“When it is considered how short is the span of human life,” St. Augustine of Hippo wrote in the fifth century, “does it really matter to a man whose days are numbered what government he must obey, so long as he is not compelled to act against God or his conscience?”
President Trump is no theologian, nor was he elected to look after souls. He’s also not from the “religious right.” On Thursday, though, he took up the noble cause of religious liberty, and for that he deserves applause.
Now that he’s taken up this fight, however, Trump would benefit from taking St. Augustine to heart and adjusting his priorities. The president’s focus in his executive order was on politicking by churches, and the Johnson Amendment which prohibits it. This is well and good, but ought to be a very distant second to conscience protection matters generally, and in particular the secular left’s relentless efforts to compel Christians to participate in abortion, gay marriage, and other activities that their faith proscribes.
Throughout his election campaign, when Trump spoke about religious liberty it was strictly about the Johnson Amendment. The amendment is a 60-year-old law that cracked down on charitable groups, including churches, to prevent them engaging in politics, at risk of losing their tax-exempt status. This, in effect, made first amendment freedom of speech contingent on the paying of taxes, which is has scant basis in the Constitution. It should be repealed.
This seems still to be the priority for Trump in the context of religious liberty. In his religious liberty executive order on Thursday, the first substantive point was his instruction to the IRS to give churches the widest berth permitted by law. But this leaves the amendment in place so it can be revived by the next aggressively secular administration and used as it chooses.
Weakening and undoing the Johnson Amendment is fine. Nobody wants the taxman listening in homilies and sermons. But many religious people are pretty happy with the separation of church and electioneering. The more our churches get involved in politics, the more we can expect politics to get involved in our churches, which wouldn’t be good.
Which brings us back to conscience protection. The most important threat to religious liberty is the left’s culture-war offensive on conscience.
The Obama administration tried to force Christian businessmen to pay for birth control, including abortifacients; the administration lost in the Hobby Lobby case. Obama kept fighting, though, and tried to force nuns to secure contraceptive coverage for convent staff.
The Obama administration’s Equal Employment Opportunity Commission also targeted a Catholic school because it dismissed a gay teacher for violating the school’s code of conduct by marrying another man.
Washington State’s Attorney General has declared war on a florist who wouldn’t participate in her gay customers’ wedding. New Mexico has tried to ruin the business of a photographer who wouldn’t participate in a gay wedding.
The ACLU is suing Catholic hospitals for not aborting babies, and separately for not performing gender-switch surgeries.
Here government isn’t merely restricting the freedom of religious people. It is compelling them to do something they know is wrong. Many people are compelled by their faith to help the poor and serve their neighbors. The Democratic thought police commands, in effect, you may not serve others or enter the marketplace until you check your morality at the door.
This is the more pressing threat, and President Trump should turn his attention this way.
He should start by replacing the Justice Department holdovers (including a former Ruth Bader Ginsburg Clerk and Hillary Clinton donor) who are currently keeping alive the Obama administration’s appeal of the latest ruling in the case against the Little Sisters of the Poor.
Trump hasn’t even nominated an assistant attorney general to head the civil division. His solicitor general nominee hasn’t been confirmed yet. He needs to fill these top jobs and all the everyday lawyers at DOJ who can take the Little Sisters’ case out of the hands of liberal lawyers and stop this revolting persecution of nuns.
There’s plenty more Trump can do to protect conscience rights in almost all executive agencies. This, too, requires hiring good and capable people dedicated to disarming the parts of the federal government that try to impose left-wing morality.
Trump’s executive order is mostly symbolic. It’s a good symbol. But it needs to be followed by substantive good deeds to protect the freedom of conscience.
