Making the case for religious liberty

Each week, The World and Everything in It features a “Culture Friday” segment, in which Executive Producer Nick Eicher discusses the latest cultural news with John Stonestreet, president of the Chuck Colson Center for Christian Worldview. Here is a summary of this week’s conversation.

A court case decided recently in Iowa shows the precariousness of religious liberty and the necessity of making the cultural case for freedom of conscience. The Iowa Civil Rights Commission has a policy aimed at enforcing transgender rights in so-called “public accommodations.” Leaders of some churches in Iowa were concerned they might fall under the definition of “public accommodations” and, as a result, be subject to state rules about sexual orientation and gender identity.

Last week, the federal judge in the case issued a highly technical legal ruling saying churches were exempt from the law. If the church was hoping its First Amendment rights might be vindicated, they weren’t; the finding simply held churches aren’t public accommodations. Nevertheless, the church withdrew its case.

John Stonestreet said this week that preserving religious liberty in the long run will require a better public understanding of the importance of Christianity.

“People don’t understand what freedom of conscience is and, by and large, they’re not interested because they don’t really understand the contributions that Christians make in the world,” Stonestreet said. New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof showed his own understanding in a column this week, talking about the good he has seen come from Christianity.

“In my reporting around the world, I’ve been awed by evangelical and Catholic missionary doctors risking their lives to ease suffering,” Kristof wrote. “And remember that it was evangelical pressure that led President George W. Bush to adopt a massive program to fight AIDS around the world, saving millions of lives and turning the tide of the disease”

But Stonestreet said many people don’t share Kristof’s view, and said Christians must do a better job making the case for their religion.

“When 50 percent of people … would suggest that if Christians disappeared from all the good, charitable work they did, the government would just pick it up without any problem whatsoever, that’s astonishing. That’s just foolish,” Stonestreet said, citing a recent survey. “We knew for the last 30 years that the brand of [the pro-life movement] had to change, and it has, stunningly. That same sort of brand change has to take place when it comes to marriage and religious liberty.”

Listen to “Culture Friday” on the Oct. 28, 2016, episode of The World and Everything in It.