NASHVILLE, Tenn. (ABP) — Attorney General Alberto Gonzales chose the Feb. 20 Southern Baptist Convention Executive Committee meeting to announce a new Justice Department focus on religious freedom. But some Christian leaders questioned the move, as well as the Bush administration's commitment to a robust defense of the Constitution's religious protections.
Gonzales told members of the SBC's main governing board that the department was launching the “First Freedom Project” effort to fight religious discrimination in employment, housing, land use, education and other areas of the law.
“Religious freedom is a fundamental part of our nation's history and one of its core principles,” Gonzales said.
He said his department's civil-rights division will spearhead the effort. It will include educational efforts to inform government officials, employers and everyday Americans about their religious-liberty rights under law. It also features a new website, www.firstfreedom.gov, containing resources on religious freedom and information on filing religious-discrimination complaints with Justice officials.
Gonzales sought out SBC leaders for the chance to make the announcement at the meeting.
“Throughout our history, nothing has defined us a nation more than our respect for religious freedom,” Gonzales said. “It is not confined to members of one church or the followers of one set of beliefs. Through this initiative, the Justice Department continues its vigorous efforts to enforce protections against religious discrimination.”
The announcement coincided with the release of the Justice Department's “Report on Enforcement of Laws Protecting Religious Freedom: Fiscal Years 2001-06.” Gonzales, referring to the report, suggested that the current administration had more assiduously enforced religious freedom than the Justice Department under President Bill Clinton.
The 43-page booklet, which is available on the First Freedom website, attempts to illustrate the Justice Department under Bush has increased the enforcement of religious-freedom laws.
The report notes that cases of religious discrimination in educational institutions increased from the period of 1995-2000, during the Clinton administration, when the department reviewed one case and conducted no investigations, to 82 cases reviewed and 40 investigations during the first six years of the Bush administration.
For example, the department filed a successful lawsuit to protect the right of a Muslim student to wear a head scarf while attending public school and defended the right of religious groups to meet in public facilities on an equal basis with secular groups.
But some Christian leaders said Gonzales failed to draw attention to all aspects of religious freedom.
Brent Walker, executive director of the Washington-based Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty, said he appreciates the administration focusing on the First Amendment — but that the amendment covers two aspects of religious freedom that are inextricably linked to each other.
“The First Amendment has two protections for religious freedom — prohibition on religious establishments and protection for free exercise of religion,” Walker said in a statement provided to Associated Baptist Press. “The administration has often ignored the importance of the no-establishment principle by supporting attempts of governments to endorse a religious message, using tax dollars to fund pervasively religious organizations, allowing religious discrimination in hiring for federally funded projects, and going to the Supreme Court to cut back on the rights of citizens to challenge such practices.”
Walker also noted that Bush's record on free-exercise protections is “not perfect.” He pointed to a Supreme Court case last year in which the administration attempted to limit a small religious sect's ability to use hallucinogenic tea for sacramental purposes. A unanimous high court rejected the administration's position.
The head of the National Council of Churches, when asked for a comment on Gonzales' announcement by an ABP reporter, said he wished the attorney general had chosen a more representative body to hear his announcement. SBC leaders have been among Bush's strongest and most consistent supporters.
“We are pleased to see the Bush administration focus renewed interest on religious freedom,” said NCC General Secretary Bob Edgar in a prepared statement. Nonetheless, he continued, the NCC does “find it unsettling that only a single denomination, representing a fraction of the rich diversity of religious life of America, was selected to receive the attorney general's personal presentation. It would seem more appropriate had he made such an appearance before an ecumenical or interfaith gathering, symbolically underlining the vision of a nation in which the law plays no favorites but sees all faiths as equal before the Constitution.”
After his speech, in response to a question, Gonzales told reporters he chose an audience of Southern Baptists to announce the government's new effort because “this is a group very interested in the protection of religious freedom.” He noted the “timing worked out where this was a good venue to speak to a receptive audience.”
Baptists in America were early champions of religious liberty and influenced the development of the Constitution's First Amendment, which guarantees religious liberty and other freedoms.
But the NCC's statement said Edgar had invited Gonzales to appear at the NCC Committee on Religious Liberty meeting, slated for March 12 in Washington, to “extend to this very diverse group of interfaith advocates for religious freedom the same courtesy of a face-to-face visit that he has already extended to the Southern Baptist Convention.”
The NCC also encouraged Gonzales to make similar appearances before leaders of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, the National Association of Evangelicals and “Jewish and Muslim faith groups who together make up the complex tapestry of religious life in our nation.”
At the conclusion of his address, Gonzales asked the Executive Committee to help spread the word of what the Justice Department is doing to preserve religious liberty and to help educate Southern Baptists about religious-liberty laws.
The First Freedom Project will sponsor a series of regional training seminars for leaders interested in religious liberty. The first one will be March 29 in Kansas City, Mo., followed by seminars in Tampa, Fla., April 25 and Seattle, Wash., May 10. Other dates and locations will be announced later.
Another initiative — unrelated to Gonzales' announcement but called the First Freedoms Project — is a partnership between three Baptist organizations. The Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty, Associated Baptist Press and the Baptists Today newspaper have joined in that project to emphasize the Christian commitment to First Amendment principles, particularly religious liberty and freedom of the press (www.firstfreedoms.com).
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