On October 4, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT), the outstanding champion of religious freedom in the US Senate these days, delivered a thoughtful and thought-provoking speech on religious freedom. He spoke about religious freedom challenges and constructive responses. The speech deserves wide consideration. Particularly noteworthy is the discussion of how some current efforts to stamp out discrimination are wrongly pursued without regard to their encroachment on religious freedom, the tale of how the nearly unanimous support for the Religious Freedom Restoration Act has lately dramatically shrunk, and the importance of the religious organization exemption in the ENDA bill that the Senate passed last year.

Also worthy of special note are Sen. Hatch’s suggestions about how to protect and enlarge religious freedom. He cites Prof. Tom Berg’s observation that religious freedom must be not only a constitutional principle but a social reality. Knowing the constitutional status of religious freedom is important, but for the long run and in the present, what is vital is the social reality and social practice of religious freedom.

That means, among other things, that we should all stand up for the rights of all people and organizations to bring our religious convictions with us into public debates about important matters, that we must defend the right of religious student groups to use religious criteria in selecting their leaders, that we should applaud partnerships between government and faith-based services, that we must highlight the good that religion and religious organizations do in our nation and the world, and that “we must affirm our own individual faith and devotion.” “By demonstrating that religion is important to our own self-identity and desire to serve, we show our community members that religion is a thing of value and source of motivation.” “There can be no greater protector of religious liberty,” Sen. Hatch points out, “than a society composed of individuals who actually value religion.”