Gov. Rick Perry: "Religious Freedom Does Not Mean Freedom From Religion.”

Many of us are familiar with the supposed “war on Christmas” narrative that is propagated by theligious right as most notably put forward by those such as Bill O’Reilly, Rick Perry and Sarah Palin. However, this narrative is but a surface manifestation of a deeper dialogue that Christianity, and Christians are under attack in America. They are under attack by secularism, by liberals, by the LGBTQ community, by atheists, by nonbelievers, by those that seek to create and flourish in a truly pluralistic and multicultural civil society. A few keys issues in this diatribe can be thought of as prayer in public schools, protecting the LGBTQ community from discrimination, taking the word God off our currency and out of the Pledge of Allegiance, not allowing nativity scenes to be placed on public property and so on and so forth. Whatever side of the argument we as individuals may align; we are all, to some extent, familiar with this dialogue however superficially I just presented it.

This past week, on June 13^th 2013, Governor Rick Perry thought it necessary to sign into law the “Merry Christmas Bill”. Perry said, "People of faith too often feel they can't express their faith publicly. And if they dare display it, they find themselves under attack from individuals and organizations that have nothing to do with them or their communities for that matter."[1] This law, which goes into effect this coming September, is designed to allow religious displays in schools as long as there is more than one religion being represented or if a secular symbol is present. Whether or not this bill is necessary or appropriate is another question. The much more prevalent issue is that Rick Perry, when introducing this bill, said, “Religious freedom does not mean freedom from religion.” This is a heavy statement that requires a bit of unpacking.

Perry’s remarks reflect a fundamental misunderstanding of human rights and what freedom and religion actually means. A distinction I always find myself making when discussing these issues is that of freedom of religion and freedom of conscience. Could you tell me, off hand, what the difference between the two is? It’s actually quite difficult and requires defining the terms. What do we mean when we say freedom of religion? What does religion actually mean here? Would it be appropriate to say it includes the freedom to find meaning, purpose and joy in our lives? If so, religious organizations, tradition and dogma can become irrelevant to leading a “religious” life. Indeed, many people, especially in the past few decades are choosing to shed religious tradition and myth in favor of something more personally fulfilling whether it be a “spiritual but not religious” orientation, or identifying as a humanist or atheist or nonbeliever. This is not new information. I feel that religion is often used in an unfortunately narrow light. I often ask: “what is more religious than your conscience?” What is more religious than critical thinking? What is more religious than following your reason as far as it can take you? Whether someone is a believer or a nonbeliever, having freedom of conscience is the essence of freedom of religion.

Religious freedom is a narrow term and usually comes with narrow understanding. I prefer the term freedom of conscience as it necessary includes alternative and broader ways of understand religion as a mechanism for finding truth, meaning and purpose. Governor Rick Perry is a victim to a false dichotomy. He is a religious zealot fighting for his team against a false enemy. At the basest level, this man is limiting the religious freedom he is trying so desperately to protect. “Freedom of religion does not protect freedom from religion” is an oxymoron. Freedom of religion necessarily includes freedom from religion. This is correctly understood by many as a fundamental human right. For example, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) published an op-ed this past January entitled “Government Must Protect Nonbelievers.” In this essay Katrina Lantos Swett the Chair of USCIRF and Dr. M. Zuhdi Jasser, a Commissioner of USCIRF, say

While religious freedom is an integral part of our heritage, it also is misunderstood. A key misunderstanding concerns the matter of belief. Simply stated, religious freedom means not only the right to believe, but the freedom to disbelieve — to embrace any religion and to reject every religion. People express their religious freedom by choosing theism, atheism or any other response to ultimate questions. Religious freedom allows them to follow wherever their conscience leads.[2]

Secretary of State John Kerry echoed these remarks this past May. He said,

“Whether it be a single deity, or multiple deities, or no deities at all, freedom to believe —including the freedom not to believe — is a universal human right…But freedom of religion is not an American invention. It’s a universal value. And it’s enshrined in our Constitution and ingrained in every human heart. The freedom to profess and practice one’s faith, to believe or not to believe, or to change one’s beliefs, that is a birthright of every human being.”[3]

Whether it’s Jon Stewart calling it “Bullshit Mountain” or Bill Maher calling it “The Bubble,” Governor Rick Perry certainly lives there. Nonbelievers and secularists, including religious secularists, are continuing to be persecuted for their efforts to create a pluralistic society that protects all people from discrimination. As history has shown the most dangerous forms of discrimination are those that come with the justification of religious dogma and righteousness. Governor Rick Perry’s ignorance and intolerance of human rights and freedom of conscience is a stain upon public policy and a hindrance to the evolution of civil society.

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[1] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/14/rick-perry-freedom-from-religion_n_3441187.html?ir=Religion&ncid=edlinkusaolp00000008

[2] http://www.uscirf.gov/news-room/whats-new-at-uscirf/3918-op-ed-richomnd-times-government-should-protect-nonbelievers-january-22-2013.html

[3] http://occupydemocrats.com/secretary-of-state-john-kerry-freedom-not-to-believe-is-a-universal-human-right/

Tax Exempt Status of Churches and Illegal Electioneering

It’s been a long time since I’ve written a blog post and there are a lot of ideas I have lined up. Unfortunately due to my chronic laziness I have a few that should have been posted last fall that still need to be posted. So hopefully I’ll be able to get productive and start posting again.

There were a lot of issues related to religion in politics that came up during the last election cycle. One of the most important of these issues is illegal electioneering done by churches and their tax-exempt status. In 1954, the Johnson Amendment was signed. It requires political neutrality from churches in order to maintain their tax-exempt status. Nonetheless, illegal electioneering by churches and pastors is commonplace. Here are three examples for this past election cycle:

1.     Senior pastor Terry Fox in Wichita, Kansas ran an ad in the Wichita Eagle stating that he would speak “about how the Obama administration and its socialist agenda is [sic] making the way for the Antichrist to take over the world.” He hosts a weekly radio show for his church and on it he said, “There’s no question in my mind that the sitting president we have today is far more evil and far more committed to a one-world government.” They openly endorsed Rick Santorum during the Republican Presidential Primary violating IRS rules. Their church publication, The Summit Informer, regularly includes illegal political campaign intervention. 

2.     Perhaps you saw this one in the news: a church in Leakey, Texas posted this on a sign outside their church, “Vote for the Mormon, not the Muslim! The capitalist, not the communist!”

3.     The San Diego Union-Tribune reported that Skyline Church Pastor Jim Garlow said at the end of his sermon, “Some came to hear my endorsement. My endorsement will be Jesus. I’ll tell you whom I’m going to vote for, but I don’t think that makes it an endorsement. I’m going to vote for Mitt Romney, but I’m not telling you to.”

Many would wrongfully point out that this is a free speech issue. This is not about free speech. This is about using tax money as a subsidy for partisan political activity.

In 1969, the Supreme Court ruled in Walz v. Tax Commission of the City of New York that religious tax exemptions did not violate the establishment clause of the 1^st amendment because they were granted to all religions. They justified their position because the do not transfer any revenue to the churches; they merely refrained from collecting taxes. However, this amounts to a government subsidy that all taxpayers contribute to, and only some utilize. This maintains a privilege given to some at the expense of others. The Supreme Court even said so itself in the 1983 ruling of Regan v. Taxation when it said that “both tax exemptions and tax deductibility are a form of subsidy that is administered through the tax system.” Once again, these are contradictory points of view from the US Supreme Court. On the one hand, religious tax exemptions do not violate the first amendment, but they can be thought of as a subsidy.

Here is a little background information: Churches get three main types of exemptions…income taxes, property taxes and taxes on donations (tithing).

The qualifications for a tax-exempt status are as follows:

1.     The organization must be organized and operate exclusively for religious, educational, scientific, or other charitable purposes (i.e. not political)

2.     Net earnings may not benefit any private individual or shareholder

3.     No substantial part of its activity may be attempting to influence legislation

4.     The organization may not intervene in political campaigns

5.     The organizations purposes and activities may not be illegal or violate fundamental public policy.

The overarching reasoning for this tax-exemption is that churches provide a public benefit. But what benefit does a church provide that couldn’t be fulfilled by some other nonreligious organization? Charity work can be done by anyone, you can learn about religion from any number of locations, and the advancement of religion itself is not a charitable act.

There are a number of negative consequences of the current system:

1.     Resources are being used by churches that could be used more effectively or more efficiently elsewhere

2.     Churches have an unfair business advantage with tax exemptions

3.     Taxpayers are responsible for the portion of taxes that churches are exempt from paying

4.     Churches are given preferential treatment

5.     Churches participate in political and lobbying activities with little or no sanctions brought against them (such as loss of tax exempt statues)

6.     Sanctions against churches have little or no effect due to the lack of regulations and oversight

This amounts to taxpayers indirectly supporting churches. I am forced to ask: “Why should my tax dollars go to support the subsidy of a religious organization that I am opposed to?” “Why should my taxes support the subsidy of the Mormon Church when they spent millions of dollars pushing proposition 8 in California.”

The fifth and sixth items on the list are very closely related and stem directly from the fourth. The prohibition of political and lobbying activity was the trade off made for churches to be tax exempt in the first place. In fact, the IRS makes it very clear that a churches failure to adhere will result in their tax-exempt status being revoked. The problem is the IRS’s inability or (more likely) unwillingness to adequately enforce this. Many churches break this rule, often overtly as in the examples above, and even feel that the rule infringes on their right to free speech. Many have even arrogantly claimed that restricting their ability to be involved in politics is a restriction on their religious freedom.

Religious organizations must understand that the tradeoff was made because religious political and lobbying activism poses a threat to the separation of church and state. But to some like Rick Perry, there is no such thing as the separation of church and state. He said as much when he claimed:

"This separation of church and state, which has been driven by the secularists to remove those people of faith from the public arena, there is nothing farther from the truth…When you think about our founding fathers, they created this country, our Constitution, the foundation of America upon Judeo-Christian values, biblical values and this narrative that has been going on, particularly since the ’60s, that somehow or another there’s this steel wall, this iron curtain or whatever you want to call it, between the church and people of faith and this separation of church and state is just false on its face…The idea that we should be sent to the sidelines, I would suggest to you, is very driven by those who are not truthful…Satan runs across the world with his doubt and with his untruths and what have you and one of the untruths out there is driven –  is that people of faith should not be involved in the public arena."

Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of this quote is that Satan drives those who push for separation of church and state, those that defend secular public space. It is inherently evil and must be combated. It’s warfare with truly cosmic and transcendent implications.

Thanks to a complete absence of sanctions or supervision, churches can, and do, freely abuse their tax-exempt status. This is an ongoing problem that in my opinion necessitates revoking all religious organization’s tax-exempt status. Last year, Italy decided to revoke their churches property tax exempt status. As a result, their tax revenue will dramatically increase. A study at the University of Tampa quantified the amount of US tax revenue lost at $71 billion. This is more than the federal government budgets for education (69.8 billion).

The Freedom From Religion Foundation is now suing the IRS to enforce its laws. Funny that you have to sue these days just to get people to do what they are supposed to be doing.

Government Must Protect Nonbelievers

The following op-ed appeared in the Richmond Times-Dispatch on Sunday January 20, 2013.

On Wednesday, the United States observed its annual National Religious Freedom Day. This day commemorates the Virginia General Assembly’s adoption in 1786 of Thomas Jefferson’s Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom and celebrates the enshrining of this right in the U.S. Constitution and our country’s culture.

While religious freedom is an integral part of our heritage, it also is misunderstood. A key misunderstanding concerns the matter of belief. Simply stated, religious freedom means not only the right to believe, but the freedom to disbelieve — to embrace any religion and to reject every religion.

People express their religious freedom by choosing theism, atheism or any other response to ultimate questions. Religious freedom allows them to follow wherever their conscience leads.

Through such documents as the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the 1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, nations around the world have acknowledged on paper that freedom of religion or belief is an inalienable human right.

These documents capture the broad essence of the right, speaking of “freedom of thought, conscience and religion.” Yet according to a Pew Research study released last August, nearly 75 percent of the world’s population lives in countries in which this fundamental freedom is significantly restricted.

The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), on which we serve, has found that countries that typically persecute atheists also target members of disfavored or minority religious communities and individuals belonging to majority faiths who dissent from government-sanctioned interpretations.

In a number of nations, disseminating atheist views is specifically prohibited or restricted. Among these countries is Egypt, which USCIRF recommended in 2012 that the State Department add to its list of the world’s worst religious freedom violators. Just last month, Alber Saber was given a three-year jail sentence in Egypt for “offending” religion as a result of administering an atheist Facebook page.

Another such country is Indonesia, which USCIRF continues to monitor due to its permitting serious religious freedom abuses. Last June, Alexander Aan, a 31-year-old civil servant, was sentenced in Indonesia to a 2½-year prison term for creating a Facebook group supporting atheism and posting questions about the existence of a deity and cartoons depicting and insulting the Prophet Muhammad.

Both of these cases underscore how states that persecute atheists violate not only freedom of religion or belief, but other precious freedoms, including freedom of expression. They remind us that, in the end, freedom is indivisible. There is no bright line that can be readily drawn in the sand to separate them.

The implication is clear. Those who stand unequivocally for other freedoms, including freedoms of speech and press, association and assembly, also must support religious freedom, just as those who stand for the right of believers to follow their conscience must do the same for nonbelievers.

While history bears stark witness to the persecution of atheists in the name of belief and believers in the name of atheism, the call of conscience requires us to pursue a brighter path of freedom and dignity for all. Thus, as we mark National Religious Freedom Day, we’d do well to recall these wise words from the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom:

“No man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place or ministry whatsoever ... nor shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief.”

For believer and skeptic alike, freedom of thought, conscience, religion or belief merits our firm support around the world.

Katrina Lantos Swett serves as chairwoman of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF). M. Zuhdi Jasser serves as a USCIRF commissioner. To learn more about the commission, go to uscirf.gov.