The Public Relations and Religious Liberty Department of the General Conference has consistently worked to prevent efforts designed to make churches the surrogates for political parties. These efforts take place around the world. One such effort is currently playing out in the United States. In this struggle we face serious odds as the White House is firmly in favor of passing a law that would allow political parties to recruit churches to join their party machines and use churches as political party cells to further their political agendas. The bill in question is not a bill with wide support among churches. Rather, it is a bill designed by politicians, for politicians, at the expense of the integrity of churches. So far we have prevailed against a very well coordinated, powerful effort in 2004. No doubt, we’ll face it again this year.

We also have some major challenges coming up at the U.S. Supreme Court this year. Maybe one of the most serious is the challenge to the Religious Land Use & Institutionalized Persons Act. In 1990 the U.S. Supreme Court reinterpreted the freedom of religion provision in the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. No longer, the Court stated, would the government be required to provide a “compelling interest” before placing a burden on religious freedom. Now, the Court declared, all the government must show when it inhibits the free exercise of religion is that the government did not directly intend to violate someone’s religious freedom and that the law or action in question applies to everyone. This ruling opened the door to significant governmental abuse of people of faith. The two areas initially impacted by the U.S. Supreme Court’s weakening of the protection for religious freedom, was zoning for churches and religious activities in prisons.

Zoning laws govern if a building can be built, whether it can be altered, and how a building may be used. After the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision, municipalities increasingly passed zoning laws that ensured that churches could not build in their communities. Of course the laws did not target churches specifically. Rather, following the Supreme Courts lead, the laws were written to apply to everyone equally – at least in theory – but the net effect was that more and more often congregations trying to build a church in their community were refused the right to do so. In other cases, churches were prohibited from renovating their buildings. Some communities even banned churches from providing charitable services from their church because they did not want the poor coming to their community for help. Because all of this was done with laws that did not appear on their face to be aimed at churches and that applied to everyone equally, they could be enforced under the U.S. Supreme Court’s new weak interpretation of what the state must do to ensure freedom of religion for its citizens.

A similar problem developed in some prisons. For example some prisons enforced rules that limited prisoners access to literature. This made it very difficult to get Bible studies, inspirational books, and other types of religious literature to prisoners. It is hard to believe this happened–after all, the point of prison is to reform prisoners, and there is no force capable of reforming the human heart equal to the power of the Holy Spirit–but it did.

In response to these problems, the U.S. Congress passed the Religious Land Use & Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA). RLUIPA mandated that before local governments could ban churches and other houses of worship from building a new structure, altering their building for their needs, providing help to the poor, or using their building in any other way, the government must prove it has a “compelling” reason to impose the limitation. Similarly, it required that prisons show they have a “compelling” reason before banning the religious practices of prisoners. The Seventh-day Adventist Church played an important role in getting it passed and virtually all those interested in religious liberty were delighted by the passage of RLUIPA.

But not everyone was happy. Some local governments did not want the burden of showing a compelling reason before banning churches from locating in their districts. Further, some state prisons did not want to take reasonable steps to accommodate the religious needs of their inmates. In addition to these two groups, some expounded the theory that RLUIPA violates the separation of church and state because it protects religion but not non-religion. That is, RLUIPA ensures that houses of worship get preferential treatment over non-religious structures. The fact that the U.S. Constitution explicitly provides protection for religion in its text was not enough to convince them that, yes, protecting religious freedom not only is permissible under the U.S. Constitution, it is mandated.

Those unhappy with the religious liberty protections in RLUIPA brought a law suit, and this year that law suit will be heard at the U.S. Supreme Court. Once again, the Seventh-day Adventist Church is involved supporting the constitutionality of RLUIPA through an amicus brief that has been delivered to the U.S. Supreme Court. We are watching this case carefully, a negative decision could have a seriously negative impact on religious liberty across the board.