A Statement from the Institutional Religious Freedom Alliance

Every day, throughout the United States and overseas, people inspired by religious faith serve people in need-the poor and oppressed, students, the sick, homeless families, abused women, and many others. Some of the groups collaborate in service with government; many raise their funds only from private donors. Either way, they serve the common good, helping in ways that government does not or providing vital help that obviates the need for government to act.

For these essential services to survive and thrive, their freedom to be different–to be authentic expressions of one or another religious commitment to service, to maintain a particular identity, to embody a specific vision of how best to help–must be protected.

Candidates for public office should speak up unequivocally on behalf of these faith-based service providers and their religious freedom. They should explicitly affirm policies that support the freedom of faith-based service providers and their ability to serve their neighbors in their distinctive faith-shaped ways.

1. Faith-based service organizations serve the public good, which is diverse, and they do not serve only within the religions that inspire and shape them.
2. The freedom of faith-based service organizations–their distinctive identities, internal practices, and ways of serving–is protected by the Constitution, including the freedoms of religion, speech, and association, and by multiple statutes, including the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993.
3. Freedom of religion is not limited to the freedom to worship and believe. It protects the exercise of religion individually but also through organizations, and not only the conduct of religious ritual but also the religious exercise of serving other people, including people of other faiths.
4. Government must not penalize as discriminatory different ways of contributing to the common good. The rights of everyone are best secured by ensuring the freedom to form and choose diverse organizations rather than by forcing every group to serve everyone.
5. Faith-based organizations, whether or not they accept government funds, must be free to consider religion when making hiring decisions, determining employee benefits, and selecting their leadership, as well as in decisions about what services to offer the public.
6. For the sake of the needy and a flourishing society, it is essential for government to protect, not constrain, the freedoms of faith-based service organizations.

Even-especially-in a time of extreme budgetary stress, government and the public should support the financial tools that undergird our thriving civil society with its diverse ways of serving the community: tax incentives for charitable contributions, reduced rates for nonprofit mailings, tax exemption for all legitimate charities, and government funding (via contracts, grants, cooperative agreements, or vouchers) for essential social services provided through diverse service providers, both religious and secular.