The following are unedited and electronically transcribed remarks delivered by both Rep. John Curtis (R-Utah) and Mary Hasson, the director of the Catholic Women’s Forum, during the event Religious Liberty for All. 

Rep. John Curtis: I am just so delighted to be with you. I’d like to tell you about a Curtis family story.

After 117 years, in dog years, we lost the Curtis family dog, Bandit, who finally passed away a couple of years ago. We loved Bandit, but he was appropriately named. He learned, after some years, when we all left the kitchen, to get up on his hind legs and eat off the kitchen cabinet…countertop. He could eat and consume an entire pizza if we left the room for just a moment. I did what any father of the household would do is I made rules against eating off the counter if you are a dog. He didn’t follow those rules or obey those rules and he was particularly adept at waiting until we left before he performed his treachery in eating off the countertops.

Very similarly, when my wife and I started our young family, we determined that we were wanting to keep our family room nice. And so I came up with a rule that the kids couldn’t eat in the family room. Well, those of you that are smiling are parents and know that I would inevitably come home and find food stains and dirty dishes and plates and cups, right, in the family room. So I did the logical thing. I made more rules to keep them from eating in the family room. And guess what? They found loopholes to my rules and flat out ignored my rules.

Now I might be slow to learn, but somehow along the way, I figured out that rules and laws don’t change people’s hearts. When we don’t change hearts, we may slow the behavior down, we could perhaps even extinguish it while we’re watching, but in the end, we cannot change bad behavior if we have not changed hearts.

Now, I feel like this is a principle that we too often overlook when we talk about religious liberty. And that’s one of the things I’d like to talk about today. Well, likewise, Rick Larsen said I was brave. I’ve learned that there are certain things you avoid talking about. You don’t want to be the speaker on Mother’s Day, you don’t want to be the speaker about youth morality to youth, and you don’t want to talk about religion and politics, right? Well, here I am today, talking about this difficult subject, but I’m looking forward to it.

My parents taught me that the path to establishing the America idea of religious liberty was not a simple one. Even after we landed on the shores, but many of the great minds that built our country and the constitutional system that governs it felt that they had been guided by God and wanted to ensure that future generations of Americans had the freedom to seek that same guidance with the free exercise of religion.

George Rossington wrote, “Forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principles.” Washington had a deep passion for religious study and spirituality, and everybody that came in contact with him, he influenced that way. Likewise, Thomas Jefferson is widely recognized as one of the fathers of religious freedom. On his tombstone, he had engraved three things: That he was the drafter of the Declaration of Independence, that he was the founder of the University of Virginia, and that he was the author of Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom. That statute served as an inspiration for the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Jefferson worked together on that document and [inaudible 00:03:48] with James Madison. We remember him as the Father of the Constitution who passionately argued that religious freedom was one of the fundamental rights that the first patriots had bled for in the revolution.

After the death of the Prophet Joseph Smith, Brigham Young led the Saints to Utah. As a direct descendant of Brigham Young, and I smile because most of us are, that’s a polygamy joke, many of my ancestors were part of that track. Our ancestors sought liberty and a place they could have freedom to worship as they chose. In many ways, I feel like that journey of our forefathers to Utah mirrored the journey of our great American forefathers who came in across the sea in search of their own freedom and liberty.

My great-great-grandmother, Janet Burton, was one of those. Janet lived in Scotland. Her first three children died of the scarlet fever. She had six children. Her husband worked in the coal mines and would stop at the pub on the way home and spend his hard-earned dollars and come home drunk and frequently beat Janet. He said to her at one point, “Woman, get rid of your religion or leave this house.” She chose to pursue religious freedom in America and bought a ticket aboard a ship. Took her three young children aboard that ship. The father changed his mind, came aboard the ship, grabbed the oldest of the three children and said, “Woman, if you leave, you will never see this child again.” She had to make that very difficult decision between pursuing religious freedom and leaving a son that she would likely never see again. And indeed, she left and never saw the son again. He died in the world war.

These pilgrims and settlers followed to our shores from all around the world, knew how important it was to be a shining city on a hill or freedom from tyranny and the opportunity for prosperity would be accompanied by religious liberty unlike anything they had ever experienced. In drafting the First Amendment, the Founders sought to address two key points writing, “Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” From the foundation of our nation, and in fact, the very reason for our founding was that religious freedom, the liberty to both worship to one’s choosing or not at all, have been fundamental, central, essential to our American way of life.

Remarkable how simple it is. “Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” The Founders didn’t need to try to come up with pages and pages, books and books, and chapters and chapters to mandate every detail of appropriate interaction between human beings. They gave us one sentence. Despite the strong resolve to protect religious liberty that was part of our founding, we wouldn’t be here today, and I wouldn’t be asked to talk on this topic, if we didn’t feel like we were slipping and losing our freedom of religion.

Several weeks ago. I watched the debate unfold that pitted religious liberty against discrimination of the LGBT community. It framed the debate as someone must win and someone must lose. Instead of seeking compromises between the two competing interests of religious liberty and individual rights, sponsors to the Equality Act treated it as mutually exclusive, overturning decades of important balance of protections like the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, casting that historic compromise aside was shortsighted and a strong indication that the willful cooperation and collaboration on this sensitive issue might be weak in the current Congress.

In the United States House, there is a procedure that allows the party in the minority, Republicans, to offer one final amendment and one final objection to a bill. This is called MTR or motion to recommit. It’s generally full of drama. Everybody waits to see what our one point will be, what our one change would be to a bill that we disagree with. I found myself looking forward to the defense the Republicans would surely make in favor of religious liberty. Sadly, I watched as our defense was that this would force young women to compete with males who identified as female in sports. Yes, this is a big problem, but I was saddened my fellow colleagues didn’t even mention the defense of religious freedom.

I’ve been able to identify at least three reasons I believe the support for religious liberty is slipping. First, today, the landscape is changing. Fewer and fewer young Americans are engaged with religion than the generations before them. Religious nones, as in none of the above, make up roughly 23% of our population who believe in no religion. This is scary because the largest group, 35%, are our millennials. Because of this, it becomes much more difficult to make a case for religious freedom as fewer Americans, and particularly those who are raising or will raise our coming generation, understand that religion has no place in their life.

Second, I think we have a branding problem. Today, we struggle with religious… Today’s struggles with religious liberty are often framed as being in conflict with individual rights. The debate is too often framed that religious liberty and individual expression are a zero-sum game. Those of us in this room know that that’s not true. There is room to protect both rights without compromising religious values. And at its core, if we complicate how we treat others with the criteria that they must agree with us, we will inevitably fail.

Third, in Washington, I sense a political climate that is taking aim at religious liberty because it’s argued that if you’re religious and if you exemplify signs of bigotry, you must be stopped, and religion must be the problem.

Because of the slippage of support for religious liberty in recent decades, Congress has attempted to make laws aimed at protecting religious liberty. In 1990, Congress passed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. In 1998, Congress unanimously, we never do anything unanimously, unanimously passed the religious, excuse me, we passed, excuse me, the law that says International Religious Freedom Act, which proclaims the right of freedom of religion undergrids the very origin and existence of the United States.

So I ask us here today, are any of these laws superior to or have they protected religion any better than the simple “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof?” How is it that we have increased laws to protect religious liberty, yet we feel the religious liberty is more under attack than ever? We have a trajectory, more laws protecting religious liberty and less religious liberty. We’re changing the laws, but we’re not changing the hearts.

The last few months, I’ve seen the President of the United States called a racist. I’ve seen the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, called a racist. I’ve seen former Vice President, Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden called a racist. I suppose it depends on how you define a racist, but I’m willing to admit that I catch myself making people judgements. Who here today could help me define a law that would outlaw people judgements or racism? Not just stopping racist actions, but forcing hearts not to be racist. I think we can all agree, racism is bad. How many pages of a text would it take to create our new law? But wait, there is a law and it’s already been given to us. “Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.”

In recent years, some of the most heated debates over religious liberty have come in tandem with individual rights of members of the LGBTQ community. I feel an urgency to pause here and state clearly, unequivocally, on the record, that I believe the LGBTQ community is a critical part of the fabric of our country and of our state. They are deserving of our unequivocal love and respect and their contributions here in Utah are utterly invaluable.

As a Mayor of Provo, it was important to me that the entire community felt this widespread love. I prioritized inclusion and sought to ensure my administration did everything possible to recognize the intrinsic value of all of our citizens, including our LGBTQ community. I fought hard against discrimination and was grateful for my association with organizations like Provo Pride, Equality Utah, Encircle, and others who I was honored to stand with to ensure our policies in City Hall reflected the love in our hearts. Perhaps even more than that, I’m grateful for my association and relationships in my life that helped me better understand the experiences of the LGBTQ community and have been patient with the conservative, religious Utah boy who grew up in the ’60s and took a little longer to develop the appropriate empathy than I would like to admit.

How did an old, that’s me, white, straight guy gain an appreciation for the LGBTQ community? It wasn’t a law. It was a firsthand experience with someone that I love who is part of the community that changed my heart.

So what is to be done? First a rebrand. As the mayor of the city of Provo, I undertook to rebrand the city. I underestimated the fact that every single resident of the city of Provo was a graphic artist and a marketing expert. It was painful. Even with that experience, I’m suggesting that we need to rebrand. We must change the stereotype that protecting religious liberty is a zero-sum game. We face a unique challenge of balancing needed protections for the LGBTQ community with the importance of protecting religious liberty, one of the fundamental rights enshrined at the foundation of this nation. But I believe this compromise is possible because what we have seen right here in Utah, the Utah compromise, historic legislation that effectively balanced LGBTQ individuals as human beings and religious institutions protected by the First Amendment.

I believe there’s still real opportunity to continue cementing the critical balance between religious liberty and individual rights. There’s also tremendous urgency. As Congress fails to address these issues, we see that they still get decided by our judicial system, rather than our legislative forum. As more and more cases move forward, like the Masterpiece Cakeshop and Hobby Lobby did, we must recognize that firm guidance for rules of the road are necessary. I fear that our hesitancy to engage on this issue sets us up for a missed opportunity to carefully craft a balance that may not be achieved by the courts.

Here in Utah, we have an opportunity to continue leading the way and fostering religious liberty and rebranding, to reengage those who don’t put a high value on religious freedom. I believe the key to that is ensuring that our North Star in this debate is the notion that the worth of every soul is great, that every person has intrinsic value, and the right to be who they want to be without impingement from government, society, and our communities. Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.

While we fight for that love and recognition for members of our LGBTQ community, religious communities must also be fought for and continually protected. Part of that fight extends to pushing back against domestic terrorism we’ve seen in recent months against places of faith, like mosques and synagogues. A threat to any person of faith around the world is a threat to religious liberty here on our own shores. Those of us who believe deeply in American value of religious liberty have an absolute responsibility to stand with our brothers and sisters of faith against those who would cross religious expression in any form.

Last week, at this time, I was in Israel with 70 of my colleagues, Democrats and Republicans. You didn’t read about that. Right? You read about the others. Seventy of us visiting sites like the Iron Dome and seeing how Israel is protected from incoming missiles, visiting their northern border and seeing the threat from Hezbollah, leaving our prayers at the Wailing Wall, and having a quiet, almost reverend experience at Yad Varshem, Israel’s official memorial to victims of the holocaust, an unfathomable attempt to wipe out a people, culture, and religion, and a warning to the world forever that there always has been and always will be attempts to suppress our right to worship without interference and that this agenda can come from the very institution that’s supposed to protect it, government.

I want to close with the quote that I know President Larson also appreciates. Alex de Tocqueville, “I sought for the greatness and genius of America in her harbors and ample rivers, and it was not there; in her fertile fields and boundless forests, and it was not there; in her rich mines and her vast world commerce, and it was not there; in her democratic Congress and her matchless Constitution, and it was not there. Not until I went into the churches of America and heard her pulpits aflame with righteousness did I understand the secret of her genius and power. America is great because she is good. And if America ever ceases to be good, she will cease to be great.”

Thank you for allowing me to be here with you this morning.

Rick B. Larsen (Sutherland Institute president): Take a few minutes and just present a few questions. Thank you. Representative, what can we do as individuals to encourage other members of Congress to support and promote religious liberty in the U.S. and throughout the world?

Curtis: I think I would answer that much the way I frequently answer to people on any topic of how to show influence. Do you know, we live in a world where a very few of you speak for very many. We’re contacted in my office a lot, maybe a thousand times in a week, and I have 800,000 constituents. So you can see, we just get a sliver of a representation of what people are thinking. And I would invite people to use every medium of letters, of visits, of attending town hall meetings, and expressing your opinions and making sure that you’re being represented and not assume that your good neighbors who are involved are representing you.

Larsen: You know, Representative, often, things become important when they affect us.

Curtis: Right.

Larsen: Maybe you could take a minute and just talk about how religious liberty issues are often embedded within legislation and maybe not recognized as that immediately, but that’s how they play out.

Curtis: Well, I think it’s fair to say that we see unfolding on the national stage several themes. And most bills that come before us are laced with those themes. And if there is an underlying bias to remove protection for religion, you’re going to see that in almost everything that comes before us. And I would give a shout out to organizations like this, but it’s not just this organization. There’s a number of organizations that have fulltime staff, that have people watching and looking for these things. And I think connection with those types of organizations really helps us know what we need to be looking for.

Larsen: This is an appropriate question based on a comment you made. Seeing as you serve on the Foreign Affairs Committee, what role do you think the U.S. should play and how it can play in defending religious liberty around the world?

Curtis: I’ve been blessed to travel quite a bit in this capacity and I’ve been blessed to sit at the feet of prime ministers and kings and rulers of nations. And frequently, my colleagues, when they’re in that position, will ask about the religious freedom in that particular country. And we always make it a point, when we’re there, to make sure that they know that this is very important to us.

There are so many places in this world where we are not free, as much as it’s under attack here, there’s many more places where it’s much worse. And I think the values of the United States, our work overseas, supporting that work overseas, sometimes I hear people, and I don’t blame them, clamor to withhold our financial dollars from this work that’s going on overseas. I’ve seen firsthand how influential those dollars are and how much they make a difference around the world.

Larsen: Thank you. You know, often we make assumptions about one another and I think this question goes right to the heart of that type of misunderstanding. I’ll read it exactly as written. Do you think there’s room for LGBTQ groups to seek protection on the basis of their own religious principles?

Curtis: Well, I suppose I’ve pondered myself at what point something is a religion and how we define that. And I think that’s one of the reasons today that I said if we’re looking for an exhaustible list of rules and regulations, we won’t…we’ll be disappointed. And the real thing that we can do is find a connection between that community and others. And that will change hearts and minds so much quicker than rules and laws. And rules and laws are temporary fixes and they force the actions but not the hearts. And I will be the first to admit that we’ve got a lot of work to do with hearts with this community. And hopefully that’s something that this room can be an impetus for changing.

Larsen: Thank you. Is there a proposal in Congress that you would like to see specific to protecting religious liberty? Is there anything active or anything in the works that you’re aware of?

Curtis: So unfortunately, what’s in the works are just the opposite, things that would undermine it. I mentioned the Equality Act that would actually remove one of the major foundation points for that. And I’ll come back to this very simple, I don’t know how you say it any better than what our founders said. And sometimes simplicity is better. We can come up with rule after rule of law after law. However, I would love to see the United States Congress adopt Utah’s model. There were those of us who tried to add amendments to the Equality Act to get it in line. My staff even suggested to me, at one point, we put forth an amendment that completely replaced the text with the Utah version and we were unsuccessful in getting that amendment. But there are models of good legislation and none better than right here in Utah.

Larsen: I wanna follow up on that a little bit. So some would say Utah is better on the religious liberty front than many states. Some would say it’s worse. How do you view it? Having been a mayor and now working in Washington, D.C., how would you rate…where is Utah on the continuum and why?

Curtis: I always rate Utah on any issue at any subject at the very top. There’s a bias in my mind that we just have things figured out here. In truth, I think we have some work to do on our hearts and accepting everybody, particularly the LGBTQ community. We’ve made great progress, but there’s still a lot of hearts that would discriminate and that puts pressure on religious liberty.

Larsen: Thank you. So this is a very targeted question, but I think it’s well-intended and provides you with an opportunity to express a position. Why did you want to vote no on the budget?

Curtis: Oh, on the budget.

Larsen: Skipping from religion.

Curtis: Yeah, another easy, light topic.

Moderator: Yeah, let’s go to something much more fun.

Curtis: Let me once again point out, Utah. Utah has a balanced budget. We make hard decisions. The budget that we just voted on, as well as the budget I voted on my first year in Congress, expands by hundreds of billions of dollars spending without an answer and without a revenue source. And as we teach here in Utah, one of the quickest ways to undermine the foundation of something is to be financially strapped, whether it’s your business or your family or your country. And I believe we can’t be as strong as we would like to be as a country for finance if our financial underpinnings are not solid.

Moderator: Thank you. Are there any more questions? I think we’ve…actually in a rare…

Curtis: No easy ones?

Moderator: How about this? Where’d you get your socks?

Curtis: So when I was mayor, I was committed to stamping out ugly socks, one pair at a time. And I’ve taken that commitment to Washington, D.C. And my colleagues all receive a pair of Curtis socks on their birthdays and we’re working on it. We’re making progress.

Larsen: This is courage in action. [inaudible 00:27:50]. This is an interesting question because embedded within the question are the very issues. I’ll read it as is and then maybe we can expand. In our current angry political climate, how can we be leaders in positive speaking about toxic topics? And this is the disagreement that comes up or we’re almost conditioned for it to come up on LGBTQ issues, and religion is an interesting one. The wording is interesting when you listen to that, because my question would be how and when did we allow these questions and this conversation to become toxic? Are the differences that vast or are we focusing on specific issues that make the entire conversation more difficult?

Curtis: Well, I’d like to point out several things that I feel strongly about. One is we’re all subject to a press and media that expose us to the worst. And I get to see firsthand that it’s not as bad as you hear. Now, I’ll be the first to tell you there’s a lot that’s not good going on, but I could spend an entire hour telling you about good things that are happening in Congress, good bills that are passing, and you don’t read about those and see those in the press. And that’s unfortunate because that then exasperates this.

I had a newspaper reporter, when I was running in my first election, put a microphone right up under my nose and say, “It’s never been so bad. What are you going to do?” And I smiled and I said, “Do you remember the Civil War? Watergate? We’d been in some bad places as a country and it tends like and it feels like at the moment we’re in it that it has never been so bad. There is so much love. There is so much goodness with my colleagues in Washington D.C.” And I mentioned, right, at the beginning, let me kind of re-emphasize this. All of you read incessantly about the one or two congresspersons that was not allowed to go to Israel. Did you read about the trip of 70 that were in Israel at the very time that was going on? Riding on the buses together, eating together, learning together, right. And what a perfect example of the press presents to you all the negativity while much good is going on.

So the second thing that I feel strongly about is that we each individually bear a responsibility for the tone of the debate. Now, I say this, and a lot of people don’t understand it, my wife hates it, town halls hate it. But I’m gonna say it because I feel strongly about it. Our leadership in this country is far more a reflection of who we are than we’re willing to admit. When you see something you don’t like, we need to go home and look in the mirror. Now, not individually, but collectively as a country. As elected leaders, we reflect the will of the people. And so for those who are concerned and frustrated with the tone, coming from a national level, I understand that concern. But one of the places to start is individually.

Larsen: Thank you. I agree. You touched on this. Let’s go ahead and ask the question fully. Could you give us some perspective from your seat in the nation’s capital, what is going on with this discussion of antisemitism that’s trending, and how do we respond to that?

Curtis: It is alarming. It should not be surprising. It pokes his head up and gets buried for a while and then pokes his head up. And I think that there’s similar parallels to the discrimination in all communities, like the LGBTQ community. And this is why I say I think there’s a little bit more work to do in our hearts than we’re willing to admit. So many of us want to blame the congresswoman who’s making bombastic statements. She got elected by somebody who supports those statements, right? Or very likely will be reelected. And so I think a lot of times, it’s this personal reflection that we need to spend more time on.

Larsen: All right, then. You touched on this in your remarks also, changing the mindset of a younger…of the upcoming generations, younger is a very broad term, let’s just say upcoming generations, changing their mindset on the importance of religion. Do you think we are succeeding at connecting religious principles to freedom? Where is the disconnect?

Curtis: I think the disconnect is vast. I worry that political parties are also losing the millennials. They’re losing their affiliation for really all organizations. They’ve lost trust in them. And that is very concerning to me. As a Republican, are we capturing the hearts and minds of young Utahns who believe in conservative values but are struggling with the party? And I believe it’s incumbent on organizations and religions to find those connection points and teach those principles that’s so infused me in our generation with loyalty and support for parties and for religions and organizations.

Larsen: Are we inadvertently using language, now I’m down to an individual level, are we’re using language around our children, our neighbors, our community that’s making that situation worse?

Curtis: Absolutely. Positively. I’ll tell you what, if I could transport you all to the town hall meeting I had the night before last, not one person I know in their 20s would ever go back to a meeting like that. They don’t need it, they don’t want it. Right? They don’t treat each other that way. Why would they participate in something that fosters that type of tone?

Larsen: That’s an interesting point. There’s the example we’re setting. Okay. Please, let’s express our gratitude to Representative Curtis for taking the time.

Curtis: Thank you very much.

Mary Hasson: Thank you. I’m delighted to be here. I have to say, Congressman, I related to the dog story. I grew up in a family that had big dogs and one of the last straws for my mom was when the dog stole the Thanksgiving turkey off the table. So I took it to heart and got a small dog.

But thank you for your remarks and thank you for the introduction. Thank you to Sutherland for hosting this and to all of you here. The opportunity to have a discussion about these topics in this kind of a spirit of civility, of respect, is too rare and yet so very important. So I appreciate the value that you all place on religious liberty. I have just a few minutes, and what I want to do is share some thoughts on religious liberty, but through the lens of conscience, and then I’ll offer a few thoughts on some contested issues related to this.

As the congressman pointed out rightly, you know, we’re blessed in this country to have the language of the First Amendment, “The Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” For those of us who are religious believers, the emphasis on religious liberty, on the value of conscience is very much part of who we are and part of our faith traditions.

So in the LDS Church, we find the language that says, “We claim the privilege of worshiping Almighty God according to the dictates of our conscience, and we allow all men the same privilege, let them worship how, where, or what they may. And government and courts should protect all citizens in the free exercise of their religious beliefs.” That came from the “Articles of Faith” and the “Doctrine and Covenants.”

As a Catholic, I look to my own tradition, and in Vatican II, in the document, “Dignitatis Humanae,” locates religious freedom in the dignity of the human person. That because we have dignity and because we have a Creator who’s oriented us towards the truth, every person has the right to seek that truth.

And so in the context of my own faith tradition, our teaching speaks that every person is bound to follow his conscience in order that he may come to God, the end and purpose of life. Every person is entitled to profess his religion in community because we don’t believe alone, we express what we find. And individuals and groups must enjoy immunity from human coercion, that no one can be forced to act contrary to his or her own beliefs, whether privately or publicly, whether alone or with others.

So human dignity is the foundation for our religious freedom and it’s built into our faith traditions, it’s built into the fabric of our culture. So why are we having the difficulties that the congressman alluded to? Well, if we look at the larger culture, there’s confusion and I think part of that confusion goes right to the heart of an understanding of conscience, what does conscience mean?

And there are sociological reasons for why there’s a diminished sense of what conscience is, that it’s no longer rooted in the idea of a relationship with God and an objective truth. And we’re in a post-truth culture. Moral relativism reigns.

And so there’s… Yeah, sociologists love to do surveys. But among the millennial generation, truth is something that is felt, that the majority of millennials will say they feel truth rather than that they know truth, that they can point to truth. And so among the youngest millennials, only 21% believe in absolute truth, that there are some things that are always right and always wrong.

To ears that are conditioned to believe that truth is relative, when someone comes forward with a truth claim that says, “I believe that this is true,” it does not resonate, it sounds like a stubbornness of holding onto a position in the face of perhaps facts or opinions to the contrary.

And part of this too is because there’s less respect for external authority. The conscience is rooted in our relationship with God. It says that there is an authority higher than the power of the state. And yet again, in our youngest generations, we see a disdain really towards external authorities of all sorts, not just religious traditions.

But then also there’s the decline in religious belief. The statistics on the “nones” — I would highlight that even among the youngest, the statistics are even worse– It’s about one out of three. Of our youngest, Generation Z, according to Barna research, about a third considers themselves atheist, agnostic, or nothing, just disaffiliated.

So, for example, from my faith tradition, where Catholics are about 20% of the population, they’re outnumbered. Children who are raised in my faith tradition are outnumbered among their peers by those who do not believe. And this leads to something that the sociologists call irreligious socialization, where it’s more and more likely that our young people are growing up without an experience of having friends who are serious religious believers.

And so that concept — that personal experience becomes something foreign, becomes something that they don’t quite understand — this is exacerbated then by the cultural hostility towards religion. And some of this, I think, we have to acknowledge has roots traceable to the sexual revolution: that religion was perceived to be the great “no” and the perception is that religion was somehow against pleasure and sex and all these things that the culture was now celebrating. So the hostility towards religion is very much a part of the changes that we see in sexual mores.

We also have an issue that religion is less visible. We’ve had all those fights over the public square and the place of religion in the public square. About 25 years ago, my husband started something called The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty. And when he began that, the main fights over religious liberty were about Christmas creches in the public square. Now here we are in a much different place, but in the process, we’ve seen just an invisibility in many places of our public life, an invisibility of religion and faith, or at least a desire for that.

And so what that means in practice is that the social value of religion has also become something that’s invisible or at least underrated. The social services that are provided by religious institutions account for about a quarter of a trillion dollars a year in services. That’s a tremendous gift to our society and it comes out of religious organizations, people who are motivated by their belief in the goodness of others and the need to serve others.

And yet we don’t hear that story either, the tremendous good that religion has done. And part of that too is because religions are full of imperfect people and my own faith certainly has had its share of negative contributions to that perception of religion with the abuse crisis and things like that. But we can see the shift.

So conscientious objection used to be something that was at least respected. It now has been rephrased. So it’s a religious refusal. Conscience has become invisible. So how do we rehabilitate this idea of conscience? How do we educate especially a younger generation that has less and less experience with religion and doesn’t really understand conscience as anything different than your opinion versus mine?

I think one thing to key in on is the idea of relationship. You know, this younger generation is very much about relationship. And so first, conscience talks about our relationship with God. It’s not just my personal opinion. Conscience means I acknowledge that God is my Creator and that everything I do, I owe to Him, and that He is the authority in my life. That is my first accountability…

We can all resonate with the idea of accountability in relationships. You can’t have good relationships without accountability. Well, conscience is about my accountability to God, to answer and to be faithful to the call that He’s made on my life. And so that is something that cannot be compromised. That’s something deep, and it starts first with that relationship with my God. And then that dictates from there how I relate to others.

So if conscience is the hallmark of a relationship with God, we need to personalize that, to stop talking about conscience as if it’s just an idea. A person who brings forward a conscientious objection is saying, “There is a higher authority in my life. There’s Someone to whom I am accountable to first in making my decisions.”

So let me tell you a little story. I was at a conference a couple of weeks ago and there was a speaker who had a style that we don’t often see in Catholic circles. And he was making his points and he said…after he made a point, he said, “Can I get an amen?” And to a Catholic congregation, there was kind of silence. We’re not used to chiming up with an “amen,” certainly not a robust one.

And he continued and he punctuated every few minutes with, “Can I get an amen?” In so doing, he invited the congregation in to hear what he had to say and to affirm what it was that he was proposing. And by the end of his talk, he was getting his “amens.” We were drawn in. He got us to “amen.”

But that same preacher, if he were in the public square, should be free to do the same thing, to invite those who are listening to hear what he has to say, and he can invite them, “Can I get an amen?” They can “Amen,” or they can walk away. Or if they’re of another faith tradition, they might say, “Well, I’m going to take up the podium over here and I’m going to present a different message.” And that’s good too. The one thing that preacher cannot do is to summon the coercive power of the state to get his “amen.”

And so let me give you an analogy here in terms of the issues we face with balancing the rights and respect for all people in a culture where we have very different views certainly of morality and sexuality and marriage. I remember a conversation I had with a young man, a series of conversations, who was experiencing confusion in his gender identity. And we’ve had great conversations.

Well, imagine if this young man came to me today and said, “I have to tell you, I’m coming out. I’m a woman. My pronouns are she, her. Can I get an ‘amen’?” I can’t give him that “amen” because as much as he’s my friend, as I stand and I look and I speak to him and hear him and respect that discovery that he’s made, I am, first of all, in that very moment still in relationship with my God and obedient to my God’s values.

And because I believe the tenets of my faith — the body, male, female, has religious significance —  I can no more assent or affirm or give an “amen” to his call to affirm him as a woman, the woman he claims to be or feels that he is, than I could just simply turn my back on God.

And if he says to me, “Well, if you can’t affirm, if you can’t give me an ‘amen’ to my claim to be a woman, can you at least make the cake and celebrate with me?” And I would say, “I can’t give you an ‘amen’ to that either because I cannot participate in that celebration, but I can take you out for pizza and we can continue our conversations and I can be your friend and I can continue to care for you and to serve you in other ways.”

But if my friend gets angry and brings in or seeks to summon the coercive power of the state to compel an “amen,” to compel me to affirm the identity that he asserts, even though my conscience says I cannot do that because I’m first in relationship with God even as I’m in relationship to you, that would be the coercive power of the state encroaching upon my religious freedom.

And so these are thorny issues. How do we respect others? How do we respect their own proclamations of who they are? And I think some of it comes back to just that idea, you cannot compel an amen in violation of my conscience. I can hear you, I can give space for you to make that proclamation, but you cannot use the power of the state to compel an amen.

And so in practical terms, what does that look like? It means that we start first within our faith communities and that we ensure that there is that genuine respect for all, even as we disagree perhaps about our identity as human beings. Those are deep disagreements.

And so we hear the term “culture war” and it has a very bad rap. Why? Because it’s turned ugly. But the problem with the phrase “culture war” is not that we disagree about “culture.” Because we have deep beliefs, our visions of who we are and how we live together in culture are going to be in conflict.

The problem with culture war is the “war.” It’s not that we have to paper over our disagreements, it’s that we need to come together in relationship, acknowledging the relationship of a believer, first of all, with their God, but then acknowledging our relationships with others and seeing how it is that we can serve and seek to be friends, to share that public space — without summoning the power of the state to compel an “amen” in violation of my conscience.

I’m almost out of time, but I want to just raise an issue here that’s particularly important for Catholics. And that’s that as we have seen the law developed, to put in law these categories of sexual orientation and gender identity, there is a spillover effect. So I know in the Utah Compromise, it was limited to housing and to employment, and yet right here in Salt Lake City, I was looking up what happens in the schools around here.

And for Catholics, 9 out of 10 Catholic children go to public school. I don’t know what the percentage is for the LDS families. But in the Salt Lake City public schools, those categories [sexual orientation and gender identity] are there. They are categories of non-discrimination. And what that says to the children, to the staff, to the teachers, is that these categories cannot be…not affirmed. In other words, you give an “amen” or you are being disrespectful or bigoted.

And unlike the broad public square, in our public schools, for example, there is no countervailing voice of religion that can speak up and say, “Okay, even if we have these categories, here’s a religious perspective, or make room for my religious conscience that says I cannot use those pronouns because that violates my conscience.” And so what we have is really a situation that is very tricky and very difficult for believing families whose children are in situations where they feel compelled to give an “amen” in violation of their consciences.

And so that’s just one particular example and I hope on our panel we’ll talk a little bit about the categories themselves because I think there’s some work that needs to be done on that. Certainly, we want to protect the rights of everyone, but the categories themselves are shifting and changing, even within sociology and psychology themselves, and we don’t like to make law on the basis of things that are going to be…that are not solid and not set.

But more importantly, I just leave you with this thought: that people of goodwill have and always will disagree about very deep and serious things, but if we, first, as religious believers, work within our communities to bring forward the idea of respect and the dignity of every human being, no matter how deeply we disagree and on what grounds, that that is the first step. That we don’t need additional laws as the first thing out of the box. We need to begin to live that deep respect for others and then we need to remind our lawmakers that the law can never compel an “amen.” Thank you very much.

 

 

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