There may be a reason those “Defense of Religious Liberty” bills are popping up across the U.S., including the two filed in the Georgia General Assembly recently.
LifeWay Research of Nashville polled pastors and Christians last September and found 7 of 10 believe religious liberty is on the decline and that Christians are losing or have lost the “culture war.”
Ed Stetzer, the pollster behind the numbers, said he sees the legislative attempts as a defensive action, in contrast to the days when Christian-based political groups like the Moral Majority pushed proactive legislation.
“They are thinking, ‘How do we keep our religious freedoms as a minority?’ ” Stetzer said.
“We were surprised at how high the anxiety was about religious liberty.”
“Legislators are hearing from their constituents on this.”
Stetzer comes from a Baptist background, but LifeWay, a Southern Baptist nonprofit, polled across Protestant lines among 1,007 pastors and 1,001 American Christians. Some highlights:
•Q: “Religious liberty is on the decline in America.” Seventy percent agree; 27 percent disagree. Self-identified evangelical pastors are more likely to agree (81 percent) than other pastors (47 percent).
•Q: “Many Christian leaders have talked about society being in a culture war. Regardless of how you feel about that terminology, how would you explain the current situation?” Fifty-nine percent say Christians are losing. One in 10 say the culture war is already lost; 10 percent say Christians are winning. Evangelical pastors (79 percent) are more likely than other pastors (60 percent) to say Christians are losing or have lost the culture war.
Some of the unease about religious liberty is due to shifts in American culture and church practice, Stetzer believes. In the 1960s, nearly two-thirds of Americans were Protestants. Today, they make up less than half of the population, according to the General Social Survey, a collection of demographic data funded by the federal National Science Foundation.
In the past, Protestants in particular took it for granted that Americans would look to the church for guidance on moral issues, he said. Government and culture no longer defer to Protestant Christians, and the shift makes pastors and their congregations anxious, Stetzer believes.
Thomas Kidd, professor of history at Baylor University, and author of “God of Liberty: A Religious History of the American Revolution,” told LifeWay that recent court battles also may play a role in making Christians feel anxious.
Kidd pointed to the Hobby Lobby contraceptive-provision case as well as the Supreme Court’s 2012 Hosanna-Tabor ruling, which says religious institutions have some rights to discriminate in who they hire or fire. Both involve disputes between the government and religious groups over exemptions from federal law. In both cases, religious liberties were in conflict with other values such as nondiscrimination or health care issues.
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