WASHINGTON (RNS)—Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced during a Department of Justice summit in Washington he is creating a religious liberty task force to challenge what he called a dangerous movement “eroding our great tradition of religious freedom.”

While affirming some of Sessions’ remarks, the executive director of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty took him—and the Trump Administration in general—to task for “sowing division where there should be unity” in regard to religious freedom.

The task force is an outgrowth of President Trump’s executive order directing agencies to protect religious liberty, Sessions said. It will help Justice Department employees remember their duty to accommodate people of faith, he asserted.

“This administration is animated by that same American view that has led us for 242 years—that every American has a right to believe and worship and exercise their faith in the public square,” Sessions said at the summit.

Sessions alluded to the fears of some Americans that the freedom to practice their faith has been under attack. He spoke of nuns “ordered to buy contraceptives,” a reference to an Obama-era contraception mandate. While the mandate did not force the nuns to buy contraceptives, it required them to cover the costs of contraceptives in their employees’ health plans.

“Religious Americans are no longer an afterthought,” he said. “We will take potential burdens on one’s conscience into consideration before we issue regulations or policies.”

Speaking at the summit alongside Sessions were a host of religious leaders, including Roman Catholic Archbishop Joseph Kurtz, who chairs the Committee for Religious Liberty at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, as well as Jack Phillips, the Colorado baker who won a Supreme Court case after refusing to design a cake for a gay couple’s wedding reception.

Personal religious liberty battles described

During a panel discussion, a host of religious leaders described their personal religious liberty battles. They included a Chabad rabbi who fought opposition to his building a synagogue in Boca Raton, Fla., a Sikh lawyer who refused to shave his beard and take off his turban to accept a job and Phillips, an evangelical Christian.

The summit examined the controversial issue of religion-based service refusals to LGBTQ Americans head on.

Sessions praised Phillips for his “bravery” in his Masterpiece Cakeshop legal challenge. Others, including Kurtz and Heritage Foundation executive Emilie Kao, said the country ought to defend the rights of faith-based adoption agencies to refuse to allow same-sex couples to adopt children.

Without ever referring to LGBTQ people explicitly, Kurtz alluded to the need to protect faith-based adoption agencies’ desires to deny service to gay or lesbian couples because of the Catholic faith’s opposition to same-sex relationships.

“When activists try to force Christian ministries into violating their consciences, they force Christians into a bind,” Kurtz said. “We cannot reject our commitments to service, nor can we turn away from our commitment to the truth about the human person.”

The Alliance for Defending Freedom, a conservative legal firm that defended Phillips, immediately issued a release congratulating Sessions and his religious liberty initiative.

“Too many of the clients ADF represents are risking their businesses, their life savings and their safety to follow their conscience,” the statement said. “All Americans should be free to peacefully live and act consistent with their convictions and faith without threat of government punishment.”

‘Sowing division where there should be unity’

Amanda Tyler, executive director of the Baptist Joint Committee, affirmed some of Sessions’ remarks, noting particularly his references to freedom of conscience and the Department of Justice’s prosecution of “attacks and threats against houses of worship and people because of their religion.”

However, she took issue with the attorney general for “oversimplification of unsettled legal questions involving the free exercise of religion and the near told omission of any concern for government promotion of religion, which the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause prohibits.”

“I agree that we find ourselves in a perilous moment, but I fear that what is most in jeopardy is widespread support for religious liberty for all. And the actions of this administration, including the announcement of a one-sided Religious Liberty Task Force, are only exacerbating the problem,” Tyler said.

“In aligning the government closely with a narrow viewpoint on religious freedom—which fails to balance concern for protection of the rights of others with the right to exercise one’s religion—the Trump administration is sowing division where there should be unity on our first freedom.”

The Baptist Joint Committee “will continue to call for a full understanding of religious liberty for all, which demands that government neither inhibit nor promote religion and its practice,” she added.

“If religious freedom is going to survive—let alone flourish—in our pluralistic and rapidly changing society, we must all advocate for a more complete and inclusive understanding of religious liberty for people of all faith traditions and those who do not adhere to any religion,” Tyler said.

With additional reporting by Managing Editor Ken Camp.

WASHINGTON — Churches and other nonprofit groups are struggling to make sense of a new levy imposed on their traditionally tax-exempt operations by the sweeping tax overhaul that Republicans in Congress passed last year.

Those outfits in Texas and beyond now must pay a 21 percent tax on some fringe benefits, such as parking or mass transit passes, that they provide to their employees.

That change has provoked outrage and confusion among many nonprofit entities that say the little-noticed provision is already becoming a financial and administrative burden, one that could have an impact on their ability to fulfill key missions.

Continue reading this article in the Dallas Morning News.

WASHINGTON (BP)—Legislation to prohibit government from discriminating against adoption and foster care agencies over their religious or moral convictions has taken an initial step toward potential passage in Congress.

The House of Representatives Appropriations Committee included the Child Welfare Provider Inclusion Act in a spending bill it approved July 11.

The committee first passed the measure as an amendment to the Labor, Health and Human Services and Education funding bill in a 29-23 vote. The panel then forwarded the amended version of the bill in a 30-22 roll call.

The proposal, H.R. 1881, would bar the federal government—as well as any state or local government that receives federal funds—from discriminating against or taking action against a child welfare agency that refuses to provide services in a way that conflicts with its religious beliefs or moral convictions, such as placing children with same-sex couples.

If enacted, the legislation would require Health and Human Services to withhold 15 percent of federal funds from a state or local government that violates its ban.

ERLC chief voices support for measure

The Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission and other advocates for the bill have called for a federal solution to a growing pattern of some state and local governments requiring adoption and foster care agencies to place children with gay couples or shut down such services.

ERLC President Russell Moore expressed gratitude for the committee’s support for the measure.

“Protecting the rights of those who are dedicated to caring for the most vulnerable among us only ensures that more children have access to the love and support they so desperately need,” Moore said. “This is precisely what the Child Welfare Provider Inclusion Act would do.

“Far too many children are waiting, right now, either for adoption or foster families. Our government must not stand in the way of those seeking to care for them.”

The Child Welfare Provider Inclusion Act “would not only guarantee faith-based child welfare agencies are not discriminated against, but would further the goal of seeing vulnerable children united with loving families,” Moore said.

The ERLC included enactment of the Child Welfare Provider Inclusion Act as a priority in its 2018 legislative agenda and organized a July 3 letter with nearly 70 signatories that urged the Appropriations Committee to add it to the Labor, HHS and Education bill.

Division in states regarding child welfare agencies

Nine states have laws that require child welfare agencies to place children with same-sex couples in adoption, foster care or both, according to Reuters News Service. They are California, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Nevada, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island and Wisconsin.

Meanwhile, nine other states have enacted measures that protect the right of agencies to abide by their religious or moral convictions in adoption and foster care—Alabama, Kansas, Michigan, Mississippi, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Texas and Virginia.

The division in the states and threats to agencies in some jurisdictions call for federal action, the ERLC and its allies said in the July 3 letter.

“Given the heavy investment of the federal government in child services and the woefully inconsistent territory across the states, we believe this problem justifies a federal solution,” they wrote.

In an apparently barrier-breaking decision July 13, a federal judge in Philadelphia ruled the city can require adoption and foster care agencies it has contracts with to place children with gay couples, according to NBC News. The decision is the first of its kind by a federal court, NBC reported.

Catholic Social Services had brought suit after Philadelphia’s Department of Human Services stopped cooperating with CSS and Bethany Christian Services because they refused to place children in same-sex homes.

In another case, Catholic Charities of Fort Worth has been sued for declining to place children with a same-sex couple.

Rep. Robert Aderholt, R-Ala., who introduced the Child Welfare Provider Inclusion Act as an amendment to the funding bill, said after its adoption his goal was “to encourage states to include all experienced and licensed child welfare agencies so that children are placed in caring, loving homes where they can thrive. We need more support for these families and children in crisis, not less.”

Aderholt is co-chairman of the House Coalition on Adoption.

LGBT rights group criticizes action

Meanwhile, the Human Rights Campaign—the country’s largest political organization advocating for LGBT rights—criticized the committee’s action.

“Any Member of Congress who supports this amendment is clearly stating that it is more important to them to discriminate than it is to find loving homes for children in need,” said David Stacy, director of government affairs at the Human Rights Campaign.

The ERLC-led coalition letter pointed to the pressure brought on the adoption and foster care system by the opioid epidemic among adults.

“Now is an especially terrible time to reduce the capacity of state governments to efficiently place children in safe, loving homes,” the letter stated.

In addition to Moore, the letter’s signers included Chris Palusky, president, Bethany Christian Services; Albert Reyes, president, Buckner International; Daniel Nehrbass, president, Nightlight Christian Adoptions; David Nammo, executive director, Christian Legal Society; Penny Nance, president, Concerned Women for America; Kelly Shackelford, president, First Liberty Institute; David Christensen, vice president, Family Research Council; and Joseph Kurtz, chairman, U.S. Catholic Conference of Bishops Committee for Religious Liberty.

WASHINGTON (RNS)—When it comes to politics, white evangelical Christians stand apart from every other religious group, according to a new poll conducted by the Public Religion Research Institute and The Atlantic.

The poll found 61 percent of evangelicals say the United States is headed in the right direction. By comparison, 64 percent of the overall public—including majorities of other Christian groups as well as religiously unaffiliated Americans—believes the country is seriously off track.

“White evangelical Protestants are sitting in their own unique space in the religious landscape on a whole range of issues,” said Robert Jones, CEO of research institute.

The survey, conducted in June from among 1,000 people, asked questions about voting and political engagement. But it also broke down respondents’ answers based on religious affiliation—white evangelical, white mainline Protestant, nonwhite Protestant, Catholic and religiously unaffiliated.

Continued support for President Trump

An overwhelming 81 percent of white evangelicals voted for President Trump, and they have generally stuck by him during his first 18 months as president.

Evangelicals widely hailed Trump’s nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to fill retiring Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy’s seat.

In recent days, Robert Jeffress, one of Trump’s informal evangelical advisers and the pastor of First Baptist Church in Dallas, called for an end to Robert Mueller’s investigation of possible collusion between the Russian government and the Trump campaign during the 2016 presidential election.

The PRRI poll showed 77 percent of white evangelicals view Trump favorably or mostly favorably, the highest percentage since the 2016 election. By comparison, 17 percent of non-white Protestants, a group made up of African-Americans and Hispanics, viewed Trump favorably or mostly favorably.

Least likely to view changing demographics positively

As a group, white evangelicals were also the least likely to view America’s changing racial demographic makeup positively. Fifty-two percent of white evangelicals said they felt negatively about the prospect that nonwhites would become the majority of the population by 2043. That fits with white evangelicals’ approach to immigration, their distrust of Muslims and support for a border wall with Mexico.

By comparison, all other religious groups in the survey viewed the changing demographics in mostly positive terms.

“I argued that white evangelical voters have really shifted from being values voters to being what I call ‘nostalgia voters,’” said Jones. “They’re voting to protect a past view of America that they feel is slipping away. That’s driving evangelical politics much more than the old culture-war dynamics.”

Brantley Gasaway, a professor of American religious studies at Bucknell University in Lewisburg, Pa., said white evangelicals’ fears about the nation’s growing racial diversity might be linked to their perception of religious diversity.

“They perceive that America becoming less white means America will become less Christian,” he said. “I don’t think that’s true. Many Latino immigrants are coming from predominantly Christian nations. But they perceive changes in racial demographics as being a threat to the predominance of Christians in the United States.”

As a group, white evangelicals are declining. A decade ago they made up 23 percent of the U.S. population; today it’s more like 15 percent, Jones said. But they have an outsize influence at the ballot box because they tend to vote in high numbers.

The one area where religious groups appeared united is in their support for legislation that would make it easier to vote—measures such as same-day voter registration and restoring voting rights for people convicted of felonies.

View media as biased

A majority of all religious groups, with the exception of nonwhite Protestants, saw media bias as a “major problem.” White evangelicals led the pack, with 79 percent saying media bias was a major problem. By contrast, 50 percent of religiously unaffiliated also said it was a major problem.

While most religious groups said they would prefer that presidential elections be decided by the national popular vote as opposed to the Electoral College, white evangelicals once again stood out: 52 percent said presidential elections should be decided by the Electoral College. (Trump won the Electoral College but lost the popular vote.)

The margin of error for the national survey was plus or minus 3.3 percentage points.

WASHINGTON (BP)—A federal appeals court ruling that protects a church’s internal communications buttressed both religious freedom and defense of the unborn, according to the Southern Baptist Convention’s public policy and moral concerns agency.

The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans reversed July 15 a federal judge’s order requiring the Roman Catholic bishops and archbishops of Texas to turn over their private deliberations on what they describe as doctrinal and moral issues.

Although the case involved the Catholic Church, the SBC’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission had said in a friend-of-the-court brief a failure to vacate the order would also endanger the religious freedom of Southern Baptist and other congregationally governed churches.

ERLC President Russell Moore applauded the Fifth Circuit’s opinion.

“The court’s ruling, which affirms religious liberty, as well as the sanctity of human life, is a victory for all Americans,” Moore said. “Churches and religious organizations shouldn’t be forced to disclose private information that could sabotage their ability to protect human dignity and engage in the public square. I am thankful the court acknowledged this in their decision.”

Moore added he prays the bishops and other religious organizations “will continue to stand firm in their convictions as we work to ensure the state respects their constitutional rights.”

Abortion clinic network wanted bishops’ emails

The case involves a challenge by the Whole Woman’s Health abortion clinic network to a 2016 state law that requires fetal remains from abortions or miscarriages to be buried or cremated rather than discarded in a landfill or by other means.

The Texas Conference of Catholic Bishops is not a party to the lawsuit, but Whole Woman’s Health sought its emails seemingly because the bishops have offered free burial for fetal remains in the church’s cemeteries in the state.

Magistrate Judge Andrew Austin refused June 13 to suppress Whole Woman’s Health’s subpoena of emails and attachments involving Texas Conference of Catholic Bishops Executive Director Jennifer Allmon since Jan. 1, 2016, on the disposal of the remains of aborted babies.

The documents sought “do not address religious doctrine or church governance,” Austin wrote in his order.

On June 18, the Fifth Circuit Court halted the order at the Texas bishops’ request and called for the filing of briefs in the appeal by June 25.

Internal deliberations protected

In the Fifth Circuit’s July 15 divided opinion that blocked Austin’s order, Judge Edith Jones wrote for a three-member panel to say past U.S. Supreme Court opinions “have protected religious organizations’ internal deliberations and decision-making in numerous ways.”

While none of those decisions directly addressed discovery orders as in this case, “the importance of securing religious groups’ institutional autonomy, while allowing them to enter the public square, cannot be understated and reflects consistent prior case law,” she wrote.

Problems regarding both the First Amendment’s protection of religious free exercise and prohibition on government establishment of religion “seem inherent in the court’s discovery order,” Jones said. “That internal communications are to be revealed not only interferes with TCCB’s decision-making processes on a matter of intense doctrinal concern but also exposes those processes to an opponent and will induce similar ongoing intrusions against religious bodies’ self-government.”

Judge James Ho agreed with Jones and wrote in a concurring opinion, “It is hard to imagine a better example of how far we have strayed from the text and original understanding of the Constitution than this case.”

The abortion providers’ effort to gain the bishops’ internal communications causes the court to wonder if it is an attempt “to retaliate against people of faith for not only believing in the sanctity of life—but also for wanting to do something about it.”

Judge Gregg Costa dissented from the majority opinion, saying the documents sought by the abortion providers in this case “do not come close to the concerns” addressed in the Supreme Court’s line of decisions on religious free exercise and establishment of religion.

‘Private theological and moral deliberations’

Before Austin’s order, the Texas bishops provided more than 4,300 pages of external communications at the request of Whole Woman’s Health but they refused to grant about 300 internal communications that included “private theological and moral deliberations,” according to Becket, a religious liberty organization representing the TCCB.

Eric Rassbach, vice president and senior counsel at Becket, issued a public statement after the Fifth Circuit decision: “Letting trial lawyers put religious leaders under constant surveillance doesn’t make sense for church or state. The court was right to nip this abuse of the judicial process in the bud.”

In its brief in support of the Texas bishops, the ERLC—joined by the National Association of Evangelicals—said the SBC is not hierarchical, unlike the Catholic Church, but its cooperating churches and other congregationally governed bodies still “would face serious harm.”

“Religious deliberations over doctrine and mission and morality are just as protected by the church autonomy doctrine for congregational churches like the Baptists as for any other religious organization,” the brief said. “The threat posed by the subpoena in this case is equally menacing to religious freedom as if it had been levied against a Baptist minister, a state Baptist convention, a Baptist cooperative entity or any other religious body.”

WASHINGTON (RNS)—President Trump nominated U.S. Court of Appeals Judge Brett Kavanaugh to be his Supreme Court nominee to replace Justice Anthony Kennedy, setting the stage for a heated confirmation battle that likely will focus on his views regarding both law and religion.

Trump made the announcement from the White House on Monday evening July 9 after keeping observers guessing several days.

“Judge Kavanaugh has impeccable credentials, unsurpassed qualifications, and a proven commitment to equal justice under the law,” Trump said, as Kavanaugh stood nearby with his wife and children. “He is a brilliant jurist with a clear and effective writing style universally regarded as one of the finest and sharpest legal minds of our time.”

When Kavanaugh spoke soon after, he was quick to talk about his faith.

“I am part of the vibrant Catholic community in the D.C. area,” Kavanaugh said, after mentioning his Jesuit high school. “The members of that community disagree on many things, but we are united by a commitment to serve.”

Move the court to the right

Kavanaugh, who once clerked for Kennedy, has built a high-profile career tailor-made to please many stalwart conservatives: He helped author the Starr Report on then-President Bill Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky, represented Cuban child Elian Gonzalez pro bono to keep him from returning to the island nation, and was a lawyer with the George W. Bush campaign during the Florida recount.

But since being appointed to the District Columbia Circuit of the Court of Appeals, Kavanaugh also has issued rulings that speak directly to hot-button issues among people of faith, such as abortion and religious liberty.

“He’s going to move the court to the right of the man who he clerked for,” said Micah Schwartzman, a University of Virginia School of Law professor who specializes in religion and the U.S. Constitution. He noted the most lasting impact of Kavanaugh’s appointment may be how it reshuffles the calculus of the court, saying his confirmation will make it “more likely Chief Justice John Roberts will be the swing vote.”

Many have noted Kavanaugh’s dissent in Garza v. Hargan, when the court allowed an undocumented teenager who had crossed the border from Mexico into Texas as an unaccompanied minor to get an abortion while residing at a government-funded shelter. He argued the 2017 ruling was “ultimately based on a constitutional principle as novel as it is wrong: a new right for unlawful immigrant minors in U.S. government detention to obtain immediate abortion on demand.”

Kavanaugh also wrote a lengthy dissent in another case when the court declined to take up a case brought by a group of priests who objected to the Obama administration’s rules regarding contraceptive coverage.

‘Not conservative enough’ for some

Some conservative observers, however, felt that his dissent wasn’t conservative enough. David French at the National Review argued Kavanaugh erred by purportedly suggesting the government has a compelling interest to provide contraception to a religious organization that opposes it.

“While the government may well deem that contraceptives provide many general benefits (and Kavanaugh outlines those benefits in his opinion), that is not the same thing as holding that those general benefits are sufficiently compelling as applied to the employees of a small religious nonprofit,” French wrote.

But in another National Review piece, Justin Walker—assistant professor at the University of Louisville Brandeis Law School and former clerk of both Kennedy and Kavanaugh—argued the D.C. circuit judge is ultimately a “warrior for religious liberty.”

Responding to an article in the conservative publication The Federalist critical of Kavanaugh, Walker noted Kavanaugh chaired the Federalist Society’s Religious Liberty practice group in the 1990s, offered pro bono work for “cases defending religious freedom,” and “represented a synagogue pro bono in a local zoning dispute.”

“Judge Kavanaugh believes his job is to apply the law objectively, without regard to his personal views,” Walker said in an email to Religion News Service. “Part of applying the law objectively includes applying the Constitution. He also understands that our founders believed deeply in religious liberty, and that the Constitution they wrote protects the free exercise of religion.”

Kavanaugh also reportedly volunteered his time on a Supreme Court religious liberty case with Kelly Shackelford, president and CEO of First Liberty Institute, and Jay Sekulow, one of Trump’s lawyers who has long opposed the portion of the IRS tax code that bars nonprofits from endorsing candidates for office.

A First Liberty Institute representative confirmed the 2000 case was Santa Fe Independent School District v. Doe, where the court ruled a policy allowing student-led, student-initiated prayer at high school football games violated the establishment clause of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

America’s religious communities are failing children with chronic health conditions such as autism, learning disabilities, depression and conduct disorders.

And they have been doing it for a very long time, suggests a just-published national study following three waves of the National Survey of Children’s Health.

The odds of a child with autism never attending religious services were nearly twice as high as compared to children with no chronic health conditions. The odds of never attending also were significantly higher for children with developmental delays, ADD/ADHD, learning disabilities and behavior disorders.

Sanctuaries were much more sympathetic to children with health conditions such as asthma, diabetes, epilepsy or vision problems. Those children were as likely to be in the pews as youngsters with no health conditions.

But children with conditions that limit social interaction, those youngsters and their parents who are often excluded from other social settings and have the greater need for a community of social support, were most likely to feel unwelcome at religious services.

Continue reading this article at the Association of Religion Data Archives.

WASHINGTON (RNS)—As the summer heat waxes and state legislative sessions wane, the Congressional Prayer Caucus Foundation has scored a few small but significant victories.

This year, five state legislatures passed laws mandating every public school prominently display the U.S. motto, “In God We Trust.” The addition of Arkansas, which passed such a law in 2017, brings to six the number of states with public school mandates, including Alabama, Florida, Arizona, Louisiana and Tennessee.

Project Blitz gains traction

Those laws, mostly sponsored by legislative prayer caucuses in about 30 states, were inspired by the foundation’s 2017 manual known as Project Blitz, a 116-page guide for state legislators listing 20 model bills of which “In God We Trust” is the first.

For a foundation begun in late 2005 as an offshoot of the Congressional Prayer Caucus, that’s an impressive start.

The list of “In God We Trust” legislation doesn’t count states like Minnesota that passed a law allowing but not mandating public schools post the motto, or a new North Carolina law requiring the Department of Motor Vehicles to issue optional “In God We Trust” license plates.

Project Blitz has been likened to the American Legislative Exchange Council, which brings conservative state lawmakers together with corporate sponsors to draft model legislation.

The model bill project was conceived by the foundation based in Chesapeake, Va., alongside two partners—WallBuilders, the group headed by Christian nationalist David Barton, and the National Legal Foundation, a Christian public interest law firm.

The project’s stated purpose is to protect religious liberty, which the foundation says is a key American principle that has “weakened and come under increasing attack.”

Religious freedom for whom?

But the way Project Blitz defines religious freedom is misleading, said Frederick Clarkson, senior research analyst with Political Research Associates, a social justice think tank based in Somerville, Mass.

“Religious freedom in the sense that Project Blitz means it is not what the rest of us understand as the revolutionary aspiration of religious equality for all,” Clarkson said. “It’s more of a cover for some conservative Christians to promote their religious and political views via public policy and public institutions, and as a justification for broad exemptions from the law.”

In addition to the “In God We Trust” model bill for public schools, the Project Blitz manual offers a raft of other bills, including:

• A Religion in Legal History Act that endorses an “appropriate presentation of the role of religion in the constitutional history of the United States” to be placed in courthouses and other public institutions (Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin signed such a law in May).
• A state resolution on marriage that says the state “supports and encourages marriage between one man and one woman.”
• A Child Protection Act that allows religious exemptions for adoption and foster care agencies from serving same-sex couples (both Kansas and Oklahoma passed such laws this year).
• A Licensed Professional Civil Rights Act that would exempt “pharmacists, medical personnel and mental health practitioners from providing care to LGBTQ people, and such matters as abortion and contraception.”
• A Student Prayer Certification Act that would require states to certify they are not preventing students from engaging in constitutionally protected prayer.”

Repeated email and phone calls to the foundation were not returned.

Americans United for Separation of Church and State has been keeping track of Project Blitz legislation. It found 76 bills introduced in state legislatures nationwide in 2018 that were either identical or used similar language to the Project Blitz manual.

Some lawmakers see no harm

Many legislators said they saw no harm in “In God We Trust” measures.

“Our national motto and founding documents are the cornerstone of freedom and we should teach our children about these things,” said Tennessee State Rep. Susan Lynn, who sponsored the bill passed in that state in March.

Project Blitz writers acknowledge “In God We Trust” bills may seem symbolic, but they serve a larger purpose, which is to lay the foundation for future efforts.

“Despite arguments that this type of legislation is not needed, measures such as the ‘In God We Trust’ bill can have enormous impact,” reads the manual. “Even if it does not become law, it can still provide the basis to shore up later support for other governmental entities to support religious displays.”

Pushback begins

Some religious groups have begun to push back. In North Carolina, where an “In God We Trust” bill passed in the state House in June but stalled in the state Senate, the executive director of the North Carolina Council of Churches went on record opposing such a bill.

“For those who have no religious tradition, whose beliefs also are protected by the First Amendment, the motto is an affront,” wrote Jennifer Copeland in a blog post. “For those who do believe the tenets of Trinitarian Christianity, we don’t need a sign at school telling us who we trust.”

Last month, the Presbyterian Church (USA) passed by consensus a resolution at its General Assembly that said it will “stand against any invocation of ‘religious freedom’ (in the public sphere) that deprives people of their civil and human rights to equal protection under the law, or that uses ‘religious freedom’ to justify exclusion and discrimination.”

Regional affiliates of Americans United—including one in North Carolina—are watching developments closely.

“They’re destroying the integrity of religion in America,” said Rollin Russell, a retired United Church of Christ minister active with the Orange-Durham chapter of Americans United in North Carolina, referring to the prayer caucus groups. “It makes me crazy that people with that understanding of Christianity are enforcing their theological perspective on everybody else.”

(POLITICO) — Republicans have quietly imposed a new tax on churches, synagogues and other nonprofits, a little-noticed and surprising change that could cost some groups tens of thousands of dollars.

Their recent tax-code rewrite requires churches, hospitals, colleges, orchestras and other historically tax-exempt organizations to begin paying a 21 percent tax on some types of fringe benefits they provide their employees.

That could force thousands of groups that have long had little contact with the IRS to suddenly begin filing returns and paying taxes for the first time.

Many organizations are stunned to learn of the tax — part of a broader Republican effort to strip the code of tax breaks for employee benefits like parking and meals — and say it will be a significant financial and administrative burden.

Continue reading this article on Politico.

WASHINGTON (RNS)—The U.S. Supreme Court has upheld President Trump’s temporary ban on refugees and immigrants from a group of primarily Muslim-majority countries in a 5-4 decision, arguing it is within the executive branch’s power to “suspend entry of aliens into the United States.”

“The President has lawfully exercised the broad discretion granted to him … to suspend the entry of aliens into the United States,” the decision, written by Chief Justice John Roberts, reads, citing a statute in the United States code on inadmissible aliens.

“By its terms, (the statute) exudes deference to the President in every clause. It entrusts to the President the decisions whether and when to suspend entry, whose entry to suspend, for how long, and on what conditions. It thus vests the President with ‘ample power’ to impose entry restrictions in addition to those elsewhere enumerated in the (Immigration and Nationality Act).”

The decision, known as Trump v. Hawaii, spoke dismissively of the argument that the travel ban violates the Establishment Clause of the Constitution, which prohibits the government from establishing one religion: “Plaintiffs have not demonstrated a likelihood of success on the merits of their claim that the proclamation violates the Establishment Clause.”

Two dissents written

Four justices wrote two dissents to the decision. Justice Stephen Breyer, joined by Justice Elena Kagan, argued there is some evidence that exceptions to the ban are not being applied narrowly and show “anti-religious bias,” and would therefore “set the Proclamation aside.”

Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, said review of the ban didn’t “cleanse (it) of the appearance of discrimination that the President’s words have created,” later adding, “Based on the evidence in the record, a reasonable observer would conclude that the Proclamation was motivated by anti-Muslim animus.”

Sotomayor also argued the ban violates the First Amendment to the Constitution, which guarantees religious liberty, saying, “The Court’s decision today fails to safeguard that fundamental principle.”

The court said it only considered the president’s executive order in making its decision, not Trump’s statements and tweets targeting Muslims, writing, “the issue before us is not whether to denounce the statements. It is instead the significance of those statements in reviewing a presidential directive, neutral on its face, addressing a matter within the core of executive responsibility.”

Widely varied reactions

The president was quick to celebrate the decision, tweeting, “SUPREME COURT UPHOLDS TRUMP TRAVEL BAN. Wow!”

Omar Jadwat, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, issued a scathing rebuke of the ruling.

“This ruling will go down in history as one of the Supreme Court’s great failures,” he said. “It repeats the mistakes of the Korematsu decision upholding Japanese-American imprisonment and swallows wholesale government lawyers’ flimsy national security excuse for the ban instead of taking seriously the president’s own explanation for his actions.”

Rachel Laser, president and CEO of Americans United, likewise criticized the decision.

“The Supreme Court today has forsaken one of our most foundational and cherished values—that our government must never single out any one religion for discrimination,” Laser said. “Our hearts break for the millions of Americans who, because of the Muslim ban, will continue to be separated from their loved ones and face peak rates of hate crimes and maltreatment.

“We refuse to be Americans divided. We are Americans united in the belief that people of all faiths, and with no religious affiliation too, all deserve equal treatment in America. We know well that when it comes to religious freedom, as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. stated, ‘Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly.’ We call on all Americans to rise up and repudiate the politics of fear, hate and division coming out of this administration.”

‘Straightforward win for President Trump’

Micah Schwartzman, a professor at the University of Virginia School of Law who specializes in the religious clauses of the U.S. Constitution, called the decision “a straightforward win for President Trump.”

“My read is that the 5-4 decision by the majority is a broader victory than many people expected,” he said. “Many thought the court would dodge this case—but it didn’t.”

Schwartzman, whom Sotomayor cites in her dissent, expressed frustration at what he described as the court “burying its head in the sand” by declining to consider Trump’s various negative comments about Islam.

“This was the big case: This was when the court was faced with clear religious animus coming from the president of the United States,” he said.

Schwartzman also argued there was a disconnect in the court’s approach to the ban compared with a recent Supreme Court ruling in Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission.

In that case, Justice Anthony Kennedy cited comments by CCRC officials supposedly deriding the religious beliefs of a baker who declined to make a cake for a same-sex wedding as evidence of anti-religious animus—something Schwartzman argued the court ignored in the travel ban decision.

“There is deep and profound inconsistency from the court between Masterpiece Cakeshop and this case,” he said. “The travel ban case casts Masterpiece under a deep cloud.”

Nelson Tebbe, professor at Cornell Law School, agreed.

“In the Cakeshop case, the court found that one or two statements by a multi-member board of officials sufficed to overturn its actions,” said Tebbe, who signed on to the same amicus brief as Schwartzman, in an email. “In the travel ban case, by contrast, overwhelming evidence of animus by a single decision maker, the president, was insufficient to overturn a policy with an obvious, discriminatory effect.”

Deluge of criticism

The travel ban has endured a near-constant deluge of criticism since then-candidate Donald Trump first proposed a “complete and total shutdown of Muslims” entering the country while campaigning for president in December 2015.

After he was elected, Trump signed an executive order instituting a more specific version of the idea on Jan. 27, 2017, banning refugees and migrants from seven Muslim-majority countries.

The order triggered widespread protests at airports across the country, and an unusually broad spectrum of faith groups—including the Council on American-Islamic Relations, National Association of Evangelicals, U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism and the National Council of Churches—either rejected or outright condemned the ban.

Holly Hollman, general counsel of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty, had joined 30 other legal scholars in a friend-of-the-court brief arguing the ban is unconstitutionally based in religious animus toward Muslims.

“We are deeply disappointed by the Supreme Court’s refusal to repudiate policy rooted in animus against Muslims,” said Amanda Tyler, executive director of the Baptist Joint Committee.

In giving such broad deference to President Trump, the court neglects its duty to uphold our First Amendment principles of religious liberty. Safeguarding religious liberty requires the government to remain neutral with regard to religion, neither favoring one religion over another nor preferring religion or irreligion.

“More than ever, preserving American religious freedom requires the active involvement of all citizens to denounce religious bigotry in all its forms.”

Legal challenges

The ban was beset by legal challenges. Within days, courts issued a nationwide temporary restraining order restricting enforcement of large parts of the ban. Trump subsequently signed a new version of the executive order that, among other things, removed Iraq from the list of countries affected by the ban.

That, too, was met with lawsuits: The United States District Court for the District of Hawaii issued yet another temporary restraining order in March 2017 that prevented the amended version from going into effect.

The debate made its way to the Supreme Court, which issued a decision on June 26, 2017, that reinstated parts of the order and set oral arguments on the case for later that year. But a third version of the ban, also signed in September, prompted the court to delay the arguments. A Hawaii judge halted this version in October.

Oral arguments in the case finally were offered before the court on April 25, 2018, with a wide swath of faith groups signing on to several amicus briefs siding with those condemning the ban.

The government defended the ban, arguing that the president has the authority to create immigration policy, that the ban itself doesn’t amount to a “Muslim ban” that discriminates unconstitutionally and that Trump’s comments about Islam during the campaign were “made by a private citizen before he takes the oath of office and before … (he) receives the advice of his cabinet.”

But the state of Hawaii disagreed on several counts, arguing that since Trump has refused to disavow his previous remarks about Islam—such as “I think Islam hates us”—those comments still paint the ban.

According to a 2017 poll from the Public Religion Research Institute, 55 percent of Americans oppose the ban, compared with 40 percent who approve. Among major religious groups, only white evangelical Protestants expressed majority support (61 percent) for the ban, compared with 48 percent of white Catholics, 42 percent of white mainline Protestants, 37 percent of Hispanic Catholics and 31 percent of religiously unaffiliated Americans. Only 24 percent of black Protestants expressed support for the ban.

With additional reporting by Managing Editor Ken Camp.

EDITOR’S NOTE: On Wednesday afternoon, June 20, President Trump signed an executive order mandating that officials continue to criminally prosecute everyone who crosses the border illegally but requiring them to seek to find or build facilities that can hold families—parents and children together—instead of separating them while their legal cases are considered by the courts.

The recently implemented zero-tolerance immigration policy that separates children from their parents who cross the border without proper documentation prompted strong reaction from some Baptists—particularly after U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions cited the New Testament in support of the policy.

“People who violate the law of our land are subject to prosecution. I would cite you to the Apostle Paul and his clear and wise command in Romans 13, to obey the laws of the government because God has ordained them for the purpose of order,” Sessions said at a June 14 gathering in Fort Wayne, Ind.

Sessions made the comments two days after messengers to the Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting in Dallas approved a resolution calling for reform in the immigration system to “make it more just, humane, efficient and orderly.”

The resolution expressed messengers desire for reform that includes “an emphasis on securing our borders and providing a pathway to legal status with appropriate restitutionary measures, maintaining the priority of family unity, resulting in an efficient immigration system that honors the value and dignity of those seeking a better life for themselves and their families.”

‘Outrageous’ and ‘heinous’

Suzii Paynter, executive coordinator, expressed outrage both at the effect of the zero-tolerance policy and Sessions’ use of Scripture to justify it.

“The policy of ripping children from the arms of parents is outrageous, and quoting Scripture in its defense is heinous,” Paynter said.

“While it is necessary to control the flow of immigrants and refugees into the country, the use of tactics meant to traumatize and inflict irreparable harm to children and their parents is un-American and certainly do not appear anywhere in the Bible I read.”

Russell Moore, president of Southern Baptists’ Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, posted a photo of a crying immigrant child to his Twitter account June 18 with the tweet: “Father and mother are treated with contempt in you; the sojourner suffers extortion in your midst; the fatherless and widow are wronged in you” (Ezekiel 22:7).”

Later, Moore posted a recording obtained by ProPublica from inside a U.S. Customs and Border Protection facility. On it, listeners can hear crying immigrant children who were separated from their parents and the response of a Border Patrol official. Moore tweeted: “Are our consciences so seared that we do not hear the horror in this?”

Moore was among the religious leaders who signed a June 1 letter from the Evangelical Immigration Table to President Trump, urging his administration to reverse the zero-tolerance policy that separates families.

‘Need our prayers’

Gus Reyes, director of the Texas Baptist Christian Life Commission, issued a statement June 18 calling for prayer for everyone involved in the situation along the Rio Grande.

“These children and their parents need our prayers,” Reyes said. “This is a frightening time for them, because they have been separated in a strange land. Children and families hold special places in our hearts because of the teachings of Scripture.

“Our law enforcement personnel along the border need our prayers. They are in a difficult situation of having to enforce laws that are causing human suffering. It is always hard to see children suffer.

“Our political leaders in Washington need our prayers. Many are torn between competing interests related to securing our southern border, enabling needed workers to enter, upholding existing law and protecting families.”

‘Honor a higher authority’

Reyes noted he was in Washington, D.C., meeting with lawmakers about the matter, and he urged others to practice responsible Christian citizenship.

“Scripture instructs us to respect the laws of nations, but the Bible also indicates Christ followers are to honor a higher authority,” he said. “We obey the laws of governments unless they call on us to violate the instructions of God, then we seek to change the laws. God is sovereign over nations, and in a democracy Christians have a special responsibility to bring godly influence to government policies.

“Living in a democracy, Christians have a responsibility to seek to influence government in the direction of care and justice for all people, especially the ‘least of these,’ as noted by Jesus in Matthew 25.”

‘We can do better’

Kathryn Freeman, director of public policy for the CLC, participated in a June 18 call-in news conference organized by the Evangelical Immigration Table. It featured a panel of Christian women who discussed refugee resettlement and justice for Dreamers, as well as concern about the forced separation of immigrant families.

Freeman noted the plight of asylum-seeking parents who have fled violence in Latin America, only to find themselves criminally charged and separated from the children at the U.S. border.

“Texas evangelicals do not want this done in our name,” Freeman said. “To tear small children from their parents is absolutely heartbreaking, and it is not legally necessary. Every past administration has exercised discretion in these cases, especially when individuals have credible fears of violence in their home country and when their children are affected. We can do better as a nation.”

WASHINGTON (RNS)—The right-leaning Robert P. George and the left-leaning Cornel West may not agree ideologically, but they came to the nation’s capital to urge others to get to know people who are not like them, just as Martin Luther King Jr. did.

A Baylor University event marking the 50th anniversary of King’s assassination aimed to shed light on the minister and civil rights leader who is “so often evoked and so rarely studied in any detail,” said Dean Thomas Hibbs, director of Baylor in Washington, the school’s outpost in the capital.

Organizers said they arranged for the discussion of King’s legacy as a display of brotherhood from two people of widely different perspectives.

“Their friendship is a counter to so much of what ails our public life,” Hibbs told the audience at the luncheon at a Capitol Hill hotel.

‘Nobody has a monopoly on the truth’

Indeed, George, whose Twitter page features a photo of him embracing West, and West, who calls George “my conservative brother,” traded compliments as they each highlighted King’s theology.

“We’re a couple of guys with some pretty strong opinions, but we recognize nobody has a monopoly on the truth,” said George, professor of jurisprudence at Princeton University and a senior fellow at the Baylor Institute for Studies of Religion. “We have something to learn from each other, even across the lines of religious or theological or philosophical or political difference.”

George and West have worked together 11 years, first jointly teaching a class at Princeton—with reading material ranging from Sophocles’ “Antigone” to King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail”—and later drafting a statement on “freedom of thought and expression” on college campuses that reflects the stance they’ve been discussing together in public sessions.

West said he’s had to answer critics who can’t understand how he travels around the country with George: “I say, ‘Have you met him? Have you sat down and talked with him?’”

Search for Beloved Community

They sat onstage, comfortably taking turns highlighting how King had crossed divides in search of his goal of a “beloved community.”

West and George agree the emphasis on King should be on his role as a Christian minister, although his civil rights activism also is grounded in his being a product of the black community.

“The last thing we ever want to do with Brother Martin is view him as some isolated icon on a pedestal to be viewed in a museum,” said West, professor of the practice of public philosophy at Harvard University. “He’s a wave in an ocean, a tradition of a people for 400 years so deeply hated, but taught the world so much about love and how to love.”

Catholic theologian Thomas Aquinas, the Hindu leader Mohandas Gandhi and the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber influenced King’s approach, the two scholars noted. But that approach did not bring him broad appeal during his lifetime. King was criticized not only by racist segregationists, but also by black activists who didn’t agree with his commitment to nonviolence, George said.

“It wasn’t that everybody agreed we got a hero,” said George, who thinks King’s image has become “sanitized” over the years. “It was only after April 4, 1968, when he was assassinated, when he was martyred, that we began to have now the heroic King.”

Learn ‘heroic humility’

West added that King never received a majority vote in a popularity poll as he worked towards his beloved community—the idea that all people are equally deserving of justice and peace—but, he said, more people need to have that “unbelievable courage.”

“We learn from everyone, as Brother Martin, heroic humility,” said West. “That means that we ought to be jazz-like. We ought to not just lift our voices but recognize you can’t lift your voice without bouncing your voice off that of others.”

In brief interviews after their talk, the scholars said they hope their example will help others learn to listen to—and not just hear—people outside their individual tribes and silos.

“Listening means that you’re taking on more of what the person is saying,” said George. “You’re trying to understand it. You’re considering whether there might be some truth in it.”

West added that what’s unusual about their approach is that it’s public.

“There are examples of deep friendships and sisterhoods and brotherhoods across ideological, political lines,” he said. “People want to protect their image vis a vis certain constituencies.”