WASHINGTON (RNS)—Toss out the party and ideology labels—Republican, Democrat, conservative, liberal.

The Pew Research Center’s new survey, “Beyond Red vs. Blue: The Political Typology,” finds no sharp lines dividing people by their views on politics, faith, family, and the role and limits of government.

“It’s a spectrum,” said Michael Dimock, vice president for research for Pew Research Center. Looking at questions relating to faith and family, he observed, “The caricature that all religious people are Republican is just not true.”

Black and Hispanic political liberals who attend church and hold conservative views on issues such as gay marriage shade red on social issues.

To find where people align by values, the typology survey, based on 10,000 U.S. adults, divvies up the public into color zones.

Shading toward red:

• 12 percent: Steadfast Conservatives—older and white, socially and politically conservative.

• 10 percent: Business Conservatives—also largely white but more pro-Wall Street, pro-immigrant.

• 14 percent: Young Outsiders—conservative on government, not social issues.

Blue or shading that way:

• 15 percent: Solid liberals—this group parts company with other “blues” on religion and social issues.

• 15 percent: Faith and Family Left—largely black or Hispanic, highly religious.

• 12 percent: Next Generation Left—roughly half are under age 40, liberal on social issues but less keen on the social safety net.

• 13 percent: Hard-Pressed Skeptics—financially stressed and pessimistic.

‘Bystanders’ take no part in politics

And outside the zones altogether are the Bystanders (10 percent), often young, who take no part in politics.

“What you see is an anchor on the left of fairly secular people, balanced by the Faith and Family Left with a strong Democratic orientation but very religious personal lives. They’re more conservative about how they think people should be living their lives,” Dimock said.

Looking to the right, he sees divisions between Steadfast Conservatives and Business Conservatives.

“Both are very religious personally, but the Business Conservatives don’t translate that into a social conservative stance. They are not as moralistic on how they see the scope of issues.”

Faith necessary for morality?

That turned up when Pew asked whether it was necessary to believe in God to be moral.

Yes, said an overwhelming number of the Faith and Family Left (91 percent) and more than two in three of Steadfast Conservatives (69 percent).

But the seesaw balanced with Business Conservatives (66 percent) and Next Generation Left (91 percent) saying belief in God was not essential to morality.

There are similar splits on views toward the Bible and human evolution.

Where Steadfast Conservatives and their Business brethren stood closest was on views of Islam. They were the only two types in which majorities agree on the statement: “Islamic religion is more likely than others to encourage violence.”

However, on questions about homosexuality and gay marriage, Steadfast Conservatives are much more likely to take the strongest stands in opposition.

Nearly three in four (74 percent) say society should discourage homosexuality rather than accept it—markedly higher than the Faith and Family Left (48 percent) who agree with them.

Gay marriage

Similarly, on gay marriage, 84 percent of Steadfast Conservatives and 55 percent of the Faith and Family left oppose it.

But gay marriage gets strong support from the right-leaning Young Outsiders (68 percent) and their counterpoint, the Next Generation Left (78 percent).

Both of those youthful “types” join the Solid Liberals in strong support for abortion to remain legal in all or most cases.

When Pew asked whether society is better off if people make marriage and children a priority, the same alignment emerged.

Most Young Outsiders (65 percent), Next Generation Left (72 percent) and Solid Liberals (77 percent) say society will do just as well if people have different priorities.

As Democrats and Republicans look ahead to elections, those generational divides are going to matter.

“The Democrats’ side is already aligning with generational change,” Dimock said. “So, the future isn’t as much of a challenge to the Democrats as it is to the Republicans.”

WASHINGTON (RNS)—As soon as the Supreme Court decided for Hobby Lobby and against the Obama administration’s contraception mandate, critics called for the repeal of the 1993 law the justices relied on to make their 5-4 decision.

A Washington Post editorial suggested the next day the Religious Freedom Restoration Act could be narrowed in scope. A hashtag popped up on Twitter: #repealRFRA. The Freedom From Religion Foundation asked its constituents to lobby Congress to scrap the law.

President Bill Clinton signs the Religious Freedom Restoration Act on the White House’s South Lawn on Nov. 16, 1993. (RNS public domain photo via the The U.S. National Archives)Yet at the same time, 10 prominent religious leaders sent a letter to Congress, imploring lawmakers not to touch the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

“Do not amend or appeal RFRA, one our nation’s most vital legal protections for the religious freedom and rights of conscience of every person of every faith,” read the letter, whose signatories included Matthew Harrison, president of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod; Russell Moore, president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention; and Gary E. Stevenson, presiding bishop of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

RFRA sits at the heart of the Hobby Lobby case, perhaps the most debated on the Supreme Court’s docket during its recent session. The case revolved around the question of whether employers had to cover all types of birth control, including ones their religious convictions held out as morally objectionable. But it hinged on RFRA.

Compelling government interest

RFRA says federal laws can’t substantially burden a person’s free exercise of religion unless the law furthers a compelling government interest—in the case in point, getting free birth control to women—and uses the least-restrictive means possible.

In the Hobby Lobby decision, the court’s conservative majority ruled privately held corporations, not just people, have rights under RFRA. And while it assumed the contraception mandate furthered a compelling interest, it ruled the mandate was not the least-restrictive means of getting a full range of birth control to women, and in the process, the mandate trampled on the religious rights of the evangelical Green family that owns Hobby Lobby.

Marci A. Hamilton, a Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law professor who has been trying to repeal RFRA since Congress passed it nearly unanimously in 1993, claimed the Hobby Lobby case shows how RFRA invites religious people to use their beliefs to discriminate against others.

“The genie is out of the bottle,” Hamilton said. “RFRA is an extreme standard, and with Hobby Lobby, it becomes crystal clear that RFRA yields results that are in opposition to the vast majority of Americans’ views.”

Most Americans, a Kaiser Health Tracking Poll released in April showed, believe an employer’s religious beliefs should not trump employees’ rights to all types of birth control promised by law.

Opens the door to other issue

Some critics of the Hobby Lobby decision say it not only tramples women’s health care rights, but also opens the door to other business owners who want to invoke their religious rights to discriminate by, for example, refusing to hire gay employees.

In the wake of the ruling, Sarah Warbelow, legal director of the Human Rights Campaign, a national gay rights group, said it and allied groups “must remain vigilant in the event business owners attempt to use this decision to justify other forms of discrimination, including against LGBT people.”

Could the movement to repeal RFRA go anywhere? So far, no member of Congress has stood up to advocate repealing or even tinkering with it, although some have said the Supreme Court misinterpreted it.

“I’m not nervous for RFRA,” said the Southern Baptists’ Moore. “I think RFRA is secure in law and that it has the support of the Congress.”

Still, the attacks against RFRA, Moore continued, are unsettling and reflect a movement on the political left to redefine religious liberty protections as licenses to discriminate.

“We do see religious liberty coming under harsh rhetorical attack in ways I don’t think could be anticipated years ago,” he said. “We’re attempting to be Paul Reveres for religious liberty protection and warning people ahead of time that there are crucial rights that must be protected.”

WASHINGTON (RNS)—Here are five things to know about the Hobby Lobby case—one of the most anticipated Supreme Court decisions of the year.

1. Corporations can’t pray, but they do have religious rights.

Hobby Lobby isn’t a person. It’s a chain of crafts stores owned by a religious family. And although the evangelical Green family objects to parts of the Affordable Care Act’s emergency contraception mandate, it’s not the Greens but the company that writes the check for employees’ health insurance. The first question the justices had to answer was this: Does Hobby Lobby have religious rights? To many Americans, this seems odd. Does a craft store believe in God?

Hobby Lobby founder Steve Green. (RNS Photo)A majority of the justices held a closely held company such as Hobby Lobby does have religious rights. The court didn’t apply those rights, however, to publicly held corporations, where owners’ religious beliefs would be hard to discern.

But well before the justices delivered their verdict on this question, many legal scholars said they wouldn’t be surprised were they to affirm the company’s religious rights. American corporations do have some of the rights and responsibilities we usually associate with people. And in the 2010 Citizens United campaign finance case, the justices overturned bans on corporate political spending as a violation of freedom of speech—corporations’ free speech.

2. The Affordable Care Act isn’t the only way to get contraception to women.

The justices in this case interpreted not only the 225-year-old Constitution but also the 20-year-old Religious Freedom Restoration Act. If a federal law is going to substantially burden someone’s religious freedom, RFRA says the feds must make sure the law uses the “least-restrictive means” to achieve its purpose. In this case, the purpose is providing birth control to female employees at no cost.

Justice Stephen Breyer asked the “least-restrictive means” question when this case was argued before the court: Instead of making the company provide insurance that conflicts with its owners’ beliefs, how about if the government pays for it? The Supreme Court answered Breyer’s question in the affirmative in this opinion: There are ways of getting contraception to women that don’t substantially burden the Green family’s religious beliefs. Justice Anthony Kennedy, in a concurring opinion, suggested the government could pay.

3. The American people would have ruled differently.

There are nine U.S. Supreme Court justices, and most of them ruled for Hobby Lobby. But what if a softball team composed of a random sample of nine American adults got to decide this case instead? Well, the team likely would have come up with a different decision.

In a Kaiser Health Tracking Poll, released in April, Americans expressed solid support for the contraception mandate, backing it by a 2-to-1 margin. Kaiser also asked specifically about requiring coverage in the Hobby Lobby scenario: Should a for-profit business owner with religious objections to birth control be subject to the requirement? Again, a majority (55 percent) said yes, they should, “even if it violates their owners’ personal religious beliefs.”

4. This court protects religious rights.

Chief Justice John Roberts’ court is shaping up to be pretty darn protective of that free exercise clause. Less than two months ago, the court ruled 5-4 the town of Greece, N.Y., could regularly convene town meetings with sectarian Christian prayers. And in 2012, the court ruled 9-0 a Lutheran school could fire a teacher who had some ministerial responsibilities, despite the government’s argument that her dismissal violated the Americans With Disabilities Act.

In all these cases, the court sided with religious rights over other rights. “The Roberts court has been a great champion of religious freedom,” said Lori Windham, senior counsel at the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which represented Hobby Lobby.

5. Hobby Lobby won, but the next company to cite religious objections might well lose.

Contraception mandate fans painted terrible scenarios of religious rights run amok in the case of a Hobby Lobby win. What if a Jehovah’s Witness invokes her religious rights and says she won’t cover blood transfusions in her company’s health plan? What if an employer says vaccinations conflict with his beliefs?

The Hobby Lobby decision may certainly embolden religious employers to object to laws they consider burdensome. But that doesn’t mean they’re always going to win. The court made clear in this ruling religion should not always trump the law and said its decision applies to the contraception mandate, not other insurance mandates. 

The court also specified an employer could not use religion to get an exemption from laws that prohibit discrimination—on the basis of race, for example. The justices were silent, however, on whether employers’ religious beliefs could override laws that prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.

Also unclear, legal experts say, is how this decision is going to affect religious nonprofits and religiously affiliated schools and hospitals that want the same sort of exemption the justices awarded to Hobby Lobby.

WASHINGTON (RNS)—The Supreme Court sided with the evangelical owners of Hobby Lobby Stores Inc., ruling 5-4 that the arts-and-crafts chain does not have to offer insurance for types of birth control that conflict with company owners’ religious beliefs.

The nine members of the U.S. Supreme Court. (RNS/ Supreme Court Photo)Beyond the specifics of the Hobby Lobby case before them, the justices broke new legal ground by affirming that corporations, not just individual Americans or religious non-profits, may claim religious rights.

Does the decision mean the religious beliefs of business owners stand paramount? That they are more important than a female employee’s right to choose from the full array of birth control methods she is promised under the Affordable Care Act? Or that a business owner may invoke his religious rights to deny service to a gay couple?

Not necessarily, legal experts say.

The decision for Hobby Lobby, the justices made clear, applies to privately held companies such as Hobby Lobby—not vast publicly held corporations, for which the owners’ religious beliefs would be difficult to discern.

Victory for conservatives

But in general, the ruling—the most-anticipated in the high court’s current session—is a victory for advocates who had hoped the justices would find that the federal government had tread too heavily on the Constitution’s guarantee of free exercise of religion.

“This case demonstrates that Americans don’t give up their religious freedom when they open a family business,” said Lori Windham, senior counsel at the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which is representing Hobby Lobby. “The court understands that religion isn’t limited to what you do in a synagogue on Saturday or a church on Sunday.”

The majority opinion says:

• The 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which sets a high bar for any federal law that restricts religious practice, can be invoked by closely held for-profit businesses.

• Although employers at such companies can’t be forced to insure for contraception that conflicts with their religious beliefs, that doesn’t mean that any religious employer can refuse to provide anything that doesn’t meet their personal religious tests—blood transfusions or vaccinations, for example.

• The government could have found a way to achieve the goals of the act’s so-called contraception mandate in a way that impinged less on religious rights, a RFRA requirement.

Health Care act overstepped

Lawyers for Hobby Lobby argued the Affordable Care Act, President Obama’s landmark health care law, had overstepped when it required the company and another owned by a Mennonite family—Conestoga Wood Specialties Corp.—to insure employees for birth control the companies owners found contrary to their Christian beliefs.

Agreeing with the majority opinion, written by Justice Samuel Alito, were Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Anthony Kennedy, the court’s swing vote, who also wrote a concurring opinion. The dissenting opinion, written by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, was joined by Justice Sonia Sotomayer. Justices Elena Kagan and Stephen Breyer wrote a separate dissent.

The justices’ affirmation of religious rights in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby reflects rulings in two other major religion cases in the past three years, and the seeming intention of the Robert’s court to preserve religious rights when they compete with others or run in the face of anti-discrimination laws.

In Hosanna-Tabor v. EEOC in 2012, the court backed a Lutheran school that had fired a teacher who claimed she had been discriminated against under the Americans With Disabilities Act. In Greece v. Galloway in May, the court approved the convening of government meetings with highly sectarian prayers.

A federal appeals court ruled marriage is a fundamental right that cannot be denied based solely on the sex of the person a citizen chooses to marry.

The U.S. 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver upheld a lower-court decision striking down Utah’s ban on same-sex marriage. It is the first time a federal appeals court has backed gay marriage.

(RNS photo courtesy Stefano Bolognini via Wiki Commons)Last year, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down parts of the federal Defense of Marriage Act, finding it unconstitutional to deny federal benefits to same-sex couples who are legally married in their state, but the court stopped short of declaring a fundamental right to marriage for gay couples no matter where they live.

The appellate court affirmed a lower court’s ruling that Utah’s 2004 constitutional amendment ensuring the state “will not recognize, enforce or give legal effect to any law” providing “substantially equivalent” benefits to a marriage between two people of the same sex as are allowed for two individuals of the opposite sex abridged the right to equal protection under the law guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

“We hold that the Fourteenth Amendment protects the fundamental right to marry, establish a family, raise children and enjoy the full protection of a state’s marital laws,” the appellate court ruled. “A state may not deny the issuance of a marriage license to two persons, or refuse to recognize their marriage, based solely upon the sex of the persons in the marriage union.”

ERLC joined brief

The Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention joined Mormon, Catholic, Lutheran and evangelical groups in a brief filed in February asking the appeals court to uphold Utah’s gay marriage ban and a similar law in Oklahoma, claiming children do best growing up in a traditional home with a married mother and father.

“Undermining the husband-wife marital institution by redefining it to include same-sex couples will, in the long term, harm vital child-welfare interests that only the husband-wife definition can secure,” the religious groups argued. “The result will be more mothers and fathers concluding that the highest end of marriage is not the welfare of their children but the advancement of their own life choices.”

Rejected argument

The appeals court rejected that argument, noting it also would apply to opposite-sex couples who choose not to have children.

“There can be little doubt that the right to marry is a fundamental liberty,” the court opined. “The marital relationship is older than the Bill of Rights—older than our political parties, older than our school system.”

“Marriage is a coming together for better or for worse, hopefully enduring, and intimate to the degree of being sacred,” the ruling continued. “It is an association that promotes a way of life, not causes; a harmony in living, not political faiths; a bilateral loyalty, not commercial or social projects.”

WASHINGTON—The Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty joined a lawsuit asking the Colorado Supreme Court to declare a pilot program using taxpayer dollars for private school vouchers unconstitutional.

The BJC, a religious-liberty organization that serves 15 cooperating Baptist conventions and conferences in the United States with supporting congregations across the nation, joined groups representing Jewish, Hindu and Disciples of Christ traditions in a friend-of-the-court brief.

Holly HollmanThe brief says the groups have in common a “firm commitment to the principle that religious education of children is a matter best left to families and their houses of worship” and know from “long experience that the use of tax dollars to fund religious institutions and religious education impedes rather than advances the cause of religious freedom.”

For that reason, they asked the state’s highest court to find that the court of appeals made a mistake when it determined in February 2013 the “Choice Scholarship Program” that operates in Douglas County, Colo., did not violate the state’s constitution.

The program provides 500 vouchers students may use to attend private schools both within and outside Douglas County. More than three quarters of the private schools that participate in the program are religious schools.

Threat to religious liberty

“The BJC has long opposed vouchers for the threat they pose to religious liberty,” BJC General Counsel Holly Hollman said in an article  in the June 2014 Report from the Capital. “As the brief explains, programs like the one in this case encroach on that principle by interfering with free choice in matters of conscience and making religion dependent on government.”

In 2002 the United States Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in Zelman v. Simmons-Harris a voucher program in Ohio did not violate the Establishment Clause of the U.S. Constitution. The case before the Colorado Supreme Court, however, hinges on a clause in the state constitution forbidding the use of public dollars for religious instruction in sectarian schools.

About 35 states have “no aid” provisions in their constitutions, and Colorado’s is one of the strongest, Hollman said.

The school board and state education department argued in lower courts that judges should disregard the funding ban because its passage was motivated by anti-Catholic bigotry.

The historical record

The BJC brief counters, “The historical record does not support their position.”

The brief says the “impulse toward nonsectarian public education” that led to no-aid clauses were generally seen as a “sincere effort to make public education available for children of all faiths and races, while respecting Jeffersonian notions of church-state separation.”

It also says states were enacting no-aid provisions prior to the 19th century influx of Catholic immigration, which bolstered support for an unsuccessful effort by U.S. Speaker of the House James Blaine to add a no-aid clause to the federal Constitution, earning the epithet “Blaine Amendment” to similar laws criticized as anti-Catholic.

The brief says there is no evidence Blaine had any personal animosity toward Catholicism—his mother was Catholic and his daughters went to Catholic schools—but his proposal was likely a sincere effort to deal with ongoing controversies over the proper role of public schools amid increasing diversity.

WASHINGTON (RNS)—The U.S. Supreme Court let stand a lower-court ruling that a Wisconsin high school acted unconstitutionally when it held its graduation ceremonies in a local megachurch.

The case, Elmbrook School District. v. Doe, involved a high school in a suburb of Milwaukee that rented the nondenominational Elmbrook Church for its graduation exercises multiple times through 2009. In 2012, the Chicago-based 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals called the event “offensive” and “coercive.” The church’s banners, pamphlets, Bibles and other religious materials remained in the sanctuary during the graduation.

No reason given

As is their custom, the justices did not give a reason for declining to hear a challenge to the 7th Circuit ruling.

The decision may be a signal by the court that despite its approval of sectarian prayers at public meetings in the Town of Greece v. Galloway decision in May, it draws the line at exposing children to religious symbols when they have no choice about it.

Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas dissented in the decision to let stand the lower-court ruling. They argued in a seven-page opinion the Greece v. Galloway decision undercut the 7th Circuit decision in Elmbrook.

In the dissent, Scalia, a Catholic, likened the exposure of children to religious symbols at graduations to his own distaste for the public playing of “rock music or Stravinsky,” implying he—and they—have to put up with it but are not damaged by it.

“It may well be … the decision of the Elmbrook School District to hold graduations under a Latin cross in a Christian church was ‘unwise’ and ‘offensive,’” Scalia wrote. “But Town of Greece makes manifest that an establishment of religion it was not.”

Reactions divided

Reaction from religious liberty groups was divided.

“Church buildings should not be treated like toxic warehouses simply because they normally house religious activities,” said David Cortman, senior counsel for Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative Arizona-based Christian law firm that specializes in First Amendment cases. “We hope the Supreme Court will clearly affirm in a future case that government neutrality toward religion is not achieved by treating it like asbestos in the ceiling tiles of society.”

“No student should ever be forced to choose between missing their own graduation and attending that seminal event in a proselytizing environment inundated with religious icons and exhortations,” said Alex J. Luchenitser, associate legal director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State and the attorney who argued the case on behalf of the plaintiffs. “We are very pleased that the decision of the appeals court will stand.”

WASHINGTON—A prisoner has the right to exercise his religious belief by adhering to religious grooming standards, according to a brief filed at the U.S. Supreme Court and signed by the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty.

The BJC joined the American Jewish Committee and other organizations in a friend-of-the-court brief defending the religious rights of Gregory H. Holt, also known as Abdul Maalik Muhammad, a practicing Muslim serving a life sentence in Arkansas.

Click to read the brief.Holt asserts he has a religious obligation to maintain a beard, but the Arkansas Department of Corrections’ policy prohibits facial hair other than neatly trimmed mustaches. It also allows one-quarter-inch beards for inmates with a diagnosed dermatological medical condition.

Holt maintains the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act protects his right to have a religiously mandated beard while incarcerated.

The act, which became federal law in 2000, was designed to protect the religious freedom of prisoners and other people in government custody, as well as protect religious freedom in the context of zoning and other land use laws. The law stipulates government may substantially burden the exercise of religion only if it demonstrates it has used the least-restrictive means to further a compelling interest.

The BJC led a diverse coalition of religious and civil liberties groups in supporting the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, and a unanimous Congress enacted the measure.

‘Security issues’

While prison officials have a compelling interest in maintaining security, the question is whether their refusal to allow a religious exception for Holt’s requested beard is the least-restrictive means of furthering that interest. The Arkansas Department of Corrections denied Holt’s request to grow a one-half-inch beard, saying an exemption to its policy could create security issues.

Holly Hollman, general counsel for the Baptist Joint Committee, noted the law protects the right of people of all faiths to follow their religious beliefs.

“The government has a responsibility to ensure incarcerated individuals can freely exercise their religion if there is no contrary compelling governmental interest at stake,” Hollman said. “This case demonstrates the need for RLUIPA to make sure religious rights are protected and taken seriously.”

When the Arkansas Department of Corrections denied Holt’s request, it only presented hypothetical security concerns and did not show an exception for Holt would undermine security, even though he has been allowed to maintain a one-half-inch beard since winning a preliminary injunction in October 2011.

The brief explains the correctional department’s medical exemption demonstrates a less-restrictive facial hair policy is feasible within the prison’s facilities.

Religious rights

“Part of RLUIPA’s purpose is to elevate religious needs to a similar level as other considerations,” the brief states. “In light of the high degree of protection that RLUIPA gives to inmates’ religious rights, it is illogical for the same institution to provide an almost identical accommodation for medical reasons, while denying that same accommodation for religious purposes.”

The Supreme Court in 2005 recognized RLUIPA as a permissible accommodation of religion in Cutter v. Wilkinson that provides “heightened protection” for religious exercise, allowing prisoners to seek religious accommodations under the same standard as the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

Overtly Christian prayers at government meetings do not violate the First Amendment’s ban on establishing religion, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled, 5-4.

Writing for the majority, Justice Anthony Kennedy said the practice in Greece, N.Y., opening council meetings with prayers led by a local minister is in keeping with the long tradition of “legislative prayer,” consistent with both houses of Congress maintaining a chaplain to open each day’s session with prayer.

Demonstrators in front of the Supreme Court on Nov. 6, 2013, during oral arguments of Greece v. Galloway. (RNS photo by Katherine Burgess)“As practiced by Congress since the framing of the Constitution, legislative prayer lends gravity to public business, reminds lawmakers to transcend petty differences in pursuit of a higher purpose and expresses a common aspiration to a just and peaceful society,” Kennedy wrote.

The majority reversed a ruling of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that because the prayers overwhelmingly were led by Christians, the practice gave the appearance the town was endorsing one religion over others. The parties in the lawsuit, Town of Greece v. Galloway, did not oppose the use of ceremonial prayer but argued that it must be nonsectarian.

Kennedy asserted it would be more problematic for the government to decide what constitutes a permissible prayer.

“The First Amendment is not a majority rule, and government may not seek to define permissible categories of religious speech,” Kennedy opined. “Once it invites prayer into the public sphere, government must permit a prayer giver to address his or her own God or gods as conscience dictates, unfettered by what an administrator or judge considers to be nonsectarian.”

Responses

The Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty had filed a friend-of-the-court brief asking the Supreme Court to strike down the town’s prayer policy, arguing, “Prayer is an expression of voluntary religious devotion, not the business of the government.”

The BJC expressed disappointment with the ruling.

Susan Galloway, a resident of Greece, N.Y., who filed a lawsuit against the town, speaks to the media. (RNS photo by Katherine Burgess)“While the court ruled for the town under the historic tradition of ceremonial prayer for lawmakers, local governments can—and should—take steps to ensure that citizens are not forced into religious acts at a government meeting,” said Hollyn Hollman, BJC general counsel.

“It is hard to square a government-led religious practice in a local municipal meeting with the Constitution’s guarantee of equal rights of citizenship without regard to religion.”

Russell Moore, president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, said the Supreme Court “did the right thing” in reversing the lower court’s decision.

“The Town of Greece case is about a government seeking to establish a state-ordered civil religion that crowds out the most basic rights of freedom of speech,” Moore said. “That is not what our ancestors, and their allies among the American Founders, meant by religious liberty.”

Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, expressed disappointment with the ruling.

“The Supreme Court just relegated millions of Americans—both believers and nonbelievers—to second-class citizenship,” said Lynn, an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ. “Government should not be in the business of forcing faith on anyone, and now all who attend meetings of their local boards could be subjected to the religion of the majority.”

Joining Kennedy in the majority opinion were Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justice Samuel Alito. Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas concurred in part.

Dissenting opinion

Justice Elena Kagan—joined by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor—said in a dissenting opinion the town’s prayer practice “does not square with the First Amendment’s promise that every citizen, irrespective of her religion, owns an equal share in her government.”

Kagan said she disagreed with the argument that prayers offered in Jesus’ name were “ceremonial” in nature.

“These are statements of profound belief and deep meaning, subscribed to by many, denied by some,” Kagan said. “If they (and the central tenets of other religions) ever become mere ceremony, this country will be a fundamentally different—and, I think, poorer—place to live.”

Rights, responsibility and respect provide the infrastructure for bridges of understanding between faith groups, Baptist religious liberty advocate Brent Walker stressed in a symposium at Harvard University May 1.

Brent Walker told a Harvard symposium audience that rights, responsibility and respect provide the infrastructure for bridges of understanding between faith groups.Walker, executive director of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty, joined a Jewish rabbi and a Muslim academic in the inaugural event sponsored by the Loeb Initiative on Religious Freedom in Cambridge, Mass.

Other panelists were Angela Buchdahl, senior rabbi at Central Synagogue in New York, and Yasir Qadhi, dean of academic affairs at the Al Maghrib Institute, a worldwide Islamic education organization.

Moderator Henry Louis Gates Jr., a Harvard professor, asked panelists to describe the role of faith institutions in building bridges of understanding.

Rights, responsibility, respect

Faith Bridges rely upon “the three R’s of civic engagement—rights, responsibility and respect,” Walker explained. “All three of these are important and must go together.”

Christians, Jews and Muslims “all believe we got our right of religious liberty from God,” Walker said, noting other faiths tend to agree, and even many nonreligious people see personal faith or nonfaith as an individual right.

“We must take care to exercise responsibility” for faith and its exercise, he added.

Other participants included Angela Buchdahl, senior rabbi at Central Synagogue in New York; Yasir Qadhi, dean of academic affairs at the Al Maghrib Institute; Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr.A key for Christian understanding of faith-responsibility is found in the fifth chapter of the New Testament book of Galatians, he said: “St. Paul affirms our freedom in Christ, but we must not use it for self-indulgence, but to serve one another. The rights we want for ourselves, we must afford to others.”

Exercising respect then enables people of faith to relate positively toward people who embrace other faith or no faith, Walker said.

The practice of respect can be characterized in an adage: “We must have a hard core and soft edges,” he explained. “We need not give up our core beliefs. … But insofar as we bump up against others, (we must) maintain a soft edge.”

In terms of practical application, the Baptist Joint Committee regularly participates in coalitions and civic advocacy groups on Capitol Hill, Walker noted. Those groups set aside their differences to work on behalf of a principle they share—religious liberty for all.

“We can go slowly. Take one step at a time,” he said. “We don’t have to agree on everything for us to work together on one thing.”

Unfortunately, “the groups that most need interfaith dialogue are typically the least involved in such efforts,” Qadhi reported. Like-minded groups get together and marvel at the similarity of their views, but the anti-toleration groups are “loudly absent.”

Conduits for communication

Civic leaders can serve as conduits for communication by calling representatives from various faiths together to focus on common needs, he urged.

For example, the mosques in Memphis, Tenn., where he lives have reached out for dialogue with the large Christian churches, which have not responded. “But what if the mayor had called us together?” he asked.

But when groups get together, they shouldn’t pretend they’re the same, Qadhi added.

“At some point, we need to move beyond the positive platitudes and concentrate on the very real differences” between faith groups, he stressed. “At some point, each of us believes in the exceptionalism of our faith tradition or else we would not be an adherent of that tradition.”

He told about a pastor who concluded his part in an inter-faith gathering by saying he loves all the participants, and therefore must present the Christian gospel to them. The next morning, a rabbi called the imam to apologize for the pastor.

“I was not offended,” Qadhi recalled. “After he (the pastor) has told me he thinks I’m going to hell, he actually can have a conversation with me on another topic.”

Building relationship bridges

Buchdahl observed faith communities possess the staying power for building relationship bridges and maintaining communication.

“Faith communities take the long view,” she said. “We have timeless traditions, ancient wisdom. We will stay the course beyond the election cycle or one particular leader’s role.”

People of faith can build upon an innate human desire to make progress together, she added, noting she has “a fundamentally optimistic view of human nature.”

“Most people really want to do good in the world,” she said. “Sometimes, we lose sight of that, and we need the reminders that rituals and holidays offer us.”

Also, faith communities need to remember “organized people equals power,” she added.

Many community organizations do “wonderful work,” but membership merely implies paying dues, attending meetings and receiving a newsletter, Buchdahl said. She contrasted that with membership in a church, synagogue or mosque.

“Faith communities are centers of relationship,” and when relationships are organized, things happen.

NASHVILLE—The U.S. Congress added the words “under God” to the country’s Pledge of Allegiance 60 years ago, and most Americans want to keep it that way, despite ongoing legal challenges.

A lawsuit filed March 28 against a New Jersey school district contends reciting the phrase “under God” in the pledge sends a message nonbelievers are bad citizens and creates a hostile environment for atheist students.

But a telephone survey of 1,001 Americans from Nashville-based LifeWay Research found 85 percent want to keep “under God” in the pledge.

Researchers found one in four Americans (25 percent) believe forcing students to say “under God” violates their rights. But less than one in 10 (8 percent) Americans want to remove “under God” from the pledge.

The survey results show little support for changing the pledge, said Scott McConnell, director of LifeWay Research.

“Most Americans have recited the pledge hundreds of times and are not inclined to memorize a different pledge,” he says. “Changing it may just feel wrong. Most Americans say they believe in God or a higher being and feel comfortable having ‘under God’ in the pledge.”

Lawyers for the parents in the New Jersey lawsuit disagree. They issued a statement April 21 announcing the suit.

“Public schools should not engage in an exercise that tells students that patriotism is tied to a belief in God,” said David Niose, attorney for the American Humanist Association’s Appignani Humanist Legal Center, which represents the parents. “Such a daily exercise portrays atheist and humanist children as second-class citizens and certainly contributes to anti-atheist prejudices.”

A similar legal challenge to the pledge is pending before the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts. That case, brought by atheist parents of a public school child, claims the “under God” phrase violates the state’s equal rights laws.

The study by LifeWay Research found younger Americans are more likely to support removal of “under God” from the pledge. Fourteen percent of those ages 18-29 want to remove the phrase, compared to 5 percent of those over 64.

Women (88 percent) are more likely to want to keep “under God” than men (83 percent). Americans with a college degree are more likely (13 percent) to want it removed. Self-identified born-again, evangelical or fundamentalist Christians are most likely (94 percent) to say “under God” should remain.

The telephone survey of adult Americans was conducted Sept. 6-10, 2013, and interviews were conducted in either English or Spanish. Researchers called both listed and unlisted numbers and reached about 20 percent of the sample by cell phone.

Analysts weighted responses by age, gender, education, race/Hispanic ethnicity, region and market size to reflect the population more accurately. The sample provides 95 percent confidence the sampling error does not exceed plus or minus 3.1 percentage points. Margins of error are higher in sub-groups.

MUSTANG, Okla. (RNS)—The Mustang, Okla., school board voted to adopt a Bible course developed by Steve Green, clearing the way for the Hobby Lobby president, whose suit against the Affordable Care Act currently is before the U.S. Supreme Court, to enter another charged arena at the borderline of church and state.

A Bible course developed by Steve Green. (RNS image courtesy of Museum of the Bible)The board, whose district practically is in Hobby Lobby’s Oklahoma City backyard, agreed to beta-test the first year of the Museum of the Bible Curriculum, an ambitious four-year public school elective on the narrative, history and impact of the Good Book.

For at least the first semester of the 2014-15 year, Mustang alone will employ the program, said Jerry Pattengale, head of the Green Scholars Initiative, which is overseeing its development. In September 2016, he hopes to place it in at least 100 high schools and in “thousands” by the following year.

If successful, Green, whose family’s wealth is estimated at upward of $3 billion, would galvanize the movement to teach the Bible academically in public schools, a movement born after the Supreme Court banned school-sanctioned devotion in the 1960s but whose steady progress in the last decades has been somewhat hampered.

The Green curriculum “is like nothing we’ve seen before,” said Charles Haynes, senior scholar at the First Amendment Center and editor of a booklet sent to all schools by the U.S. Department of Education in 2000 on teaching religion in public schools.

“It’s unique in its ambition and its scope and its use of the latest technologies. I think school districts far from Oklahoma will take note,” Haynes said.

So will civil libertarians. In an award acceptance speech last April before the National Bible Association, Green explained his goals for a high school curriculum were to show the Bible is true, that it’s good and that its impact, “whether (upon) our government, education, science, art, literature, family … when we apply it to our lives in all aspects of our life, that it has been good.”

Hobby Lobby founder Steve Green.If realized, these sentiments, although shared by millions of Americans, could conflict with the court’s requirement that public school treatment of the Bible be taught in a secular, academic fashion.

In the same speech, Green expressed hope such courses would become mandatory, whereas now they usually are elective.

Green’s move into public school curricula grew out of his involvement in a 430,000-square-foot museum of the Bible due to open in 2017 several blocks from the National Mall in Washington, D.C., that will feature objects from his family’s 44,000-piece collection of biblical artifacts.

A little over a year ago, Pattengale said, the realization a high school curriculum could “help millions of students worldwide” understand the Bible’s importance came to seem even more pressing than the museum. Having created an international network of scholars to assist the museum, Pattengale led a crash initiative on the curriculum.

He describes the first year, which takes the project only to its quarter-way mark, as a multimillion-dollar effort involving more than 170 people.

“It will never recuperate its expenses,” he said, but “there’s no desire to make money.”

He describes the program as “robustly unique.” It divides its topic into three areas—the Bible’s narrative, the history of its composition and reception, and its impact on human civilization. The spine of the first-year program—the only text completed so far—is a 400-plus-page book, currently spiral-bound, featuring 108 chapters divided into five-day-a-week lessons.

Digital reproductions of ancient manuscripts from the Green Collection will supplement the new curriculum.The book links to an array of state-of-the-art digital enhancements, including one where illustrations “come alive” as video on the screen of a smartphone, Pattengale said; original lectures by Green Institute scholars; clips from the Mark Burnett/Roma Downey miniseries The Bible; and deep digital access to the Greens’ biblical collection.

Asked to describe a typical chapter, Pattengale outlined a “narrative” segment on creation that includes a summary of the Bible account; a section on how subsequent scientific discoveries relate to what the Bible says; and a consideration of key reasons it was written. A sidebar called “Are People Created Equal?” explores the Book of Genesis’ influence on that idea through history, including the famous phrase from the Declaration of Independence.

Contrary to popular assumptions, there is nothing unconstitutional about teaching about the Bible in public schools. The same Supreme Court ruling that outlawed school-sanctioned prayer in 1963 also said, “Nothing we have said here indicates that such study of the Bible … when presented objectively as part of a secular program of education, may not be effected consistently with the First Amendment.”

The key words, of course, are “objectively” and “secular,” Haynes suggested. “The bar is actually low,” he said. “I think it’s hard for judges to get beyond the surface to questions of what a sound academic course looks like but much more difficult to develop materials that actually both reflect constitutional principles and are academically solid.”

Added Southern Methodist University’s Mark Chancey: “The devil is in the details” of each plan.

Of his boss’ 2013 speech, Pattengale said: “The curriculum may or may not espouse those views. The last people (Green) wanted to hire were scholars who would embellish the facts to support his religious position.”

A chapter with the provocative title “How Do We Know That the Bible’s Historical Narratives are Reliable?” will include diagrams charting the commonality of multidisciplinary scholarly findings with the biblical account—or the lack of such commonality, he said.

The Mustang school board voted to approve the curriculum, with four members in favor and one abstention. One former pastor spoke out against adopting the curriculum, citing the innate difficulty of finding common language about the Bible.

Abstaining board member Jeff Landrith insisted the community had not had enough chance to review curriculum. Board President Chad Fulton responded it would available shortly for examination.

One party promising to take a look was the Oklahoma ACLU—“to ensure no students … have their right of religious liberty compromised.”

Soon, many will have a chance to assess it.