If the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) is swept away, the first victims will be minority faiths and those assisting the poor.
Both of us have served in Congress—one as a Democrat; one as a Republican. We have dedicated our careers to advocating on behalf of the poor and marginalized in the United States and around the world. We are motivated to do so because we are followers of Jesus, not any one political party.
We have routinely called on foreign governments to protect religious minorities in their own countries, recognizing that religious freedom is the cornerstone of all other freedoms. However, recent events in Indiana and now Arkansas have caused us to direct our attention toward home.
As Members of the U.S. House of Representatives, we took part in a unanimous vote in 1993 to pass the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), the model for many of the state level laws now under scrutiny — and in some cases, under attack. RFRA passed the Senate with 97 votes and was signed into law by President Bill Clinton. The overwhelming bipartisan support in Congress was mirrored by a diverse supporting coalition of civil society and faith-based groups, including the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, the National Association of Evangelicals, and the American Civil Liberties Union.
These groups, which have little else in common and rarely find common cause, came together because RFRA promised to take religious liberty out of “standard interest-group politics” that too-often favored the well-connected few, and put all religious believers—minority and majority, rich and poor—on a level playing field.
RFRA has lived up to this promise. As our friends at the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty like to say, RFRA protects everyone from “A to Z—Anglican to Zoroastrian.” For every Presbyterian soup kitchen RFRA has protected, there is an equally-protected mosque in rural Tennessee. For every Midwest homeless shelter, there is a Florida synagogue. For every Sikh schoolchild, there is a Muslim, Jewish or Native American inmate who has been able to live out his faith in peace.
People whose only knowledge of religious liberty legislation comes from the Indiana uproar — which has been stoked in part by misinformed media coverage — can be forgiven for thinking that RFRA gives religious believers special rights. It does not. All that a RFRA law does is make sure that the government treads very, very carefully when it is restricting peoples’ religious practices, even when those practices are unfamiliar or unpopular. RFRA doesn’t guarantee a particular outcome. In fact, the best research shows that even with a state RFRA’s help, religious believers lose their cases more often than not.
If the state and federal RFRA laws were repealed, those from minority faiths, those who are in prison, and those whose faith motivates them to sacrifice themselves to serve the poor and marginalized will find themselves vulnerable in the very land where Pilgrims once sought refuge for their unpopular religious beliefs.
President Clinton was convinced that our commitment to religious freedom was what enabled us to survive as “the oldest democracy now in history and probably the most truly multiethnic society on the face of the Earth.” He signed RFRA into law because he believed that it “protects all Americans of all faiths” in a way “consistent with the intent of the Founders of this Nation.” He was right. By treating all religious beliefs neutrally and giving religious believers a way to defend their freedom in court, RFRA represents the best of this tradition.
It would be tragic if, as a result of misinformation and misunderstanding, we were to allow domestic religious liberty to precipitously erode at home. As millions of Americans this weekend celebrate Passover and Easter respectively, we reflect on the rich religious tapestry of this nation. Many who oppose RFRA laws claim do so in the name of tolerance. But to drive people of faith out of the public square, by denying them the most basic, narrow, legal protections for abiding by their conscience, is in fact the greatest intolerance.
Former Rep. Frank Wolf, a Republican, represented Virginia’s Tenth Congressional District from 1981 to January of this year. Former Rep. Tony Hall, D-Ohio, represented a Dayton-area congressional district in Ohio from 1979 to 2002, when he was appointed Ambasador to the United Nations for Food and Agriculture. Thinking of submitting an op-ed to the Washington Examiner? Be sure to read our guidelines on submissions for editorials, available at this link.
