Supreme Court ruling defends religious freedom

Excerpted from "Thin skins and legislative prayer,"Washington Post commentary by George F. Will, May 7, 2014 — After the marshal on Monday spoke the traditional “God save the United States and this honorable court,” the Supreme Court ruled that the Upstate New York town of Greece does not violate the First Amendment’s prohibition of “establishment of religion” by opening its board of supervisors’ meetings with a prayer. This ruling would not have scandalized James Madison and other members of the First Congress, which drafted and sent to the states for ratification the First Amendment and the rest of the Bill of Rights. The Congress did this after hiring a chaplain.

Three decades have passed since the court last ruled on the matter of prayers during government meetings. In 1983, the court held:

“From colonial times through the founding of the Republic and ever since, the practice of legislative prayer has coexisted with the principles of disestablishment and religious freedom.” Since then, however, many Americans have become more irritable and litigious and less neighborly. Also, there are many more nonbelievers.

The majority held that ceremonial prayer — an encouragement to gravity and sobriety — is not harmful to the plaintiffs, who felt somehow coerced when present at public prayers, and who said such prayers are necessarily divisive. The court should have told them: If you feel coerced, you are flimsy people, and it is a choice — an unattractive one — to feel divided from your neighbors by their affection for brief and mild occasional expressions of religiosity.

Taking offense has become America’s national pastime; being theatrically offended supposedly signifies the exquisitely refined moral delicacy of people who feel entitled to pass through life without encountering ideas or practices that annoy them. As the number of nonbelievers grows — about 20 percent of Americans are religiously unaffiliated, as are one-third of adults under the age of 30 — so does the itch to litigate believers into submission to secular sensibilities.

The United States would be a more congenial place if it had more amiable atheists who say, as one such did, that “it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are 20 gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.” Some will say Thomas Jefferson was a deist, not an atheist.

Still, Jefferson made statesmanlike accommodations of the public’s strong preference for religious observances. As president, he attended Christian services conducted in the House of Representatives. They also were conducted in the Supreme Court chamber and the Treasury building. Jefferson attended a service in the House two days after praising (in an 1802 letter) “a wall of separation between church and state.”

Jefferson was no slouch when it came to asserting rights. But Greece’s prickly plaintiffs, having taken their town to court, might now ponder his example of relaxed, friendly respect for practices cherished by others and harmless to him.

Commentary

CMA VP for Govt. Relations Jonathan Imbody: “I hesitate to add to the eloquent and insightful commentary by George Will, other than to suggest that Christian healthcare professionals as well as town councils should cheer this decision. Healthcare professionals are not exempt from the rising tide of litigation by people disaffected by faith, whether their complaint focuses on homosexual issues, abortion ‘rights’ or any other of a host of issues that conflict with your conscience and the tenets of your Christian faith.
“Every case the Supreme Court decides in favor of religious freedom builds a bulwark of precedents and highlights what the First Amendment clearly guarantees::

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

“Since the framers of the Constitution never separated conscience and religion, this first right enumerated in the Bill of Rights means that you as a Christian healthcare professional or student have a right to decline or participate in practices and prescriptions according to the dictates of your conscience and moral standards, free from government coercion. The rub, of course, comes when discrimination comes not from the government but from your healthcare specialty college, or the admissions committees of the schools you're trying to get into, or the ethics committee at the hospital where you practice (see reporting discrimination, below).
We need to strengthen and expand conscience protections in law while simultaneously convincing colleagues and countrymen of the benefits to all that come from respecting conscience and religious freedoms: promoting tolerance, diversity and non-discrimination.

Action

1. Use our easy pre-written customizable message to support H.R. 940 - Healthcare Conscience Rights Act (House bill) and S. 1204 - Health Care Conscience Rights Act (Senate bill)
2. If you have experienced discrimination, visit our Freedom2Care website for reporting options.

Resources
CMA SCOTUS brief in Hobby Lobby religious freedom case
CMA’s Freedom2Care website on freedom of faith, conscience and speech
CMA commentaries