The slippery slope of religious intolerance

More on religious tolerance and the infringement thereof in an alleged democracy...

Last week, thanks to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the federal government took a giant leap toward encroaching on the religious liberty of Catholics. Reuben Daniels Jr., director of the EEOC District Office in Charlotte, N.C, ruled that a small Catholic college discriminated against female employees by refusing to cover prescription contraceptives in its health insurance plan. With health-care reform looming before the country, this ruling is a bad omen for people of faith.

In 2007, eight faculty members filed a complaint against Belmont Abbey College in Belmont, N.C., claiming that the school's decision to exclude prescription contraceptives from its health-care plan was discriminatory against women. "As a Roman Catholic institution, Belmont Abbey College is not able to and will not offer nor subsidize medical services that contradict the clear teaching of the Catholic Church," said the college's president, William Thierfelder, at the time.

In March the commission informed the college that the investigation of its employee health insurance plan had been closed with no finding of wrongdoing. Inexplicably, the case was reopened, and now the college is charged with violating federal law. If Belmont Abbey doesn't back down, the EEOC will recommend court remedies.

You can see where this leads. If forced to provide coverage for birth control, I wouldn’t be surprised if Belmont Abbey just ended medical coverage entirely. Partly this is an issue of overindulged people in a litigious society who think they should be able to dictate to their employer the terms of their employment and have no issue with suing if they don’t get their way, a legal system equivalent of a toddler throwing a tantrum. However the greater issue here is the issue of religious tolerance.

Who cares you might ask? I am not a Roman Catholic, I have never heard of this school and no one I know ever has or ever will go to school there. The reason it concerns me and should concern you is that restrictions on religious liberty impact everyone and it is an awfully slippery slope. Religious liberty is not something that is reserved for Protestants. There is an awful outcry whenever the government removes a 10 Commandments monument from public lands but the silence is deafening when the afflicted group is out of favor. Many evangelicals would cry foul if this college was forced to pay for abortions but since most evangelicals don’t care about birth control, we find something else to think about. Even in places, or perhaps especially in places, where we see religious liberty being restricted by the government of a group we are nto part of we should speak up. I will defend to the end the right of a Muslim woman to wear a headscarf or a Catholic college to refuse to cover contraception in the same way I would fight for my right to tell a Muslim or Catholic the Good News of Jesus Christ. It is disingenuous to cry “Persecution” over every perceived affront to Christmas but then turn a blind eye when the impacted party is a religion you don’t subscribe to.

There are many people who see my wife covering her head and think she is being repressed, including people who are Christians. There are many people, including some in the church, who think that we are unqualified to educate our own kids. As people increasingly educate their own children and with the nearly double child-bearing rate of homeschooling families, as public schools become emptier, revenue goes down and teachers need employment, you can be sure that there are many people who will look greedily at the millions of homeschoolers and try to find a way to force them back to the schools. If you think that in an increasingly secular world there are not forces who would like to expunge all religious expression, including private religious instruction of children by their own family, you are dangerously naïve. Government encroachment on religious liberty will not stop with small Catholic colleges or Muslim garments.

This is why we need as Christians to be concerned when religious liberties are being infringed. We may not be Muslim or Catholic or mormon or Hindu, but we all live under the specter of government infringement on the practice of our faith. I despise Islam as I do every other religion that leads people away from Christ, but I no more want the government to tell Muslim women they cannot dress as they choose than I do the government telling me what we can teach in our church. God is sovereign and no government can stop the Gospel from being proclaimed. That is not my concern. However, as a Christian who is an American citizen, I (and you) have a Constitutional right to practice our religion or not practice any religion without government intrusion. That right is being chipped away here and abroad. Today it is headscarves in France and mandated contraception coverage in Catholic colleges. Tomorrow it could be tax funded abortions and outlawing the preaching of the Gospel. We shouldn’t see religious liberty as a buffet where we pick and choose what liberties we like and which ones we leave on the buffet line.

Who makes decisions for your children?

The world we live in is deteriorating by almost any measure and the last bastion of any sanity is often the family. Thus the continuous assault on parental rights by the secular left in this country and around the world. We see that take its next step in a decision by the FDA to allow "women" at age 17 (or their 17 year old male partners) to buy the so-called "Plan B" pill in case of unprotected sex. Albert Mohler had a very important and equally chilling radio show on this ruling (and a blog post), I recommend that every Christian parent listen to this and as we did invite your kids to listen as well.

The glaring issue here is that these are minors who cannot vote, cannot buy tobacco, cannot sign legal contracts and are four years from buying alcohol in the same drug store. Note that the ruling allows 17 year old boys to buy the pill for their partner.

As one caller to the Albert Mohler program pointed out, there is nothing to stop 17 year old boys and girls from buying "Plan B" pills for other minors. What is to stop a 17 year old boy from buying these pills, with no supervision, for a 14 year old he had sex with? This opens the door on a whole new world of underage sex. That is really the goal. Read this quote from a New York Times editorial (written by the NY Times editors, not a syndicated columnist):

The harder question is whether to remove all age and other restrictions, potentially allowing children as young as 11 or 12 to take the drug without medical supervision. The judge sensibly left that issue to the F.D.A., which can presumably be trusted to make a fair assessment now that it will be under new leadership. (emphasis added)

Huh, see I would think that this issue should be decided by the parents of 11 and 12 year old girls, not the FDA. I guess I am less trusting of the decision making ability of the FDA, especially in this administration. I recognize that the Times is not advocating this position, but they certainly are wondering if it shouldn't be part of the conversation to allow girls 11 and 12 years old unfettered access to over the counter contraception. When the paper that considers itself the voice of journalism, THE paper of record and it seriously entertains such questions, you see the ideological perversity of its worldview laid bare.

Why is this issue such a victory for liberals? So what if women can now buy a pill one year earlier? The greater issue here is yet another wedge driven between parents and children. Liberals have tried and failed for decades to divide parents and children, to prevent parents from passing on their counter-revolutionary morals onto their kids. With the tools of the media and public school system at their disposal already, selling contraception to kids without any medical or parental involvement is just another way for the secular left to mold kids without the pesky interference of their parents.

Christian marriage and birth control

Dr. Albert Mohler asked the question: what should Christian couples think about birth control? The impetus for his question was driven by the fortieth anniversary of Humanae Vitae, the Roman Catholic encyclical that reiterated Rome's prohibition against any sort of artificial birth control. It was long a strictly Roman issue, but now spearheaded by groups like the QuiverFull movement evangelical Christians are starting to ask this question. Especially for young Christian couples, the question of when or even if to have children is at the forefront of many couples minds. Should Christian married couples put off unduly or even refuse entirely to have children. And that is what it is, a refusal. It is not a choice, all things being equal, to have children. It is the default. A man and a woman get married and in the natural course of things have children. The only choice for most couple is to NOT have children by artificial means. So is that permissible Scripturally?

The Scripture is pretty clear. Children are intended as an end result of the marital relationship and are consistently referred to as a blessing, one that is specifically granted by God. Tell someone God is going to bless them with money or cars, and man they are all for it! Tell them God is going to bless them abundantly with children, and you may get a less enthusiastic reaction. The very first things God tells His crowning achievement is found in Genesis 1: 28:

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them. And God said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth." (Genesis 1:27-28)

Where is that explicit command abrogated? It is part of marriage and marriage is ordained by God to propagate the human race, to have dominion over the earth and rule it. I think Dr. Mohler sums it up properly, not every marital act is required to be open to procreation, but every Christan marriage should be. Timing and circumstance may impact when Christians start a family, and believe me I know how expensive a big family can be! It is a conversation we need to have in the church and in families, with a view of children that recognizes them as blessings, and not inconveniences to our lifestyle or entries on our financial statements. Dr. Mohler's broadcast is a great place to start thinking about it the issue.

Just because we can prevent child birth does not mean we should prevent it.