In March, Congressman Blake Moore introduced the Fair Treatment of Religious Organizations Act, legislation designed to protect religious organizations from losing their tax-exempt status or access to federal funding because of their religious beliefs or practices regarding marriage and sexuality.
Whether or not the bill advances in the current Congress, it raises an important question for those who care about institutional religious freedom: What obligations does government have toward religious organizations in a pluralistic society?
At the Center for Public Justice, we have long argued that religious freedom is not merely a protection for individuals worshipping in private. It is also a protection for institutions: churches, schools, charities, ministries, hospitals, and other faith-based organizations that serve the public while operating according to their religious convictions.
Such protections in law matter most when religious organizations hold beliefs that are contested or unpopular with the general public or with public officials.
For years, religious freedom advocates, legal scholars, and faith-based organizations have expressed concern that the federal government might employ what some have called the “nuclear option”: revoking a religious organization’s tax-exempt status because of its religious beliefs or practices regarding marriage and sexuality. Those concerns intensified after Justice Samuel Alito raised the possibility during oral arguments in Obergefell v. Hodges (2015), invoking the Supreme Court’s earlier decision in Bob Jones University v. United States (1983), which ruled that the university’s racist practice was not shielded by religious freedom protections. Cutting off tax-exempt status would cost the organization in taxes due and also in lost income by ending its donors’ ability to deduct contributions. It would both undermine the economics of faith-based organizations and send a powerful signal that certain religious viewpoints are unwelcome in public life.
The need to protect faith-based organizations whose convictions differ from prevailing cultural or political views does not apply only to organizations holding traditional beliefs about marriage. In principle, any religious organization, whether orthodox, progressive, or somewhere in between, should be free to operate according to its sincerely held religious convictions without fear that government will selectively penalize it through tax law or funding policies.
A commitment to principled pluralism has long informed CPJ’s work. In a diverse society, government should not seek to resolve every moral disagreement by empowering one side and marginalizing the other. Rather, public justice requires maintaining space for individuals and institutions with profound differences to live, serve, and contribute to the common good together.
That does not mean government must agree with every belief held by religious organizations. Nor does it mean that difficult questions about civil rights and religious liberty disappear. It does mean, however, that government should exercise great caution before using tax status, public benefits, or regulatory authority to pressure religious organizations to alter or abandon their convictions.
The Fair Treatment of Religious Organizations Act is one proposal to provide greater assurance on this point. It would seek to clarify that faith-based organizations should not lose tax-exempt status or access to federal funding used to provide needed services because of their religious convictions concerning marriage and sexuality.
Reasonable people will disagree about the bill’s prospects or particulars, and it may not become law in this Congress. Yet the principle it raises is worth considering carefully.
A pluralistic republic depends not only on protecting worldviews we personally favor, but also on safeguarding the freedom of institutions with whom we may disagree. Religious freedom is strongest when it protects organizations across theological and ideological lines and when it is grounded not in partisan advantage, but in enduring commitments to freedom, justice, and the common good.
That is a conversation worth continuing regardless of the fate of any particular bill.
Dr. Girien Salazar is the Director of Faith-Based Policy and Research at the Center for Public Justice (CPJ). Girien’s non-profit leadership experience includes roles as Executive Director of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference (NHCLC), Director of Development at The Philos Project, Director of Development at Nelson University, and service on non-profit, local, and state boards such as the Latin American Heritage Society, San Antonio Parks and Recreation, and OneStar National Service Commission Board in Texas. Girien holds a Bachelor of Science in Church Ministry and a Master of Arts in Theological Studies from Nelson University and a Doctor of Philosophy in Leadership Studies from Dallas Baptist University. A U.S. Navy veteran, he served eight years as a Religious Programs Specialist and was honorably discharged at the rank of Petty Officer 1st Class.
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