Russell Moore, president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, writing at his Moore to the Point, referencing today’s arguments at the US Supreme Court regarding health care mandates and religious freedom, which he calls “the most important religious liberty case in a generation“:

This case isn’t about politics or culture wars. This case will set the tone for the next hundred years of church/state jurisprudence in this country. This case will tell us whether we’ve bartered away a birthright paid for with our forebears’ blood…

Our government has treated free exercise of religion as though it were a tattered house standing in the way of a government construction of a railroad; there to be bought off or plowed out of the way, in the name of progress.

The government wants us to sing from their hymn book, “Onward, Sexual Revolutionaries,” but we can’t do that. We love and respect our leaders, but when they set themselves up as overlords of the conscience, we must respectfully dissent.

We cannot accept the theology lesson the government has sought to teach us, that religion is simply a matter of what happens during the scheduled times of our services, and is left there in the foyer during the rest of the week.

Our religious convictions aren’t reduced to simply the opinions we hide in our hearts, or sing in our hymns. Our religious convictions inform the way we live.

Moore’s column is fascinating and not too long — well worth the read.

Other references at the Religion Clause.

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