Praying for Religious Freedom

When President Barack Obama talked with faith leaders Thursday morning at the National PrayerBreakfast, he spent most of his time discussing not the religious freedom we enjoy in this country, but the lack of freedom in other parts of the world. He quoted from Psalms and Isaiah and pointed to instance after instance where religious rights are being trampled. He suggested that as people of faith, we are commissioned to stand up for the inalienable rights of others—including their right to worship how they want. He said:

"We believe that each of us is 'wonderfully made' in the image of God.  We, therefore, believe in the inherent dignity of every human being—dignity that no earthly power can take away.  And central to that dignity is freedom of religion—the right of every person to practice their faith how they choose, to change their faith if they choose, or to practice no faith at all, and to do this free from persecution and fear."

Obama's speech came on the heels of a new study by the Pew Research Center, which found that religious restrictions had hit a six-year high in 2012. A full third of the world's 198 countries were described as having "high religious hostilities," and researchers noted that "religious hostilities increased in every major region of the world except the Americas." Egypt is the harshest country on the planet when it comes to governmental restrictions of religion, while Pakistan was considered by Pew to have the highest social hostility—that is, where religious minorities are actively intimidated, ostracized or attacked.

Some instances have gotten lots of press. In his address, Obama mentioned Kenneth Bae, the Christian missionary sentenced to 15 years of hard labor in North Korea, and Saeed Abedini, a pastor in Iran who's been imprisoned for 18 months because he's Christian. Some, not so much. The Pew report noted the case of the 2012 Nigerian riots, where Muslim youth burned Christian businesses and churches and eventually killed four Christians. Two more Christians were killed by a Muslim mob in Kenya. In Somalia, the Islamic militant group al-Shabab beheaded a man in November of 2012, believing he had converted to Christianity.

Naturally, people of other faiths were targeted, as well. Muslim women were assaulted for wearing veils or headscarves and called "terrorists"—sometimes, presumably, by Christians. A rabbi and three Jewish children were killed in France by an Islamic extremist. And, of course, six Sikhs were killed in the United States—shot to death by a white supremacist.

While most Christians believe that their faith is the "right" faith and are encouraged to bring others into its holy fold, I believe that what Obama says in this matter is true. God did not use divine coercion to force us to love and worship him. It is our choice: It must be if it is to be real love and worship at all. And as such, we must preserve that choice for others wherever and whenever we can.

If You Love Something, Keep It Free

North Carolina will not vote for an official state religion after all—despite an impassioned move toward that end by a handful of the state’s politicians. And that’s probably a good thing.

A little background: For the last few days, North Carolina has been enmeshed in a pretty remarkable political brouhaha regarding state-sanctioned prayer. The American Civil Liberties Union (on behalf of three plaintiffs) filed a lawsuit against a county board of commissioners for opening 97 percent of its meetings with Christian prayer.

Now, anyone who follows this stuff knows that these sorts of suits are fairly common: The ACLU often files lawsuits against governments, schools or other state-run institutions that (they say) push Christianity in public settings. Sometimes, these lawsuits are dismissed after the institution promises to never, ever pray in the name of Jesus again. Sometimes, they go to court—with mixed results. The First Amendment is a tricky thing.

But this is the first time that I remember a state saying, in essence, that governmental Christian prayer is so important that they’d be willing to write a law that would, essentially, supersede the First Amendment. It said, in part:

North Carolina General Assembly asserts that the Constitution of the United States of America does not prohibit states or their subsidiaries from making laws respecting an establishment of religion.

The proposal was nixed before it could come to a vote. And I think all of us, religious and secular alike, can be grateful.

Christian thinker Os Guinness has done a great deal of ruminating on the themes of faith and freedom. Last year, in his book “A FreePeople’s Suicide: Sustainable Freedom and the American Future,” he talked quite a bit of something he called the “golden triangle of freedom”—a dynamic absolutely critical to, he says, the success and future success of America.

In The Christian Post, he described the triangle like this: “Freedom requires virtue, virtue requires faith of some sort, and faith of any sort requires freedom. And like the recycling triangle, it goes round and round -- freedom requires virtue which requires faith which requires freedom which requires virtue, and so on.”

Guinness says that freedom is great and all—but it can’t be just sort of a willy-nilly, hedonistic freedom that some would like. Our personal freedoms have to be tempered by virtue—a moral code of some sort that helps us govern ourselves. And Guinness doesn’t believe that such virtue is possible without faith of some kind. Atheism just doesn’t have the ethical oomph to provide it.

But there’s another side to that: Faith needs freedom to flourish—not just freedom to worship Christ, but freedom to worship, or not worship, anything at all.

I heard Guinness speak several years ago, and I remember him stressing how brilliant the First Amendment—protecting the rights of all faiths—was to the character of the country. Europe (he pointed out) has always been filled with countries that sanctioned official state religions. But when religion is tied too closely to a government, it often grows corrupt and, as such, it often doesn’t look much like the work of God at all. Guinness said at the time that the First Amendment—and the freedom of religion it guarantees—is a prime reason why the United States is still so religious compared to much of Europe. Faith needs freedom to flourish, even if folks use that freedom to reject faith completely.

And really when you think about it, that philosophy mirrors the whole concept of God-given free will. God doesn’t force us to love Him. Jesus never twisted anyone’s arm to follow him. He simply asked if they’d like to. And that still seems like a pretty good strategy to me.

I know that Christians can grow kinda tired of secular assaults on faith and tradition. And hey, I like Nativity displays in the town square as much as the next person. But the solution, I don’t think, is to replace our spiritual liberty with a state religion—even if the religion is one I agree with.