religious liberty

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Lingering Supreme Court mystery: Justice Anthony Kennedy and religious liberty

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Lingering Supreme Court mystery: Justice Anthony Kennedy and religious liberty

Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy retired in 2018, but religious-liberty activists still want to know where he hoped to draw a bright line between religious freedom and the Sexual Revolution.

Kennedy knew that the First Amendment's declaration that government "shall make no law ... prohibiting the free exercise of religion" was creating warfare in modern American law and politics. But he didn't know how to end the strife.

In his majority opinion in the court's 5-4 Obergefell v. Hodges decision legalizing same-sex marriage, Kennedy stressed that many Americans opposed this change because of "decent and honorable religious or philosophical premises," and he denied that "their beliefs are disparaged" in the ruling.

"It must be emphasized that religions, and those who adhere to religious doctrines, may continue to advocate with utmost, sincere conviction that, by divine precepts, same-sex marriage should not be condoned," he wrote, in 2015. "The First Amendment ensures that religious organizations and persons are given proper protection as they seek to teach the principles that are so fulfilling and so central to their lives and faiths."

Since then, the Supreme Court has issued important rulings clarifying the rights of churches, denominations and ministries with clearly stated doctrines on sex, gender and marriage, noted Stanley Carlson-Thies, who recently retired as head of the Institutional Religious Freedom Alliance, which he founded in 2008 as part of the nonpartisan Center for Public Justice. He also assisted the George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations with issues linking faith and public life.

"The court knows that the freedom of religious expression is more than worship, alone," said Carlson-Thies, reached by telephone. "But where will the court draw the line, especially with religious individuals who own businesses that deal with the general public? …

"That's the mystery. Everyone knows the court needs to do something. These issues are not going away. … But it isn't clear the everyone thinks the Supreme Court should have the last word on everything. You hear that argued on the left and the right -- depending on who controls the White House."

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The church bombing in ancient Damascus: This was more than a political drama

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The church bombing in ancient Damascus: This was more than a political drama

The faithful gathered for a more than symbolic rite at St. Elias Orthodox Church in Damascus -- the Feast of all Antiochian Saints.

During this June 22 service, a jihadist -- Syria blamed the Islamic State -- entered with a rifle and began firing. As worshippers tackled him, he detonated an explosive vest. In seconds the Orthodox Patriarchate of Antioch had more names to add to its two millennia of saints and martyrs.

"Among the spirits of the righteous perfected in faith, give rest, O Savior, to the souls of Your servants, keeping them in the blessed life which is from You, O loving One," Orthodox believers prayed this past Sunday, in global memorial prayers for the new martyrs of Syria.

"In Your place of rest, O Lord, where all Your Saints repose, give rest also to the souls of Your servants, for You alone are immortal." Bishops circulated names to be read aloud: "Nabil, Emile, Souliman, Simon, Abdullah, Amal, Milad, Razzouk, Farid, Peter, Georgios, Mariam, Susan, Julia, Metanios, Maen, Laurance, Anjie. …"

In a funeral for many of the martyrs, Antiochian Patriarch John X preached about the past, the present and the life to come.

"You, beloved martyrs, have left us and were translated to heaven, to eternal life, in the presence of the Lord Who rose from the dead," he said, in an online translation from Arabic. "You were martyred and entered into eternal life … joining the company of all righteous and holy Antiochian Saints, and all the saints. Today, we turn to you. We ask you to pray for us, now that you rest in the Lord's embrace."

It's hard to shock believers in sanctuaries surrounded by centuries of war, conquest and terror. Young people saw three of the faithful attempt to push the attacker away from the flock inside St. Elias.

"Grace, Peter and Milad. I know them personally," said Patriarch John. "These are our people and our heroes. … They would have done the same and protected the people around them even if they were in the mosque."

The political context was significant and, thus, dominated mainstream news reports. BBC noted: "It was the first such attack in Damascus since Islamist-led rebel forces overthrew Bashar al-Assad in December, ending 13 years of devastating civil war."

But, for Christians around the world, this attack also took place in an ancient, truly biblical context.

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Is this a news story? Yet another threat to the ancient churches of Syria

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Is this a news story? Yet another threat to the ancient churches of Syria

In the Triumph of Orthodoxy service on the first Sunday of Great Lent, the clergy and faithful proclaim -- with many shouting -- bold statements of faith from the year 787, after decades of persecution.

"This is the Faith of the Apostles! This is the Faith of the Fathers! This is the Faith of the Orthodox! This is the Faith, which has established the Universe!"

These words were especially poignant during the March 9 rites at the Mariamite Cathedral of Damascus, amid reports that hundreds, maybe thousands, of Christians and members of the Muslim Alawite sect have been killed by Islamist militias in Syria.

The Antiochian Orthodox Patriarch John X addressed part of his sermon, by name, to the nation's interim president Ahmad al-Sharaa, the former ISIS and al-Qaeda militant who is also known as Abu Mohammad al-Julani.

"Mr. President, two days ago, I heard a sheikh, a friend of mine, publicly say that the Noble Prophet [Mohammad] instructed his followers that, 'If they go to war against a people, they must not harm the innocent, must not betray, must not mutilate, must not kill a woman or a child, and if they find a monk in his hermitage, they must not kill him,'" he said, in a translation by the ancient Antiochian patriarchate.

The patriarch added: "The tragic events unfolding in the Syrian coastal region have claimed the lives of many civilians and public security personnel, leaving numerous others wounded. However, the majority of the victims were not affiliated with any militant factions -- rather, they were innocent, unarmed civilians, including women and children."

In a Reuters interview, al-Sharaa vowed to stop the violence, adding: "We won't accept that any blood be shed unjustly, or goes without punishment or accountability, even among those closest to us. … Many parties entered the Syrian coast, and many violations occurred" while combatants sought "revenge."

In the chaos, journalists have struggled to confirm statistics about fatalities, while waves of social-media videos claim to show crucified Christians, Alawites being beaten, militants firing machine guns into houses, women being paraded naked and bodies stacked near streets.

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How the Babylon Bee helped topple digital dominos in the media marketplace

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How the Babylon Bee helped topple digital dominos in the media marketplace

On March 15, 2022, Babylon Bee editors ran a blunt joke about a powerful American leader -- proclaiming the assistant secretary in the Department of Health and Human Services as the website's "Man of the Year."

The joke caused controversy because Admiral Rachel L. Levine had, more than a decade earlier, transitioned to become a transgender woman and, two days before the Bee jab, was named one of the "Women of the Year" by USA Today.

At that point, the Twitter management cancelled the Babylon Bee's account, cutting a vital link between the Christian satire website and the online readers that were its lifeblood.

"Many people said trans people are already subject to so much ridicule, and posts like this just fan the flames against a minority group," noted Bari Weiss, editor of The Free Press, in a recent podcast with Babylon Bee CEO Seth Dillon. "How do you respond to that criticism?"

That's a "fair question," noted Dillon, but one built on the "concept that comedy should be something that only punches up at the power structure. That the oppressors can do no right, the oppressed can do no wrong. They're marginalized, and they need to be protected and insulated, and the powerful can be the subject of scorn and ridicule."

In this scenario, an evangelical humor website far from the entertainment-industry mainstream was the powerful "oppressor." Meanwhile, noted Dillon: "Admiral Rachel Levine is a transgender admiral in the Biden administration, a high-ranking government official. The narrative that's being imposed on the culture is … coming from the top down, imposed on people that really do in large numbers find it absurd and objectionable. So we were, in fact, punching up."

With the Bee locked in "Twitter jail," digital dominoes began falling -- a chain reaction that would help shape in news and journalism, which would affect debates during a tense, complicated White House race.

On March 24, the Bee team heard from a reader -- Elon Musk -- who was paying close attention to "cancel culture" trends. As an omnipresent Twitter user, the world's richest tech entrepreneur was already getting messages from people urging him to buy the social-media platform.

Musk wanted to know why Bee tweets had vanished.

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Were there any religion-news events in 2024? It rather hard to say ....

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President Donald Trump is returning to the White House, convinced -- after a close encounter with an assassin's bullet -- that he had God on his side in the election.

While opinions differed on that theological question, Trump clearly drew strong support from voters that frequented pews. In Washington Post exit polls, he received 56% of the Catholic votes, while 41% backed Vice President Kamala Harris. In 2020, 52% of self-identified Catholics supported President Joe Biden, with 47% for Trump.

As always, Trump fared well with Protestants and "other Christians," with 62% supporting him, as opposed to 37% for Harris. She won 60% of the votes of non-Christian believers, while Trump had 33% -- up 4% from his showing in 2020.

Thus, members of Religion News Association selected the 2024 presidential election as the year's top national religion story. The 2024 poll of religion-news professionals was dominated by analysis of national and international news, as opposed to specific headlines and events, with a strong emphasis on trends among religious conservatives.

But Trump's wins among religious believers -- as well as gains among Latinos and Black men -- were only one side of this drama, stressed Jessica Grose of the New York Times opinion staff.

Democrats should note the "large and growing religious group that is already in their corner: the Nones," she noted, referring to religiously unaffiliated Americans. "According to new data from the Public Religion Research Institute … 72 percent of the religiously unaffiliated voted for Kamala Harris. Melissa Deckman, the chief executive of P.R.R.I., shared a more granular breakdown of unaffiliated voters with me over email: 82 percent of atheists, 80 percent of agnostics and 64 percent of those who said they had no particular faith voted for Harris."

However, key voters rejected Democratic Party stands on many cultural and moral issues, noted Ruy Teixeira, a veteran Democrat strategist. In a Blueprint2024 survey, the top reason "swing" voters gave for rejecting Harris was that she seemed "more focused on transgender issues" than middle-class needs. Thus, one Trump ad proclaimed: "Kamala is for they/them. President Trump is for YOU."

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What will happen if millions of religious believers sit out the 2024 election?

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What will happen if millions of religious believers sit out the 2024 election?

It was the rare Trump quote that caused groans as it rocketed through conservative media.

But this soundbite came from an upcoming memoir from former First Lady Melania Trump: "Why should anyone other than the woman herself have the power to determine what she does with her own body? A woman's fundamental right of individual liberty, to her own life, grants her the authority to terminate her pregnancy if she wishes. … I have carried this belief with me throughout my entire adult life.”

Former President Donald Trump had already softened his party's strong stance against abortion, leading satirists at The Babylon Bee to note: "Pro-Lifers Excited To Choose Between Moderate Amount Of Baby Murder And High Amount of Baby Murder."

To put that in ballot-box terms, a new study by the Cultural Research Center at Arizona Christian University claimed that 32 million church-going Christians are poised to sit out this election, many because they are disillusioned or believe the results will be rigged.

If the number of conservative believers going to polls plummets, that would clash with trends in the last four White House races, according to political scientist Ryan Burge of Eastern Illinois University, author of "20 Myths about Religion and Politics in America."

"Half of the Christians are not going to vote. That's normal. That's old news. … We can expect those numbers to remain stable," said Burge, reached by telephone.

But there's another trend researchers expect to see again, he added. Yes, 80% of white evangelicals "voted for John McCain in 2008 and 80% have been voting for Donald Trump. We can expect that to happen again. It's what they do."

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That 2024 reality: Protestant pastors facing pressures linked to partisan politics?

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That 2024 reality: Protestant pastors facing pressures linked to partisan politics?

Eight years ago, Lifeway Research asked Protestant pastors who they planned to support in the presidential election and only 3% declined to answer.

That number didn't change much in 2020, when 4% declined. But things changed recently, when almost a quarter of the pastors refused to voice their choice in the 2024 White House race.

Among those who tipped their hand, 50% said they would vote for former President Donald Trump and 24% backed Vice President Kamala Harris. The intriguing question was why -- in a tense, tight election -- so many clergy insisted that they were undecided or needed to remain silent for some other reason.

"Whether these pastors are mum because their vote might differ from the majority view in their congregations or because they are genuinely undecided was not clear," noted Mark Wingfield, of Baptist News Global. "Nationally, as few as 3% of all voters are considered truly undecided this election year, a much lower share than in previous years."

In the document explaining the survey, Lifeway executive director Scott McConnell noted that how pastors define "their own political party preference" is consistently the best way to predict their voting-booth decisions.

Half of the Protestants in the survey identified as Republicans, while 18% were Democrats and 25% said they were political independents. Clergy leading conservative flocks -- evangelical, Baptist, nondenominational or Pentecostal -- were most likely to be Republicans. Presbyterians, Methodists, Lutherans and clergy in other progressive mainline churches were most likely to be Democrats. Also, Black pastors were among those most likely to back Harris (71%) and the least likely to support Trump (5%).

Thus, a recent Pew Research Center survey found that 82% of white evangelicals -- clergy and laity -- planned to vote for Trump, while 86% of Black Protestants supported Harris. White mainline Protestants were more evenly divided, with 58% ready to back Trump.

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Why those fierce, tribal wars over parental rights are not going to go away

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Why those fierce, tribal wars over parental rights are not going to go away

The vague 22-word prayer from the New York Board of Regents was totally nondenominational: "Almighty God, we acknowledge our dependence upon Thee, and we beg Thy blessings upon us, our parents, our teachers and our Country."

A few parents protested, saying any kind of prayer -- even voluntary -- violated the rights of students from homes led by atheists, agnostics, or believers from other faiths.

In other words, the pivotal 1962 Engel v. Vitale school-prayer decision was a parental rights case. Schools had to change.

Two years ago, the Montgomery County Board of Education created a policy requiring pre-K and elementary students to read texts about LGBTQ+ life. A Maryland network of Muslim, Christian and Jewish parents protested, saying this violated their parental rights -- exposing their children to beliefs that clashed with beliefs in their own homes.

This spring, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected alternative activities for these students. Schools would not have to change -- for now.

"In the school-prayer cases, parents wanted to defend their children from state-mandated prayers and any exposure to religious faith. It was a matter of parental rights," noted philosopher Francis Beckwith, who also teaches Church-State Studies at Baylor University.

"Now the shoe is on the other foot, with the state preaching a different set of doctrines. If you pay close attention, the left is making arguments that are similar to those the right once made about prayer in public schools. ... The state says it wants children to become good Americans. The question is whether parents get to play a role in that. These battles are going to continue."

In another parental rights case that may reach the U.S. Supreme Court, California Gov. Gavin Newsom recently signed legislation banning policies that require public educators to tell parents if their children take steps, at school, to change their gender identities. The state wants to protect children who believe they are transgender from their own parents -- if parents' beliefs clash with what is taught at school.

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Southern Baptists wade into the troubled waters of religious liberty -- once again

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Southern Baptists wade into the troubled waters of religious liberty -- once again

In the midst of heated debates about female pastors and the morality of in vitro fertilization, the national Southern Baptist Convention recently passed a religious liberty resolution that -- in terms of Baptist history -- was rather ordinary.

But these are not ordinary times in American life.

"Messengers" from autonomous SBC congregations resolved: "That we encourage and support robust Christian engagement in the public square, including individual Christians who pursue elected or appointed office in order to influence government by living out their Christian worldview while advocating Christian morals with respect for the consciences of all people."

The "resolved" clauses then became much more specific.

"That we oppose any effort to establish a state religion of any nation, including the United States of America; that we refute the idea that God has commanded any state to establish any religion or any denomination; and we reject any government coercion or enforcement of religious belief, including blasphemy laws. …

"That we oppose any effort to use the people and the churches of the Southern Baptist Convention to establish Christianity as the state religion of the United States of America."

During debates on convention-floor debates, that blunt line in Resolution 2 -- opposing efforts to establish a Christian "state religion" -- was challenged by the Rev. Justin Ramey of Crider Baptist Church in Eddyville, Kentucky.

"What does that mean?", he asked. "Should we remove 'In God We Trust' from our currency? Does it mean we should remove 'under God' from our pledge? I'm grateful that our government at one time at least acknowledged Christianity as our foundation and encouraged it."

The final Resolution 2 text failed to include two important words in today's fiery debates about religion in American life, according to Mark Wingfield of the progressive Baptist News Global website.