One of the ways that churches and synagogues fulfill the mission that God has placed on the lives of believers is by serving others. Food pantries, medical missions, and crisis pregnancy centers are just a few of the ways that Christians and Jewish people have lived out God’s mandate to share the good news by serving others.
Of course, what’s baked into the cake of religious organizations serving people is that they should be able to share their faith with others. It’s Missions Month at my home church, and I’ve served with some of our local and global missions partners. It’s a blessing and privilege to serve and to have gospel conversations with people.
Unfortunately, since the middle of the 20th century, federal regulations have made it difficult and later nearly impossible for religious organizations to receive federal money and share the faith behind the mission. The Bill Clinton-era 1996 welfare law explicitly said that “No funds provided directly… shall be expended for sectarian worship, instruction, or proselytization.”
Court decisions and compromise legislation gave some concessions, but now the Trump administration is untying the hand of faith that accompanies the hand of service. The Department of Justice recently directed federal agencies to stop requiring faith-based organizations that receive federal money to refrain from sharing faith.
“On August 25, the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) issued a landmark opinion: it directs federal agencies to stop enforcing rules that require faith-based providers to refrain from engaging in religious conduct as a condition of participating in federal programs,” write Nicole Stelle Garnett, Michael A. Helfand, and John Meiser at City Journal. “The order is great news for countless religious charities, social service agencies, and schools.”
Related: Faith All Over the Place, Episode 8: On Mission for Jesus With Pastor Kurt Petersheim
The trio continues:
The Supreme Court has made it clear that such rules are unconstitutional. When the government extends public support to private organizations, the First Amendment’s Free Exercise Clause prohibits it from denying such support to groups that engage in religious activity. Yet federal agencies have continued to enforce these rules in dozens upon dozens of federal programs.
The OLC’s legal directive was unmistakable: federal agencies must stop enforcing such restrictions. All that remains now is for states and all levels of government to follow the OLC’s lead in respecting the First Amendment’s religious freedom protections.
“Religious restrictions on generally available federal funding programs are presumptively unconstitutional,” the OLC notes in its opinion.
"Because the statutory and regulatory religious restrictions applicable to programs administered by the Department of Health and Human Services discriminate based on anticipated religious use without any compelling governmental interest, they violate the Free Exercise Clause,” the opinion also points out. “Use-based religious restrictions on generally available federal funding programs are presumptively unconstitutional.”
It’s a massive win for religious liberty, and I’m sure it’s giving missionaries at many organizations the chance to breathe a sigh of relief. Some states are beginning to ease similar state-level restrictions, while others — like California (shocker) — are doubling down on freezing out faith conversations.
Garnett, Helfand, and Meiser write:
That the battle for religious equality persists is both exasperating and devastating: exasperating because these exclusions violate the First Amendment; devastating because the consequences fall on real people. Religious institutions looking to serve vulnerable citizens—often where the government itself has failed—lose access to critical resources needed to carry out that mission if they remain true to their religious commitments. And in being told that public benefits available to everyone else are somehow beyond their reach because of what they believe, faith communities are relegated to second-class citizens.
The Founding Fathers never envisioned a nation that penalized churches and missions for sharing their faith while receiving money from the federal government. (Then again, they probably didn’t picture a bureaucracy that would dole out money hand over fist like this.) This nation arose from a foundation of religious liberty, and it’s time we keep turning back toward that footing.
Faith-based charities shouldn’t have to choose between serving people and staying true to the faith that motivates that service in the first place.
That’s exactly the kind of religious-liberty fight we cover at PJ Media — the stories the legacy press often ignores, minimizes, or gets backward.
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