Many Protestant and evangelical leaders are standing with the
Roman Catholics bishops against the Obamacare mandate to compel
religious hospitals, schools and charities to purchase insurance
coverage for contraceptives, abortifacients, and
sterilization.
Although modern conservative Protestants have been
accepting or ambivalent about birth control, they recognize a clear
infringement on religious liberty. Mandatory coverage for
abortion-inducing drugs is doubly troubling for pro-life
Protestants.
“I’m not a Catholic but I stand in 100% solidarity with my
brothers and sisters to practice their belief against government
pressure,” tweeted Rick Warren, a California Southern Baptist who
is perhaps America’s most popular megachurch pastor and religious
author. He bracingly added: “I’d go to jail rather than cave in to
a government mandate that violates what God commands us to
do.”
Leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention, Lutheran
Church-Missouri Synod and National Association of Evangelicals have
all denounced the Obamacare provision. “The Obama administration
has declared war on religion and freedom of conscience,” warned
Southern Baptist officials. “This will not stand.”
The head of Intervarsity, a large evangelical campus
ministry, pronounced himself a political “moderate” who disagrees
with Catholic teaching on contraception while having “grave
concerns” about the morning after pill. But he focused on religious
freedom. “I’m upset because the mandate compels a religious
community to act contrarily to its understanding of Scripture,” he
said of the Obamacare policy. Noting threats to his own group on
increasingly secular college campuses, he warned of a “new era
where the majority will increasingly impose its views upon beliefs
it regards as backward.” And he concluded: “Let us stand in
solidarity with our Catholic friends on the health care
mandate.”
But some Religious Left groups are remarkably defending
the Obamacare mandate, apparently believing that government control
and subsidized sexual freedom take priority over religious liberty.
“This is a great day for women in the United States,” enthused the
chief lobbyist of the United Methodist Church. “This act goes a
long way in increasing the overall maternal health in the United
States,” he claimed, emphasizing that women must be free from
“living by the dictates of their employers.” He boasted that
“historically” his denomination has espoused “firm” support for
contraception and family planning.
Actually, Methodism only endorsed contraceptives in 1956.
An attempt in 1936 aroused such controversy that church
progressives retreated. In 1908, President Roosevelt shared his
belief that birth control equaled “race suicide” when addressing
the church’s governing convention. The United Methodist Church
first endorsed abortion rights in 1970. But the recent Methodist
lobby endorsement of the Obamacare mandate focused exclusively on
the supposed right to contraceptives while completely ignoring
religious liberty concerns.
So too did a new coalition of “mainstream” religious
groups while announcing they “stand with President Obama and
[Health and Human Services] Secretary Sebelius” behind the new
Obamacare mandate. “Hospitals and universities across the religious
spectrum have an obligation to assure that individuals’ conscience
and decisions are respected and that their students and employees
have access to this basic health care service,” the coalition
insisted, inviting other “religious leaders to speak out with us
for universal coverage of contraception.” They affirmed “individual
religious liberty,” but evidently only for employees, not
employers, or employees who agree with their religious
employers.
This new religious coalition for the Obamacare mandate
included mainly just radical caucus groups within liberal religious
bodies, but almost no actual church officials, except for the
presidents of the dwindling United Church of Christ and the
Unitarian Universalist Association. Even the United Methodist lobby
office evidently declined to sign. Two seminary presidents signed.
The chief organizer, herself a Unitarian minister who heads the
Religious Institute on Sexual Morality, Justice, and Healing,
boasted of having received a White House phone call one evening
before their news release. Another coalition member was the
Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, which touts abortion
as a “religious” right.
For much of the Religious Left, the instrumentalities of
the Sexual Revolution are themselves holy rites more sacred than
any civil right or protection from government interference. And
having largely denied the ethical teachings and historic doctrines
of their own faith, these religious voices have largely distilled
religion down to mandating, usually by government coercion, the
fulfillment of various physical needs. They offer a religion
without soul or transcendence. More disturbingly, their material
demands ultimately entail suppressing or coercing more traditional
religionists, not to mention all who cherish individual rights of
speech and faith. If all their wishes were fulfilled, the ultimate
result would be more authoritarian than any theocracy of the Middle
Ages, unmediated by grace or charity.
More promisingly, the much wider religious coalition
against the Obamacare mandate overturns historic interfaith
resentments, sets aside doctrinal differences over contraception,
and prioritizes religious freedom and protection for the individual
conscience. This interfaith coalition recognizes that liberty is
more sacred than any government mandate.
