DENVER (ABP)—The Southern Baptist owners of Hobby Lobby won’t have to pay millions of dollars in fines, thanks to a federal appeals court ruling June 27 allowing the Oklahoma-based retailer to proceed with its lawsuit challenging Obamacare.

Steve Green, President of Hobby LobbyThe 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said a lower court erred in refusing to grant an injunction blocking implementation of the Affordable Care Act. The appellate court stopped short of issuing the injunction, however, returning the case back to the district court to examine unresolved religious-liberty claims.

Hobby Lobby owners claim a section of the law requiring employers to provide healthcare coverage that pays for FDA-approved contraceptives violates their faith. The Green family does not object to artificial birth control, but they believe two types of birth-control drugs and intrauterine devices represent an early form of abortion by preventing implantation after an embryo is conceived.

Unlike the lower court, the 10th circuit determined the plaintiffs have a likely chance to succeed under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which prevents the government from substantially burdening a sincerely held religious belief without a compelling government interest.

The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which represents Hobby Lobby in the case, called the ruling “a tremendous victory not only for the Green family and for their business, but also for many other religious business owners who should not have to forfeit their faith to make a living.”

Americans United for Separation of Church and State, one of several groups to file friend-of-the-court briefs on both sides of the lawsuit, termed it “a dangerous distortion of the principle of religious liberty.”

“This court has taken a huge step toward handing bosses and company owners a blank check to meddle in the private medical decisions of their workers,” said Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United. “This isn’t religious freedom. It’s the worst kind of religious oppression.”

“Religious freedom means the right to make decisions for yourself, not the power to use your dogma to control other people,” said Lynn, a minister in the United Church of Christ.   

WASHINGTON (RNS)—For the first time, the federal government has issued written guidelines for houses of worship confronted with a homicidal gunman.

Vice President Joe Biden released the new rules six months after the school shooting in Newtown, Conn., that left 26 dead, including 20 children.

Pryor Creek Community Church is one of a few dozen churches around the country that are offering concealed carry certification classes as a way to reach out to non-Christians or to attract new members. (RNS photo courtesy iStockPhoto.)Beyond seeking shelter and waiting for police to arrive, as many Newtown victims did, the new rules also advise adults in congregations to fight back—as a last resort—in a bid to stop the shooter. The new federal doctrine is “run, fight or hide.”

After Congress failed to pass a slew of gun safety measures in April, Biden said the executive branch is doing what it can, promising to put gun control legislation back in lawmakers’ hands, and pointing to 21 executive actions to beef up gun safety taken by the administration since Newtown.

He also unveiled three new federal guidebooks to keep institutions safe—one for schools, one for colleges and one for houses of worship.

Although shootings at churches and other houses of worship remain relatively rare, they can make inviting targets for shooters—particularly disturbed individuals—who are looking for a highly visible target to settle a grudge or make a political statement.

Last year, a gunman killed six people inside a Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wis. In 2008, a gunman killed two people inside a Unitarian church in Knoxville, Tenn. In 2007, a gunman killed two people inside the New Life megachurch in Colorado Springs, Colo., before being shot and killed by an armed volunteer.

As federal officials worked with education officials in crafting new school-safety rules, they also consulted clergy, Biden told a White House auditorium filled with federal officials who have worked on the issue.

Congregations at risk

“The faith leaders not only want us to talk about making schools safer,” Biden said. “They’re worried that their congregations are at risk. So they wanted to know, what should they be thinking about when someone stands up in the middle of the congregation and decides to do something similar as we saw in the schools.”

In response to their concerns, Biden said, “we gave concrete direction.”

The guidelines’ basic run-fight-hide advice is similar to that given to schools faced with active shooters. Worshippers should first try to flee the scene, taking people with them but not waiting for those who refuse to leave. If flight is not possible, hide—the guidelines describe some of the best hiding places. Fighting back is a last resort.

Fighting back

According to the new rules, gathered in a 38-page document called “Guide for Developing High-Quality Emergency Operations Plans for Houses of Worship,” fighting back is advised for “adults in immediate danger.”

They should: “Consider trying to disrupt or incapacitate the shooter by using aggressive force and items in their environment, such as fire extinguishers or chairs. In a study of 41 active shooter events that ended before law enforcement arrived, the potential victims stopped the attacker themselves in 16 instances. In 13 of those cases, they physically subdued the attacker.”

The question of how best to subdue a gunman is likely to rekindle a debate within many churches, particularly in parts of the country where it is common to carry weapons. Should members of the congregation bring guns to church?

Guns in church?

“Each house of worship should determine, as part of its planning process, policies on the control and presence of weapons, as permitted by law,” the guidelines say.

It also says individuals must make their own decisions about how best to respond when confronted by an active shooter.

Although the booklet was unveiled at an event on gun violence, it focuses on emergency preparedness in general, whether for a shooter, an arsonist or a hurricane. A section focuses on “active shooter situations.”

WASHINGTON (RNS)—Twin Supreme Court rulings that further opened the door for same-sx marriage in the United States were not entirely unexpected, and the condemnations from religious conservatives angry at the verdicts certainly were no surprise either, social observers noted.

So the real question is what opponents of same-sex marriage will do now.

Here are four possible scenarios:

• It’s religious freedom, not sex.

A man holds a gay pride flag in front of the Supreme Court June26 after the court decided to strike down the Defense of Marriage Act. (RNS photo by Adelle M. Banks)Even before the Supreme Court rulings, many religious groups who oppose gay marriage—and other policies, such as the Obama administration’s decision to mandate free contraception insurance—had been reframing the argument as a matter of religious freedom.

That is the focus of the Catholic bishops’ current “Fortnight for Freedom” campaign, which the hierarchy deployed to argue that gay marriage and the birth-control policy would force churches to comply with laws that violate their teachings and their conscience.

If believers become martyrs to gay marriage—if Christian florists and bakers who refuse to supply bouquets and wedding cakes for gay couples are subject to lawsuits or sanctions, for example—then public opinion could turn against gay rights.

In his statement welcoming the high court rulings, President Obama was careful to try to ease those fears, stressing that even as gay rights expand, “maintaining our nation’s commitment to religious freedom is also vital.”

“How religious institutions define and consecrate marriage has always been up to those institutions,” he said. “Nothing about this decision—which applies only to civil marriages—changes that.”

The fate of this scenario may depend on what kind of religious exemptions, if any, states and cities include in their gay rights legislation.

• Live the gospel; change the culture.

One line of attack against gay marriage foes asserts they are hypocrites who castigate gays and lesbians even as they divorce and remarry and commit adultery and cohabitate and have children out of wedlock.

Guilty as charged, say some Christian leaders, who argue the court rulings should be the spur to Christians to confess their sins and put their own house in order so they can show Americans that believers actually practice what they preach.

“That means that we must repent of our pathetic marriage cultures within the church,” said Russell Moore, president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, the public policy wing of the Southern Baptist Convention. “This means we have the opportunity, by God’s grace, to take marriage as seriously as the gospel does, in a way that prompts the culture around us to ask why.”

As part of that conversion, Moore said, Christians also need to stop demonizing gays and lesbians.

“The gay and lesbian people in your community aren’t part of some global ‘gay-agenda’ conspiracy. They aren’t super-villains in some cartoon. They are, like all of us, seeking a way that seems right to them,” Moore said.

Denver Seminary’s Elodie Ballantine Emig wrote in Christianity Today: “We are all sinners in need of a savior. We are on a level playing field with gays and lesbians who, in my experience, can detect condescension and hypocrisy a mile away.”

This argument says by living out their teachings without acting self-righteous, Christians stand a better chance of actually changing the culture rather than simply complaining about it. Favorable laws and court rulings will follow, rather than the other way around.

• Turn gay marriage into Roe v. Wade.

Ironically, a sweeping Supreme Court decision in favor of gay rights could be the best thing to happen to gay marriage opponents.

The precedent here is the 1973 high court ruling legalizing abortion, Roe v. Wade. That decision was supposed to be the end of the national debate over abortion, but instead it was only the beginning. Some say when the justices—led by Anthony Kennedy’s swing vote—overturned the federal Defense of Marriage Act, they set up a similar scenario.

“Kennedy’s decision is the Roe v. Wade of this generation, not this generation’s Brown v. the Board of Education,” said Maggie Gallagher of the American Principles Project, referring to the landmark decision that struck down racial segregation in schools.

“Just as 40 years after Roe v. Wade abortion opponents continue to fight for the pro-life agenda, pro traditional marriage supporters will fight on as well,” agreed Rick McDaniel, senior pastor at the Richmond Community Church in Virginia.

Of course, Roe has not been overturned, and it looks likely to remain the law of the land. But abortion opponents can point to growing restrictions on abortion rights at the state level —and they can hope gay rights eventually will face the same pushback.

• It’s not so bad, so full speed ahead!

Another tack is to argue the dual rulings were not really a defeat for gay marriage foes and no one should run up the white flag of surrender.

“While today’s decisions were very disappointing, they do not represent a watershed moment for marriage as many are suggesting,” Brian Burch of CatholicVote.org wrote in a fundraising plea to supporters. “Same-sex marriage advocates did not get what they wanted, namely a ‘Roe v. Wade’ for same-sex marriage.”

“We have a clear path forward to protect marriage and respond to these rulings, in Congress and in the states, and in the hearts and minds of our fellow citizens,” Burch wrote. “The future of marriage remains a dispute open to ‘We the People.’”

The thinking here is that gay marriage opponents should look on the bright side.

Lobbyists like Brian Brown, head of National Organization for Marriage, and Bill Donohue of the Catholic League even doubled-down in this high stakes game and said conservatives should push for a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage.

WASHINGTON (RNS)—With a July 4 deadline looming for an immigration reform vote on Capitol Hill, politicians and clergy at the National Hispanic Prayer Breakfast pushed lawmakers to reach common ground.

Vice President Joe Biden (RNS photo by Adelle M. Banks)“It’s the right thing to do, it’s the Christian thing to do, but it’s also an incredibly practical thing to do,” said Vice President Joe Biden, addressing about 550 in attendance.

Biden cited a Congressional Budget Office analysis of the Senate immigration bill that showed reform would reduce the federal deficit by $197 billion in the first decade after the bill’s passage and $700 billion after 20 years.

Many of the leaders attending the breakfast spent the previous day on Capitol Hill pressing for passage of immigration reform.

“We’ve been at this for a long time, and we see it as the best opportunity we’ve had in a long time,” said Luis Cortes, president of Esperanza, a national Hispanic organization that hosted the biennial breakfast. “If we can’t get it moving forward now, it means we will remain in this strange situation for years to come.”

The predominantly evangelical group drew both Democrats—Biden and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi—and Republicans—Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers of Washington and Sen. John Cornyn of Texas.

Corina Zuniga (RNS photo by Adelle M. Banks)Cornyn agreed reform is necessary, citing people who have died trying to cross U.S. borders or been pressed into sexual slavery when they reached this country. But he cited different statistics from the CBO, which said the proposed Senate bill would cut illegal immigration only by 25 percent. “Obviously, it needs some work,” he said.

Becky Keenan, co-pastor of Gulf Meadows Church in Houston, said immigrants are aware that with reform comes responsibility. “We want to enjoy the benefits of this nation and do not expect a free ride, only an equal opportunity,” she said in a prayer at the gathering. 

Another Texas pastor who attended the breakfast said she hopes for a meeting of minds at the Capitol after seeing a member of her church get deported and his American-born children follow him to Mexico.

“I don’t believe that either extreme has the answer or it’s such a great problem that it can’t be solved,” said Corina Zuniga, pastor of Fuente de Agua Viva (Fountain of Living Waters) Church in Pasadena. “But we have to come to that common ground where we can find a place that can be a start.”

WASHINGTON (RNS)—Fifteen years after Congress created an independent watchdog panel to oversee global religious freedom, the panel has little power and little influence, activists told lawmakers.

USCIRF Staff Tiffany Lynch and Sahar Chaudhry (both in center) at a Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission briefing on Human Rights Challenges Facing Syrian Refugees and Internally Displaced Persons,  June 18.The 1998 International Religious Freedom Act chartered the bipartisan and independent U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, charged with advising the State Department and Capitol Hill on protecting religious freedoms abroad.

But Thomas Farr, director of the Religious Freedom Project at Georgetown University, said an “anemic, largely rhetorical methodology” by the Clinton, Bush and Obama administrations has resulted in “a loss of conviction among policy makers that religious freedom is the first freedom.”

As if to make the point, the State Department’s ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom, Suzan Johnson Cook, skipped the first-ever hearing by the National Security Subcommittee of the House Oversight Committee.

Questions absence on panel

According to Subcommittee Chairman Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, the State Department withdrew Johnson Cook as a witness to avoid placing her on a panel with witnesses from nongovernmental organizations. Chaffetz called Johnson Cook’s absence “terribly disappointing” and “a waste of Congress’ time.”

A persistent divide between the State Department and the commission is over the designation of “countries of particular concern,” or CPCs—the world’s worst violators of religious freedom. The commission consistently wants more nations singled out and more often; diplomats in Foggy Bottom typically want fewer.

‘Worst offenders’ list not updated

Johnson Cook’s recent report didn’t update the list of worst offenders since 2011, although State Department officials say the current list doesn’t expire until August. Katrina Lantos Swett, chair of the commission, said the list cannot continue to lag.

“We continue to believe that when combined with the prospect of sanctions or other actions, CPC designations can move repressive governments to undertake critical changes,” Lantos Swett said.

The State Department’s current list includes Myanmar, China, Eritrea, Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Uzbekistan as the worst offenders. The commission wants to add Egypt, Iraq, Nigeria, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Vietnam.

“Unfortunately, neither Republican nor Democratic administrations have designated CPCs in a timely manner and they generally have imposed pre-existing sanctions, not unique actions,” Lantos Swett said. While she would like to see actions taken against these countries, such as making U.S. financial aid conditional, ultimately the commission lacks any real power.

Responsibility of Congress

“At the end of the day, that’s really a decision for the Congress,” Lantos Swett said. “I mean, this is where the Congress has to act to hold any administration’s feet to the fire in terms of how that aid is to be handled.”

Johnson Cook’s position went unfilled for the first two years of President Obama’s first term, and the commission nearly went out of business last summer until Congress stepped in. Johnson Cook, a former Baptist minister from the Bronx, faced initial skepticism for her lack of experience in the field.

Farr said three administrations since the International Religious Freedom Act was enacted have assumed a narrow approach to the issue of religious freedom—focusing solely on reports, speeches and lists of severe persecutors. The government, he said, is merely “raising the issue” not “solving the problem.”

WASHINGTON (RNS)—Close to three-fours of Americans say legal recognition of same-sex marriage is “inevitable,” according to a new survey by the Pew Research Center.

Overall, 72 percent of surveyed Americans view gay marriage as inevitable. Of those who support same-sex marriage, about 85 percent say it is inevitable, and about 59 percent of opponents also say it is inevitable.

“As more states legalize gay marriage or give equal status, the question in our minds was how the public sees the trajectory on this issue,” said Michael Dimock, the report’s lead author and director of the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. “Do they see a future in which gay marriage is going to be the rule, not the exception, in American society?”

For the first time in Pew polling, just over half—51 percent—of Americans favor allowing same-sex couples to marry legally, the report says. The telephone survey was conducted May 1-5 among 1,504 U.S. adults. The margin of error was plus or minus 2.9 percentage points.

Personal experiences

The survey found a strong link between personal experiences and attitudes about homosexuality. About 87 percent of Americans know someone who is gay or lesbian, up from 61 percent in 1993. About 68 percent of those who know a lot of gays or lesbians favor same-sex marriage, compared with 32 percent of those who don’t know anyone.

“As for the gay marriage issue, it’s not about whether we will have families. We already do. It’s about whether we will enjoy the same protection as our siblings, neighbors and co-workers,” said Rick Rosendall, president of the Washington-based Gay and Lesbian Activists Alliance.

“The more people recognize that their siblings, neighbors and co-workers include gay men and lesbians, the clearer it is that those family members, neighbors and co-workers should be treated the same as they are.”

Same-sex marriage is or will be legal in 12 states and the District of Columbia. Several states also have domestic-partnership provisions for same-sex couples, and the U.S. Supreme Court will rule on two gay marriage cases this month.

“This poll should caution us to redouble our efforts in explaining to Americans what marriage is, why marriage matters, and what the consequences of redefining marriage are,” said Ryan Anderson, a scholar at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank.

Anderson, who promotes marriage between a man and woman, said it’s not quite clear what Pew’s poll question means, since same-sex marriage is legally recognized in 12 states. “The more important question is not what will happen—but what we should do.”

“No surprise”

Thomas Peters, communications director of the National Organization for Marriage, which opposes same-sex marriage, said Pew’s poll numbers are no surprise.

“Gay marriage activists have spent a huge amount of money and cultural influence trying to convince Americans of the lie that redefining marriage is inevitable,” he said.

RICHMOND, Va. (ABP)-—A “profound spiritual odyssey” prompted Abraham Lincoln’s crafting of the Emancipation Proclamation, one of “the most revolutionary documents ever signed by an American president,” a prominent religious historian told a conference on racial reconciliation.

“Not much attention has been given to the religious aspect of the Emancipation Proclamation,” said Harry Stout, the Jonathan Edwards Professor of American Christianity at Yale Divinity School. “But it can’t be understood without understanding Lincoln’s God.”

Harry Stout, the Jonathan Edwards Professor of American Christianity at Yale Divinity School.Stout focused on the religious influences on the proclamation—issued 150 years ago—during a keynote address at the three-day annual conference of the Baptist History & Heritage Society, centered on the theme, “Faith, Freedom, Forgiveness: Religion and the Civil War, Emancipation and Reconciliation in Our Time.”

Unlike other Lincoln addresses—such as the ones made on the Gettysburg battlefield and at his second inauguration—the Emancipation Proclamation generally is not taken as an “inspirational event,” said Stout. “Its language is dry and mechanical, and its eloquence is suppressed.”

Some historians have regarded it as insubstantial rhetoric, since the document freed enslaved people only in those parts of the nation in rebellion and largely outside federal control.

But Stout said the revolutionary proclamation set the stage for complete emancipation nearly three years later.

A shift in outlook

What’s more, the historian added, “Lincoln’s God informed the act from start to finish,” and that reflected a shift in the president’s religious outlook begun in 1862.

In the early years of the war, Lincoln’s attitude toward religion remained what it had been since his youth, Stout said.

“The weight of evidence points to a Lincoln more in sympathy with unitarianism than with trinitarianism,” he said. “He had come very close to atheism.”

But two years of war and preoccupation with slavery moved Lincoln toward a deeper sense of a providential God “who can intervene in human affairs to effect his purposes.”

“Nothing would push Lincoln’s religious evolution more than his election as president and as commander of troops in a bloody war,” Stout said.

While he never adopted an “evangelical Christology,” Stout said, Lincoln’s “transcendent, impersonal God” became “the Puritan God of the Bible.” He also began expressing his motivations with religious language—a vocabulary that surprised many in his Cabinet when he told them he planned to announce the proclamation.

Struggle with legality

Despite Lincoln’s confidence in the religious and moral support for emancipation, he initially struggled with its legality.

“Lincoln was always antislavery, but he never believed the presidency conferred on him the power to act on this belief,” Stout said. “He didn’t think he could free slaves (only) because of his moral views. The Constitution protected slavery, and he was required to abide by the Constitution.”

He resolved that difficulty by appealing to military necessity, which trumped constitutional liberties. In making that argument, Stout said, Lincoln chose a route that strengthened the moral claims not only of emancipation but also of racial equality—both consistent with what Lincoln now believed to be God’s moral judgments.

Lincoln could have made an economic claim that military victory required the South’s economy to be shattered and emancipation would accomplish that. Instead, he argued that Union army needed more troops, and freed slaves could be put in uniform to fight for a cause they endorsed.

Racial equality

“He instinctively chose the argument that would eventually point to equality and citizenship,” Stout said. “Though he denied that racial equality was his goal, he made it inevitable by the choice he made.

“Had Lincoln’s moral lodestar gone with the economic argument, the slaves could have been returned to their former state. Putting guns into their hands meant there was no turning back.

“Every decision Lincoln made was a leap of faith, always tilted in the direction of moral equality in ways of which even he wasn’t always aware.”

Lincoln’s confidence in the religious underpinnings of the Emancipation Proclamation didn’t suggest he “presumed to read God’s mind”—a characteristic of some clergy that infuriated him, Stout said. Rather, “it was an act of transcendence and understanding. He knew his role aligned with God’s hatred of slavery.”

Once accepting a view of divine providence, Stout said, “he couldn’t let it go.” That religious vocabulary subsequently permeated both the Gettysburg and Second Inaugural addresses.

“Lincoln was indispensable in emancipation, and he knew it,” the historian said. “He realized the enormity of what he was doing. He caught the thunderbolt. It was the single most important outcome he would accomplish in his lifetime.”

NASHVILLE, Tenn.—When natural disasters occur, most Americans take increased interest in God and donate to relief agencies, a recent survey shows.

Furthermore, they trust faith-based agencies more than their secular counterparts. And one-third believe prayer can avert natural disasters.

Those are among the findings of a LifeWay Research survey conducted days after an historic EF5 tornado devastated parts of Oklahoma May 20, killing two-dozen people and causing billions of dollars in damages.

According to the study, commissioned by LifeWay’s Bible Studies for Life curriculum, a third of Americans increase their trust in God during times of suffering. In response to the question, “How do you feel about God when suffering occurs that appears unfair?” the most common response is “I trust God more” (33 percent).

Other responses include:

• “I am confused about God” (25 percent).

• “I don’t think about God in these situations” (16 percent).

• “I wonder if God cares” (11 percent).

• “I doubt God exists” (7 percent).

• “I am angry toward God” (5 percent).

• “I am resentful toward God” (3 percent).

“Disasters, particularly natural disasters, perplex all of us,” said Ed Stetzer, president of LifeWay Research. “While some call them ‘acts of God,’ others question why a good and loving God would do such a thing.

“The fact is, God does not give us all the answers. But as Christians, we believe that God gives us himself, and that is why we have faith. Faith is believing God when you don’t have all the answers, but disasters test that faith. Some people draw closer to God; some pull away.”

LifeWay reported Southerners, frequent church attenders and people without a college degree are likely to trust God more during disasters, while younger Americans are more likely to doubt God exists.

Nearly six in 10 Americans (57 percent) agree with the statement, “When a natural disaster occurs, my interest in God increases.” Thirty-one percent disagree, and 12 percent don’t know. Nearly two-thirds of respondents living in the South agree (62 percent), compared with just over half in the West (54 percent) and Northeast (51 percent). Women, people with a college degree and those who attend worship services once a week also are likely to be more interested in God during a disaster.

Prayer and natural disasters

Despite their increased interest in God following disasters, most Americans doubt prayer can avert natural disasters. Fifty-one percent disagree that praying can avert natural disasters, with a third (32 percent) strongly disagreeing. Still, 34 percent believe prayer can avert natural disasters. Americans in the South (40 percent) are more likely to believe than those in the Northeast (26 percent) and West (28 percent).

Thirty percent of Americans post on social media that they are praying for specific people or things. Sixty-seven percent do not post topics of prayer on social media, and 3 percent don’t know.

Among those who post prayers on social media, most take a moment to pray rather than consider the post itself a form of prayer. When asked to complete the statement, “If I post a prayer on social media …,” 23 percent say they always take a moment to pray, and 10 percent consider posting the update to be form of prayer. Sixty-four percent complete the statement by saying they don’t post prayers.

Trusting and giving

When a natural disaster occurs, Americans trust faith-based groups to be more responsible than secular groups with their donations by nearly a two-to-one margin.

Fifty-six percent agree they trust faith-based groups more, while 28 percent do not. Those who live in the Midwest and South, men and those who do not have a college degree are more likely to trust faith-based charities, while residents of the Northeast and Americans ages 45 to 64 are not as likely.

Almost 60 percent of Americans donate to relief agencies in the wake of natural disasters. Thirty percent donate to both faith-based and secular relief agencies, 15 percent donate to faith-based relief agencies only, and 12 percent donate to secular relief agencies only.

A third of Americans (32 percent) don’t donate to any relief agencies.

The survey of 1,040 American adults was conducted May 23-24, 2013. A sample of an online panel representing the adult population of the United States was invited to participate. The sample provides 95 percent confidence the sampling error from the panel does not exceed plus or minus 3.1 percentage points. Margins of error are higher in subgroups.

David Roach is a writer in Shelbyville, Ky. Marty King, LifeWay’s director of communications, contributed to this story.

WASHINGTON (RNS)—When it comes to protecting religious liberty abroad, watchdogs insist the U.S. State Department missed a key opportunity to put teeth into its annual assessment of global religious freedom, released by Secretary of State John Kerry.

Continuing a pattern begun under the previous presidential administration, the report does not include a list of “countries of particular concern,” or CPCs—the diplomatic term for countries that either actively suppress religious freedom or don’t do enough to protect it.

The list varies little from year to year—North Korea, Iran, China and a handful of others routinely are cited as the worst offenders. But the new report contains no worst-of-the-worst list that would single out offenders for sanctions or other punishment.

Big flaw

The lack of new CPC designations in the report is a big flaw, according to Rep. Frank Wolf, R-Va., often-acknowledged as the dean of religious liberty watchdogs on Capitol Hill.

“As religious freedom conditions continue to deteriorate globally, it is more important than ever that the State Department use this vital tool to press governments to end abuses, protect their citizens and respect this fundamental human right,” said Wolf and two other congressmen who fired off a letter to Kerry immediately after the report’s release.

Their concern was echoed by others who monitor religious liberty abroad, including the U.S. Commission on Religious Freedom, the independent body created by Congress that each year puts out its own list of worst violators.

Knox Thames, the commission’s director of policy and research, said the 1998 law that mandates the State Department report also requires new designations of CPCs annually. The current CPC list dates from 2011.

Timing is critical

For years, the annual report and the CPC designations were simultaneous. That changed late in the George W. Bush administration and has been continued under President Obama, Thames said. But the list of CPCs “is what gave all of this teeth,” he said.

The list prompts “countries to do things they don’t normally want to do.”

But Aaron Jensen, a spokesman for the State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor said the CPC designations can be made on a different schedule than the report’s release and “at any time as conditions warrant.”

He said he has no information as to when the State Department may release a new CPC list.

Thames said he’s hopeful the new designations will come out this summer.

They work, he continued, offering Vietnam as an example of a country that bristled at its inclusion on the CPC list. But actual reforms, pressed by U.S. diplomats, resulted in a delisting in 2006.

Recommended changes

The U.S. Commission on Religious Freedom—which generally pushes the State Department to be more aggressive in insisting on religious freedom reforms in its diplomacy—recommended all eight countries on the State Department’s current CPC list be redesignated—Myanmar, China, Eritrea, Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Uzbekistan.

The commission also wants an additional seven countries added to the CPC list: Egypt, Iraq, Nigeria, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Vietnam.

It’s true, said Paul Marshall, a senior fellow with the Washington-based Hudson Institute who specializes in religious freedom, that the State Department’s CPC list has been “very stable for a long time.”

There are some entrenched, authoritarian governments, such as North Korea’s, that don’t care if they make the list or not. But that doesn’t mean the CPC list and the report in general are not valuable, Marshall said.

Take CPC-designated Saudi Arabia, he said, where non-Muslim religious practice officially still is forbidden. The United States has pressed Saudi officials on the topic, and in recent years, the Saudis have said they are not going out of their way to root out non-Muslim observances, although they still prosecute them when they see them.

And in Myanmar, a long-standing member of the CPC club, the religious freedom situation has been fluid, and is something the U.S. government should track, Marshall said. So “the list is a good thing.”

Reports should guide policy

Jamsheed K. Choksy, a professor of Central Eurasian Studies at Indiana University and an incoming USCIRF fellow, said the problem actually is larger than the report or whether the CPCs are included.

“What needs to happen is that the government of the United States needs to take these reports and make them central aspects of American policy and foreign relations,” he said.

Retired Ambassador Randolph Bell, who runs the First Freedom Center, a Virginia-based religious freedom watchdog group, took a similar view. The lack or inclusion of new CPCs isn’t as crucial as whether U.S. foreign policy is going to act on the information gathered by its own staff and make religious freedom an organizing principle for U.S. bilateral and multilateral relations.

But in any case, Bell said, the United States needs to keep churning these reports out to keep attention focused on the cause of the repressed faithful.

“If they’re not there, then wouldn’t people who are focused entirely on U.S. trade and economics, or people focused on some other aspect of global affairs, say climate change, just go about their business?” he asked.

WASHINGTON (ABP)—The Supreme Court agreed May 20 to hear a case centering on whether sectarian prayers at the beginning of official government meetings violate the First Amendment—an issue that has roiled local governing and school boards for years.

Justices will review an appeals court ruling that found a town council in upstate New York at odds with the Constitution after 11 years of offering primarily Christian prayers at the opening of public meetings.

A lower court had upheld the council’s practice, but the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals disagreed, saying the council should have found members of other faiths to pray.

Two residents of the town of Greece, a suburb of Rochester, who are not Christian said they felt marginalized by the prayers and challenged the practice.

Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, which is representing the two residents, told the Washington Post, “A town council meeting isn’t a church service, and it shouldn’t seem like one.”

David Cortman, senior counsel of Alliance Defending Freedom, which is representing the town, told the Post the framers of the Constitution prayed while drafting the Bill of Rights. “Americans today should be as free as the Founders were to pray,” he said.

The Supreme Court case, Town of Greece vs. Galloway, will be argued this fall.

(ABPNews)—Texas Baptist Men plans to dispatch an incident command team to Shawnee, Okla., Wednesday to relieve Oklahoma Baptists who had been responding to a previous tornado there, according to the group’s latest website posting. The team they are relieving is going to Moore, Okla., to help in recovery from an even larger tornado that struck there.

(CBS 11 NEWS Video)The TBM team will be using a bus given by the Salvation Army as the command center. TBM also will be providing chaplains. Recovery units have been place on alert, and Oklahoma Baptists have asked that the feeding unit be placed on alert.

Most Baptist churches and individuals eager to help the victims of Monday’s deadly Oklahoma twister are being told to get ready — and to wait.

While some faith-based disaster-response agencies are cleared by authorities to respond immediately, most are not and generally take long-term recovery roles in such disasters.

The reason: first-responders and even most victims of the massive tornado that killed at least 24 people in Moore, Okla., are not ready for an influx of out-of-towners bearing chainsaws and shovels, law enforcement and relief agency officials said.

Volunteers: sit tight

The Cooperative Baptist Fellowship of Oklahoma commented on Facebook that it’s too early to know what all the local needs are.

“Many of you have expressed interest in responding to the devastation in Moore,” the post said. But first-responders have yet to complete their work, and neither they nor many churches have shared their needs.

“When they start letting volunteers in, we will give you information on how to volunteer,” CBF Oklahoma said.

Mid-Atlantic region preparing

Disaster-response teams in the Mid-Atlantic have been placed on alert as they monitor devastation in Oklahoma.

“We have been asked to place all volunteers on alert status for the Oklahoma tornados,” Dean Miller, disaster-response coordinator for the Virginia Baptist Missions Board, said in an e-mail to volunteers. “Obviously [it’s] too early to tell, but Sam Porter (the disaster-response director for Oklahoma) thinks there could be a significant response in the coming days.”

North Carolina Baptist Men and Women has “equipment and team leaders on alert for a possible response,” the disaster-relief group posted on its Facebook page. “We are maintaining situational awareness and in contact with national leadership. Pray for the survivors as they face the challenges of today.”

The District of Columbia Baptist Convention’s emergency-response team also is on alert, said Ricky Creech, the convention’s executive director/minister.

“We are awaiting requests for mutual aid assistance from Incident Command, which is set up in First Baptist Church of Moore, Okla.,” Creech said in an e-mail. “Once the mutual aid request is sent out, we will then determine if the closer state response teams can handle the resources and capacity needed to fill the request. If not then D.C. Baptist emergency response team will deploy. We would most likely send our chainsaw and debris removal units along with any available chaplains and assessors.”

At home

At least 80 Oklahoma Baptist volunteers began work in several locations in the state, said Sam Porter, disaster-relief director for the Baptist General Convention of Oklahoma.

The massive, mile-wide tornado that swept through Moore, Okla., May 20.

“Within moments of hearing of the destruction in Moore, we put together a rapid-response volunteer team to help with the clean-up and recovery efforts,” Porter wrote on the BGCO’s web page. “Our teams are on the ground now surveying the area and helping where we can be of most assistance.”

Early estimates rate the tornado as an EF4, meaning it had winds between 166 and 200 mph. CNN reported May 21 that the twister was at least two miles wide and that at least nine children were among those killed.

Churches taking steps

Individuals and churches across the country are already taking steps to help — many of them by urging financial contributions to relief agencies, including CBF disaster response.

In Atlanta, members of Second-Ponce de leon Baptist Church were told that pastors, churches and families in the impacted areas “appear to be mostly safe” and are themselves helping in the relief and recovery efforts. It urges financial contributions to CBF online or via the church.

Tommy Deal, CBF’s national disaster-response coordinator, said CBF’s specialty is long-term recovery and is already communicating with CBF Oklahoma to begin mapping out plans to help victims get back on their feet.

WASHINGTON (RNS)—Even before rogue abortionist Kermit Gosnell was convicted in Philadelphia of delivering and then killing late-term infants, abortion opponents were convinced they had a case that could reshape an abortion debate that has remained static over the years.

After the verdict, they were even more confident.

“Dr. Gosnell is only the front man; and the real trial has only just begun. The defendant is the abortion license in America,” Robert P. George, a Princeton law professor and leading conservative activist, wrote after a jury convicted Gosnell of three counts of first-degree murder for snipping the spines of babies after botched abortions.

Gosnell, who could face the death penalty, also was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter in the death of a 41-year-old patient who sought an abortion at the squalid West Philadelphia clinic prosecutors labeled a “house of horrors.”

Yet the fervent prayers for a game-changing impact from the Gosnell conviction may go unanswered for a variety of reasons.

A ‘monster’ used by both sides

First, Gosnell provides an equal-opportunity icon. Pro-life groups see him as the embodiment of a culture that devalues life. Abortion rights supporters believe they can make a powerful argument out of the Gosnell case for greater and more affordable access to safe abortion services.

“Anti-choice politicians, and their unrelenting efforts to deny women access to safe and legal abortion care, will only drive more women to back-alley butchers like Kermit Gosnell,” Ilyse Hogue, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, wrote in an email.

In fact, at least nine of the jurors who convicted Gosnell told the court they are “pro-choice.” As New York Magazine’s Dan Amira put it: “Pretty much everyone believed that Gosnell is a monster who did horrible things. Where the two sides part ways is on what the tragedy says about abortion more broadly.”

Public opinion stalemate

A second factor working against prospects for a major shift is that most Americans, like the courts, are so settled in their views on abortion that it’s hard for anything—even the gruesome Gosnell story—to change their minds.

A Gallup Poll taken weeks into the Gosnell trial and a few days before the verdict found public opinion virtually unchanged: 26 percent of Americans said abortion should be legal under any circumstances, 20 percent said it should be illegal in all circumstances, and more than half—52 percent—opted for something in between, as has been the case since 1975.

The Gallup survey also showed few people were paying attention to the case; conservative activists accused the media of downplaying the trial due to a liberal bias, but it turns out conservative media also did not cover the case very much—in part because the details were so horrific the audience likely would tune out those stories.

Overtaken by events

A third reason the Gosnell case probably is not “the trial of the century,” as one abortion foe claimed, is simply bad timing: Benghazi, the IRS investigations of Tea Party groups and reports that the Justice Department had snooped on journalists’ phone records all overshadowed the Gosnell story.

Other controversies not only gave the public something less gruesome to focus on, but they gave conservatives too many targets all at once.

‘Safe, legal and rare’ but still legal

Finally, it is possible the Gosnell case seemed like such a slam-dunk for abortion opponents that they overreached in arguing Gosnell showed why every abortion is wrong.

“The unsafe conditions of the clinic do not cause our gut-wrenching response,” Collin Garbarino wrote a month ago in First Things, predicting that the trial, just starting, would strengthen the anti-abortion movement. “No. Our horror stems from the very act of abortion itself, the most brutal and distasteful act tolerated in America today.”

Or as George put it, after the Gosnell trial “it will no longer be possible to pretend that abortion and infanticide are radically different acts or practices.”

Yet by a wide margin, most Americans are not willing to make such sweeping judgments on legalized abortion, whatever their views on Gosnell. What many might support, however, are measures to provide greater oversight of abortion clinics and perhaps some limits on relatively rare late-term abortions.

Such proposals are gaining steam around the country—often at the initiative of conservative lawmakers—and in the wake of the Gosnell case even attract support from more liberal commentators, such as Michael Wear, who led the Obama campaign’s outreach to faith groups in 2012, and The Washington Post’s Melinda Henneberger.

“Though I do not support a ‘personhood’ amendment, neither am I OK with the Orwellian dodge that it’s not a baby unless and until we say it’s a baby,” Henneberger wrote.

The risk for abortion opponents is that endorsing such limited policies could be seen as settling for a Clintonesque standard for abortion as “safe, legal and rare”—but nonetheless still legal.

Still, the more pragmatic activists in the movement seem to recognize the momentum from the Gosnell moment is likely to fade as quickly as it does for gun control advocates after a deadly shooting massacre. So, if they don’t seize this moment for what they can get, they may wind up leaving loyalists in both camps energized, but the center as ambivalent as ever.