By Chelsea Langston Bombino

Editor’s Note: This article originally appeared on the Sacred Sector blog in April.

This is the first article in a recurring Religion Unplugged column from Sacred Sector Director Chelsea Langston Bombino that will explore religious freedom in the United States.

The national conversation regarding religious freedom right now is largely focused on the question of public, in person gatherings for worship services. This public conversation and its nuances have been relatively well covered. And yet, it is important to recognize that this is not the only element of the institutional religious freedom discussion that needs to be had at the moment. Right now, my colleagues and I are carefully monitoring the implementation for various provisions of the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act and anticipating areas of future legislation designed to address COVID-19 to ensure institutional religious freedom–that is, the religious exercise of faith-based organizations, both churches and faith-based services, in distinction from the religious exercise of individuals who want to worship together with others– is upheld and protected.

In the weeks to come, this column will take up in detail emerging public policies that impact the freedom of faith-based organizations. This column will focus on making visible the right now largely invisible, untold and often surprising elements and stories of how institutional religious freedom advances human flourishing during COVID-19 and beyond.

This pandemic has impacted every area of our individual and institutional lives. For many of us, our kitchen tables may now functionally be our offices, our worshipping spaces, our children’s classrooms, and our boardrooms. The structure of our daily lives has changed dramatically, not just because COVID-19 exists, but because it has dramatically shifted the norms of the social institutions that make up the fabric of our daily lives. The shaking up of institutional norms has brought both challenging and redemptive moments. For example, I am writing this article while nursing my five-month-old baby. Pre-COVID-19, many working parents, like myself, spent many more hours physically apart from their children. Now, this moment has highlighted both the inherent value of the family as an institution and it has raised complex questions about how best to implement household norms around paid work and family caregiving.

Institutions Made Visible

Until COVID-19, we were living in a society where many people, especially young people, ignored institutions, overlooked their significance, or did not necessarily connect the importance of institutions to their own daily lives and well-being. Put another way, institutions were, at best, invisible or taken for granted, and at worst, highly suspect. Americans are now talking (albeit through Zoom and other virtual means) about the ways COVID-19 is changing the institutions in their lives (their workplaces, childcare providers, houses of worship, gyms, local coffee shops). Americans across the country are engaged in private and public discourse about how the institutions in their lives are changing due to this pandemic: how government action is affecting these groups, changing organizational structures and norms, and how these institutions are communicating with their members, those they serve and their broader communities.

In my roles as director of Sacred Sector and the Institutional Religious Freedom Alliance, both initiatives of the Center for Public Justice (CPJ), I focus on empowering faith-based organizations to advance their institutional religious freedom (and their institutional responsibility) by consistently and holistically living out their sacred missions and beliefs in everything they do. The sacred sector refers to the wide range of faith-based organizations that conduct community activities or provide goods and services, and are places of work for employees, contract workers, and volunteers. I believe proactive prevention is the best way for faith-based organizations to protect their religious freedom, both as a normative principle and now during this unprecedented moment in our history. That is why my work is mostly focused upstream of the courtroom on empowering religious organizations, especially under-resourced congregations and service-based organizations, to live out their faith-based identities holistically. Sacred Sector does this through an approach we refer to as the “Three P’s” we help organizations navigate public policy, develop organizational best practices and practice public positioning.

COVID-19 has renewed public focus on how institutional life is changing in every segment of society and sphere of responsibility. In a strange way, COVID-19 represents an opportunity for those of us who advocate for religious institutions in the public square to add their distinctive perspective and expertise to the conversation, specifically with respect to faith-based organizations.

What follows are a few key areas that my colleagues and I are closely monitoring in public policy that have an effect on the freedom of faith-based organizations to continue to make their uncommon contribution to the common good during this economic and health crisis. As my colleagues have written, any legislative or administrative response to COVID-19 should consider not just the well being of individuals, but also sustaining the well-being of the civil society institutions through which individuals live their lives. There are examples in recently passed federal legislation of a proactive effort to safeguard the viability of faith-based institutions, such as: providing more funds for SBA forgivable loans, with increased access for religious nonprofits, expanding unemployment insurance to include workers of religious institutions who were previously ineligible, and allowing non-itemizers to deduct $300 in giving to nonprofits, including religious organizations. The ongoing responses of Congress and this administration do not perfectly protect and advance the faith-based sector, but they do demonstrate positive steps toward ensuring the sustainability of our diverse tapestry of civil society organizations in the U.S during COVID-19 and beyond. All governmental actions during COVID-19 should continue to consider the following wherever practicable:

● Empower faith-based organizations to contribute to the social safety net while preserving their religious freedom, enabling funds to flow to faith-based organizations without restrictions that limit their religious freedom.

● Mitigate expected economic hardship for faith-based organizations as well as their employees by rapidly reimbursing employers for mandated sick and family leave payments. The unemployment insurance safety net should be expanded so that groups excluded from coverage – clergy, employees of religious organizations as well as gig-economy and contingent workers – are included.

● Incentivize charitable giving in this time of economic and social crisis. Congress should enact a universal charitable deduction that gives a deduction on taxes owed to all taxpayers who contribute to the charitable sector.

The COVID-19 crisis presents our nation with not a sprint, but a marathon. Public policy responses must respond to urgent needs while protecting those institutions — including religious communities, faith-based charities, and the family — that help keep our society strong.

For the faith-based sector, like all other sectors, there is no area of organizational life that COVID-19 has not touched. One leader of a historically black church recently told me:

COVID-19 is shaping every element of our congregational lives and those we serve. We need to know how legislation or regulations being passed will impact us and hopefully help us better serve our communities. Sometimes the black church gets left behind. We should not change our message, but we should change our methods. There are people in our communities who don’t understand that government has a distinct role to play, and that if government is offering assistance at this time, religious organizations should have their religious freedom protected even as they partner with government.

In the coming weeks and months, I will take up specific areas of public policy, institutional practices, and public messaging that impact faith-based institutions and their freedom to operate and serve during COVID-19. I invite you to join me as we explore how sustaining the freedom of diverse religious groups in this moment is essential to advancing other important social goods, like supporting pregnant women, providing vital services to homeless individuals, and advancing equal opportunity for disadvantaged groups.

Chelsea Langston Bombino is the director of Sacred Sector, an initiative of the Center for Public Justice. Sacred Sector is a learning community for faith-based organizations and emerging leaders within the faith-based nonprofit sector to integrate and fully embody their sacred missions in every area of organizational life. Chelsea lives in Maryland with her husband and her infant son.