This week, Indiana’s legislature
passed a bill, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (SB 101),
which is now in the hands of our Governor, Mike Pence. He has said that he will
sign this bill into law. This act would allow private parties — including
businesses open to the public — to invoke a religious defense in legal cases
involving refusal of service. Many folks think that this legislation is focused
particularly on protecting refusal of service to gay and lesbian people. The
implications of this legislation certainly include, but also reach far beyond,
this particular community.
This paragraph is found in the
social statement, “Human Sexuality: Gift and Trust,” adopted by the 2009
Churchwide Assembly of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America:
While Lutherans hold various convictions regarding lifelong,
monogamous, same-gender relationships, this church is united on many critical
issues. It opposes all forms of verbal or physical harassment and assault based
on sexual orientation. It supports legislation and policies to protect civil
rights and to prohibit discrimination in housing, employment, and public
services. It has called upon congregations and members to welcome, care for,
and support same-gender couples and their families and to advocate for their
legal protection.
In the spirit of these shared commitments, the
day after this legislation passed in the Indiana House, I wrote and submitted this
letter to the Indianapolis Star newspaper:
What is religious freedom? Is it
free range to do whatever we want, regardless of the possible negative
consequences for others? Is religious freedom the “right” to use our business
enterprises as shields from people and circumstances that we think might taint
our own moral purity? Is religious freedom the unmitigated permission to impose
our own moral codes on others and to keep them at a distance so our own moral
purity won’t be compromised? Not according to the Christian scriptures, the
very scriptures invoked by some supporters of the misguided and so-called
religious freedom legislation.
At the heart of Christian faith is
the good news that in Jesus Christ we are forgiven and saved by grace (not
through our own moral purity or works). By this amazing grace we are set free
from trying to keep ourselves pure and holy and are called, rather, to follow
Jesus into the dark places no one else will go and to love and serve – to
touch, eat with, and welcome as Jesus did – those whom others turn away or whom
the powers that be push aside.
The apostle Paul put it this way
in his ancient letter to the Galatians (chapter 5): “For freedom Christ has set
us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery…For
you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters; only do not use your freedom
as an opportunity for self-indulgence, but through love become slaves to one
another. For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, ‘You shall
love your neighbor as yourself.’”
This is the religious freedom
Christians are called to embrace in their daily, workaday lives and in the
businesses they run.
The Rev. Dr. William O. Gafkjen
Posts
