Government Hostility Towards Religion – Have We Counted the Cost? By Lathan Watts for CNS News
To the surprise of absolutely no one outside the political class in Sacramento, a majority of residents in California have already or are seriously considering fleeing the state.
A recent poll by the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies found more than half of Californians surveyed had considered leaving. The most common reasons cited were housing costs, high taxes, and the political climate.
While those three factors are inextricably linked they share another common connection, possibly overlooked, that if allowed to flourish, could help alleviate the state’s fiscal crises – religious liberty. By embracing the role of religion in a free society instead of seeking to confine it to the hearts, minds, pulpits, and pews of the faithful, California might stem the flow of people, jobs, and revenue to other states.
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Much of the tax burden born by Californians is allocated toward dealing with social ills that churches, ministries, and faith-based nonprofits are dedicated to relieving. Poverty, homelessness, addiction, to name a few. Yet, the political climate expressed by the California legislature is overtly hostile to people of faith.
The recently passed ACR 99 requested religious leaders and those with “moral influence” to abandon two millennia of Judeo-Christian doctrine on human sexuality/gender and affirm behaviors most religious faiths eschew. This after a controversial bill just last year labeled some religious viewpoints on human sexuality as “consumer fraud.”
Welcoming and tolerant California is not. But while California may be the nation’s leading exporter of prosperity, it is not alone in failing to recognize the economic short-sightedness of religious hostility.
In major cities and small towns all over the nation government officials are opposing churches and faith-based organizations and their attempts to serve local communities, often due to a mistaken notion of lost revenue because of the tax exempt status of these ministries.
