Why I Oppose Religious Freedom Laws as a Christian

Chairman Willard and the members of the Judiciary Committee,

My name is David Lewicki and I am the co-chair of Presbyterians for a Better Georgia, which serves the 100 congregations of the Atlanta Presbytery, and the 40,000 members of the Presbytery, and works to help them live out their religious values in the public sphere. More importantly, I serve the North Decatur Presbyterian Church as pastor.

I want to be the first, and perhaps only one today, to challenge the notion of religious freedom that lies beneath this proposed law.

Now, I love religious freedom—it’s an essential part of my life and of our nation's life. But does anyone else find it ironic that this law, asking for more religious freedom, is being championed by conservative Christians in Georgia? I ask you a serious question: is there a more religiously free people on God’s green earth than Georgia Baptists? When a group of people who already enjoy so much religious freedom start asking for more… that is a “thing that makes you go hmmmm….”

When the request for more freedom happens just following a Supreme Court decision we know as "Hobby Lobby" that carved out new powers for corporations to refuse certain kinds of services on religious grounds, it is also a thing that makes you go hmmmm….

Let me be frank. There is no group of people who have caused more harm to members of the gay and lesbian community than conservative Christians. So when the LGBTQ community finally starts to see this nation honoring their dignity and their God-given humanity through the advent of marriage equality, NOW we see conservative Christians advocating for more religious freedom? Hmmm...

I’m opposed to religious freedom laws because they are asking for legal cover for overt discrimination. I'm offended by those with the temerity to suggest we who oppose RFRA laws are creating a tempest in a teapot because we can’t find examples where RFRA laws have been used to discriminate--we can't name precedents in the RFRA case law. The question is not what's been done with this law in the past, but what can and will it do in the future? If I have a hammer sitting in the garage, and I’ve only used it to pull out nails, it doesn’t mean that one day I won’t find something I need to bash in. The question we need to answer before we pass this law is not what has it done before, but what does it allow—and how will it be used by people (and by "people," I begrudgingly include corporations) here in Georgia in the days to come?

Let me say a bit more about freedom, and let me do something that we Christians are fond of doing—let me turn to the Bible. The Bible says a lot of about freedom. God parts the waters of the Red Sea in order to deliver God’s people from slavery into freedom. Jesus dies on a cross to win our freedom from sin and death. But here’s the thing about freedom in the Bible: God gives people freedom for a purpose. Let me quote to you from the Apostle Paul, Galatians 5:13: “You were called to freedom, brothers and sisters; only don’t let this freedom be an opportunity to indulge your selfish impulses, but serve each other through love.”

Freedom--according to the Bible--is God’s gift to us so that we might serve each other.

I simply can’t find the passage where it says God gives us freedom so that we can judge each other and not serve each other.

So please understand why I—and many many others are suspicious of this so-called "religious freedom" bill. It doesn’t seem necessary and it doesn’t resemble any Biblical definition of freedom.

I wasn’t born in Georgia, but I’ve learned enough about the history of my home state to know the names of the Magnolia Room at Rich’s Department Store and the Heart of Atlanta Motel. Those names remind us all of a very unhappy time in our state’s history—a time remembered by some of you in the room. It was a time when people exercised their sincerely-held religious beliefs in ways that demeaned and degraded other people. We learned a lesson in that experience—we learned that religious people are often not as noble as we think we are and that we shouldn’t be blindly trusted with our freedom (any Christian who teaches original sin should understand that). We also learned that we Georgians do not want to live in a state where whole classes of people can be legally denied services on account of who God made them to be. On the contrary, the law decided that even private businesses are part of the “commons.” They belong to every person, in part because the roads, the sewers, the police and fire protection those businesses enjoy are funded by every person. Our common spaces--including private business--are places where we meet each other, and interact and engage each other as equals—as people, made in the image of God, with equal rights and equal dignity. Let’s not pass any law if it threatens to diminish our commons.

I've been a rain cloud on the parade so far. So, let me say how this can all turn out well—how we can BOTH celebrate the gift of religious freedom and honor and protect all the residents of Georgia.

Sen. McKoon and the other sponsors of this bill can withdraw it for 2015. During the summer and fall, we can plan a series of forums co-hosted with Georgia Equality. We can hear the real experiences of LGBTQ people who have been hurt by discrimination committed in the name of religion and the LGBTQ community can hear how important religious freedom is to the supporters of this bill.

And next session, we can come with not one bill, but two. The first will be a religious freedom bill that might look very similar to this one. The second bill would be a long-awaited anti-discrimination bill that protects LGBTQ people from unfair treatment on the job, in housing, and in other areas. This very same thing happened in Utah.

Let’s do the same here in Georgia—let’s not make laws that work for some at the expense of others. Let’s make laws that work for everyone. Let’s make them together. Let’s create a Georgia where religious freedom is something we all can celebrate, not something some of us need to fear.