During a panel discussion about President Obama’s mandate that employers, including religious ministries, provide insurance coverage for contraceptives, one panelist declared, “This is a test between a constitutional right (health care) and religious liberty.”
The panelist is a well-informed personality regularly featured on talk shows, so the comment was not from some ill-informed individual. That is what made the observation so onerous. The speaker claimed a constitutional right for a proposed government policy and placed religious liberty as something beyond the pale of constitutional protection.
That is exactly opposite of what the U.S. Constitution provides. Religious liberty is a core constitutional concept. The Constitution’s framers understood that it was an inalienable right granted by God. It had its genesis at creation when God made man in His image. Man has a dignity unlike any other creation. That dignity requires that no power — secular or sacred — attempt to come between a human being and the Creator.
The writer of the Declaration of Independence declared men were “endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights.” That concept was carried forward in the Constitution in the First Amendment’s first two clauses. In the first (the establishment clause), government is prohibited from doing anything to advance religion. In the second (the free exercise clause), government is prohibited from doing anything to prevent free and uninhibited worship.
Thus, from the beginning, religious liberty has been considered an inalienable right codified in the nation’s laws. It is recognized as a “human right” in today’s terms.
Not so with health care. Free and uninhibited access to health care may be a government policy. It may even be a good government policy, but it is not a constitutional right. Some want to call health care a “human right” and equate it with religious liberty. For example, some public spokesmen appeal to a sense of community and argue that the nation’s shared morality justifies free and uninhibited access to health care as a human right.
But if the nation’s shared morality can justify free and uninhibited access to health care, then that access can be taken away when the nation’s morality changes or the sense of community ceases to exist. Human rights do not have their origin in government. They have their origin in God. He is certainly concerned that His children have access to health care. All God’s children should be concerned. But access to health care is not on the same plane as religious liberty.
In society, no liberty is unlimited, not even religious liberty. When personal liberty begins to impact the general welfare, it is often curtailed. One of the clearest examples is that individuals are free to handle snakes as part of their religious worship. But when snake handling is done in the presence of others, the general welfare is endangered and personal liberty (the right to handle snakes in worship) is restricted.
In 1993, Congress passed and the president signed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. This law stipulates that government must evidence a “compelling interest” whenever it limits a person’s religious freedom. If government can demonstrate a “compelling interest,” then it can limit religious freedom but only in the “least restrictive manner.”
The laws of the United States make clear that religious freedom is an inalienable right that can be limited only under the most pressing circumstances and then only in the most unobtrusive ways.
That is why President Obama’s policy requiring religious ministries such as hospitals, colleges, etc. to pay for insurance coverage that provides free contraceptives elicited such a protest. Catholic bishops said they are being required to pay for something they consider sinful. The Roman Catholic Church’s official position is that contraception is sinful.
Baptists from the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC) to the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty (BJC) cried foul, saying the Obama administration had overstepped its bounds. The policy violates the religious liberty of a large segment of citizens. The proposed government policy makes no attempt to accommodate these citizens’ religious convictions and imposes a system that is invasive to the inner workings of the various faith groups.
At every point, the administration failed to protect the nation’s commitment to religious liberty in its pursuit of free and uninhibited access to health care including free access to contraceptives.
Responding to the cries about religious liberty, President Obama backtracked, saying religious groups would not have to pay for free access to contraceptives. Instead insurance companies would be required to provide the services free of charge. Administration spokesmen said it would be less expensive in the long run for
insurance companies to provide contraceptives free of charge than not to provide them.
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops initially called President Obama’s move “a good first step.” But soon the bishops announced they would oppose the new policy with the same vigor as they had the former using judicial and legislative channels. They concluded that even if religious employers do not have to pay for the contraceptives, it is still bad public policy.
Richard Land of the ERLC called the change an “accounting trick” that ends up with religious employers continuing to pay for the contraceptives. He called on Southern Baptists to continue opposing the proposal on religious freedom grounds. Some said the real issue is “infanticide” because babies are killed by some drugs available as contraceptives.
That is one reason the Catholic bishops labeled the proposal “vile and despicable.”
Absent from the bishops’ news release announcing continued opposition was the claim that religious liberty was being violated by the proposal. The BJC opined that by backtracking on forcing religious employers to pay for contraception, the religious liberty concerns have been satisfied.
The argument over President Obama’s policy of free and uninhibited access to contraceptives is far from over. Legal challenges have been filed. Proposed legislative challenges have been announced. But the framework of the debate has been significantly altered. Protests to the initial policy announcement were heard, and steps were taken to address this clear violation of religious liberty. Whether it is enough remains to be seen.
Baptists must always be on guard against those who would deny or take away religious liberty entirely in pursuit of some government policy based on the moral standards of the day. Religious liberty is a gift from God for all times. It must stand even when social policies change.
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