The fight for religious freedom can't wait

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.

This week in Missouri, the state Senate shut down a nearly 40-hour filibuster by senators trying to block a religious-freedom initiative. If approved, it would allow voters to decide on a constitutional amendment in Missouri protecting conscience rights for individuals and religious organization as they relate to same-sex wedding ceremonies and receptions.

It’s not a generalized religious-freedom bill; it specifically protects from state punishment the florist, the baker, the photographer, and the church that decline to participate in those ceremonies, and it provides an affirmative defense in a civil suit. But measures like these have backfired in the past and been rescinded by the government in the face of public outrage. Some are concerned losing those political battles solidifies the idea that dissenters need to be punished harshly for objecting to same-sex ceremonies. In other words, Missouri might be calling for the question before winning the argument.

John Stonestreet this week said the culture’s attitude toward same sex marriage is “not where it needs to be,” but Christians cannot afford to wait for the culture to catch up before trying to protect religious freedom.

“For many, at least in the popular culture and the popular imagination of many people in the culture, the phrase ‘religious freedom’ sounds like license to discriminate,” Stonestreet said. “But the fact of the matter is, we’ve still got to protect these people.” He said the church has an important role to play in equipping its members to live out their beliefs about marriage in their day-to-day work.

“This is what we call the theological notion of calling or vocation—that all jobs are done for the glory of God and that there’s not a ‘sacred job’ and a ‘secular job;’ there’s just work done before the presence of God,” Stonestreet said. He called on pastors to take a stand now for religious freedom and not to wait until they themselves are called on to perform a gay marriage.

“What that baker does day-in and day-out is also sacred work in front of the presence of God for the glory of Christ as a believer,” Stonestreet said. “If I am going to stand for the pastor’s right, his freedom of conscience, which I will, I’ve also got to stand for the baker and the photographer’s right as well. So the pastor, the church, I think is going to have an increasingly important role to play as this proceeds.”

Listen to “Culture Friday” on The World and Everything in It.