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Compassionate Service Requires Political Action
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The harsh tone and combativeness of the Religious Right has led many young evangelicals and others to seek a more civil, more welcoming way of engaging society.  Some have taken a sabbatical from politics to focus on service, giving generously of their time and money to support compassionate action:  tending to the sick instead of scheming to gain votes; offering actual alternatives to pregnant young women instead of trying to outlaw abortion.

And yet this is an either-or that just doesn't make sense.  Compassionate service isn't an alternative to political action but requires it.  New York City offers a current example.  Last week the City Council adopted Bill 371, which imposes onerous new requirements on crisis pregnancy centers, including a requirement to announce and display a government-mandated statement listing a range of services that they do not offer.  It's as if grocery stores had to post signs stressing that they won't sell you paint.  A judge in Baltimore recently struck down a similar requirement there as an unconstitutional restriction on free speech.

Will the centers survive this latest attempt to hobble their operations?  Even if they do, there is no doubt Bill 371 will make it harder for them to provide their compassionate service to pregnant women who are desperately searching for help. 

Anthony Bradley has this wise comment:  "Christian withdrawal from politics can inadvertently undermine the justice work of the church by not having a voting presence to maintain religious liberties for Christians to do what they are called to do." 

Sometimes vigorous, even highly oppositional, political action is required to protect the freedom that faith-based organizations need in order to carry out their acts of mercy and compassion.

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Last December the Illinois legislature passed, and in January Governor Pat Quinn signed into law, the deceptively named "Illinois Religious Freedom Protection and Civil Union Act."  When it goes into effect on June 1, there won't be gay marriage in Illinois, but the two members of each of the new civil unions will be regarded in the law as "spouses" just the same as those couples who are actually married.  Grave difficulties will ensue for faith-based organizations that regard "spouse" to be either the man or woman of a married couple. 

Actually, the difficulties have already begun, long before the law even is activated.  As the Chicago Tribune reported on March 2, activists and government officials, prompted by the new law, have been investigating the practices of faith-based foster care agencies, probing whether they treat gay couples the same as mother-father couples. 

A spokesman for the Department of Children and Family Services justified the investigations by saying that adoption of the civil union law proved that "Illinois as a state has grown" on the gay rights issue.  Now that the state's citizens are more enlightened, "Adoption law and practice should reflect the values of the people of Illinois."

But apparently only some values and only some people.  There is an actual constitutional requirement--more than a "value"--called the freedom of religion.  And there are many people in Illinois who, whatever they might think about gay couples, are quite sure that, where possible, children ought to be placed where they can enjoy both a mother and a father, even if the mom and dad are adoptive or foster-care parents.  There is nothing illegal about mother-father parents or about placing children with them.  And Illinois has plenty of agencies happy to work with gay persons and couples who want to be foster parents.

But the activists--and perhaps soon the Illinois officials, too--want to force every foster care agency to act as if same-sex foster parents are no different than opposite-sex foster parents.   And those activists are quite prepared to subordinate the actual constitutional requirement that the government protect religious exercise to the legislatively created rights of gay persons. 

Is it too much to hope that Illinois officials will listen to the constitution and devise a way actually to protect religious freedom while they seek to advance gay rights?

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Government exists to serve the people, many of whom are religious believers, and it is required to respect their exercise of their religion.  For many of those believers, exercise of religion extends to schooling.  Here's one sign:  three-quarters of the 29,000 private k-12 schools in the United States are faith-based schools.  And yet our governments steer almost all of our education tax dollars to secular schools; in the entire USA, school-choice programs that allow the choice of a faith-based school serve only some 180,000 students.

School choice is often debated solely as an escape mechanism for poor children trapped in failing public schools.  Indeed it is an important and necessary escape mechanism for families not wealthy enough to exercise "school choice" the way richer families can:  paying for private education on their own or moving to a better public-school district.

And yet education concerns more than learning the alphabet, facts, and math:  it is bound up with character, conceptions of virtue, worldviews, religious convictions, standards of right and wrong.  Families clearly don't all hold the same views on such vital matters.  So faith ought to be a part of education, not forced to be set apart from it.  And so school choice ought to be comprehensive, enabling parents, whether poor or not, to seek out the best schools for their children--with "best" understood to include an evaluation of a school's philosophical or faith basis.  Government funds ought to follow the children the the schools--whether faith-based or secular--that the parents are convinced are best suited to educate them.

Such matters will be on the agenda on April 1st at an important conference to be held at the Boalt Hall School of Law, University of California at Berkeley, "May Superman Pray?" 

For details, go here. 

Hat tip to Rich Garnett and the Mirror of Justice blog.

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It is a shocking story:  Last week one of Britain's top courts refused to come to the aid of Eunice and Owen Johns, who had been told by employees of Derby City Council that they would likely be unable to get city approval to be short-term (respite) foster parents because their biblically based view that sex outside of marriage is wrong would be regarded as discriminatory and anti-gay.  The Johns have already been foster parents to 15 children, and the city employees conceded that they were committed to the children's well-being.

The judges did not say--as somewhat loosely reported--that Christians can never be foster parents.  A statement from the Christian Institute carefully explains the ruling.  But the Institute's statement gives little comfort to people--Christians or others--who are committed to religious freedom and see an important role for faith-based services.  "As the judges pointed out, Parliament has enacted equality laws containing competing legal rights such as those based on sexual orientation and those based on religious beliefs.  It is very clear that equality laws are leaving Christians at the bottom of the pile."

A blogger for The Telegraph put it sharply:  "Christianity isn't dying, it's being eradicated."

See also:

Brad Greenberg, "AP muffs Britain�€™s foster-care ban," GetReligon.org, March 1.

Christian Legal Centre, "Breaking News:  High Court Judgment suggests Christian beliefs harmful to children," Feb. 28.

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If our governments do not robustly protect religious freedom, then faith-based services can hardly thrive, for they will not be free to follow their own convictions but will be required to bend to secular standards.  But also:  if our governments solve their extreme indebtedness and over-extension by carelessly slashing services to the poor and needy they will harm not only those vulnerable neighbors but also faith-based services, because many faith-based organizations partner with government in service to the needy. 

That's not to say that the government debt crisis ought to be solved without cutting government spending nor to say that government programs are the best or only instruments of social justice.  Far from it.  It is just a reminder that in our complex and interdependent society, we have asked our federal, state, and local governments to play a significant role of caring for the poor, and our governments carry out that role very often by partnering with faith-based organizations.  Cuts to government social spending will hit many faith-based organizations very hard--unless citizens dramatically step up their giving to those organizations so that they can maintain their services to the poor.

Worth reading:

Center for Public Justice and Evangelicals for Social Action, "A Call for Intergenerational Justice:  A Christian Proposal for the American Debt Crisis." 

Catholic News Agency, "Proposed federal budget cuts could have a �€˜drastic�€™ impact on poor."

"Orthodox Union Praises President Obama's Budgetary Vision, But Expresses Concern Over Potential Harm to Charities."

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An excellent recent report from the Jubilee Centre of Cambridge, England, evaluates the current UK coalition government's plans to blaze new life into civil society institutions after decades when government has gotten bigger and bigger.  "The Big Society in Context" by Guy Brandon assesses the government's plans and actions in the light of a biblical (Jewish and Christian) view of government and society.  The report will remind the reader of discussions in the 1990s and 2000s in the United States about government, civil society, and faith-based services.

Here's one important and perceptive note:  a more active and expansive civil society must mean a more active faith-based sector, for that is where the majority of volunteer and other-serving energy and action is.  And yet if a government desires to see civil society to flourish, then it must protect, not continue to encroach upon, the freedom of religious individuals and institutions to follow their faith convictions, even when these are different from the secular consensus:

"Where the state genuinely tries to facilitate the work that churches and other faith groups do in the community, it is fulfilling its role. Where it merely tries to co-opt church resources, or places unacceptable conditions on faith groups in return for its support and thereby compromises their integrity and ultimate purpose, it is overstepping itself."

That's a word of wisdom not only for the UK coalition government, but for our own administration and our own faith-based initiative.

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