Deacon Keith Fournier Twilight of Religious Liberty or an Invitation to Christian Collaboration?

May 5, 2016

In June of 2015, the United States Supreme Court issued an egregious, unjust opinion in a case styled Obergefell v Hodges.  Five lawyers in black robes manufactured out of whole cloth a new "right" for two men or two women to do what they are incapable of doing, marry. They claimed to have found such a "right" in the 14th amendment to the United States Constitution, apparently next to the so called "right" to take the life of children in the womb through procured abortion.

In the wake of that act of judicial alchemy, some activists within the homosexual equivalency movement have been enforcing this edict across the Nation by using the police power of the State to persecute Christians. They have also been using it to suppress the free speech, free association and the free exercise of religion of Christians. There is a tsunami of activism hell-bent on compelling faithful Christians to deny their deeply held religious conviction that marriage is solely possible between one man and one woman - because only a man and a woman can achieve the unitive and procreative ends of marriage.

The tsunami wave began in the commercial arena, when homosexual equivalency activists strategically used public accommodation arguments against Christians in commerce. In 2015 I wrote concerning a good Christian woman who simply asked to be accommodated when it came to participating in same sex weddings. Months later, along with my friend and fellow lawyer Mat Staver, the founder of Liberty Counsel, I opined concerning the danger that advisory opinions from State Supreme Courts now have the effect of excluding faithful Christians from serving on the judicial bench.

Since writing those articles, the situation has grown even more urgent. Will faithful Christians soon be excluded from certain forms of commercial participation? Will fidelity to the Bible, the Natural Moral Law and the unbroken Christian tradition soon exclude Christians from any government service? With the continuing expansion of the reach of the State into every arena of citizen participation, will Christians soon experience overt exclusion from other forms of public service?

Prior to what is called the Edict of Milan, the Christians of the first three centuries in ancient Rome had to avoid participating in certain occupations and refrain from serving in public office. That was because to do so would require that they apostatize, or abandon the faith. Is that approach what lies ahead for us in a Nation which has lost a full understanding of the moral foundations of freedom?

It is time to ask the real question - how far will a radical secularist State go in asserting its police power over our practice of the Christian faith?  What will we do in response?  Are we entering the twilight of Religious Liberty in America? Or, is this an invitation to Christian Collaboration. We must stand together as Christians, across confessional lines, and resist this blatant rejection of the fundamental right to religious freedom.

When the Bill of Rights to the United States Constitution was enacted there was no Internal Revenue Service. The current structure of corporate law, such as the distinction between a corporation being considered nonprofit or for profit, did not exist.  The First Amendment stood for the existence of a Fundamental Right to Religious Freedom for all men and women. It protected them, in living their entire life and not just going to Church on Sundays. The use of the phrase "Free Exercise" was quite apropos. The Christian faith is lived! The First Amendment is meant to protect its exercise whether the believer is engaging in commerce, public service, or simply pursuing liberty and happiness. We cannot be compelled to surrender our deeply held moral and religious beliefs outside of the walls of their chosen church or place of worship by the civil government.  

With a growing disregard for that protection, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act  (RFRA) was passed in 1993. It has since been used whenever a legal issue concerning the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment to the Bill of Rights is at issue.  The Religious Freedom Restoration Act presumes the primacy of the Free Exercise of Religion as a fundamental Constitutional Right. The First amendment begins with these words, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."

Whether one looks to Western societies which have abandoned the moral foundations of freedom, giving rise to a growing hostility toward faithful Christians and soft persecution - or to the rise of extremist anti-Christian radical Islam accompanied by the shedding of their blood, there is an inescapable conclusion - we are in a struggle and we are living in a new missionary age.

Pope Leo XIII in his Encyclical Letter on the Wisdom of Christianity reminded us all, "Christians are born for combat, whereof the greater the vehemence, the more assured, God aiding, the triumph." We are called to spiritual combat in this hour. The struggle we face in a declining western culture involves a clash of worldviews, personal and corporate, and competing definitions of human freedom, human dignity, and human flourishing. It is a contest over the moral foundations of a truly human and just social order.

We will continue to insist on the fundamental Right to Life. Every procured abortion is the taking of innocent human life and is always and everywhere intrinsically immoral. Without the right to life there are no other rights and the entire infrastructure of rights is thrown into jeopardy. Human rights are goods of human persons. When there is no human person to exercise them, all the rhetoric extolling them is nothing but empty air and sloganeering. This truth informs our respect for every human life whether that life is found in the first home of the mother's womb, a wheelchair, a jail cell, a hospital room, a hospice, a senior center, a soup kitchen or on a refugee boat.

The Right to Life position is not about an issue at all. Nor are those who hold it "single issue voters". It is the foundation for every other human right. Human rights are goods of human persons and abortion stops a beating heart! The language used in the political discussion on abortion reveals an Orwellian newspeak. There is no abortion right. Abortions do not have rights, only human persons have rights, and the child in the womb who dies in a procured abortion is suffering not only an unjust death but an egregious human rights abuse.

We will continue to insist that true marriage and family have been inscribed by the Divine Architect into the order of the universe and that no Court, legislature or government can change the nature and ends of marriage.  Truth does not change, people and cultures do; sometimes for good and sometimes for evil. The Apostle Paul instructed the Christians in Ephesus to "put on the whole armor of God" (Eph. 6:12, 13).

He told the Christians in Corinth, "For though we live in the world we are not carrying on a worldly war, for the weapons of our warfare are not worldly but have divine power to destroy strongholds" (2 Cor. 10:4,5). And in his letter to the Christians in Rome he describes in gory detail what happens when people reject God's plan for family and sexuality (Romans 1).

Jesus promised us that the gates of hell would not prevail against the Church (Matt. 16:18). The demons have tried for over two millennia, but they have failed. The evil one has set his scopes on the first cell of the Church, the Christian family. Is it any wonder that the enemy of the Lord's loving plan for the whole human race, the Church, would seek to destroy the Church by attacking its smallest cell, the Christian family?

The greatest weapon we have is not our argumentation and apologetics, as vital as they both are. Nor is it the use of the Courts to protect our rights and our vote and political participation to secure them and protect the real common good.  Though both are absolutely essential. Rather, it is to recognize that the attack is from the gates of hell and then to wield the spiritual weapons the Lord has given us.

It is time to rediscover one another, across Christian confessional lines, and wield those weapons together. While we contend in the public square, we must remember that we do not struggle merely against flesh and blood. The assault on life is diabolical. The assault on marriage is diabolical. But, as Jesus promised, the gates of hell will not prevail against us. (Matt. 16:8) However, a kingdom divided against itself will not stand (Matt. 12:25).

The growing soft persecution we are facing as Christians in the West is rooted in the rejection of the truth concerning the dignity of every human life, at every age and stage, the nature and ends of marriage, and the fundamental right to religious freedom. This rejection is throwing us together in joint efforts geared toward slowing the moral collapse of western civilization. However, we cannot stop there. Our task is to do what the early Christians did, proclaim in word and deed the fullness of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and transform western culture, indeed the whole modern age, from within.

We need one another to do this effectively. We need to face the reality of the divisions among us and find the way to healing. We need to become family again. Family members may disagree, but they are always family. We are thee family of God, yet we live quite a different story. Our response to what seems to be a twilight of religious liberty should be the acceptance of an invitation to Christian collaboration.

Image: American flag and Church. Credit: Jim Lopes via www.shutterstock.com.