(continued from last week:)

The US Congress created some years ago the US Commission on International Religious Freedom which is comprised of people appointed by the president, the speaker of the house, the majority leader of the Senate, and the minority leaders of both houses. USCIRF, as it is known, was recently reauthorized for four more years, although some of us unsuccessfully supported reforms that would have strengthened the bipartisan structure of the commission and encouraged better coordination between it and the State Department.

I’m not a specialist on religious liberty. I agree with Brent Walker, the retiring head of the Baptist Joint Committee on Religious Liberty, who says, “The separation principles is simply another way of saying government should not try to help or hurt religion, but it should leave religion alone…In short, government must be neutral towards religion.”

But our freedom to worship God or not does not permit employers to refuse to offer health care plans that deny birth control to employees because they feel offended. It does not permit storeowners to refuse to sell wedding cakes to gay couples because they don’t like LGBTQ people. It does not give farmers the right to sell unpasteurized milk because it somehow contravenes their faith. Things have been turned on their head. As Thomas Jefferson said, “The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks by leg.”

Not only are people, churches, businesses, and organizations claiming their own religious liberty is jeopardized if, for example, women have access to birth control, they are suggesting their religious liberty has been compromised if the government will not use taxpayer money belonging to all of us to fund their projects.

A church in Columbia, Missouri challenged a state decision denying a grant to its preschool which sought to replace the gravel on its playground with softer, safer material. The Missouri Attorney General says the state constitution expressly prevents tax dollars from being used to aid religious groups. The case is going to the Supreme Court.

“They’re just kids,” says a church representative. But, if government tax money goes to help the church’s playground, why shouldn’t it be spent to fix the roof and otherwise generally help make the building safer?

“The issue is not whether the playground surface is inherently religious, but it’s whether the state government must fund an upgrade to a church playground despite a state constitutional ban on funding churches,” BJC General Counsel Holly Hollman said.

BJC Executive Director Brent Walker said the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment simply does not permit outright government funding or grants to churches and other houses of worship. “We do not look to government subsidies to build houses of worship; we should not fund capital improvements that way either,” Walker said.

Your religious freedom is not limited because the government won’t fund your church playground. It’s limited when the government tries to stop the preacher from delivering a sermon in the church or in a public space designated as an open forum.

When President Bush announced his faith-based initiative, the point was made that religious institutions had been discriminated against in terms of receiving government grants. I’m not so sure that was accurate. Organizations like Church World Service and Catholic Relief Services receive millions of dollars of government money.

Quite a brouhaha erupted about what Bush was trying to do. I spoke in a number of United Methodist Church settings about it at the time and made the point that we needed to separate government money and tax funds -- public money, that is -- and church money. Public funds are for the benefit of everyone and you can’t, or shouldn’t, use tax money to push the agenda or teachings of your faith.

Now, if you want to apply for government money to run a homeless shelter or to build affordable housing or to run some kind of program, then simply set up a separate corporation and don’t mix church money and public funds. Otherwise, you may see on the nightly TV news footage of government agents walking out of your church carrying boxes of documents and your computers because they’re investigating whether you misused money that belongs to all of us—Mormons, Muslims, Methodists, and others. That money is different.

If you receive government money to help you run your hospitals or universities or relief agencies, then you have to abide by rules that apply to everyone. You can’t set the rules; neither can you whine about your liberty being infringed upon.

Bob Jones University used to ban black students. When they did accept them, they banned interracial dating. As a result, they lost their tax exempt status. The Southern Baptist Convention passed a resolution arguing that the action violated churches’ constitutional right to operate without government interference, but Bob Jones lost, as well they should.

When I was a boy, we Protestants used to oppose the use of taxpayer money to assist Catholic parochial schools. Our argument was that if you wish to have your own schools, that’s OK, but you have to bear the expense. Tax money supports what the religious right now calls ‘government’ schools. We call them public schools.

Then came Brown v. the Board of Education, and many a white Southerner withdrew their children from public or ‘government’ schools in favor of newly created ‘Christian academies’, which were really just schools for white kids. Suddenly, these former anti-Catholics saw the virtue of seeking taxpayer money to support their private schools. And they argued that if they didn't get public funding, it’s a form of religious persecution against them.

Now they want public money while they teach their version of the faith and reserve the right to fire teachers who get divorced, who are gay or support gay rights, or who get pregnant outside marriage.

Meanwhile, some are arguing that the Johnson Amendment of 1954 is unconstitutional. That’s the law which provides churches and other nonprofit organizations with tax exempt status as long as they stay out of electoral politics. Mostly, it is the religious right that is making this argument. They want to retain their lucrative tax exempt status, which they receive because they are viewed as providing a public good while not seeking political power.

Battles over the Affordable Care Act, religious involvement in political campaigns, funding for church programs and charities, questions over zoning, same-sex marriage and LGBTQ issues, persecution due to religious identity, hate crimes, and numerous other issues promise to keep religious liberty in the forefront for many years to come.

There is no certainty our nation will continue to enjoy religious liberty without the commitment of all of us.