Recently, President Barack Obama and others in his administration (including Secretary of State Hillary Clinton) have been using the term “freedom of worship.” That’s a significant departure from the constitutional phrase with which most Americans are familiar: “freedom of religion.”
The truth is that changing the word “religion” to “worship” drastically changes what is protected. Read the words of the First Amendment: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…” That “free exercise” wording protects those whose religion entails much more than worship.
The Left — specifically the ACLU — has been extremely successful in misleading the American public into believing that the “separation of church and state” is a constitutional principle. It is not. As a result, far too many people of faith, including pastors, have confined themselves and their worldview within the church walls while godless philosophies and agendas overwhelm the public square.
Christians are called to live our religion, not just observe services on Sundays. An attempt to bamboozle the American people again into believing that the First Amendment only protects the “freedom of worship” will lead to banishing religious expression outside of the church setting in all its forms.
The freedom to live out one’s faith in the public square is already colliding with the liberal idol of “tolerance.” Issues of freedom and liberty are front and center in the current confirmation hearings of Elena Kagan for Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. The protection of true liberty must be paramount when selecting justices, as liberty or its loss affects our ability to freely exercise our religion.
Founding Father John Adams wrote in a letter to his wife in 1775 warning that “Liberty, once lost, is lost forever.” Today, in our state and federal legislatures and in our courts of law, true liberty is losing its meaning and authority in society. New generations of citizens are either ignorant of or unimpressed by the battles fought to gain and sustain it, and the unhindered expression of Christian faith is becoming a primary target and casualty.
The Left’s advance of “tolerance” is not simply respecting one another’s views, but the forced acceptance of a political philosophical perspective that would trump traditional religious mores and practice. Francis J. Beckwithputs it this way:
Liberal tolerance is a sham. Although portrayed by its advocates as an open, tolerant, and neutral perspective, it is a dogma whose proponents tolerate no rivals. Those of us who are concerned with presenting and defending our faith in a post-Christian culture must be aware of this sort of challenge, one that masquerades as open, tolerant, and liberating, but in reality is dogmatic, partisan, and coercive.
There are many examples of this happening today. Recently, in the case of Christian Legal Society v. Martinez, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against a Christian student group arguing that an organization must accept anyone as a member or officer whether or not they agree with its policies. Of course, this is ridiculous. Forcing a Christian group to allow atheists and agnostics to serve in leadership positions is as absurd as requiring the College Democrats to allow Republicans to serve in leadership positions or the Friends of Israel club to allow members of the Aryan Nation to be members and leaders.
Compulsory “tolerance” is undermining pluralism, which allows different groups to disagree. The intentional and strategic move away from the First Amendment’s guarantee of “freedom of religion” to “freedom of worship” is an ominous sign of a renewed effort to further marginalize and even censor conservative people of faith.
Read more:
‘Freedom of Worship’ Worries: New religious freedom rhetoric within the Obama administration draws concern. (ManhattanDeclaration.org)
Chuck Colson on Freedom of Worship (YouTube.com)
