Yeah, lots of people love pounding the "religious freedom" drum — "I shouldn't have to associate with / offer services to / dispense medicine for / accept customers who are those types of people" — when they think that they're part of "Us," not one of "Them."
So there are certainly a number of Christians who think, "Well, yes, a Christian should get cut slack when their moral beliefs conflict with those of someone else … because Jesus loves Christians most of all, and this country was founded on religious freedom, and if I'm forced to bake cakes for gays or make flower arrangements for Muslims, well, that's just like Nazi Germany."
Those Christians forget that "Christianity" is hardly a monolith. Most Christians think Mormons don't count. Many Protestant Christians think Catholics are beyond the pale. In the early days of this country, Quakers were persecuted, as were Baptists. The Founders had centuries of examples from Europe of wars and organized persecutions between Catholics and Protestants (with the occasional crusades against heretics for good measure).
Once you start legitimizing religious discrimination (especially when spending taxpayer money), sooner or later, you will be on the losing end of that equation.
(See also, "The Best Religious Joke of All Time" https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2005/sep/29/comedy.religion)
Catholic mom sues after Trump-backed foster care agency calls her the wrong kind of Christian
The rug has been pulled out from under “religious freedom.”
Can we go ahead and cut to religions being on the losing end of the equation, so they can give up being proud in favor of being useful? God doesn't ask us to be proud authoritarians, he instructs us to be humble servants to others – all others.
Well the Pilgrims' motivation to flee, often attributed to gaining freedom from religious persecution, was more honestly to gain the freedom to persecute others.
They should be sued and should never have been given a waiver by the Agency that happens to be during the Trump Administration. But, President Trump can use Obama’s often used quote of ” I had no idea that _____ (fill in the blank agency, like the IRS, etc.) did that and I’m going to form a committee and get to the bottom of this situation. You must stop grouping everyone that is a Christian in to groups, you hate that when they do it to the Gay/Transgender community
Now, to group other PRIVATE business and private citizens into this debate is extremely misleading and wrong. Which is probably your goal.
When a private business is asked to participate in something that they don’t believe they should, i.e. asking a devout Christian to participate in a gay wedding, we’ll, the Supreme Court ruled that is unconstitutional. Now ironically, that same bakery in Colorado, serves and sells baked goods to many in the Gay community.
What if the KKK wanted an African-American dry cleaner to clean their sheets and hoods and the dry cleaner refused ? What if a Jew wanted a Muslim baker to cater a Jewish wedding and they Muslim refused?
You want your faith-i.e. Leftism/Secularism forced on others, but, when someone else’s faith beliefs go against yours, do you choose another bakery, doctor or hospital, no, you want to sue them into submission. Which, is just like the Nazi’s and Communist did to their nations. Those secular governments have killed more people and done more harm than any religion.
So, with that, if after reading this and you want to have a discussion, not a lecture, tell me where I’m morally wrong.
+Al Hunt Yup. For the most part, English religious emigration was a matter of finding a land where they (fill in the denomination) were the top dogs, rather than the CoE.
The situation over time varied from colony to colony. Rhode Island, founded by second-hand heretic Roger Williams, was pretty free, and William Penn's Pennsylvania was open to Quakers and, by extension, to others. But Puritans dominated New England; Connecticut was the Catholic refuge; the South was largely Anglican.
James Madison wrote of seeing Baptists tarred and feathered in his Virginia youth. It was part of what drove him to ensure that Freedom of Conscience / Religion was part of the Bill of Rights.
It's worth recalling something that hasn't been a significant issue (intentionally) for fifty years: profound animus between certain flavors of Protestants and the Catholic Church. We're not just talking about centuries of wars in Europe, but profound distrust of Catholics — and the ethnicities that brought them into the US, Italians and Spaniards and Irish and, of course, those Southern Immigrants — was a hallmark of American culture through the 1960s.
(The justification, beyond grudges from European conflicts, and vaguely understood theological differences, were the accusations of divided loyalties for American Catholics between the US and the Vatican, not to mention the insidious covert subversion by the Jesuits.)
The Know-Nothings were a nationalist movement that deeply mistrusted Catholics and Catholic immigrants. The KKK is best known for their racist persecution of African-Americans, but they were also steadfastly opposed to Jews and Catholics and other "un-American" types.
Protestants had their own internal divisions, of course, but the move for public education, with Scripture as a foundation for learning to read, as well as the founding of great nation-wide charities, was a move by various Protestant denominations to band together against Catholic charities and Catholic schools. Ironically, the debate over what version of the Bible should be used in public school to teach reading — the KJV or the Catholic versions — was a foundation for the Courts to push Scripture out of the classroom.
Recall that Thomas Dewey was seen as a highly viable candidate against both FDR and Truman — and nearly defeated the latter — and is thought to have lost because of anti-Catholic voting. Famously, JFK had to disavow any papal allegiance during his election campaign, and his election to the Presidency is seen as the substantive end of anti-Catholic politics in the US.
The final, ironic, chapter here is that in the later 60s the GOP intentionally fomented abortion as a rallying point for Republicans and Conservatives against liberals and Democrats. They got major Protestant denominations — which had never been terribly interested in the issue — to ally with the Catholic Church, to make a serious social warfare issue going into the 70s and 80s.
The result of that is the sense that, oh, Catholics and fundamentalist Protestants are one and the same, close allies. They are — in narrow areas. But as this story (to draw an overlong comment to a close) demonstrates that apparent unity is an illusion for those who still want to emphasize the difference.
(My first wife, who was raised in various Protestant denominations, once confided to me that she had been taught that Catholics — which I was one of at the time — were idolaters, because of all the statues they worshipped in their church. Those divisions are not so deep below the surface as we think — again, as the article demonstrates.)
As a Catholic, I'd not heard the idolatry claim until college. But when I did, I didn't have a good response because it caught me off guard. After thinking about it, I could easily explain the teachings of the Church, "all members living or dead are all part of the congregation. We ask those that have gone before us to pray on our behalf, just as we pray on theirs." It is a fine argument, until one actually reads the prayers the Church as written for Saints. "Help me with this.. help me with that.." Most definitely support the idolatry claim. There are a number of ways that the Catholic Church does not follow the teachings of the Bible and especially the New Testament. They could do a number of things better.
+Brian Barth There's some legitimacy the claim that effectively the saints are popularly treated as minor tutelary deities, regardless of the theology. That, along with the authority and role of priests et al., more esoteric bits and bobs about what happens to the eucharist — all of that stuff creates a separation from most of the protestant sects.
Whether that then means that Catholics aren't Christian, or aren't the right kind of Christian, is another question. And to what extent that should allow discrimination in government-funded activities is still another.
+Dave Hill I agree with what you're saying. Sainthood has always rubbed me the wrong way. If the Bible says that everyone is pretty much equal in the eyes of God, then why are these being raised up above others? There's plenty of times where a scripture is read that fully contradicts what the Catholic Church does. Every Ash Wed, they read about how hypocrites do one thing or another to draw attention to themselves and to show their "faith"… Another where it says not to call the teachers "Father". Another about how the clergy are not to set themselves above the rest, yet people aren't allowed to hold the Bishop's staff without covering their hands.
Kissing rings..
The list goes on…
I've attended some Protestant services, and they place the some of the teachings of their founders or influential individuals of their denomination on the same level as the Letters in the New Testament. Or how their clergy are ordained and are able to be linked back to this person or that. They may not call them Saints, but the reverence on how they speak about the people and their influence is of similar weight.
+Brian Barth As with any institution that spans multiple centuries, there's bound to be some mission drift, and accumulation of custom and practice that the founders might have frowned on. Criticism of such things as fine; using it as a basis for discrimination when taxpayer dollars are involved is not.
I agree 100%.