Tolkkinen: Rochester bishop joins Trump’s Religious Liberty Commission

CLITHERALL, MINN. - This week I spent two and a half hours watching President Donald Trump’s Religious Liberty Commission begin its public hearings.

It was fascinating, especially for someone who has spent decades in conservative religious and evangelical circles.

You might wonder why a greater Minnesota columnist would write about something going on in D.C. (at the Museum of the Bible, no less), but there actually is a greater Minnesota connection: Bishop Robert Barron of the Winona-Rochester Catholic Diocese sits on the commission, and I was eager to learn about his perspective and how he might influence southern Minnesota. The diocese comprises 107 parishes, four high schools, 30 junior high, elementary or preschools, and a seminary across 20 counties between the Wisconsin and Dakotas borders.

Barron advocates erasing the boundaries between church and state. Congress may not make any laws regarding religion, but that should not stop religious people from getting involved in “the public square,” he argues. After all, the First Amendment provides for the “free exercise” of religion.

“Congress will make no laws preventing it, so let’s invade that space,” he encouraged.

It seemed an unnecessarily militant turn of phrase, but what he and others mean is they would like to guide America back to a time when the pervasiveness of religious beliefs was accepted. Nuns could again pray with the people they serve in publicly funded programs. Students might see the Ten Commandments posted on school walls. People might be more likely to seek God’s guidance instead of feeling like humans are alone in the universe.

Commissioners and witnesses were clearly pleased with the stream of U.S. Supreme Court rulings coming down in favor of religious liberty in recent years. Bakers who decline to make cakes for same-sex weddings can now use religious objections as a defense. Coaches can lead prayer on football fields. Religious groups have just as much right to fly their flags on public property as anyone else.

After decades in the wilderness, religion seems to be making a comeback in American civic life. So it’s high time to have a national conversation about it. In an era where Americans increasingly don’t practice religion, it can be difficult to understand the motives or reasoning of those who do. And at a time when many are alarmed by the rise of Christian nationalism, let’s make sure nobody’s rights are getting trampled.

It’s no secret that religious people have faced oppression in the U.S. Some examples from the commission’s first meeting: “Jew Exclusion Zones” on the UCLA campus, a Supreme Court ruling in favor of a copper mine on land sacred to the Apache tribes, and a conservative Christian high school senior in Maryland who says she was barred from graduating because she failed to complete a health class that contained LGBTQ content she considered objectionable.

All these cases deserve to be aired, and this hearing is a good place for it.

It’s too bad, though, that the commission is so one-sided. While there are Muslims and Jewish representatives as well as conservative Christians, missing are the voices from the religious left, religious minorities, and the non-religious.

There was nobody to correct those who spouted off that our country is founded on the pursuit of religious freedom. Nobody mentioned that the first permanent colony, Jamestown, had nothing to do with religion. It was established to find gold and silver and a trade route to the Pacific.

Untruths also went unchallenged. Commissioners and witnesses claimed that Trump pardoned anti-abortion protesters who were convicted for merely praying quietly outside abortion clinics around the country. The truth is that the protesters were convicted for blocking access to the clinics for people who have a legal right to go there.

And nobody, while I watched anyway, brought up how the Trump administration stripped funding from religious groups like Catholic Relief Services that were helping the poor and sick overseas, or from Lutheran Social Service, which was helping resettle refugees.

So if we’re going to talk about religious liberty, let’s talk about the flip side, too: religious oppression.

It was hard to listen to members of the commission yap about the right of parents to raise their children as they wish when the Tennessee mother of a transgender girl is heartbroken that the U.S. Supreme Court’s six conservative members ruled Wednesday that the state has the right to prevent her daughter from receiving puberty blockers and other drugs simply because she is transgender. These drugs are safe and are routinely given to other children, but I’m guessing that Tennessee’s action had more to do with religious beliefs than any real concern about her health.

If families have the right to pull their children out of public school curriculum because it violates their faith — and they should have that right — then the Tennessee mother deserves to be able to get her child the health care she needs without having to drive five hours to another state.

So if the bishop gets his way and religion once again permeates civic life in America, let’s hope that everyone’s rights are robustly protected.