Reclaiming Hope by Michael R. Wear

Author:Michael R. Wear
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Thomas Nelson
Published: 2017-12-22T05:00:00+00:00

RELIGIOUS FREEDOM AND THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION

The controversy was bad for America, and it was bad for religious freedom. This is not just because of the contraception mandate itself but because of what the resulting fight did to the idea of religious freedom in this country: it made religious freedom a partisan idea.

I do not believe that anyone I worked with in the Obama administration, certainly not the president, was motivated by a desire to undermine religious freedom. That was not their aim. Religious freedom is not under attack.

But it is under pressure. Religious freedom is increasingly butting up against other values in stark, personal ways, and religious freedom is often the loser in those collisions. We have a problem of pluralism, of different views and perspectives. What must be declared out-of-bounds is not our diverse perspectives, but the kind of zero-sum politics that disregards collateral damage in pursuit of a win. And the administration failed in this respect.

The Obama administration’s record on domestic religious freedom and inclusion is not all negative. The president has rejected calls to refuse government grants to organizations that organize and hire around religion. The administration defended the National Day of Prayer in federal court and won. The EEOC fought workplace discrimination based on religion. The administration successfully defended in the Supreme Court a Muslim woman’s right to wear religious clothing in her retail job. The president spoke out forcefully on behalf of religious minorities’ rights to be free from discrimination and fully included in American life.

But there were serious missteps as well. The HHS mandate is the most profound, but there were others. The administration advanced an argument in the Supreme Court case Hosanna v. Tabor that completely denied, over objections from some in the White House, a ministerial exemption under the free exercise and establishment clauses. The case involved the question of whether a Lutheran school could make hiring decisions in line with their religious doctrine. The legal argument brought forth by the federal government drew shock during oral arguments not just from the conservative justices but also from Justice Elena Kagan—the president’s own appointee, and his former solicitor general. All nine Supreme Court justices, including the president’s two appointees, decided in favor of the Lutheran school and reaffirmed the legal doctrine of a ministerial exception that is more than forty years old.

There is also a culture of fear and anxiety around the future of religious freedom that the president has mostly chosen to ignore. These concerns are legitimate and spurred by real cases. In New York City, a misguided interpretation of the separation of church and state led to a multiyear controversy in which churches using public school buildings for services on Sunday were under threat of being displaced. On college campuses around the nation Christian student groups have been derecognized because they require their leadership to be Christian. In Houston, pastors had their e-mails and sermons subpoenaed to see if they had advocated against a government policy objective. The Supreme Court decision

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