By Dr. Stanley Carlson-Thies The federal Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has proposed to eliminate an Obama-administration regulation requiring its grantees not discriminate…
By Dr. Stanley Carlson-Thies The Vital Role in Society of Faith-Based Organizations Here are three . . . quick indicators of the importance of religious…
By Dr. Stanley Carlson-Thies Nearly 110,000 comments on a seemingly obscure proposed change to the federal contracting regulations were recently received by the U.S. Department…
The Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) has allowed courts to neutrally balance compelling government interests with religious beliefs ever since it was enacted in 1993 by a bipartisan Congress. Now, Democratic members of the House and Senate have reintroduced the Do No Harm Act, a bill that would disallow religious objections to key government actions, including LGBT inclusion and reproductive health. On June 25, 2019, the House Committee on Education and Labor held a hearing on the Do No Harm Act. Representative Joseph Kennedy, who introduced the Do No Harm Act in 2017 and has now reintroduced it, expressed his concern that RFRA “has morphed from a shield of protection to a sword of infringement.” Yet RFRA does not guarantee a victory for religious actors, only a fair weighing of their claims. To adequately protect religious freedom, RFRA should not be modified.
Founder and Senior Director of the Institutional Religious Freedom Alliance Dr. Stanley Carlson-Thies spoke at the University of St. Thomas Law School’s symposium on “Religious Freedom and the Common Good” in March of 2018. His lecture transcript, along with those from fellow speakers at the symposium, has been published in the University of St. Thomas Law Journal.
The passage of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act created the so-called “church parking tax,” a burdensome provision for nonprofits that has elicited strong protests from the sacred sector. The IRS has issued interpretive guidelines, and efforts in Congress are ongoing to eliminate the tax entirely, yet fixes are slow in coming. Given the Trump administration’s professions of support for religious freedom and the many congressional voices in favor of the work of charitable organizations, it is surprising that this provision was adopted in the first place and troubling that it has not yet been eliminated. Faith-based organizations need to be aware of this issue and understand how it affects them.
The Equality Act, which would add to federal civil rights laws new prohibitions of discrimination on the bases of sexual orientation, gender identity, and sex, was introduced into the House of Representatives on March 13. Supporters of the Equality Act claim that it protects religious freedom, but in fact it would severely constrain many faith-based organizations and persons of faith who simply desire to live by their convictions about human sexuality and marriage without harming others. In this article, Stanley Carlson-Thies presents the Fairness for All framework as a new and better way to protect both LGBT people and religious freedom.
By Chelsea Langston Bombino All of life is religion. All of life is redeemed. These are concepts that are integral to a theology of public…
By Nicole Kennedy and Collin Slowey Religious freedom discussions in today’s political discourse tend to focus on, to borrow the words of Chelsea Langston Bombino,…
Editor’s Note: This article was written in response to a specific event in which Rep. Omar gave remarks about religious freedom. This article is neither…