When Your Faith Meets My Tax Dollars
Can you defend a religious institution’s right to make a decision you find objectionable? I certainly have . And I suspect that if you take religious freedom seriously, sooner or later you will have to do the same. Religious communities need substantial authority to choose their clergy and those entrusted with teaching their faith. That means a defending their authority in certain matters even when I disagree with its religious teachings or find the consequences of those teachings painful. Religious freedom cannot depend on whether the government, or the public, approves of a particular religious conviction. But a case before the United States Supreme Court earlier this week raises a different question. What happens when a religious institution wants to participate in a publicly funded program, but objects on religious grounds to the conditions attached to that funding? The case comes from Colorado, which provides eligible children with fifteen hours of publicly funded preschool eac...