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Several observers, including Thomas Farr, former State Department official and author of World of Faith and Freedom (2008), and now also the official U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, in its just released 2010 annual report, have sounded the alarm.  A number of top US leaders, including President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, have started substituting the term "freedom of worship" for the traditional concept "freedom of religion" in speeches on international affairs.

Why be concerned about a slight change of terminology?  Freedom of religion is the robust concept.  It includes the freedom not only to worship but also the right to use religious language and arguments in public life and the freedom to put faith into practice outside the walls of the church.  International human rights standards speak of the freedom not only to worship, evangelize, and convert, but also the freedom to manifest religion through charitable institutions, schools, and publications.  

Freedom of religion protects the practices of parachurch ministries; freedom of worship is largely a church matter.  The change in terminology so far seems limited to international contexts.  But that's no reason for domestic ministries not to be concerned about changing official views of religious freedom, for one of the disturbing trends in US public policy and law these days is increasingly to subject parachurch organizations to secular standards, even if churches and ministers continue to be protected by the First Amendment.

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The executives and boards of parachurch ministries have twin mission responsibilities: delivering effective services (the cup of cold water) consistent with faith commitments (in Jesus' name).  So what to do when the government says that a condition of being approved to provide the service is to violate the faith-shaped standards of service?  

Parachurch ministries are increasingly being confronted with this either/or dilemma:  Stay true to your faith mission--and be branded a discriminatory organization by the government and lose the license needed to provide the service.  Or conform to the licensing requirements and be able to provide the service--but no longer in a way consistent with faith standards.  This is the stark dilemma that faced Catholic Charities Boston when the state of Massachusetts enforced its ban on sexual-orientation discrimination on all adoption agencies.  The Catholic parachurch organization decided to stick with its faith-based conviction that adoptees will do best when placed with a father-mother married couple and so had to cease its adoption services.

Catholic adoption agencies in Britain over the past few years have been confronted with the same dilemma after the government adopted new "Equality" rules forbidding sexual-orientation discrimination.  Some of the dozen or so Catholic adoption agencies opted to drop the faith-based standards, cutting their tie with the church and taking on a secular approach.  Others gave up adoptions to preserve their faith integrity.  Several decided that the dilemma itself was unacceptable.  Three of them appealed to the Charity Commission, the regulators, for an exemption from the rules and were told that Caesar would make no accommodation to their faith standards.

One of those agencies, Catholic Care, then took the government to court, challenging the unjust dilemma. And it has won the first round: the judge told the Charity Commission that it must take another look at whether the agency should be exempted from the requirement of placing children without regard to the sexual orientation of the adoptive home.  (Catholic Care is not fighting to keep other agencies from performing gay adoptions, just asking for the freedom to stick to its own standards.)

Catholic Care, too, eventually may end up forced either to drop its faith-based standards or to drop its adoption services.  Yet its challenge to the unjust dilemma is vitally important.  Consider the consequences if every faith-based organization opted to exit a field of service when confronted with the demand to conform to an alien standard.  Such action preserves the religious integrity of the agencies, but at the expense of removing every faith-based alternative in that arena of neighbor care--in adoption services, child care, addiction treatment, and the like.  Faith will be pushed out of these areas of public life, into the margins of society, into the confines of the church.  That's to the detriment of the Gospel, to the harm of those who need help, to the loss of professionals who want to serve in a way that pleases God.  

Executives and boards rightly would prefer to avoid spending their energy and money in legal battles.  They want to serve--both the needy and God.  But to be able to continue to serve both, surely it will be necessary for some, or many, faith-based agencies to challenge the unjust dilemmas that government sometimes creates, instead of acting only to preserve their own institutional integrity.

Of course, the moment of truth may come for any faith-based agency for which faith is a live and important commitment--not only for Catholics or for adoption services.  That's all the more reason for leaders and boards to start now to think of their defenses, what the limits of their accommodation should be, and whether they should choose to challenge and not retreat.

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There have been multiple signs for many months that the American public is becoming disillusioned with our governments and our elected officials.  A mid-April Pew Research Center report entitled "Distrust, Discontent, Anger and Partisan Rancor" gives the numbers from their public opinion surveys.  Only 22% say they trust the federal government "almost always or most of the time."  Distrust in Congress and the President is very high.  Many federal agencies get high negatives.  Government is too big, is inefficient, and has the wrong priorities.  State and local agencies aren't universally loved, either.

What's going on?  Interviewed on NPR, Philip Zelikow, a history professor who co-authored a book on American mistrust of government, said that today's federal government gets so little respect because our expectations "have gotten a whole lot larger.  Government has invaded economic management and the management of social relations to unprecedented degrees.  And so, expectations of what government is supposed to do are way higher.  And meanwhile, attitudes towards performance are pretty low, especially during a period of economic downturn like this."  He also pointed to alienation due to distant and opaque government decision-making.

Sure.  Maybe all of those are important causes.  But there's good reason to stress what Zelikow calls the "unprecedented" extent of the government's invasion of "the management of social relations."  Americans are of several minds about fundamental moral, religious, and social issues (although a large proportion of the public seems more inclined to favor the past Judeo-Christian consensus than to desire its radical overturn). Yet our governments are legislating and regulating more extensively about such matters without providing adequate accommodation of contrary standpoints.  Marriage redefinition without robust protection for organizations and individuals committed to classic marriage is one example.  The government's vast new role in health care, without a rock solid maintenance of the status quo of no federal funding of elective abortion, is another very troubling example.  

Enforced equality is overbalancing self-determination in civil society.  That's bound to make many people--certainly many people of faith--very uneasy.  

See also:

Walter Russell Mead, "Go Home, Mae West," The American Interest Online, April 21. 

Michael Knox Beran, "The Descent of Liberalism," National Review Online, April 12.

Progress Report on Government Engagement with Faith-Based and Secular Grassroots Groups
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Pam Winston of Mathematica Policy Research recently summarized what MPR has learned the past few years about government partnerships with grassroots organizations.  In MPR's March Issue Brief she sketches the principles and policies of the federal and state efforts to more effectively engage groups closest to needy persons, families, and communities.  There have been creative reforms, but much remains to be done to enable (big-scale and bureaucratic) government agencies effectively to work with (small-scale and less formal) grassroots organizations, especially those that are faith-based.

Why bother?  The brief summarizes it this way:  these partners "bring important assets."  They may better connect with underserved communities because of their "credibility."  They are more likely to tailor their services to diverse situations rather than insist on uniformity.  They "leverage community resources, such as volunteers and in-kind and monetary donations."  They foster social networks and increase social capital in communities.  They are flexible and have a strong sense of mission.  

Of course, if the organizations are to maintain these strengths as they partner with the government, it is essential that the government respect the distinctive religious and sociological characteristics of these grassroots groups.  That's why the faith-based initiative represents not only a determined government effort to reach out to such groups but also a determined effort to reform government so that its "embrace" is supportive rather than suffocating.  (Thanks to Charles Glenn for that word picture.  Glenn, The Ambiguous Embrace:  Government and Faith-Based Schools and Social Agencies, Princeton University Press, 2000).

Podcast on the Challenging Environment for Faith-Based Organizations
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In early February, your editor was interviewed by Alan Reinach of Freedom's Ring Radio.  The weekly show is nationally syndicated and produced by the Church State Council in partnership with the North American Religious Liberty Association.  Host Alan Reinach is executive director of the Council, which is the religious freedom arm of the Seventh-Day Adventists in the far western US.  To listen to the fifteen-minute audio interview, go here and click on "Challenges to Faith-Based Organizations."