RFRA and the cultural imagination

This week, I talked with John Stonestreet of the Chuck Colson Center for Christian Worldview about the firestorm of controversy over Indiana’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA). We reviewed what President Bill Clinton said in 1993 when Congress approved the federal version of RFRA. The Senate passed that law by a vote of 97-3.

“Let us never believe that the freedom of religion imposes on any of us some responsibility to run from our convictions,” Clinton said. “Let us instead respect one another’s faiths, fight to the death to preserve the right of every American to practice whatever convictions he or she has, but bring our values back to the table of American discourse to heal our troubled land.”

Since then, the facts of RFRA and its legal position have not changed, but the cultural imagination has shifted drastically, Stonestreet said.

“If you go back to 1993 when the original RFRA was passed and you look at who the darlings were on television and then fast-forward it to today, it’s clear the most defended cause in the American context are those who identify as LGBT,” Stonestreet said. “There haven’t been any changes in the legal situation, there haven’t been any changes actually in the cases of people being discriminated against. We’ve had these sorts of laws on the books for a long time and it’s never happened.”

Though some people who support same-sex marriage have spoken up for religious liberty—New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, for instance—the two concepts are increasingly becoming mutually exclusive in the public eye. Stonestreet pointed out that the church has played a role in setting up that dichotomy.

“Evangelicalism, in practice, really suffers from a strange doctrine that separates sacred and secular. And they don’t have a strong, robust practice of endorsing the God-given vocation and holiness of all callings. They’re having a hard time stepping out on this issue of same-sex marriage,” leaving pastors alone to take stands on the issue when couples ask them to perform same-sex marriages, Stonestreet said. And that leaves congregants, many of whom are business owners, to grapple with the issue on their own.

“If the church can’t get it right, how are we expecting the public square to get it right?” Stonestreet asked.

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