Albert Mohler: The President, the Pill, and Religious Liberty in Peril

Thursday, February 2, 2012

Excerpt:
In actuality, the Obama Administration trampled religious liberty under the feet of the leviathan state, forcing religious employers to do what conscience will not allow. Religious organizations such as schools, colleges, and hospitals will be required to pay for services that they believe to be immoral and disobedient to God.

In a final insult, the administration allowed that religious employers could, if qualified, have an extra year to comply with the decision. As Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah made clear, this intentionally evades the point. “The problem is not that religious institutions do not have time enough to comply,” he said, “It’s that they are forced to comply at all.”

Roman Catholic authorities were among the first to respond with outrage. Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan of New York City, president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, who had personally made the case to President Obama for a broader exemption, said simply: “We are unable to live with this.”

This last Sunday, Catholics around the nation heard letters from their local bishops with the same message. The Bishop of Marquette, for example, put the matter with severe simplicity: “We cannot — we will not — comply with this unjust law.”

In other words, the nation’s Roman Catholic bishops have signaled their clear intention to defy the law rather than to violate their conscience. Will evangelical Christians demonstrate the same courage and conviction? the rest image