make better decisions. We need to understand Scripture first.

But that's not the only thing we need to understand and the second part of my book is devoted to the top five threats to religious freedom in our culture today in the five issues are a number one.

The conflict between abortion rights and religious freedom.

Number two.

The conflict between gay rights and religious freedom. Number three is the misuse of antidiscrimination laws to interfere with the ability of churches and other religious groups to choose their leaders and members in accordance with their religious beliefs.

On the fourth one is how we think about religious freedom for non-Christian religious minorities and in the fifth major areas lifting up of the public square and the relationship of government to religion and religious symbols in the public square of government funding for religious groups, and so we as Christians need to understand how these different areas are going to play out in the law so that we can respond with wisdom and with grace and with confidence right think you started with abortion rights to tell us a little bit more about why you feel like this is one of the top five threats so when the Supreme Court decided Roe versus Wade back in 1973 on the same.

The cited case called Bill versus Bolton and not held that religious organizations can't be forced to participate in an abortion position until study for many years. But with the cases that we handle that bracket on behalf of the Little sisters of the poor and Hobby lobby you saw an attack on that long-standing compromise trying to force the Green family. The owners of Hobby lobby and the little sister. The poor were Catholic nuns to use their health insurance plans to provide coverage for drugs that could cause an abortion major attack.

We openly took those cases up to the Supreme Court, and one of those cases, but it's still an ongoing fight today is can lose people be coerced by the government to participate in some way in an abortion and we need to be prepared as Christians understand the arguments for and against that and why it's vital that no person of conscience should be forced to participate in the destruction of human life in violation of their religious beliefs. Okay so I think the second one that you mentioned was gay-rights death of the potential conflict between gay-rights and religious liberty as you see it playing out in two main ways of one is private lawsuits. This is where LGBT Q individuals or couples might see you religious organizations or individuals for denying them service in support of their wedding and so forth of the other major area is what I think of as government penalties and this is where government doesn't wait for a lawsuit, but rather a state or local government deems traditional religious beliefs about marriage to be discriminatory and then penalizes religious individuals or groups or by denying them a license or denying them accreditation or contractor grants or loans or even tax-exempt status. So this area of the law is a major risk to religious organizations and individuals today and we need to be prepared as Christians to make the public arguments for why traditional religious beliefs about marriage are not some sort of invidious bigotry but are rather a long-standing belief that many people have held and continue to hold and is worthy of respect and protection.

Okay so were working our way through what you have found to be the five most pressing threats to religious freedom in America and you have gone through abortion rights and gay rights. What would be your next one. For the next one would be the misuse of antidiscrimination laws to interfere with the ability of religious groups to achieve their members and leaders in accordance with their religious beliefs on the scene is playing out in a couple different contexts. One is Christian student groups on State University campuses and they been analyzed by their universities because they expect their leaders to uphold traditional Christian sexual ethic unit also see it in religious schools that are choosing their teachers in accordance with their religious beliefs for the much teachers to convey your discriminating against us. And the question in all these cases is can religious groups choose their leaders in accordance with their religious beliefs or not the government cannot interfere in that and feel it comes to other mission driven organizations. Nobody would expect an environmental group to be forced to hire a climate change denier you hire people who fully believe in and support your mission and the same should be true of religious groups.

So tell us what what would be another threat then you mentioned them.

What would be the next to it when it tackle another major issue is non-Christian religious minorities and will be able to keep the same religious freedom is under everyone else and I talked with a lot of Christians about this until Christians do struggle with this and wondering if she we stand up for religious freedom for Muslims, Jews, Hindus and others, and I for three arguments why all Christians should care about religious freedom, even for those we disagree with one I call the argument from self-interest, not simply the fact that the precedents that are set in cases involving Muslims and Jews and others directly affect Christians and so even if you only care about religious freedom for Christians that simply smart to defend religious freedom for everyone else on the second argument offers.

I call the argument from evangelism and we as Christians obviously we want people to come to saving faith in Jesus Christ and what is the best way to get them to do that.

Is it to take government power and stop people from practicing false religions.

We never see that in Scripture rather recently appealed to people's conscience has to be a freely and grace choose to actually protecting religious freedom for non-Christian enables more people eventually to come to faith in Christ and in the third and last argument for defending religious freedom for non-Christians. I called the argument from Justice is the fact that protecting religious freedom for non-Christians is simply the right thing to do. If we really believe that is a basic issue of biblical justice rooted in the nature of God and the nature of man and that the government is exceeding God-given realm of authority when it violates religious freedom I would have to protect religious freedom for people of all things the listing family policy matters.

This is in part one of a two-part series featuring Luke Goodrich of the Becket fund for religious liberty. We hope you enjoyed the program and plan to tune in again next week. Support to to listen to the show online into one more about NC families work to a encourage and inspire families across North Carolina go to our website it NC family.org that's NC family.org. Thanks for listening and may God bless you and your family