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Home  News & Opinions Press Room
Press Room
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 In times of heightened patriotism or in the weeks
surrounding patriotic holidays, the Baptist Joint Committee often receives
inquiries about the propriety of flying the American flag in church. Should
American flags be displayed in Baptist churches? The short answer is yes, but
only in certain places and at special times.
Of course, this practice does not constitute a
constitutional violation. The First Amendment’s Establishment Clause bars government endorsement of a
religious message; it does not prohibit a church from endorsing a patriotic symbol.
The objection to the routine display of an American flag in the sanctuary is
that it represents an act which, for some, including me, raises serious
theological concerns.
Click here to read the rest of the article.
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 This year marks the BJC’s 75th year of defending and
extending religious liberty for all, a milestone we celebrated at our annual Religious
Liberty Council luncheon. The luncheon was held in conjunction with the Cooperative
Baptist Fellowship’s General Assembly in Tampa,
Fla., during which CBF celebrated
its 20th anniversary. As I enter my 10th year of service to the BJC, I am
thankful for anniversaries. They provide an occasion to pause, if only for a
minute, to review the past and look to the future together, joined by our
common commitment.
Click here to read the rest of the article, including some of the current challenges to religious liberty.
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 My recent efforts to answer lies and misunderstandings about
the separation of church and state have been appreciated by readers of Report from the Capital and by others. Certainly the likes of David Barton seem to be on a
tear (featured on “The Daily Show” no less!) seeking to convince Americans that
this is a Christian nation and that there should be no wall of separation
between church and state.
So, I was delighted when an op-ed appeared in The Washington Post in
April by David Sehat, a history professor at Georgia State
University, titled “5
Myths about Church and State.” His piece appeared in many other papers and was
an object of great interest on Facebook and other social media and the Internet
generally.
Sehat’s myths differ from mine, but his efforts, with
one correction, were on target and well reasoned. Let me respond briefly to
what he had to say.
Click here to read the rest of the article.
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 Ministerial exception is crucial implication of religious liberty
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Jeff Huett | Phone: 202-544-4226 | Cell: 202-680-4127
Cherilyn Crowe | Phone: 202-544-4226 | Cell: 615-519-0620
June 21, 2011
WASHINGTON – A legal doctrine that bars most lawsuits between ministerial personnel and their employers is a “clear and crucial implication of religious liberty, church autonomy and the separation of church and state,” says the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty in a friend-of-the-court brief filed Monday.
The BJC filed the brief in a case to be heard this fall by the U.S. Supreme Court involving an employment dispute between a church-run school for children in grades K-8 and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission on behalf of a former teacher commissioned by the church. The case is Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School v. EEOC, et al.
Click here to read the full statement.
Click here to download the brief. (pdf)
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The U.S. Supreme Court has issued decisions in both of its religious freedom cases this term. But just because we didn’t have to wait until June does not mean the Court did us any favors. The BJC filed briefs in both cases, and the decisions were disappointments. They illustrate the difference between valuing religious liberty in theory and actually protecting that liberty in practice.
Sossamon v. Texas is a statutory interpretation case where the Court adopted a narrow reading of the remedies available when a state violates a prisoner’s rights under the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA). The Court made it more difficult to enforce a law that was carefully designed to provide strong religious exercise rights for institutionalized persons.
RLUIPA was passed with broad support and a congressional record demonstrating that state institutions sometimes restrict religious liberty in arbitrary and egregious ways. Indeed, the majority in Sossamon noted that the plain language and meaning of RLUIPA’s substantive provisions provides heightened protection to religious exercise. Congress made clear that the statute should be read to provide “broad protection of religious exercise.”
Unfortunately, the Court undercut this protection by holding that the statute’s provision of “appropriate relief” could not be read to include money damages. As Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor noted in dissent, “It is difficult to believe that Congress would have devoted such care and effort to establishing significant statutory protections for religious exercise and specifically extended those protections to persons in state institutions, yet withheld from plaintiffs a crucial tool for securing the rights the statute grants.” After Sossamon, prisoners may still sue state defendants for burdening their religious exercise, but plaintiffs are “forced to seek enforcement of those rights with one hand tied behind their backs.”
Even worse than the Court’s narrowing of RLUIPA’s enforcement provisions is its obliteration of taxpayer standing in Arizona Christian School Tuition Organization v. Winn, et al. In Winn, the question was not about how to correct a constitutional violation but about whether the plaintiffs could even get into court (known as “standing to sue”) to challenge a law alleged to provide taxpayer support to religion in violation of the Establishment Clause.
In a 5-4 decision, the Court ruled that the plaintiffs do not have standing because they challenged a tax credit as opposed to a tax “extracted” from citizens. The Arizona program at issue in Winn allows any individual to direct up to $500 of his or her state income tax bill to a state tuition organization, which then provides private school scholarships. Plaintiffs alleged that the program operates unconstitutionally, primarily because many of the participating tuition organizations award scholarships only to religious schools.
The majority’s opinion, written by Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy, focuses on the mechanism Arizona used for the alleged establishment of religion and, in essence, leaves the doctrine of taxpayer standing hanging by a thread. The Court held that the taxpayer plaintiffs did not have standing under Flast v. Cohen (1968), the case that established the narrow and necessary exception to the general rule against taxpayer standing. The rule in Flast recognizes taxpayer standing when the government uses its taxing and spending power in violation of the Establishment Clause. In Winn, however, the Court denied standing because the Arizona program did not extract a tax.
In Hein v. Freedom from Religion Foundation (2007), a case that challenged aspects of the Bush administration’s Office of Faith-based and Community Initiatives, the Court denied taxpayer standing to challenge executive branch expenditures. Winn has now effectively eliminated the doctrine of taxpayer standing. A state legislature can avoid a constitutional challenge simply by using tax credits instead of a direct appropriation.
Associate Justice Elena Kagan, writing her first dissent since joining the Court, sharply criticized the Court’s decision. She said, “This novel distinction in standing law between appropriations and tax expenditures has as little basis in principle as it has in our precedent. ... Taxpayers who oppose state aid of religion have equal reason to protest whether that aid flows from the one form of subsidy or the other.”
As the four dissenting justices recognized, the decision is at odds with a long line of Establishment Clause cases brought by taxpayers to challenge government subsidization of religion, and the consequences are serious. The demise of taxpayer standing necessarily diminishes the strength of the Establishment Clause to protect religious freedom for all.
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On November 12, 2001, Brad and Connie Bull — good friends and Baptist Joint Committee supporters — gave birth to a son. The proud parents quickly sent me a picture of John-Clarke Leland Bull.
Brad and Connie had named their son after two Baptist heroes: John Clarke, Baptist minister and co-founder of Rhode Island, and John Leland, Baptist evangelist fighting for religious liberty in Virginia. (Their daughter, Delyn, is named for Brad’s paternal grandmother who agreed to marriage only if her Methodist fiancé became a Baptist!)
Not all of us are sufficiently steeped in our Baptist heritage or committed to religious liberty that we would name a child after multiple ancestors. But it is important that we all understand how critical it is to communicate to the next generation the principles that underpin our commitment to religious freedom and our appreciation for the price paid by our predecessors to ensure it for us.
I know I am, and the Baptist Joint Committee surely is. Let me briefly outline for you three ways in which we are determined to do this.
For the past 30 years, the Baptist Joint Committee has had a very effective internship program. Started by James Dunn — with Bill Underwood (now president of Mercer University) as the first intern — the program has developed over the years into one of the premier internships on Capitol Hill. We generally enjoy six, sometimes seven interns each year. Some are in between college and graduate school (often law school or seminary), some are still undergraduates, and others have finished their schooling.
The benefits of the internship program go both ways. The interns learn a great deal, are modestly compensated for their efforts and absorb the new commitment to religious liberty that makes the Baptist Joint Committee unique. The Baptist Joint Committee, on the other hand, benefits from the interns’ hard work and, perhaps more importantly, from the interns then becoming ambassadors championing the cause of religious liberty on their college campus, law school or seminary and throughout their careers.
We now have an alumni group of some 150 former interns leading our churches and colleges, making laws in state legislatures and spreading the gospel of religious liberty in their daily lives.
Another prong of our strategy to reach the next generation is being implemented through the Walter B. and Kay W. Shurden Lectures on Religious Liberty and Separation of Church and State. Through the incredible generosity of Buddy and Kay Shurden, who endowed annual lectureship on college and seminary campuses on an annual rotating basis, the Baptist Joint Committee is taking the initiative to the students themselves. In April of this year, we completed our sixth Shurden Lectureship with Melissa Rogers delivering insightful and inspiring messages to students at Georgetown College in Georgetown, Ky. Because of the Shurdens’ commitment, these lectureships will go on in perpetuity. Next year we will be at Mercer University. We then go to Stetson University in 2013 and Baylor University in 2014.
A third way in which we are reaching out to young people is through our Religious Liberty Essay Contest. Open to high school juniors and seniors and now in its sixth year, the contest seeks to engage high school students on a religious liberty topic. It offers a top prize of $1,000 and a trip to the nation’s capital, $500 for second place and $100 for third place. When we first started we received only a handful of essays. This year we netted more than 370 qualified essays from 43 states, far surpassing our previous high of 74 in 2009. We plan to announce this year’s winner sometime before the Baptist Joint Committee’s Religious Liberty Council Luncheon at the CBF General Assembly in Tampa this June.
How can you help? Tell us about promising potential interns; earmark gifts for the Shurden Lectures so that someday we will be able to fund two lectureships a year; encourage your children and students who attend your churches to participate in the essay contest.
By the way, the Bull family is doing well. In fact, they showed up at the BJC offices last month. (John-Clarke was a little chagrined to learn that I had kept his baby picture in my desk drawer all these years.) Brad and Connie, professors at Tennessee Baptists’ Carson-Newman College, are furthering the education of John-Clarke and Delyn through tours of the Library of Congress, the National Archives, the U.S. Capitol, the monuments on the National Mall and, yes, a visit to the Baptist Joint Committee. You should come see us, too!
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Court of Appeals to hear church-state case May 12
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Jeff Huett | Phone: 202-544-4226 | Cell: 202-680-4127
Cherilyn Crowe | Phone: 202-544-4226 | Cell: 615-519-0620
May 11, 2011
 WASHINGTON – A federal court should strike down a policy inviting religious leaders to use meetings of the Forsyth County (N.C.) Board of Commissioners as a platform to promote their faith, according to a Baptist church-state organization. In a friend-of-the-court brief (pdf), the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty says the policy is unconstitutional, threatens religious liberty and degrades religion by entangling it with government.
On May 12, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals will hear oral arguments in the appeal of the case of Joyner v. Forsyth County. The original case was brought in March 2007 by two residents of Forsyth County, N.C., who filed suit against the county. The residents challenged the county’s practice of allowing sectarian government-sponsored prayers at county board of commissioners meetings under the First and Fourteenth amendments to the U.S. Constitution and sections of the North Carolina Constitution. They claimed the Board’s prayers advance Christianity and have the effect of affiliating the Board with it.
Click here to read more.
Click here to download a pdf of the BJC brief.
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Official government acts should not urge citizens to engage in religious exercise
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact:
Jeff Huett | Phone: 202-544-4226 | Cell: 202-680-4127
Cherilyn Crowe | Phone: 202-544-4226 | Cell: 615-519-0620
May 4, 2011
 Congress’ official designation and the president’s proclamation of a National Day of Prayer is misguided and unnecessary, says a Washington, D.C.-based church-state organization. A recent court decision said the law calling for the day of prayer cannot be challenged in court, but an official religious declaration by the government is still “unwise,” according to the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty.
“The government shouldn’t be in the business of telling the American people what, where or when to pray or even if they should pray,” said J. Brent Walker, executive director of the Baptist Joint Committee.
In the proclamation designating May 5 as this year’s National Day of Prayer, President Barack Obama stated, “I invite all citizens of our Nation, as their own faith or conscience directs them, to join me in giving thanks for the many blessings we enjoy, and I ask all people of faith to join me in asking God for guidance, mercy, and protection for our Nation.” The proclamation also said, “let us ask God for the sustenance and guidance for all of us to meet the great challenges we face as a Nation.”
“There is nothing wrong with the American people getting together to pray on a designated day, even public officials,” Walker said. “In fact every day should be a day of national prayer.
“The problem with the National Day of Prayer is that it is an official act of the government urging citizens to engage in a religious exercise,” Walker said.
Click here to read more.
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Westboro Baptist Church — the tiny but seemingly ubiquitous church group founded by Fred Phelps of Topeka, Kan., and consisting mostly of his family members — is one of the most notorious religious groups in America. It seems almost everyone, regardless of religion, politics or geography, has encountered Phelps or his family members and their “God Hates Fags” and “God Hates America” signs. The church’s targets for protest seem chosen randomly. They admit, however, that a primary criterion is potential for media coverage. The higher profile or more emotionally charged an event, such as a military funeral, the more likely they will appear, carrying a message that the United States must be punished for tolerating homosexuality.
Now adding to the church’s distinction is a U.S. Supreme Court case bearing their leader’s name and upholding their constitutional rights despite the harm caused to a grieving military family.
In Snyder v. Phelps, the Court held by an 8 to 1 margin that the First Amendment’s Free Speech Clause protected Phelps from liability for the intentional infliction of emotional distress caused by picketing near a soldier’s funeral service in Westminster, Md. A jury in Maryland had awarded millions of dollars in damages to the Synder family, whose son was killed in the Iraq war. Phelps and his children and grandchildren held a protest on public land about 1,000 feet from the church where the funeral was held. The U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned that verdict finding that the Free Speech Clause protected the demonstrators’ actions. The Supreme Court affirmed that decision.
Since the case was decided, we’ve received a number of inquiries, centered primarily on two concerns: the scope of the Court ruling and Baptist fears of association with Westboro.
The case makes no specific contribution to religious liberty law. The facts of the case, recited in the opinion, state that the protesters held signs, sang hymns and recited Bible verses. The decision does not otherwise mention religion. The Court’s decision rests firmly on Free Speech principles that protect speech on public issues (including speech motivated by religion) because such speech is “more than self-expression; it is the essence of self-government.”
Taking into account all circumstances of the speech — what, where and how it was said — the Court found that the speech deserved protection because it relates to broad issues about our country’s political and moral conduct rather than purely private concerns. Rejecting Snyder’s claim that the speech’s connection with his son’s funeral made it a private concern, the Court emphasized that the Phelps message was “displayed on public land next to a public street,” the kind of space that occupies a special position for First Amendment protection. The Court noted, however, that even protected speech may be subject to reasonable time and place restrictions. The Court said that in this case the church members complied with police guidance and were not unruly or violent. As the Court stated, “Simply put, the church members had the right to be where they were.”
It seems likely the result would be different if the protesters had physically interfered with the funeral or broken any laws that regulated where they could picket, such as the many recently enacted state laws that restrict picketing near funerals (though the constitutionality of those laws has yet to be tested).
In addition to concerns about the boundaries between Free Speech and the privacy of families at funerals, many Baptists have been concerned about the damaging public witness of Westboro. Some, including those who have also been picketed by Westboro, have long issued “disclaimers” in public statements to avoid any association.
In addition to explaining the congregational and autonomous nature of Baptist churches, some have found opportunities to use publicity generated by Westboro to demonstrate another face of churches. When Westboro picketed a funeral in Raleigh, N.C., as in many cities, a number of counter-protesters showed up, holding signs about God’s love. The media attention also noted a ministry of nearby First Baptist Church on Salisbury Street that was working that same day to provide toys for children of families who could not afford them for the holidays. The coincidental timing offered a striking contrast and demonstrated one important aspect of the legal principles at stake in the Supreme Court case. The same free speech rights that protect Westboro protect those who have a far more generous view of God and a far different view of what we are called to do.
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Yesterday, Secretary Kerry released the 2012 International Religious Freedom Report, a yearly update, mandated by Congress, on the status of religious freedom in every country in the world.
You can read the report, and browse countries by name at this State Department site. Watch Secretary K... |
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In orders today, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear Town of Greece, NY v. Galloway. The decision means the high court will have its say on the hot-button church-state issue of legislative prayer for the first time in 30 years. The 2nd Circuit ruled in Town of Greece that the prayer practic... |
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