By Bob Allen
Southern Baptist and Roman Catholic leaders issued a joint statement April 3 concerning acrimony over religious liberty and same-sex marriage going on in Indiana and other states.
Philadelphia archbishop Charles Chaput and William Lori of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Baltimore joined Albert Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and Russell Moore, head of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, in denouncing “acrimony and lies surrounding legal efforts, in Indiana and elsewhere, at ensuring religious liberty for people of all faiths.”
“In recent days we have heard claims that a belief central to Judaism, Christianity and Islam — that we are created male and female, and that marriage unites these two basic expressions of humanity in a unique covenant — amounts to a form of bigotry,” the statement said.
“Such arguments only increase public confusion on a vitally important issue,” the religious leaders said. “When basic moral convictions and historic religious wisdom rooted in experience are deemed ‘discrimination,’ our ability to achieve civic harmony, or even to reason clearly, is impossible.”
Another signer was Robert George, a law professor at Princeton University who spoke at the recent ERLC leadership summit on racial reconciliation in Nashville, Tenn.
Both Archbishop Lori, chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ ad hoc committee for religious liberty, and Moore, top public-policy spokesman for the Southern Baptist Convention, were quoted by the Associated Press in a story about evangelicals and Catholics pushing together for conscience protections in laws they consider immoral.
“Individual or family-owned businesses as well as religious institutions should have the freedom to serve others consistent with their faith,” Lori said in a statement.
“We have to continue to press for religious liberty for everybody regardless of how unpopular that concept might be,” added Moore.