The New Right's Religious Freedom

State and local governments do yeoman work to diversify the economy and bring jobs to Wyoming. Then the legislature comes to town.

It never fails. They can’t help themselves. Every year at least one says something that finds its way into the national media, making us look to the world as a bunch of intolerant, backwater bigots. This year it’s “The Religious Freedom Restoration Act.”

The Orwellian title is designed to make us think that someone has taken someone else’s religious rights when the bill is designed to take the civil rights of minorities.

It’s gone viral on the Internet. Addictinginfo.org reported, “Restaurant owners could refuse to serve gay people, African-Americans, or non-Christians and they can get away with it by simply claiming that their “religious liberty” gives them the right to do so. A doctor could refuse to perform an abortion procedure to save a woman’s life. A pharmacist could refuse to sell contraception to women. Employers could fire and refuse to hire gay people. Simply put, public and private citizens can basically discriminate against gay people and anyone else they consider inferior at will. And they can do this just by playing the religious liberty card.”

What employer will eagerly associate their corporate brand or send employees to a place where they’ll be vulnerable to lawmakers who don’t value them as human beings?

Sponsor Nathan Winters, a pastor with a rather odd sense of the Gospel, can’t articulate the problem his bill “solves” except for saving ministers from being compelled to officiate at a same-sex wedding. That’s what the lofty ideal “religious freedom,” has come to mean.

The law isn’t necessary. No one can force pastors to officiate at gay marriages any more than someone can force them to love their neighbor, feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit the captives, or give drink to the thirsty. Pastors choosing not to minister to people are protected under existing law.

Rev-Rep. Winter’s bill defines “exercise of religion” as “the practice or observance of religion, including an act or refusal to act, that is substantially motivated by a sincerely held religious belief, whether or not compelled by or central to a system of religious belief.”

A science teacher who believes the earth is only 6000 years old has a “sincerely held” religious belief. If this bill passes, so will students who don’t learn science.

Worse, “sincerely held” belief doesn’t have to be “central to a system of religious belief.” The bill has homosexuals in its crosshairs. The sponsors fantasize county clerks will be able to refuse issuing gay-marriage licenses.

If legislators think this is their ingenious way to short-circuit federal court interpretations of the Constitution’s equal protection clause, they should remember how that worked for their Southern counterparts in the 60s. They too thought state law could trump progress toward equal rights guaranteed by the Constitution. Like Rev-Rep. Winters, they misled themselves and their constituents.

There’s more to this than protecting bakers who won’t make wedding cakes for gay couples. Think about it. To avoid government rules, one need have only a “sincerely-held religious belief” and that “belief need no be connected to any “central system of religious belief.”

If I claim a “sincere” belief outside of a “central system of religious belief” that the use of LSD, meth, peyote, or other hallucinogenic drugs opens my mind to the presence of the deity, the bill gives me a “Get-out-of-jail-free” card.

Doctors whose beliefs about infidels are out of the religious mainstream, may refuse to treat people of other faiths in the ER? Before you say, “There are professional rules against that” you should know the bill nullifies those rules.

What about an hotelier who adheres to a bigoted, but sincerely held “religious” view who denies rooms to interracial couples, Jews, or fill-in-the-blank? Law enforcement officers or judges with “sincerely held” off beat religious beliefs may impose Sharia Law.

This bill is as dangerous as it is unnecessary. It’s also another cause for embarrassment around the country.

Are respectful conversations possible?

My New Year’s resolution is to endeavor to understand the views of conservative, evangelical Christians. When I heard that WyWatch, a conservative political action organization, was holding a conference, I decided to attend. The agenda provided an opportunity to learn how they understand the world and why they perceive liberal theologians as threats to their beliefs.

Alas, it was not to be. I was 44 minutes late emailing my registration and they rejected my request. “Mr. McDaniel…your email request was received after the indicated registration deadline.” The conference went on without me. An opportunity to understand one another was missed.

Honestly I don’t blame WyWatch for denying my registration. I wouldn’t have trusted me either. I haven’t always spoken respectfully of my evangelical colleagues. Additionally, I am vice-chair of the Wyoming Association of Churches (WAC), an organization to which WyWatch referred in its conference invitation as a “fringe minority” guilty of misrepresenting and undermining “your biblical views.”

Therein lies the problem. As Abraham told the rich man, “between us and you a great chasm has been fixed, in order that those who would pass from here to you may not be able, and none may cross from there to us.”

Our dialogue has been disrespectful for so long that distrust has become the way in which we relate. The conference banquet speaker, Kenyn Cureton, Vice President, Church Ministries, of the Family Research Council, titled his speech, “Losing your Right to Preach the Gospel: Impossible? Unavoidable? What's At Stake for Pastors?”

As a liberal theologian, I’d have learned what it is that evangelicals believe is “at stake.” The public wasn’t allowed to attend his speech, but did get a sense of what conservatives feel the following day when they gathered at the state capitol to protest abortion laws.

Two legislators spoke at their rally. Allen Jaggi (R-Uinta) said many lawmakers forget Biblical teachings. 
“Some of the people that I work with in the Legislature are pretty smart people. But the trouble is that they don’t listen to God.”

 Legislator, Rev. Nathan Winters (R-Thermopolis) said the country and state “must return to God.”


I don’t completely agree. People of good faith who “listen to God” can and often do reach different, though honest conclusions about God’s word. Nonetheless, Jaggi and Winter’s expressed their views respectfully and I respect the sincerity with which they hold them.

Then there was Frank Eathorne, chairman of WyWatch Family Action. He spoke after the legislators, attacking other religions for promoting “anti-biblical views.”

The WyWatch leader claimed, “Atheism is growing at a record pace and Satanism, Hinduism and Islam, they all persist.” Lumping Muslims and Hindus together with Satanists and Atheists is gratuitously incendiary.

That’s an example of when sincerely held beliefs are nevertheless disrespectful.

Those with whom Jesus disagreed might not have considered his responses to them as “respectful” conversations. He once called them “a brood of vipers.” (Matthew 12:34) But in the same breath, Jesus then warned that on judgment day we’ll “render account for every careless word they utter; for by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned."

Being certain about that which is uncertain breeds disrespect. Last month Dr. Jim Ryan, head of the Colorado Council of Churches, spoke at a WAC event called “Respectful Conversations.” Ryan raised the most divisive issue, abortion. Most, not all, in attendance were probably pro-choice.

He asked how we’d react to a hypothetical Supreme Court decision giving parents the right to kill a child for any reason prior to the child’s first birthday. Ryan asked the pro-choice believers in the audience to understand that is how right-to-life believers react to Roe v. Wade as we’d react to his hypothetical.

Ryan’s point is that each of us has a fundamental basis for our views and that a respectful dialogue can take place only if we start by questioning our own opinions even as we acknowledge the sincerity with which others hold theirs.

The question is “who will go first?”