It took time, but the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has made a sea change in how it works on religious freedom issues.

Faced with what they see as dangerous trends in the Obama administration, the bishops recently announced the creation of their own Ad Hoc Committee for Religious Liberty. The goal is to address church-state trends that in recent decades have primarily been attacked by Protestant conservatives.

Anyone seeking the source of this development in American religion — including recent blasts at the White House by the archbishops of New York and Los Angeles — needs to study a 2009 Georgetown University speech by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. It received relatively little attention at that time.

“Our human rights agenda for the 21st century is to make human rights a human reality and the first step is to see human rights in a broad context,” she said, speaking on a campus known for its leadership on the Catholic left. “To fulfill their potential, people must be free to choose laws and leaders; to share and access information, to speak, criticize and debate. They must be free to worship, associate and to love in the way that they choose.”

Conservatives cried foul, noting that the secretary of state had raised gay rights — the right for all to “love in the way that they choose” — to the same level as freedoms explicitly articulated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. They also noticed that she mentioned a narrow right “to worship” instead of using more expansive terms such as religious “freedom” or “liberty.”

“Religious freedom, rightly understood, cannot be reduced to freedom of worship,” argued George Weigel, a Catholic conservative best known for his authorized biography of the late Pope John Paul II.

“Religious freedom includes the right to preach and evangelize, to make religiously informed moral arguments in the public square and to conduct the affairs of one’s religious community without undue interference from the state. If religious freedom only involves the freedom to worship, then … there is ‘religious freedom’ in Saudi Arabia, where Bibles and evangelism are forbidden but expatriate Filipino laborers can attend Mass in the U.S. embassy compound in Riyadh.”

Nearly two years later, this list of concerns looms over a blunt letter (.pdf) from New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan to President Barack Obama, one inspired by Obama administration attempts to overturn the national Defense of Marriage Act.

America’s bishops “cannot be silent … when federal steps harmful to marriage, the laws defending it, and religious freedom continue apace,” claimed Dolan, who now leads the USCCB. It is especially unfair, he added, to “equate opposition to redefining marriage with either intentional or willfully ignorant racial discrimination, as your Administration insists on doing.”

Dolan was even more frank in a letter (.pdf) to the U.S. bishops, claiming that the Justice Department is undercutting “our ancient Catholic belief, rooted in the teachings of Jesus and also the Jewish Scriptures.” If this doctrine continues to be “labeled as a form of bigotry,” he argued, this will surely “lead to new challenges to our liberties.”

In addition to clashes on same-sex marriage, Dolan listed other concerns, including Health and Human Services regulations requiring all private health insurance to cover birth control and so-called “morning-after pills.” Critics claim that the religious exception would protect few religious institutions, including colleges, and would leave insurers or individuals with moral objections completely vulnerable. The Justice Department, in recent Supreme Court proceedings, also questioned the need for the “ministerial exception” that allows religious groups to hire, and fire, ministers and staff members without government interference.

According to Los Angeles Archbishop Jose Gomez, “We are slowly losing our sense of religious liberty” in modern America.

“There is much evidence to suggest that our society no longer values the public role of religion or recognizes the importance of religious freedom as a basic right,” he argued, in an essay for the journal First Things. Instead, “our courts and government agencies increasingly treat the right to hold and express religious beliefs as only one of many private lifestyle options. And, they observe, this right is often ‘trumped’ in the face of challenges from competing rights or interests deemed to be more important.”

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It seems that we are going to see more mainstream coverage of those debates about religious liberty, military chaplains and Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” So let’s back up and note a few basic fact, some of which were handled quite well in that CNN.com report that I praised the other day in the post called, “Chaplain questions older than DADT.”

As that title implied, I wanted to note that church-state questions about military chaplains are not new.

The military powers that be have been arguing for a long time about doctrinal and legal issues linked to public prayers, God talk, preaching, evangelism/proselytism and a variety of subjects. Tensions between the traditionalist camp and what the oldline-Universalist-progressive camp are not new. It’s much harder for an evangelical, charismatic of Anglo-Catholic Episcopal priest to lead a wide variety of vague rites that mesh with various other traditions than for a liberal Episcopal priest to do that same. It’s easier for a Reform rabbi to function in a state-funded religious environment than it is for a Southern Baptist, a Missouri-Synod Lutheran or an Eastern Orthodox priest (to name a few examples).

These hot-button issues almost always revolve around public expressions of doctrine, as opposed to silent, private beliefs.

When looking at DADT, however, the current state of things clearly affects the left as well as the right. As mentioned in the GetReligion comments pages, clergy in religious groups that favor DADT repeal have had their hands tied in public ministries to gays and lesbians in the military.

However, the must crucial question is not whether many doctrinal traditionalists will have to leave the military if DADT is repealed. The real question is whether many will leave rather than face punishment for public or even one-on-one expressions of their religious beliefs. Thus, it was important that the CNN.com story included this crucial slice of the Pentagon DADT report:

Despite the fact they would not pull their endorsements for chaplains, “A significant portion of the respondents did suggest that a change in policies resulting in chaplains’ free exercise of religion or free speech rights being curtailed would lead them to withdraw their endorsement,” the report said.

Or, as Metropolitan Jonah of the Orthodox Church in America put it in a letter to the chaplains board:

“If our chaplains were in any way … prohibited from denouncing such behavior as sinful and self-destructive, it would create an impediment to their service in the military. If such an attitude were regarded as ‘prejudice’ or the denunciation of homosexuality as ‘hate language,’ or the like, we would be forced to pull out our chaplains from military service.”

So there is much more to this story than what happens if DADT is repealed. The question is how DADT repeal (or the continuation of the policy) will affect the ministry of military chaplains — liberal and conservative — and the rights of the soldiers that they serve — liberal and conservative.

This brings us to the new story on these issues in the Washington Post, which adds some useful information on the point of view of liberal clergy, such as:

The Rev. Dennis Camp, a retired Army colonel, said it pained him when gay soldiers came to him to complain of the burden they felt from keeping their sexuality a secret. They could not display pictures of their loved ones or talk freely about their personal lives, he recalled. But he could not encourage them to be honest about their orientation, he said.

“They were forced by the situation, the system, to be dishonest, and that took its toll on them. And me,” said Camp, a United Methodist minister who retired in 1996 after 27 years of service. “It was horrible. Right from the beginning I was saying, ‘This is bad. This is wrong. It really has no place in our military community.’ “

Yet in the paragraphs immediately before these lines, the Post framed the debate in the following manner:

The authors of the report noted that only three out of the 145 chaplains who participated in focus groups suggested that they would quit or retire if the law was changed. Many chaplains expressed opposition to repeal, while many others said they would not object, according to the report.

“In the course of our review, we heard some chaplains condemn in the strongest possible terms homosexuality as a sin and an abomination, and inform us that they would refuse to in any way support, comfort, or assist someone they knew to be homosexual,” the report stated. “In equally strong terms, other chaplains, including those who also believe homosexuality is a sin, informed us that ‘we are all sinners,’ and that it is a chaplain’s duty to care for all Service members.”

Once again, repeal is not the ultimate issue for the leaders of traditional religious groups. The issue is hidden in that phrase “care for all Service members.” Does “care” equal acceptance of homosexual activity? For example, I cannot imagine many traditional clergy actually saying that they would “refuse to in any way support, comfort, or assist someone they knew to be homosexual.”

Really? Did the Pentagon offer any direct quotes from chaplains expressing those views, or is that an official bureaucratic interpretation of what women and men said in these interviews? What is the legal content of those words “support,” “comfort” and “assist”?

The Post report does offer the following information from someone who is worried about protecting the rights of clergy who advocate traditional views on sexuality issues.

Many conservatives worry that lifting the policy would muzzle chaplains whose religions require them to preach against homosexuality. The Rev. Douglas E. Lee, a retired Presbyterian Air Force chaplain and brigadier general who now counsels and credentials chaplains, said chaplains generally point out their views on homosexuality before counseling a service member on that issue. He worried that military policies may prohibit even that level of conversation if “don’t ask, don’t tell” is repealed, even though Pentagon officials have not recommended any change to the policy governing chaplains’ behavior.

“There’s a strong possibility that a chaplain wouldn’t be allowed to proclaim what their own faith believes, and not give people the information they need to be a good Christian or a good Muslim or what have you,” he said. “If there’s no protection for the chaplain to be able to speak according to his faith group, that might affect the number of chaplains we recruit or our ability to do our duty for the troops.”

Once again, note the following inserted — but valid — commentary noting that Lee made these comments, “even though Pentagon officials have not recommended any change to the policy governing chaplains’ behavior.”

That’s true, although the Pentagon would find itself involved in court cases challenging those policies. Where are the crucial decisions being made, these days, on these kinds of moral and cultural issues?

Meanwhile, the CNN.com report was much stronger in this regard, since it noted that the current policies that guide the work of military chaplains already contain the very tensions about the public and one-on-one expressions of doctrine that are now being linked to the DADT debate. Again, here is that section of the CNN.com story:

“Existing regulations state that chaplains ‘will not be required to perform a religious role … in worship services, command ceremonies, or other events, if doing so would be in variance with the tenets or practices of their faith.’ At the same time, regulations state that ‘Chaplains care for all Service members, including those who claim no religious faith, facilitate the religious requirements of personnel of all faiths, provide faith-specific ministries, and advise the command.’ “

Once again, someone will need to define the word “care.”

In other words, these doctrinal tensions are not new. The DADT debates are merely the latest chapter in a larger church-state story, once in which voices on the left and right must be reported accurately.

The dispassionate telephone voice is going to ask about abortion and then about same-sex marriage. Finally, the pollster will want to know how crucial these wedge issues will be on election day. And is there any chance they might change their presidential options?

“There is this internal debate going on. … Evangelicals are reluctant to say that they’re focused on these two issues, even though all of the evidence shows that they still are,” said David Kinnaman, president of the Barna Group in Ventura, Calif., which is known for its defining niches inside American Christianity.

“The key is that a rising number of evangelicals are adamant that they are not going to overlook social justice issues. They want to find a way to combine their concern about abortion and family issues with other moral and social issues that really matter to them. The question is whether that’s possible in American politics, right now.”

It’s easy to see this dilemma in between the lines of recent surveys.

In a 2007 poll, the Barna researchers found that nine out of 10 evangelicals said abortion is a major problem, which meant that this issue was “still far and away” their most pressing concern, said Kinnaman. Meanwhile, nearly eight in 10 evangelicals said they were very concerned about issues linked to gay rights.

However, evangelicals who participated a new Barna survey split down the middle when asked if they thought their peers would focus primarily on the big two social issues when voting. On one side, 48 percent said it was true that evangelical votes would be driven by abortion and sexuality, while 45 percent disagreed. Meanwhile, 55 percent of non-evangelical Christians and 58 percent of non-Christians were convinced that these hot social issues would drive the votes of evangelical voters.

What about all of those news reports that some evangelicals — symbolized by the Rev. Rick Warren of Saddleback Community Church and a host of other label-shunning younger leaders — are trying to pursue a broader social agenda?

Kinnaman noted that only 28 percent of evangelical participants in the new survey thought that members of their tribe would give other social issues, like poverty and the environment, short shrift. In a sign that this wider-agenda debate has legs, 69 percent of evangelicals polled disagreed with that statement.

Outside the evangelical camp, 46 percent on non-evangelical Christians and 54 percent of non-Christians thought that evangelical voters would “minimize social justice issues.” These same two groups were convinced — by 57 percent and 59 percent — that evangelical voters will continue to push American life to the political right.

Meanwhile, some Americans are getting confused and even angry about all of this, even though they admit that they know little or nothing about evangelicalism.

According to surveys by Ellison Research of Phoenix, 36 percent of Americans polled indicate that they have no idea “what an evangelical Christian is” in the first place. Only 35 percent of all Americans believe they know “someone very well who is an evangelical,” while a stunning 51 percent are convinced they don’t know any evangelicals at all. On the left side of the aisle, some critics have grown hostile.

One of the surprises of a new Ellison study is “how much abuse is aimed at evangelicals,” noted company president Ron Sellers. “Evangelicals were called illiterate, greedy, psychos, racist, stupid, narrow-minded, bigots, idiots, fanatics, nut cases, screaming loons, delusional, simpletons, pompous, morons, cruel, nitwits, and freaks, and that’s just a partial list. …

“Some people don’t have any idea what evangelicals actually are or what they believe — they just know they can’t stand evangelicals.”

For political activists, the reason all of this matters is easy to see. In the new Barna survey, 59 percent of American adults are convinced that the decisions made by evangelical voters will have a significant impact on the upcoming election.

“Many Americans are convinced that evangelicals are some kind of a political bloc,” said Kinnaman. “If you look at things that way, then this really is all about politics instead of religious beliefs and doctrines. … Some people think evangelicals are part of a political movement that is held together with religious rhetoric and that’s that.”

The simple blue letters declare, “My daddy’s name is Donor.” You can buy a baby bib with the same proclamation.

For a self-proclaimed “marriage nut” like David Blankenhorn, it’s hard to see this consumer product as a positive statement about modern family life.

Of course, America has been evolving for several decades after the cultural revolutions that changed how millions of people live together, break up, get married, get divorced, have children or some combination of all the above.

Thus, the president of the Institute for American Values keeps hearing this big question: “What is the future of marriage?” It’s a logical question, since his most recent book is called “The Future of Marriage.” There is no easy answer, however, other than stating the fact that elite opinion makers and academics are convinced that old-fashioned, especially religious, traditions about marriage are fading.

“The smart money says, ‘Down the tubes,’ ” said Blankenhorn, speaking recently at Gordon College, an evangelical Protestant campus near Boston. “The big word is ‘deinstitutionalization.’ … It’s this notion of redefining marriage into just being a kind of Hallmark greeting card that says, ‘We’re in love, we have a commitment, oh special us.’ That’s what marriage is.”

This trend can be seen in current definitions of “marriage” — legal and otherwise. During his two years of research on the question, he ran into several breezy answers to the question, “What is marriage?”

For some people, it is a “unique expression of a private bond and profound love,” while others prefer a ”private arrangement between parties committed to love.” If that doesn’t work, try a ”specific relationship of love and dedication to another person” or even ”committed, interdependent partnerships between consenting adults.”

The highest court in Massachusetts, in its majority opinion in 2003 backing gay marriage, strategically called marriage the “exclusive commitment of two individuals to each other” offering “love and mutual support.”

This last variation on the theme is crucial, because debates about the future of marriage are now — like it or not — part of our culture’s bitter conflicts about the legal rights of gays, lesbians and bisexuals. Meanwhile, divorce rates remain high and millions of children are being raised in single-parent homes.

Blankenhorn consistently identifies himself as a Christian and as a political liberal who supports what he calls the “equal dignity of homosexual love” and of gay relationships. In an interview with the conservative magazine World, he bluntly said: “I know that many Christians believe that any sex other than sex between married spouses is wrong. I respect that view, but I do not share it.”

However, Blankenhorn also argues that all attempts to define marriage as a vague, private, self-defined relationship will inevitably weaken an institution that — across a wide range of cultures and faiths — has emphasized the importance of children being raised by their natural fathers and mothers. Thus, he stressed, marriage has always had a civic and even legal dimension.

Contemporary definitions of “marriage” also strive to avoid two crucial words.

The first, Blankenhorn noted, is “S-E-X. Heat. Lust. Passion. Bodies entangled. Sex, behind closed doors in the bedroom. You know, because in the whole history of the world everybody — up until about three minutes ago — has always acknowledged that marriage is the social recognition of a sexual relationship that involves sex.”

The second missing word is “children.” Anyone who studies history and anthropology, he said, would quickly conclude that discussing marriage without mentioning children would be like having a “long discussion about General Motors and nobody mentioning cars.”

But today, individual adults are convinced that marriage is all about them and that this means that they should be able to make their own rules. Thus, the key question is whether Americans believe that the individual couple is bigger than the institution of marriage or that “the marriage is bigger than the couple,” said Blankenhorn.

“We have completely forgotten this idea that maybe there is something transcendent, maybe there is something bigger than us that shapes us,” he said. “Maybe the vow shapes us. Maybe we don’t simply come up with the vow ourselves and say, ‘Here’s our marriage — wonderful sexy us.’ No, there is something bigger than us that tells us what to be and that big something else is marriage.”

Last week’s 47th convention of the Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of North America passed a resolution that addressed both sexuality and the Iraqi war. But this time the lofty words led to an historic change.

The assembly voted to oppose “divisive and dangerous” positions taken by “left-wing” and “right-wing” groups. To be specific, it rejected “support for same-sex marriage, support for abortion, support for ordination of women to Holy Orders, support for the concept of war that is ‘pre-emptive’ or ‘justifiable’ and the labeling of other faiths and their leaders with hateful terminology.”

The archdiocese — a blend of Arab-Americans and many converts — vowed to avoid groups that “promulgate these extreme positions” and renewed its commitment to seek Orthodox unity in North America.

Then the delegates cheered as Metropolitan Philip Saliba announced his decision to withdraw from the National Council of Churches USA.

The archdiocese joined the old Federated Council of Churches in the 1940s and had been active in the ecumenical movement ever since, said Father Olof Scott, of the church’s interfaith relations office. But recent decades have been tough.

The Orthodox believe “we’re getting further and further away from the primary goal of looking to bring Christianity back into a unified fold,” he told AncientFaithRadio.com. Now, the “churches of the mainline Protestant world really don’t want to hear our message. It is with that frustration that we felt that we can put our efforts to better use elsewhere.”

The national council has not responded to the departure of one of its 36 churches, said the Rev. Leslie Thune, its spokesperson in Washington. General Secretary Bob Edgar — a former Democratic congressman — is currently out of the office, but has promised to meet with Metropolitan Philip as soon as possible to discuss his concerns.

“We did not even know that this was in the works,” said Thune.

However, she noted the council’s oft-repeated stance that it does not take stands on divisive doctrinal issues, since many of its member churches have clashing beliefs on such matters.

Nevertheless, Scott said the Antiochian archdiocese quit the council, in large part, because of what he called an “almost a politicized agenda” under Edgar — with a strong emphasis on sexual liberation and opposition to conservative Christianity.

A turning point came in 2000 when Edgar removed his signature from “A Christian Declaration on Marriage,” a statement signed by representatives of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, the Southern Baptist Convention and the National Association of Evangelicals. The text defined marriage as between man and a woman.

After speaking at the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Breakfast during an NCC general assembly, Edgar issued an apology and affirmed his support for same-sex unions. He told Presbyterian News Service: “I support marriage, and I support more than marriage the love between two people, and I don’t differentiate whether it is between a man and a woman or a woman and a woman or a man and a man or whatever. We need fidelity and care in relationships.”

There have been many signs of tension. Two years ago, the Russian Orthodox Church cut all ties with the U.S. Episcopal Church following the consecration of the openly gay Bishop Gene Robinson of New Hampshire. Russian Patriarch Alexy II recently said he was worried about the leadership role that churches offering a “free interpretation” of sexual morality hold in the World Council of Churches.

Last month, the Orthodox Church in America — which has Russian roots — studied a document that said the “most advisable course” for its ecumenical work “would be eventually to withdraw from the NCC and the WCC.” After all, said this “Orthodox Relations” text, there are more Protestant and Pentecostal Christians outside of these councils than there are inside and neither includes the Roman Catholic Church.

The Antiochian archdiocese agrees. Decades ago, said Scott, Orthodoxy needed a seat in the National Council of Churches in order to “put a face” on its often mysterious rites and parishes. But now the momentum is toward work with more conservative believers.

“We don’t need the NCC,” he said, “for the identity of Orthodoxy in the new world. People know who we are. We are strong. We are vibrant. We are growing.”

Take, for example, the historic 1981 Playboy controversy. It proved that few journalists can resist a chance to use phrases such as “seminude Baylor coeds pose for Playboy.”

Right now, all kinds of people — from the New York Times editorial board to Baptist Press — are hyperventilating about a Baylor student newspaper editorial backing same-sex marriage.

By a 5-2 vote, the Lariat editors concluded: “Just as it isn’t fair to discriminate against someone for their skin color, heritage or religious beliefs, it isn’t fair to discriminate against someone for their sexual orientation. Shouldn’t gay couples be allowed to enjoy the benefits and happiness of marriage, too?”

I know how these Baylor dramas tend to play out, because in the mid-1970s there was another blowup in which students tried to write some dangerously candid news reports. In that case, I was one of the journalism students who got caught in the crossfire.

It’s interesting to note that some of the administrators who crushed us back then are often hailed in the media these days as enlightened, progressive voices at Baylor. Meanwhile, the current Baylor administration expressed outrage at the editorial, but did not sack anyone. Times change.

This latest controversy about Baptists, sex and journalism comes in the midst of national headlines focusing on scandals in the Baylor basketball program and bitter divisions in the faculty over what is and what is not “Christian education.”

There’s valid news in all of this. But I also think there are lessons to be learned about the tensions between journalists and religious leaders.

So let’s pause and consider a different scenario for this new Baylor brouhaha.

Let’s say that the students did not settle for writing an editorial about one of the most divisive issues in American culture. This quick-strike strategy was almost certainly a trial balloon seeking headlines in Texas and national newspapers.

Let’s say that, instead of writing that easy editorial, the editors assigned their best reporters to write two news stories.

Like any religious institution in the era after James Davison Hunter’s book “Culture Wars,” Baylor has its own “camp of the progressives” (truth is personal and experiential) and a competing “camp of the orthodox” (truth is eternal and absolute). This is what the ongoing Baylor academic warfare is all about — clashing views of what truth is and how one finds it.

That’s a good news story, if journalists take the time to report it.

So let’s say that the Lariat devotes one 1,200-word story to the views of Baylor “progressives,” who explain why they think changing U.S. laws to favor same-sex marriage is a good thing. They also explain how this change might affect public education, free speech, freedom of assembly and religious liberty. They say what they have to say — on the record.

Then the newspaper devotes another 1,200-word story to the views of the “orthodox,” those who believe that America should not embrace a fundamental redefinition of marriage. They address all the same questions — on the record.

After these stories run, the editors might want to write an editorial. On an issue this hot, it would certainly help to hear dissenting voices as well.

I think this is a more journalistic approach. After all, what’s the purpose of having student journalists write editorials that cause news, before they have gone through the process of writing stories that report the news?

I also think this approach would create a different kind of controversy, a more constructive kind. Instead of fostering academic guerrilla warfare and media stereotypes, this would put more information on the record.

It might even lead to informed debate. And note that this approach would require leaders on both sides to put their views out in the open for the world to see — including regents, donors, parents and potential students.

This candor would be a good thing, at Baylor and in lots of other religious camps.

So here is my final question, as a battle-scarred veteran of the journalism wars at Baylor and in other religious sanctuaries. Which side would oppose this open, on-the-record, journalistic scenario? The progressives or the orthodox?