eNews for FBOs--November 4

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Legislators and courts increasingly are demanding that faith-based organizations give up their mission of serving the public if they want to preserve their religious identity and faith-based standards.

Here's how it works: a law or ruling is made requiring all organizations to conform to some secular standard, such as a requirement that contraceptive or abortion services must be offered as part of a health insurance package. Then, in deference to the First Amendment, a religious exemption is provided so that religious organizations can maintain contrary practices. However, the exemption is very narrowly defined. To be counted as a religious organization that is exempt from the general requirement, the government requires organizations to employ people of the same faith, be devoted to religious activities or to propagating or teaching the faith, and to serve only people of the same faith.

The employment requirement makes some sense, although it doesn't fit those faith-based organizations that have a carefully considered and faith-grounded policy of hiring beyond their own faith. The requirement of a primarily religious mission is unfortunate: Why should a Bible college or a seminary be exempt but not a faith-based liberal arts college? Why should a Gospel rescue mission be exempt (because of chapel services) but not a homeless shelter operated by a synagogue and intended to show God's care but that does not have obligatory religious rituals?

Most troublesome of all is the requirement to discriminate in providing services. It is a perverse requirement: to be exempt-and thus to be able to maintain practices required by the faith but out of line with contemporary secular values--the organization is required to serve only or mainly those of the same faith. But such limited service violates the mission of most faith-based service organizations and the requirements of most religions.

A faith-based shelter is there for everyone needing shelter. The faith-based drug treatment program intends to serve anyone who wants to come, not simply those who belong to the same denomination. Faith communities, and not only the public and government, would rightly be outraged if after a natural disaster the staff of a Baptist agency walked right past Catholic or Jewish victims or required conversion before assisting a Muslim--or a Presbyterian.

Yet that's the outrageous demand of these unjust exemptions: to be exempt from a requirement that conflicts with the organization's religion, the organization must violate the religious requirement to serve everyone in need, without regard to their religion.

It seems that the authors of such skewed exemptions want to extend religious freedom protections only to churches (which are defined by religion and serve predominantly--though often not exclusively-people of the same faith) and not to parachurch (faith-based) service organizations. Thanks to the First Amendment, the officials can't avoid protecting churches and religious ministry narrowly defined--yet, intent on spreading out secular standards as far as possible throughout society, they desire to exclude from the exemption religious organizations that serve the public.

Such exemptions suppress rather than respect religious freedom. As the Catholic Archdiocese of Washington, DC, said about the narrow exemption in the proposed DC same-sex marriage bill, this kind of inadequate proposal puts religious organizations in the untenable position of either violating the law and serving the public while insisting on their freedom to be different, or violating their religion by ceasing to serve all who need help.

Additional reading: Brief of the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada in the Christian Horizons case.