Rainbow tinted roses.
In this post, I want to respond to feedback to my two earlier civil disobedience offerings this week, and press the conversation a bit further.
A very well-informed old friend of mine who deals with institutional religious liberty issues appreciated my column on Wednesday but suggested three new scenarios:
(1) Employment law is changed and religious employers (and others) are forbidden to discriminate on the grounds of sexual orientation, so are compelled to close if they do not hire a married gay person.
(2) An adoption agency loses its license to perform adoptions unless it agrees to place children with gay married couples.
(3) A religious college loses its accreditation because it insists on retaining its student conduct and employment policies. Accreditation is done by private organizations, but an unaccredited college is not a viable educational institution.
My correspondent suggested that in these kinds of cases the religious organization may (try to) just keep operating in defiance of the law, with the leaders or board going to jail as an act of civil disobedience, rather than simply obeying the law. I wonder if it would ever get that far, but it’s a scenario worth considering seriously.
These helpful comments remind me that professional licensing and accreditation bodies, not just government, will also play a key role in determining how much space is preserved for religious individuals and institutions to practice norms that differ from evolving cultural and legal standards. Those of us in higher education know of the extraordinary power of accrediting bodies in our work.
This week brought news that three Christian colleges have already altered their policy statements — these are Hope College, Belmont University, and, in a more subtle and ambiguous way, Baylor University. (Full disclosure: I have lectured at Hope and several times at Baylor.) Baylor’s move, which took place before the Supreme Court ruling on gay marriage, was the most interesting because it offered an option I did not anticipate — a very subtle quasi-change, made without fanfare and with sufficient ambiguity to allow for multiple interpretations of its meaning. Perhaps others can finesse the issue in this way.
I anticipate that in the period before the 2016 elections a great many parachurch, nonprofit, social service, and educational institutions will find a way to alter policy statements that might soon be interpreted as running afoul of federal law — leaving the remaining dissenters feeling increasingly isolated and vulnerable.
About those florists
Comments on my last article really got in the weeds related to case details when it came to florists, bakers, photographers, and so on. Expressive rights for cake designers. Standard floral/cake arrangements vs. special designs. Public accommodation law vs. religious liberty. And so on. Some of that will simply have to be left to the lawyers, but I will say three things:
1) For Christians who consider their small business to be a kind of ministry, I suggest that there are other and better ways to bear Christian witness besides refusal to serve certain customers. If I were pastor to a troubled small business owner, I would suggest a different way of looking at the situation. To serve the neighbor is not to endorse the neighbor. Why not make the best cake you ever made, offering love and care to your customer to the best of your ability? But of course, other Christians see the matter very differently.
2) To the gay-rights side, I suggest that your team is winning. Public opinion is on your side. Big business is clearly on your side. Every evidence suggests that those who cannot wrap their minds around LGBT equality or gay marriage will be an ever-shrinking minority. If there are five florists or bakers or wedding hall owners in your community, why not choose one for whom your request does not present a crisis of conscience?
3) To everyone — why not acknowledge, as St. Paul did a long time ago (1 Corinthians 6), that lawsuits are not the best way to resolve human problems? Paul wrote to those Corinthian Christians: “To have lawsuits at all with one another is already a defeat for you.” Is it not possible to come to an accommodation with one another in community? Can we not flex a bit to learn how to accept conscientious differences of conviction?
The next two Sundays at church I will be preaching from Romans 14. Everyone should read this amazing passage from the New Testament. Here Paul basically says to this particular community of squabbling Christians that conscientious differences of opinion over matters of religion and religious ethics are to be expected, even within the Church. Serve God as faithfully as you can according to your own lights. Allow others to do the same. Make space for one another. Respect each other’s freedom. Don’t judge or despise each other. Don’t harm each other. Love each other. One day, God will sort it all out. Call it theocentric tolerance, or something like that.
Good advice for all of us.
