American Religious Liberty: Stricken by the Stroke of a Pen

Last week, President Obama signed an executive order prohibiting federal contractors from discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.  He completely ignored the pleas of Christian and other faith leaders to include an exemption for religious organizations.

 

“Thanks to your passion and advocacy and the irrefutable rightness of your cause, our government – the government of the people, by the people and for the people – will become just a little bit fairer,” Obama told a gathering in the White House.

 

The executive order would prevent Christian and other religious organizations with federal contracts from requiring workers to adhere to the tenets of their religious beliefs.  Christianity Today reports the order could impact religious non-profits such as World Vision, World Relief and Catholic Charities.

 

“If religious organizations cannot require that their employees conduct themselves in ways consistent with the teachings of their faith – then, essentially, those organizations are unable to operate in accordance with their faith,” said Peter Sprigg, Senior Fellow for Policy Studies at the Family Research Council.  He went on to say the president’s order forces employers to put aside their principles in the name of ‘political correctness.’  “This level of coercion is nothing less than viewpoint blackmail that bullies into silence every contractor and subcontractor who has moral objections to homosexual behavior,” Sprigg said.  “The mask is coming off of the homosexual movement’s agenda.  They really do not believe in religious liberty.  They want forced affirmation of homosexual and transgender conduct to trump every other consideration in the workplace – including religious liberty.”

 

Not surprising, the president’s executive order was warmly welcomed by left-wing organizations like Americans United for Separation of Church and State.  “Religious groups have no right to accept taxpayer money and engage in rank forms of discrimination,” said executive director Barry Lynn.  “Faith-based groups that tap the public purse should play by the same rules as everyone else and not expect special treatment.”

 

“But that’s really not the point,” says Todd Starnes of Fox News.  “This is about the federal government bullying religious groups that hold viewpoints it deems inappropriate.”  As he wrote in his new book, “God Less America,” this administration believes gay rights trump every-one else’s rights – including religious rights.

 

Vice President Joe Biden went so far as to declare as much during a speech to international gay rights activists.  “I don’t care what your culture is,” he said in remarks covered by Associated Press.  “Inhumanity is inhumanity.  Prejudice is prejudice is prejudice.”

 

The Obama Administration and its militant cronies want to tell Christians whom to hire, how to run their business and how to think.  And now the president has decreed that any religious group that holds viewpoints divergent from the Lesbian-Gay-Bisexual-Transgender (LGBT) agenda is not worthy of federal tax dollars.

 

Last month, National Security Adviser Susan Rice told a gathering at the White House Forum on Global LGBT Human Rights that it was their responsibility to sway theological thinking on the LGBT issue.  “For the faith community, how can we reinforce to religious groups that God loves all the children of his creation equally?” she asked the crowd.  “Change will come,” she went on to say.  “It’s already coming.”

 

Indeed, it has.  And it appears the president has decided to “reinforce” the government’s theology on Christians by using his pen and phone … and woe be to any Christian American who refuses to comply.  The Obama administration seems hell-bent on forcing Christians to assimilate to the militant LGBT agenda.  Resistance is futile.

 

Denny Burk, professor of biblical studies at Boyce College (the undergraduate arm of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, KY) addressed the issues at hand in an essay titled, “Are Christian Colleges Free to be Christian?”  “There are people who are willing to use whatever means necessary to force religious institutions to conform to the new sexual morality,” he wrote.  “Any individual or institution that refuses to comply will have to face the consequences.”

 

Robert Jeffress, pastor of the First Baptist Church in Dallas, has said, “The problem with this executive order is that it paves the way for the next one – which could withhold the tax-exempt status or broadcast licenses for religious organizations holding biblical beliefs with which the administration disagrees.”

 

Rev. Dr. Kenneth L. Beale, Jr.

Chaplain (Colonel-Ret), U.S. Army

Pastor, Ft. Snelling Memorial Chapel