Religious freedom is under new and sustained pressure. A recent Pew Forum report found that between mid-2009 and mid-2010, religious restrictions increased in every major region of the world. In the Pew study’s measures of religious freedom — government restrictions and social hostilities — the United States is viewed as having moderate government restrictions and is at the high end of moderate hostility toward religion.
On college campuses, traditional Christian student groups are being kicked out because they advocate against sexual promiscuity. Pharmacists in Washington and Illinois are being forced against their beliefs to dispense morning-after pills. In New Mexico, a Christian wedding photographer was fined because she refused to accept a same-sex couple as clients. Several Christian charities have been forced to stop providing foster care and adoption services because new laws require them to violate their beliefs about marriage and family.
The president of Chick-fil-A publicly defended traditional marriage, which set off a nationwide boycott attempt led by some big-city politicians and college campus student groups. Defense of marriage amendments to state constitutions are being challenged in courts across the country.
But the greatest threat to religious freedom in our nation is in the implementation of Obamacare and its mandate requiring all insurance plans to cover birth control, regardless of religious objections. At last count there were 28 separate lawsuits involving the mandate with 80 separate plaintiffs including Catholics, and evangelical Protestant institutions, along with Jewish, Mormon, and Muslim leaders.
Why all this fuss about the right to exercise our religious freedom?
It goes to the very heart of individual freedom. We can’t separate our faith from our religion — how or if we practice it from who we are and how we live our lives. During the recent elections, the presidential and gubernatorial candidates were asked: How important is faith to you, and how does it affect decisions you make? But it doesn’t stop with us as individuals. No one practices religion solely as a solitary act.
Faith is an individual matter, but to practice it, you must join a community. In Sunday schools, congregations, churches, mosques, and synagogues, gatherings of like-minded faithful people meet regularly. These religious communities provide an environment for social conscience, learning, understanding, charitable outreach, and morality. The vitality of faith comes in its communal character.
The freedom to meet, organize, teach, witness, and undertake cultural efforts is the core of religious freedom. Faith communities are as natural and as organic as families and are as strong as the individuals who make up that family. Faith families form the civil society this country was founded on.
Our government was created to protect freedoms and limit its infringement on rights. Religious freedom is protected expressly and specifically in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, and the 14th Amendment prevents the states from infringing on those protections.
Government has no jurisdiction over belief because it has no right to come between its citizens and God, just as no one can be forced to adopt or reject any religious beliefs. Religious freedom means the freedom to believe as well as the freedom not to believe. In a 1994 U.S. Supreme Court case, Justice David Souter wrote, “government should not prefer one religion to another, or religion to irreligion.”
Some state legislatures are forming bipartisan religious freedom caucuses dedicated to crafting legislation that will protect religious freedoms. Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Idaho, Kansas, Missouri, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, and Tennessee now have working groups of lawmakers focused on stopping attacks on religious liberty. North Carolina should join them in 2013.
Religious freedom defines who we are as individuals and is the foundation of our country. It is imperative that elected officials — from the White House to Jones Street to Main Street — be reminded that America’s remarkable religious freedoms must be protected if any freedom at all is to survive.
Becki Gray (@beckigray) is vice president for outreach at the John Locke Foundation.