Religious Freedom and Civil Liberties

The news has been abuzz the past few weeks with debate over what entails "religious freedom." The spark for this discussion has been Indiana's passing of a "Religious Freedom Restoration Act" (RFRA) bill, but was also fueled by Arkansas' governor signing a similar bill into law. These laws would allow their states to protect the preferences and liberties of religious individuals and entities. In short, they say the government cannot force a person or group to contradict its religious beliefs.

However, the focus on these bills (as with other similar efforts) has been on the expansion of these religious rights to companies and businesses. The go-to example seems to be Christian bakers. Under these laws, if a baker who happens to be a Christian is asked by a gay couple to cater their wedding, the baker would have the right to refuse service if he felt catering the wedding would violate his conviction that homosexuality is wrong.
This has sparked outrage on the part of gay-rights groups who insist the law invites and legalizes discrimination. Proponents of the law claim that the focus is not on the gay community and that it will not be used to discriminate. Instead, they say, the law is intended to protect from big government.

Now, I am not an attorney or legal expert, so I cannot weigh in very much on the legality or implications of these laws. However, I have observed one issue in the back-and-forth that must be brought to the surface.

As I've listened to both sides, I can agree that each has some valid points. However, neither side is likely going to see eye to eye for one simple reason--they hold competing values. In particular, conservatives are prioritizing "religious liberty" while their opponents are prizing "civil liberties."

Of course, we in America like to believe that our laws and justice system can bring us peace, prosperity, and unity (which honestly looks a lot like idolatry at times to me). We also want to believe that our Constitution can solve any social problem we encounter. As such, we want to believe that religious liberty and civil liberties (both great American values) can coexist in harmony. But ultimately, this is not the case.  When push comes to shove, you most often will have to choose either religious liberty or civil liberty, or you will have to redefine what one of those values looks like.

Recently, Rick Santorum, a Republican presidential hopeful, came to the defense of RFRA laws by trying to point out the "two-way street" that exists. He asked why it would be wrong to allow a Christian to refuse service to a gay couple based on religious beliefs but not be wrong for a pro-gay print shop to refuse service to Westboro Baptist, who famously promote the slogan "God hates fags."

However, these kinds of remarks illustrate the tunnel vision that creeps into such public debates. Comments like Santorum's completely ignore the other side's point that the LGBTQ community is entitled to civil rights, and therefore any such discrimination is wrong. I can just imagine a gay-rights activist responding to Santorum's illustration by saying, "It's wrong for the Christian to discriminate, AND ok for the print shop to refuse service because discrimination against gays is wrong in both scenarios."

This conflict between religious liberty and civil rights (and our different priorities) means that we are really just talking past each other. We will never find common ground or see eye-to-eye as long as we are operating by different paradigms. For instance, our definitions of "civil rights" conflict. For some conservative Christians, civil rights includes race, ethnicity, and gender, but should not include "sinful" behaviors like alternate sexual orientations or gender identities. Meanwhile, others feel sexual orientation should be a protected category. As long as we cannot agree on these terms, there will be no resolution to the public debate. Beyond this simple fact, we also place different values on religious and civil liberties, and this is important because religious and civil liberties inevitably stand in tension with each other.

The bottom line is that if we value religious freedom as the highest priority, then we are going to admit that all kinds of religiously motivated beliefs are acceptable. But how far do we take this? Is it ok for white supremacist groups who use the Bible as justification for their actions to hate or even harm blacks and Jews? Is it ok for certain cults to employ suicide or human sacrifice? Most of us would say that these actions cannot be prohibited in a civil society, but this is what you will get if you prize religious freedom without adding any qualifications or redefinitions.

And most often, the way we place a check on unbridled religious freedom (or any other freedom, like freedom of speech) is to fall back on civil liberties. It's ok to utilize your freedoms unless it infringes upon the freedom or well-being of others around you. This is the very argument being used with RFRA laws. It's fine to believe that homosexuality is wrong, but the moment that belief drives you to treat others differently or to discriminate, that is a problem.

And the truth is that, by-and-large, sexual orientation is considered a civil liberty now. We have a variety of laws that explicitly prohibit discrimination against those in the LGBTQ community in certain contexts. More and more cities are passing non-discrimination ordinances (my college hangout town of Springfield, MO is set to vote on one such ordinance today). And, as I said in an earlier post, regardless of your beliefs regarding homosexuality, you need to come to terms with the fact that society has accepted it as a legitimate lifestyle (more than half of Americans support legalized gay marriage). So, if defenders of religious liberty want to protect the civil liberties of other races and genders, they are going to have to start protecting the rights of the gay community as well.

But, at the same time, we would do well to hear conservative concerns that valuing civil liberties as the highest value can pose problems as well. For instance, should a pastor be forced to offer his church building for a lesbian couple's wedding ceremony even if it violates his conscience or his church's teaching? What if civil rights keep expanding and begin to offer protections for more and more specific groups? This increases the likelihood that there will be conflict between civil and religious liberties. So, it's not good enough to simply place civil liberties on a pedestal either.

One thing I hope Christians see from this conversation is the futility of placing our hope in government or laws. Yes we need good government and just laws, but these things cannot save us. They will always be imperfect. So maybe it's time we stop putting so much emphasis on these American values, and instead turn our attention to the values of God's Kingdom, the place where our allegiance is supposed to be anyways.

In God's Kingdom, we value rights, but we don't die for them. Instead, we die for the well-being of others, even for our enemies. In God's Kingdom, we are called to practice radical love, grace, and hospitality. In God's Kingdom, we confess that all are made in the image of God, but also that all have fallen short of the glory of God. It is only as we begin to set our eyes on our heaven-on-earthly calling that we will be able to navigate the tricky areas between religious liberty and civil rights. Looking to laws and our Constitution won't bring opponents together, heal the pain in someone who has experienced discrimination, or bring about a society that respects faith. Quoting the Constitution or appealing to the "weight of history" won't change the lens your opponent is using that prevents meaningful dialogue. Only the Way of Jesus can do this. So perhaps it's about time that we start looking at the words and life of Jesus as the starting point of how to decide whether or not to bake that wedding cake.

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Other random observations as additional food for thought and discussion:

• It's helpful to note that the current RFRA bills tend to extend religious protections to businesses. For Christians, we need to really think about whether this accurately reflects reality. A business may have Christians in it, but does that make the company "Christian"? This might be easier to believe with small businesses and those who are self-employed, but what about bigger corporations like Chic-fil-a or Hobby Lobby? Certainly not every employee of these companies is a Christian. While we may want to say the company has a right to religious protections, who is protecting the religious beliefs of individual employees? If Chic-fil-a were to decide it can't cater to gay-rights events or at gay weddings, are non-Christian employees obligated to carry out the same practices, even if it goes against their religious conscience?
• We Christians do a poor job of thinking about the precedents we set. One of the interesting developments in the news has been that the governor of Indiana ended up signing a clause to prevent the RFRA law from interfering with non-discrimination laws, while Arkansas has specifically avoided creating any exemptions for non-discrimination laws. In fact, Arkansas even passed a bill that prevents cities from enacting any non-discrimination ordinances not already in state law (by the way, there are no non-discrimination laws in Arkansas protecting gays or lesbians). However, at the end of the day, the motivation for pushing back against such ordinances is the conviction that homosexuality is a sin (there really is no commercial or legal reason). However, with these and other efforts, are we setting a double standard? Are we saying it's ok to discriminate on the basis of the sin of homosexuality, but not on the sins of lust, greed, adultery, or lying? Do Christian bakers ever feel compelled to refuse to cater weddings that celebrate excess, drunkenness, and wealth? Probably not (they probably get excited about selling twice as much). Once again I wonder if are trying to legislate morality, but are ending up looking like hypocritical fools.