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In Pennsylvania, a priest faithfully ministered to death-row inmates
year after year - until a new warden ordered him to leave. In other
prisons around the country, authorities restrict inmates' access to
Bibles and Bible commentaries. Inmates are forbidden to wear yarmulkes,
or limited to one religious program a week, forcing them to choose
between Bible study and worship services.
Does this sound like religious freedom to you? Or more like government
actively interfering with religious rights, in violation of the
Constitution?
Sadly, attempts to scour public life of anything remotely resembling
religious activity are increasing, both inside and outside prison
walls. When religious believers fight back against such violations of
religious freedoms, we're immediately accused of trying to impose
theocracy on America.
Nonsense. A theocrat wants to force everyone to believe in his own god
and follow that god's rules. Christians are doing the opposite: trying
to protect the right of citizens of all faiths to worship as they see
fit.
Why do militant secularists attempt to snuff out religious practice,
even in prisons, where it is so desperately needed? Partly, it's a
fanatical hostility toward religion. But these efforts also reflect a
serious misunderstanding both of the role religion should play in
public life and of religion's social benefits.
First, we don't enjoy religious freedom because the courts allow it.
The founders secured this basic human right in the Constitution
because, as the Declaration of Independence recognizes, the right to
worship is given by God, not government.
Second, religion provides demonstrable social benefits. For example,
Dr. Byron Johnson of the University of Pennsylvania studied graduates
of Prison Fellowship's InnerChange Freedom Initiative program for two
years following their release. He found that they had a recidivism rate
of only 8 percent compared to more than 20 percent for similar inmates
and 67 percent nationally. This is great news to anyone but a
secularist ideologue. Even while this study was underway, Americans
United for Separation of Church and State sued the state of Iowa,
claiming the program violates church-state separation. What's galling
is that they not only would destroy the religious rights of prisoners,
but they would also deny society the advantage of changed lives: that
is, fewer crimes.
The abuse of prisoners' religious liberties is why Prison Fellowship
supports the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act
(RLUIPA), signed into law in 2000. The law promptly came under attack,
and the Supreme Court will soon hear arguments in a case that will
determine whether prisoners? access to religious materials and programs
can be protected by congressional action.
On this Sunday, Religious Freedom Day, get your church and your friends
to join in praying that the Court will uphold this statute. The
religious liberty of prisoners must be protected; nowhere do the lost
need the Gospel more.
America's founders wisely made religious freedom the first right; they
knew that without it, all other rights are meaningless. Two centuries
later, the prisoner sitting in his lonely cell, stripped of his Bible,
his minister, and his right to worship, knows exactly what they meant.
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