Chelsea Langston, Bombino, October 21, 2016

Our society’s commitment to religious freedom is consistently weakening, in large part because of disputes over sexual ethics and marriage. Yet it is completely right and fair for individuals and institutions to hold to religious freedom so that they can live consistently with their religious convictions about fundamental questions of human identity and human relationships, including sexual ethics. Such freedom, however, need not, and must not, result in real harm to others.

Religion, and the beliefs and practices that stem from faith, provide individuals and institutions with animating paradigms that provide guidance for life’s most basic questions: What does it mean to be human? How should we be in relationship with each other? How should we be in relationship with a divine creative being? These are central to identity and meaning, and government and society must, as far as possible, protect the ability of persons and organizations to grapple with the questions and to live out the answers they have come to.

These fundamental questions will invariably deal with sex and identity and relationships. After all, humanity is perpetuated and civilizations are structured based on how humans live out the answers to these questions. And, depending on one’s faith paradigm or other core ideology, these lived-out answers can yield a diversity of human relationship structures and individual and collective expressions of identity. This is especially true in American society, with its diversity of faiths and other orienting belief systems.

In 21^st century America, orthodox Judeo-Christian understandings of human sexuality and family structures have become minority views. Faith-rooted beliefs once taken as a given in our society, such as sex confined to heterosexual marriage, are now being challenged even more deeply by shifting public policies, personal practices, and perceptions in American life.

Diverse religious institutions (churches, schools, social welfare organizations) should and will advocate for their and each other’s religious freedom to continue to live out their respective answers to life’s most fundamental questions of human identity, human relationships, and human flourishing. Those answers are diverse. Some religious organizations’ beliefs and practices reflect and bolster the changing landscape of sexual ethics: embracing same sex marriage and gender variant expressions of identity. Some religious organizations are internally divided over how their faith answers challenging questions around human sexuality. And still other religious organizations are firmly committed to beliefs and practices reflecting orthodox sexual ethics. Faith-based nonprofits, whatever their sexual ethics, should continue to have space to live out their respective faiths fully in the public square.

Religious freedom provides enough room in the public square, a marketplace for competing animating worldviews, for diverse organizations with diverse faith and animating values paradigms to comprehensively contribute and serve diverse people with varied needs and values. What does this look like? It looks like a Muslim counseling organization’s freedom to choose to employ mental health professionals who can “offer services…with an Islamic perspective kept at all times.” It also looks like an Orthodox Jewish childcare center’s freedom to prefer to hire those practicing the tenets of Orthodox Judaism in every facet of their lives.

Religious freedom allows diverse organizations to live out their varied missions through practices that give expression to their animating religious beliefs in public life. That includes the freedom for faith-based institutions that abide in orthodox and increasingly counter-cultural sexual ethics to embody those deeply held, mission-centric beliefs in their employment practices. But such freedom, contrary to a common misconception, is not permission to harm the vulnerable.

Consider vital distinctions. In this current moment, faith organizations that ascribe to an orthodox sexual ethic and that hire and teach based on that ethic are often labeled as discriminatory “harm-doers.” The argument goes like this: not hiring someone because that person’s sexual ethic is inconsistent with the religious organization’s animating faith paradigm is “doing harm.” According to this argument, so is teaching a religious doctrine at odds with the majority’s conceptions of sexuality. Moreover, religious organizations that supposedly “do harm” in these ways are, in essence, organizations that put vulnerable people at risk.

But this line of thought ignores basic distinctions that are important for everyone. A Christian group like Believe Out Loud, which advocates for full LGBT inclusion within the church, necessarily hires not just anyone who claims to be a Christ follower, but rather Christians who can affirmatively support same-sex marriage on a theological basis. Is Believe Out Loud practicing exclusionary and discriminatory hiring practices because it would not hire an atheist and because it would not hire a Christian with orthodox sexual ethics? Surely we will, and should, quickly dismiss a claim that Believe Out Loud is “doing harm” by engaging in employment practices that reflect its faith-based mission, even though doing so “discriminates” against non-Christians and Christians with traditional values about marriage.

And religious freedom as a vital principle should not be tarnished because religious people and institutions, occasionally and completely wrongly, justify heinous, harmful acts in the name of religious freedom. When extremists use the Gospel to justify white supremacy, those claiming to follow the Gospel should stand up to denounce the extremists and reaffirm the value of the Gospel as having nothing to do with racism. We must stand up to denounce the use of religious freedom in this context, and properly affirm religious freedom’s role in promoting space for diverse ideas and institutions to flourish.

We must take seriously the claims of “harm” that are being hurled at religious freedom in this moment. Without careful reflection, language, and differentiation, “harm” is too easily diluted as a catch-all, applied to instances where it is not illuminating or accurate. Whatever supposed “harm” is done when a faith-based organization employs people aligned with its faith-based beliefs and practices, this is completely different in nature and substance than harm that is sometimes, tragically, done to victims of sexual assault within the context of a religious institution. When a religious institution is complicit in its leaders perpetuating a culture that allows for behaviors or language that condone sexual abuse of any kind, religious institutions everywhere should take an unequivocal stand to call hypocrisy and injustice what they are, and remove them from any valid discussions of religious freedom.

Religious institutions, from churches to colleges to advocacy groups, should take very seriously any actual or rhetorical harm related to in sexual assault or a culture that allows sexual assault. We are in a moment where sexual assault is being discussed constantly and even casually in public discourse. How will churches, religious schools, and religious social services organizations make clear that under no circumstances is sexual harm toward people in the purview of their institutions acceptable? Religious organizations can and should get ahead of the curve by proactively making clear religious freedom for them is not a defense for inexcusable behavior, but rather, religious freedom is a calling of accountability and transparency with respect to any claims of sexual abuse.

And it should also be noted that religious freedom, in its proper context, allows for the flourishing of diverse faith-based organizations that provide for victims of sexual abuse care on both a physical and a spiritual level. For example, a faith-based organization in Washington, DC, Restoration 199, provides a range of faith-informed, professional, mental health services to survivors of sexual violence and exploitation. Restoration 199 describes the vitality of faith in their services: “We strive to understand when faith and values issues are important to the client and foster values-informed client decision-making in counseling…. always maintaining a humility that exposes and never imposes the way of Christ.”

Another faith-based organization, Jewish Community Watch, “protects our children from sexual abuse and helps victims heal.” This organization describes the religious basis for its work: “the work we do is a Kiddush Hashem because it shows the world that we have the moral fortitude to bring honesty and safety to our community. When the rest of the world sees that the Orthodox Jewish community is acknowledging its issues and taking a moral and just position against danger, standing together with those that have been hurt, this causes our community to be a light unto the other nations and brings a true Kiddush Hashem.”

As institutions of faith are confronted with questions about the intersection of religious freedom and harm, it is essential they carefully consider the kind of harm being discussed, as well as the ways in which they can proactively avoid and denounce the most egregious of harms, including sexual abuse. And where institutions of faith are working to end harm and bring about restoration, whether in international human trafficking or college campus sexual assault, they should tell their stories about how their faith motivates their advocacy and their service.