{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.hatch.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/releases?ContentRecord_id=eaa4f914-9d3d-493b-a17a-c44791dc7b7d", "Hatch Gives Keynote Speech on Religious Freedom at BYU Law Schools International Law and Religion Symposium", "2014-10-06", "2014", "2014-10", "Republican", "House", "UT", "Orrin Hatch", "H000338", "www.hatch.senate.gov", null, null, "legacy", "U.S. Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), a current member and former Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee and a lead author of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), gave the keynote address at the 21st annual International Law and Religion Symposium at Brigham Young University law school Sunday night. Hatch\u2019s speech focused on the importance of the first freedom in our nation\u2019s history, attacks on religious liberty, and how to return our nation to one that holds sacred the freedom of religion.\u00a0 Hatch also received a distinguished service award for his dedication to defending religious freedom throughout his 38 years of Senate service. \u00a0\r\n\u201cThis is an unsettled and unsettling time for religious liberty.\u00a0 Both at home and abroad, religious liberty is under attack.\u00a0 What was once a broad consensus here in the United States that religious freedom deserves special protection has recently crumbled,\u201d Hatch said.\u00a0 \u201cBy working to make government and religion partners once more rather than antagonists, we can revive the view that religion is a force for good rather than something to be swept under the rug.\u00a0 And by ensuring that our religious heritage maintains a robust role in our educational curricula, we can ensure that our children understand that religion helped our heroes accomplish great things and made our nation what it is today.\u201d\u00a0\r\nMore information about the symposium can be found here.\u00a0\r\nHatch\u2019s full remarks (as prepared for delivery) are below: \u00a0\u00a0\r\nIt is my privilege to be with you for the 21st annual International Law and Religion Symposium.\u00a0 I am humbled to be added to the list of distinguished scholars and jurists from around the world who have given this address in the past.\u00a0\u00a0\r\nThis is an unsettled and unsettling time for religious liberty.\u00a0 Both at home and abroad, religious liberty is under attack.\u00a0 What was once a broad consensus here in the United States that religious freedom deserves special protection has recently crumbled.\u00a0 Indeed, President Obama and his administration have taken positions openly hostile to religious liberty.\u00a0 To cite just two examples, the administration argued in the Supreme Court that the federal government may control a church\u2019s decisions to hire or fire its own ministers.\u00a0 The administration also claimed authority to force employers to violate deeply held religious beliefs in providing health benefits to employees.\u00a0 At the state level, hundreds of small business owners across the country have faced fines, bankruptcy, and other sanctions under public accommodations laws for following their religious convictions.\u00a0\r\nInternationally we see many troubling attacks on religious liberty.\u00a0 In Nigeria, Boko Haram continues to attack, maim, and kill Christians in its campaign of terror.\u00a0 In Iran, a man was recently executed for \u201cheresy\u201d after he questioned the accuracy of certain religious texts.\u00a0 Pakistan continues to imprison religious dissenters for blasphemy.\u00a0 One such dissenter was recently killed by his jailer while awaiting trial.\u00a0 The rise of ISIS and other Islamist groups in the Middle East poses a significant threat to the fragile religious freedoms in that region.\u00a0 And nations from Europe to Australia are considering bans on various types of religious clothing.\u00a0\r\nI would like to take my short time with you this evening to explain why religious freedom matters, how it is under attack, and what each of us as global citizens and thought leaders can do to protect this most precious and fundamental freedom.\u00a0\r\nWhy Religious Freedom Matters\u00a0\r\nFirst, why religious freedom matters.\u00a0 Professor Thomas Berg of the University of St. Thomas writes that one of America\u2019s greatest contributions to the world has been establishing religious freedom as both social reality and constitutional principle.\u00a0 I believe this formulation is not only descriptive, but can also be prescriptive, and it will form the basis of my remarks this evening.\u00a0\u00a0\r\nReligious freedom in America was social reality before it became constitutional principle.\u00a0 For nearly two centuries before the founding of this Republic, one religious community after another came here to live their faith.\u00a0 Puritans, Congregationalists, Roman Catholics, Jews, Quakers, Baptists, Presbyterians, and Methodists all found refuge on these shores.\u00a0 Professor Michael McConnell of Stanford has noted that in the years before the Revolution, America experienced a higher degree of religious diversity than existed anywhere else in the world.\u00a0\r\nReligious freedom as social reality in America has traditionally had three dimensions.\u00a0 First, it has been freedom not only of belief, but also of behavior.\u00a0 Second, it has been freedom that may be exercised publicly as well as privately.\u00a0 And third, it has been freedom to act both individually and collectively.\u00a0\r\nThis robust social reality was the backdrop for our Constitution.\u00a0 America\u2019s Founders knew that liberty necessitates limits on government, but they were divided as to what those limits should be.\u00a0 Some thought that simply listing the powers of Congress in the body of the Constitution was enough, that enumeration was effectively self-limiting.\u00a0 Others were more skeptical about government power and demanded affirmative protection for particular rights. \r\nThe skeptics won the day, and the first right named in the Bill of Rights is the freedom of religion.\u00a0 Note that the First Amendment protects the free exercise of religion, a phrase that had been in use for more than a century before James Madison incorporated it in the First Amendment.\u00a0 Not a particular exercise of religion, or the exercise of religion by a particular person, or the exercise of religion for a particular purpose.\u00a0 The Constitution protects the free exercise of religion itself.\u00a0\u00a0\r\nReligious freedom, then, is not simply one of many competing values, but a special and preferred value.\u00a0 It is a central reason that America exists at all.\u00a0 Ninety-five percent of Americans, in fact, believe that one of the principal reasons America was founded was to enable people of all faiths to believe and practice their religion.\u00a0\r\nThe U.S. Supreme Court attaches the label fundamental to the most important rights.\u00a0 Fundamental rights are rights that are protected from virtually any encroachment and that take precedence over other interests or values.\u00a0 These rights, the Court has said, are deeply rooted in this nation\u2019s history and tradition and are implicit in the concept of ordered liberty itself.\u00a0 Religious freedom is one of these fundamental rights.\u00a0\r\nReligious freedom, however, is not an American invention. It is in fact the oldest internationally recognized human right, with a heritage going back at least to the Reformation.\u00a0\r\nNor is religious freedom a uniquely American ideal.\u00a0 In 1948, after the horror of World War II, numerous nations, including the United States, signed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.\u00a0 Article 18 of that Declaration states that every person has a fundamental right to freedom of religion, including \u201cfreedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.\u201d\u00a0\r\nHere again we see the three dimensions of truly robust religious freedom: belief and behavior, private and public, individual and collective.\u00a0 Genuine religious freedom exists when these three dimensions are both social reality and constitutional principle, and are understood as fundamental.\u00a0\u00a0\r\nIn 1998, Congress unanimously passed the International Religious Freedom Act.\u00a0 I was proud to support the Act, which created an Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom within the Department of State and established the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.\u00a0 The Ambassador submits reports to Congress each year addressing religious freedom in other countries.\u00a0 Based on these reports, the Secretary of State may designate countries that engage in systematic, ongoing, and egregious violations of religious liberty as countries of particular concern. The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom also submits independent annual reports that go into greater depth on selected countries that in the Commission\u2019s independent judgment deserve greater scrutiny.\u00a0\r\nThe Commission is a bipartisan, nine-member body that investigates religious freedom around the world and holds hearings to educate Congress and the public about instances of religious persecution.\u00a0 The Commission\u2019s immediate past chairman, Professor Robert George of Princeton, last year wrote about what he called religious freedom in its most robust sense.\u00a0\u00a0\r\nReligious freedom is far more than a mere right to worship or to believe in private, he said, but the right to express one\u2019s faith in public.\u00a0 According to Professor George, to overcome the powerful and broad presumption in favor of religious liberty, political authority must meet a heavy burden.\u00a0\r\nThe Commission\u2019s current Chair, Katrina Lantos Swett, is equally vigorous in affirming religious freedom, and has special links to Brigham Young University because of her membership in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.\u00a0\r\nThe social reality of religious freedom has an additional, more practical dimension.\u00a0 America\u2019s Founders, including George Washington, spoke about religion\u2019s role in helping to create good citizens.\u00a0 The Massachusetts Constitution of 1780 similarly declared that general happiness, good order, and civil government all depend on piety, religion, and morality.\u00a0 And the eminent Alexis de Tocqueville, writing in the nineteenth century, observed that Americans across all classes and parties believed that religion is indispensable to the maintenance of well-functioning political institutions.\u00a0\r\nThis topic has more recently been the subject of conferences and a growing body of scholarship.\u00a0 Professor Mary Ann Glendon of Harvard, for example, has argued persuasively about how violence tends to be greater in societies that suppress religious liberty and that religious freedom correlates with democratic longevity.\u00a0\u00a0\r\nThe last several American presidents have issued proclamations each year naming a day in January as Religious Freedom Day.\u00a0 These proclamations, by presidents of both parties, have made some of the same points I have discussed tonight.\u00a0 President Bill Clinton reminded us that religious freedom is a natural right and is essential to our well-being and dignity as human beings.\u00a0 President George W. Bush said that religious freedom is a cornerstone of the American republic and a fundamental human right that contributes to stable democracy.\u00a0\u00a0\r\nI have described the history of religious freedom in America to place in stark relief the consequences of weakening and constricting this freedom.\u00a0 A few blocks from the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. is the National Archives, which houses the most important documents from America\u2019s Founding.\u00a0 Reaching the main entrance requires walking past a statute on which is inscribed the axiom \u201ceternal vigilance is the price of liberty.\u201d\u00a0 That vigilance is necessary to ensure that religious liberty remains both social reality and meaningful constitutional principle.\r\nHow Religious Freedom Is Under Attack\u00a0\r\nUnfortunately, both dimensions of religious freedom in America are eroding.\u00a0 In terms of social reality, while nearly 90 percent of Americans say that religion is important in their personal lives, three-quarters believe religion is losing its influence in our society, the highest level in nearly 60 years. \u00a0\r\nIn several ways, pressure is mounting to deprive religious freedom of its foundational status in the cultural and political life of our nation.\u00a0 For example, arguments have been made in both the political arena and in America\u2019s courts that laws should not \u2014 and even may not \u2014 be based on religious considerations.\u00a0\u00a0\r\nElder Dallin H. Oaks of the LDS Church addressed this notion several months ago at Utah Valley University\u2019s Constitutional Symposium on Religious Freedom.\u00a0 The argument against basing laws on religious considerations goes like this: because religion is a private rather than a public matter \u2014 or so the argument claims \u2014 the only legitimate basis for public debate and political decision-making is so-called public reasons, which are defined to exclude religious values and expression.\u00a0\r\nThis view attacks all three of the dimensions of religious freedom that I described earlier.\u00a0 It insists that religion is limited to belief, not behavior; that religious exercise is individual, not collective; and, especially, that religion is something that should be conducted in private, not in public. \u00a0\u00a0\r\nReligious freedom as constitutional principle is also under attack, in at least two ways.\u00a0 The first is through a general decline in American citizens\u2019 knowledge about our Constitution, our history and heritage, and our form of government.\u00a0 James Madison, a principal author of the Constitution, wrote that only a well-instructed people can permanently remain a free people.\u00a0 \r\nCitizens cannot understand, let alone defend, what they do not know.\u00a0 Yet today, poll after poll shows that Americans are shockingly ignorant of even the most basic matters relating to their nation and their liberty.\u00a0 Author James Bovard aptly calls this attention deficit democracy.\u00a0\r\nThis general decline in Americans\u2019 knowledge about government sets the stage for the second way in which religious freedom as a constitutional principle is threatened.\u00a0 For 150 years after America\u2019s Founding, a consensus existed that judges have only a modest role in interpreting our written Constitution.\u00a0 Because the Constitution expresses the people\u2019s will about government power and individual rights, that consensus maintained, only the people have authority to change the Constitution.\u00a0\r\nBut ignorance about American history, our political system, and the requirements of liberty has allowed a radical transformation in the courts.\u00a0 Since the 1930s, presidents have increasingly appointed judges willing to impose their own meaning on the Constitution rather than draw the people\u2019s meaning from it.\u00a0 I mention this because the personal values and preferences these activist judges have imposed have been uniformly hostile to religion and religious freedom.\u00a0\r\nThe First Amendment prohibits federal establishment of religion and protects the free exercise of religion.\u00a0 America\u2019s Founders viewed the Establishment Clause narrowly and the Free Exercise Clause broadly, a combination that allowed for robust religious freedom and an active role for religion in public life.\u00a0 Judges who have felt free to impose their own values, however, have consistently reversed that order, interpreting the Establishment Clause broadly and the Free Exercise Clause narrowly.\u00a0 The result has been a continued diminishing of religious freedom and an increasingly muted role for religion in public life.\u00a0\r\nIn a case titled Lee v. Weisman, the Supreme Court in 1992 held that an invocation before a public school graduation ceremony was an establishment of religion prohibited by the First Amendment.\u00a0 Such invocations had been common throughout our history and are still practiced in legislatures across America, including in the U.S. Senate, where I serve.\u00a0 The argument seemed to be, at least in the public school context, that the mere uttering of religious words in the form of a prayer was an unconstitutional establishment of religion.\u00a0\u00a0\r\nWhile the Weisman decision broadened the meaning of the Establishment Clause, a decision two years earlier narrowed the Free Exercise Clause.\u00a0 The Supreme Court had for decades held that government action burdening religious exercise must meet a legal standard called strict scrutiny that requires a compelling justification for the government\u2019s action.\u00a0 Applying this standard identifies the free exercise of religion as a fundamental value while also allowing for some restrictions under narrow circumstances.\u00a0\u00a0\r\nAn Oregon state law prohibited the use of controlled substances, including the drug peyote.\u00a0 Two Native American state employees were fired for using peyote in their religious ceremonies and argued that this violated their First Amendment right to the free exercise of their religion.\u00a0 The U.S. Supreme Court disagreed, rejecting the view that there must be religious exemptions for laws such as Oregon\u2019s controlled substance ban.\u00a0 Instead, it held that any neutral law of general applicability could override religious freedom claims, and that the strict scrutiny standard would apply only when government explicitly targets religion, and in certain other narrowly defined contexts.\u00a0\r\nThis decision, titled Employment Division v. Smith, was deeply troubling.\u00a0 By significantly narrowing the circumstances in which religious exercise would be protected as a fundamental value subject to strict scrutiny, the Court significantly broadened the circumstances in which it would be subject to all sorts of government controls.\u00a0 In one fell swoop, the Court reversed decades of precedent, disregarded centuries of practice, and threatened to upend religious liberty\u2019s status as a preferred value in American society.\u00a0 \r\n\u00a0\r\nI knew that I had to do everything in my power as a United States Senator to limit Smith\u2019s effect.\u00a0 And so I led a campaign to reverse the Supreme Court\u2019s decision and restore heightened protection for religious liberty.\u00a0 The culmination of these efforts was the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, or RFRA, which I sponsored in the United States Senate.\u00a0 RFRA was the rare bill that attracted broad, indeed nearly unanimous, bipartisan support.\u00a0\u00a0\r\nRFRA\u2019s purpose was to reinstate the broad protection religious liberty enjoyed prior to Smith.\u00a0 It said, simply and plainly, that \u201c[g]overnment shall not substantially burden a person\u2019s exercise of religion even if the burden results from a rule of general applicability.\u201d\u00a0 This means government cannot pass laws or take action that substantially impedes a person\u2019s practice of religion, even when the law is targeted to some other, nonreligious purpose and affects everyone \u2014 religious and nonreligious \u2014 equally.\u00a0 Nor is there any limit on subject matter.\u00a0 All government action that substantially burdens religious liberty is prohibited, regardless of whether it involves the environment, education, transportation, or health care.\u00a0\r\nRFRA also contains an exception: Government can substantially burden a person\u2019s exercise of religion, but only if two conditions are both met.\u00a0 First, the government measure must advance a compelling government interest.\u00a0 Second, it must be the least restrictive means of advancing that interest.\u00a0\u00a0\r\nThis is the so-called strict scrutiny test that applied before the Smith decision.\u00a0 In order to intrude on religious liberty, government must have a very good reason for doing so, and the intrusion must be necessary to accomplish that goal.\u00a0 If there is an alternative way to accomplish the same result that does not intrude on religious liberty, the government must take it.\u00a0 Put differently, government may intrude on religious liberty only when it has no other choice.\u00a0 This restores religious freedom to its proper place in the pantheon of values.\u00a0 Other values and interests take a back seat where religious rights are involved.\u00a0\r\nAs you can see, RFRA is an incredibly expansive statute.\u00a0 It applies to all government action, and requires government to satisfy strict conditions before it can intrude on religious liberty.\u00a0\r\nEqually broad was the coalition that passed RFRA.\u00a0 The bill passed the House of Representatives unanimously.\u00a0 Think about that \u2014 unanimously.\u00a0 There was not a single dissenting vote.\u00a0 Even the vote to authorize the use of military force against al-Qaeda following 9/11 was not unanimous.\u00a0 RFRA passed the Senate 97 to 3.\u00a0 Nearly unanimous.\u00a0 The day President Clinton signed RFRA into law was one of the proudest days of my life.\u00a0\r\nRFRA has not had an uncomplicated history in the courts.\u00a0 In 1997, the Supreme Court held that Congress lacked constitutional authority to impose a stricter standard of religious freedom protection on the states than the Supreme Court had decreed in Smith.\u00a0 Intervening cases have confirmed that RFRA does restore the compelling interest test where federal legislation is involved.\u00a0 Significantly, nineteen states have adopted state religious freedom restoration acts, and courts in another twelve states have accomplished the same result by construing their state constitutions to require heightened scrutiny of religious freedom claims.\u00a0 Only four states have explicitly followed the reasoning of the Smith decision.\u00a0 Thus, while the Supreme Court narrowed the state protections provided by RFRA, the majority of states have followed the lead established by Congress in passing RFRA.\u00a0\r\nRFRA was a broad law supported by a broad coalition that recognized the law\u2019s expansive scope.\u00a0 When President Clinton signed it into law twenty years ago, there was widespread agreement as to religious liberty\u2019s fundamental status, and the fact that government should have to exhaust all other possible avenues before intruding on religious rights.\u00a0\r\nBut unfortunately, times have changed.\u00a0 Where once there was broad agreement, now there is discord.\u00a0\u00a0\r\nEarlier this year, in a case titled Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, the Supreme Court held that Obamacare\u2019s birth control mandate did not sufficiently accommodate the free exercise of religion.\u00a0 The plaintiffs in the case argued that providing certain mandated birth control products would violate their deeply held religious beliefs regarding the sanctity of life.\u00a0 In ruling for the plaintiffs, the Court found that there were available alternative means of accomplishing the policy objective of providing insurance coverage for birth control that would not force the plaintiffs to violate their sincere, deeply held religious beliefs.\u00a0\u00a0\r\nSet against the broad backdrop of American history, of religious freedom as both social reality and constitutional principle, the Court\u2019s decision was not remarkable at all.\u00a0 But throughout American society, the longstanding consensus about religious freedom has deteriorated, and the Court\u2019s decision has proven controversial.\u00a0\r\nAs with Smith, members of Congress responded to the Hobby Lobby decision with legislation to overturn it.\u00a0 But there was a key difference between the decisions: Smith diminished religious freedom, whereas Hobby Lobby secured it.\u00a0\r\nThink about that.\u00a0 In 1993, Congress responded to the Smith decision that had weakened religious freedom with legislation to protect it.\u00a0 In 2014, however, a mere two decades later, many members of Congress \u2014 including many who had voted for RFRA \u2014 responded to the Hobby Lobby decision that had protected religious freedom with legislation to weaken it.\u00a0\u00a0\r\nNor are these attempts to diminish religious liberty in the wake of Hobby Lobby limited to the specific facts of that case.\u00a0 Hobby Lobby dealt with Obamacare\u2019s birth control mandate.\u00a0 The proposed legislative responses to Hobby Lobby, however, sweep much more broadly.\u00a0 They would exempt from RFRA\u2019s strict scrutiny requirement not just birth control coverage, but all federal laws and regulations relating to health care.\u00a0 Just as Smith provoked a broad legislative response, so did Hobby Lobby.\u00a0 The difference is that in 1993 there was near-unanimity that religious liberty deserves the highest protection, whereas now, a significant portion of Congress believes religious liberty deserves no particular protection, at least where health care is involved.\u00a0\r\nI have served in the U.S. Senate for nearly 38 years, and have been involved in developing, negotiating, drafting, and enacting thousands of bills.\u00a0 Rarely have I seen a bill that was clearer or simpler than the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.\u00a0 In 1993, Congress was nearly unanimous that the free exercise of religion was to continue its preferred place in our hierarchy of values.\u00a0 Just 20 years later, many of the very Senators and Congressmen who supported RFRA are now pushing legislation that would render it impotent.\u00a0\r\nAnother way in which religious freedom is being pulled down from its preferred status is by placing it in conflict with other rights, including statutory rights.\u00a0 This situation occurs, for example, when the constitutional right to the free exercise of one\u2019s religion is said to conflict with a statutory right to be free from discrimination.\u00a0\u00a0\r\nThe U.S. Supreme Court addressed this issue in 2012 in a case called Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church v. EEOC.\u00a0 In Hosanna-Tabor, a religious denomination argued that its First Amendment right to determine who would serve as its ministers created an exception to a federal law prohibiting employment discrimination.\u00a0\u00a0\r\nOrdinarily, the proposition that statutes must conform to the Constitution is accepted as an obvious principle.\u00a0 A conflict between the two typically comes before the courts when a party alleges that a statute violates the Constitution.\u00a0 This case, however, came to the Supreme Court in the opposite posture.\u00a0 The plaintiff employee argued, in effect, that the Constitution violated the statute.\u00a0\r\nThe Supreme Court, thankfully, rejected this twisted view, and instead vindicated the First Amendment right of churches to choose their ministers free from governmental interference.\u00a0 Notwithstanding this clear judicial victory, however, the case revealed something very disturbing \u2014 even offensive \u2014 about the Obama administration\u2019s view of religious freedom.\r\nThe administration argued that there was no need for a special religious exception to federal discrimination law, because all groups\u2014 religious and secular \u2014 already enjoy some level of protection under the First Amendment freedom of association.\u00a0 As the Court explained in rejecting this \u201cremarkable\u201d proposition, the administration wrongly believed that, \u201cthe First Amendment analysis should be the same, whether the association in question is the Lutheran Church, a labor union, or a social club.\u201d\u00a0\r\nLet that sink in for a moment.\u00a0 The President of the United States was arguing that a church\u2019s right to select its leader free from governmental interference was no different from that of a scout troop, a local Kiwanis club, or an intramural sports team.\u00a0 The administration, in effect, was asking the Court to read the Free Exercise Clause right out of the First Amendment and hold that a church is no different from any other group in terms of its relation to government.\u00a0 Churches, in the administration\u2019s view, are just another social group.\u00a0\u00a0\r\nThankfully, the Supreme Court rejected this position unanimously, noting that \u201cthe text of the First Amendment itself .\u00a0.\u00a0. gives special solicitude to the rights of religious organizations.\u201d\u00a0 You would think this point would have been obvious to the President and his lawyers.\u00a0\u00a0\r\nDo not think, however, that the Obama administration has consistently argued that statutes trump the Constitution.\u00a0 Just last year, for example, the Obama administration argued to the Supreme Court that the federal Defense of Marriage Act violated the Fifth Amendment\u2019s implicit guarantee of equal protection.\u00a0\u00a0\r\nLay aside for the moment the remarkable fact that the Obama administration chose not to defend a duly enacted federal law. Focus instead on this fact: It became the official position of the United States that, on the one hand, an implicit constitutional right trumps a federal statute recognizing the millennia-old, religiously rooted, traditional definition of marriage, while on the other hand, an explicit constitutional right to religious freedom fails against a federal anti-discrimination statute.\u00a0 It would be difficult to imagine a more direct attack on the fundamental status of religious liberty.\u00a0\r\nThe alleged conflict between religious liberty and anti-discrimination laws represents another area where the former consensus favoring religious liberty has fallen apart.\u00a0 Last year I was proud to support the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, or ENDA, which would prohibit discrimination in hiring and employment on the basis of sexual orientation.\u00a0 The bill, which contained a robust exemption for religious organizations, struck the right balance between religious liberty and a competing right.\u00a0 It advanced the cause of equality by prohibiting workplace discrimination against gays and lesbians, but also protected the rights of religious organizations.\u00a0 In this way, it maintained religious liberty as a preferred right.\u00a0\r\nMany LGBT advocacy groups, however, have since withdrawn their support for ENDA expressly because of its religious exemption.\u00a0 In their view, religious groups should be treated just like any other groups, and the principle of equality should trump the right to religious liberty.\u00a0 Far from giving religious freedom preferred status, these groups would subsume it beneath other values.\u00a0\r\nWe are seeing the same dynamic play out across the country as LGBT and other advocacy groups are increasingly opposed to religious exemptions that even a few years ago would have passed without conflict.\u00a0 I am deeply concerned by this dynamic.\u00a0 From my perspective, it appears that now these groups believe they are \u201cwinning\u201d the argument and therefore have no need for religious accommodations.\u00a0 Whereas in the past they were willing to respect religious freedom, now that they believe they have the upper hand they are ready to disregard religious liberty altogether.\u00a0\u00a0\r\nThe U.S. Supreme Court begins its new term tomorrow, the first Monday in October.\u00a0 On Tuesday, the Court will consider a case presenting once again the question whether religious freedom remains a preferred value in American law and culture.\u00a0 In 2000, I introduced \u2014 and Congress unanimously passed \u2014the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act.\u00a0 This law applies the same protective standard found in RFRA to the contexts of incarceration and local zoning practices.\u00a0\r\nIn the case to be argued this week, a Muslim prisoner in Arkansas was denied permission to grow a half-inch beard that his faith requires, even though the state allows prisoners to grow beards for medical reasons.\u00a0 As I described earlier, neither the First Amendment nor the statute makes religious exercise an absolute value.\u00a0 But it is a preferred value.\u00a0 This case is important because it measures whether a particular policy is the least restrictive means available, or whether a particular purpose is compelling.\u00a0 For that reason, the Court\u2019s decision may signal whether religious freedom remains fundamental.\u00a0\r\nPreserving and Protecting Religious Freedom\u00a0\r\nTonight I have painted what seems like a negative picture.\u00a0 Religious freedom in three-fold dimension is being eroded and weakened as both social reality and constitutional principle.\u00a0 It is increasingly viewed not as a fundamental right, or even as a preferred value, but at best as one of many competing interests, and at worst as something that should be kept out of the public square altogether.\u00a0 This trend not only restricts religious liberty, but also limits the impact faith has on society.\u00a0\r\nI said at the outset that Professor Berg\u2019s formulation of religious liberty as social reality and constitutional principle can be both descriptive and prescriptive, and I turn now to the latter as I conclude my remarks.\u00a0 The solution to the problems I have identified is to strengthen religious freedom as both social reality and constitutional principle.\u00a0 That may sound simplistic, but it is hardly simple.\u00a0\r\nAs we have seen, it is taking mere years to undermine and possibly destroy what took centuries to build.\u00a0\u00a0 I agree with Professor Glendon of Harvard, who argues that whether religious freedom in the future will be a fundamental right is primarily a cultural challenge.\u00a0 Professor Glendon gave the 2011 Harold J. Berman Lecture at Emory University, and I commend it for your consideration.\u00a0 In her lecture, Professor Glendon endorsed legal and political efforts to defend religious liberty, but also said that in the end, success \u201cwill depend even more on the attitudes and actions of religious believers and leaders themselves.\u201d\u00a0\r\nI think Professor Glendon is exactly right, and I am deeply dismayed at the way contemporary society has come to treat religion.\u00a0\u00a0\r\nMuch of this can be laid at the feet of media.\u00a0 So much of what we see or hear in movies, on the radio, and particularly on television seems to scorn or degrade religion.\u00a0 Churches and charities are depicted as corrupt and self-indulgent.\u00a0 Late-night comics treat believers as buffoons.\u00a0 Reporters fawn over atheists and agnostics who purport to \u201cspeak truth to power\u201d by belittling our religious heritage even as they enjoy more media coverage and a more lavish lifestyle than any parish priest could ever hope.\u00a0\r\nWhen did religion become such a negative thing?\u00a0 How many movies must we endure where the villain is a priest, a pastor, or a self-righteous zealot?\u00a0 One might be excused for thinking that, based on representations in popular media, religious organizations are forces for evil rather than the backbone of much that is good and generous in our society.\u00a0\r\nNevertheless, we cannot lay all the blame at the feet of the media.\u00a0 To do so would be to pretend that we \u2014 academics, government leaders, journalists \u2014 are powerless.\u00a0 But we are not.\u00a0 Even if we cannot control what media elites disseminate, we can work within our own spheres of influence to remind our fellow citizens of our shared religious heritage and the tremendous good religion has accomplished in our society.\r\nFirst, we must be resolute against efforts to remove our religious heritage from educational curricula.\u00a0 I do not mean here to get into the debate about whether the United States is a \u201cChristian nation,\u201d or similar controversies.\u00a0 Rather, I mean to suggest that we should be honest with our children about the profound \u2014 and profoundly positive \u2014 impact that religion had on some of our greatest leaders.\u00a0 It is fashionable to question the Christianity of George Washington, and volumes have been written on Thomas Jefferson\u2019s heterodoxy, but the fact remains that nearly all of our greatest leaders, from Washington to Lincoln to Martin Luther King, were men of faith who found deep strength in their religious convictions.\u00a0 Our heroes were religious men.\u00a0 To teach this is not to \u201cinject\u201d religion into a place it does not belong.\u00a0 It is simply to state the truth.\u00a0\r\nRemember, too, that many of our greatest social movements, from abolition to the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s, were led by religious individuals motivated by religious conviction.\u00a0\r\nSecond, we must reclaim the public square as a forum friendly for religion.\u00a0 Nearly seventy years ago the Supreme Court committed legal and historical malpractice by importing into its early Establishment Clause jurisprudence the false notion that our Founders intended to wall off religion from the public square.\u00a0 Myriad historians have since proved the Court\u2019s error, but the idea it planted has flourished into the widespread belief that religion has no place in school, in government, or anywhere else in the public sphere.\u00a0 This is simply wrong.\u00a0\r\nThere should be room in all aspects of the public square for affirmations of religious devotion and recognition of the important role religion continues to play.\u00a0 This does not mean we should mandate school prayer.\u00a0 But it does mean we should allow students and government leaders to express religious views without condemnation and without criticism that religion is a purely private affair.\u00a0\r\nI am deeply concerned by the movement to cut off school funding for religious groups that require leaders to affirm the groups\u2019 religious beliefs.\u00a0 We should encourage, not hamstring, students\u2019 efforts to join together with co-believers.\u00a0 I am particularly concerned that some schools are eliminating funding for religious groups even while leaving funding for secular groups untouched.\u00a0 And I call on state officials to ensure that such schools are not using nondiscrimination codes as a fig leaf for getting rid of disfavored religious groups.\u00a0\r\nThird, we must support efforts to partner government with religious and charitable organizations to reach underserved populations.\u00a0 I believe that one of President George W. Bush\u2019s most important, and least heralded, initiatives was his effort to tap into the faith community\u2019s ability to provide services to poor and underprivileged communities.\u00a0 President Bush recognized the tremendous work that religious groups do to care for and support the needy.\u00a0 He also recognized that faith-based organizations can often provide services more efficiently and effectively than government. These efforts show that government and religion are not antagonists, but partners.\u00a0\r\nFourth, we should highlight the good that religious leaders do for our nation.\u00a0 We are bombarded constantly with negative news about religious leaders.\u00a0 Pastors embezzling from their congregations, ministers cheating on their wives, priests abusing young worshippers.\u00a0 To be sure, there are bad apples in religious groups as there are everywhere. But the few bad apples do not spoil the whole barrel.\u00a0 Wouldn\u2019t it be nice, for a change, if among all the unrelenting negativity there were some positive stories about lives changed for the better?\u00a0 There are awards, degrees, honoraria, prizes to be given.\u00a0 Commissions, boards, panels to be filled.\u00a0 Books, papers, studies to be written.\u00a0 Perhaps we could give greater thought to religious leaders in our communities that are deserving of such awards, or available to serve on such commissions, where their service can be recognized.\u00a0 Professional athletes and boorish musicians receive enough attention.\u00a0 Let\u2019s try to reserve some for our upstanding religious leaders.\u00a0\r\nFifth, we should work harder to convince people that religious freedom is worth protecting, a point made by Professor Christopher Lund at Wayne State University.\u00a0 For much of American history, we either assumed the answer or did not ask the question at all.\u00a0 But the heritage that began with social reality and became constitutional principle will not protect itself.\u00a0 Professor Lund writes that unless we do better at explicitly making this case, legislators will no longer enact laws such as RFRA, judges will not properly interpret constitutional provisions and statutes protecting religious freedom, and religious liberty will indeed no longer receive the standing it deserves.\u00a0\r\nSixth, we must affirm our own individual faith and devotion.\u00a0 As community leaders, we have the ability to reach and influence broad audiences.\u00a0 By publicly affirming our faith, we both show that faith does have a place in the public sphere, and show community members that their leaders place a priority on religion.\u00a0 This does not mean we should become public pastors.\u00a0 But it does mean we should not be shy about our own beliefs.\u00a0 By demonstrating that religion is important to our own self-identity and desire to serve, we show our community members that religion is a thing of value and source of motivation.\u00a0\r\nAnd who knows?\u00a0 Showing others how religion has changed our lives may spark a desire in them to seek greater devotion in their own lives.\u00a0 There can be no greater protector of religious liberty than a society composed of individuals who actually value religion.\u00a0\r\nChanging culture is no easy thing, and we here in this room are too small a group to redirect a trajectory that has gone so far off course.\u00a0 But we are not the only people dedicated to religious liberty, and concerned that it is retreating both here in the United States and across the world.\u00a0 The Pew Forum reports that three-quarters of the world\u2019s population live in countries with high government restrictions and significant social hostilities surrounding religion, and that level is increasing.\u00a0 In many places, religious freedom has never been social reality or constitutional principle.\u00a0\u00a0\r\nMany of our neighbors and fellow community leaders share our concerns about religious liberty\u2019s retreat.\u00a0 By reasserting religious freedom\u2019s proper place we can appeal to those who recognize the importance of religious liberty but are unsure how to proceed.\u00a0 By making the public square more friendly for religion we can invite back into the square those who share our convictions but feel uncomfortable expressing those convictions in public.\u00a0\u00a0\r\nBy working to make government and religion partners once more rather than antagonists, we can revive the view that religion is a force for good rather than something to be swept under the rug.\u00a0 And by ensuring that our religious heritage maintains a robust role in our educational curricula, we can ensure that our children understand that religion helped our heroes accomplish great things and made our nation what it is today.\u00a0\r\nReligion may never be fashionable in the way it once was.\u00a0 Our insular and insulated media elites will work to that end.\u00a0 But if we can help our young people see religion as a force for good, they will be more inclined to protect it and to stand up against secularists who seek to rid religion from our history books and banish it from our public discourse.\u00a0\r\nA 2011 survey revealed that 90 percent of Americans believe that religious freedom is an inherent right that is not granted by government.\u00a0 That is perhaps a slim reed, but it is an essential belief for rebuilding the foundation of religious freedom.\u00a0 The preamble to our Constitution states that that charter was established to secure the blessing of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.\u00a0 True religious freedom is essential for that security.\u00a0\r\nI wish each of you God\u2019s blessing in seeking to advance the cause of religious liberty, here in the United States and throughout the world.", 1, "2026-03-30T12:14:52Z", "2026-03-30T12:14:52Z"]], 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