A diverse group of Georgia faith leaders gathered at the Georgia State Capitol on Tuesday, January 14, to call on state legislators to oppose divisive religious refusal bills being proposed and introduced in the upcoming session of the state legislature. If passed, these bills could be used to refuse goods, services, and employment to LGBT people based solely on their sexual orientation, identity, or expression.
The clergy announced the release of a letter signed by more than 60 religious leaders from across the state, warning state lawmakers about the dangerous potential for an increase in discrimination against people of all backgrounds.
“We strongly oppose giving for-profit corporations religious rights that could allow them to discriminate against employees based on any characteristic—from their religious practices to their sexual orientation. This principle harkens back to the civil rights movement and our nation’s core values of equality and justice,” the letter reads, in part.
“We believe that love of neighbor guides our standing today” said Rev. William Flippin, Jr., pastor of Emmanuel Lutheran Church in Atlanta, Georgia. “This RFRA [Religious Freedom Restoration Act] bill infringes on ethics and our love of neighbor.”
The Rev. Flippin also said, “We are here united for a common purpose. Religious freedom is a deeply resonant American principle. In fact, it is one of the most fundamental rights as Americans. From the first Puritans who arrived in Massachusetts because of religious persecution, we are protected in the Constitution on religious freedom and expression. We all know that freedom is a great responsibility – to protect, to uplift, to enlighten. But, also, it is the responsibility of freedom that we not harm others. That’s why I stand today opposing House Bill 29. As a Lutheran pastor of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, I share with these great faith leaders their universal values. Our ethics of the way we treat others should reflect the way we want to be treated based on the universal love of our creator. Laws that are created or interpreted that go against that principle in harming any group, goes against that principle, hurting us all.”
ReconcilingWorks thanks Pastor Flippin, and all the clergy that participated, for their work and witness.
Go here for the full text of the clergy letter as well as a list of its signers.
See the press conference on YouTube. See below for a transcript of Pastor Flippin’s remarks.
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We are here united for a common purpose. Religious freedom is a deeply resonant American principle. In fact, it is one of the most fundamental rights as Americans. From the first Puritans who arrived in Massachusetts because of religious persecution, we are protected in the Constitution on religious freedom and expression. We all know that freedom is a great responsibility – to protect, to uplift, to enlighten. But, also, it is the responsibility of freedom that we not harm others.
That’s why I stand today opposing House Bill 29. As a Lutheran pastor of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, I share with these great faith leaders their universal values. Our ethics of the way we treat others should reflect the way we want to be treated based on the universal love of our creator. Laws that are created or interpreted that go against that principle in harming any group, goes against that principle, hurting us all
As people of faith, we must fill our frames with not only the Ten Commandments, but with the Great Commandment that Jesus gave all of us, as well as all the virtues of a Spirit-led life. It’s true that the commandments contain a list of rather daunting ‘thou shalt nots’ but these ten rulings are not meant to drag us down into negativity. In fact, they are intended to give us a very positive framework for the living of our lives.
The first four commandments provide us with guidance for our relationship with God, and the last six explain what it means to have a healthy relationship with each other.
We are standing for the principles of the Constitution: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, which the First Amendment protects. But we believe that the love of neighbor is the framework of justice that guides my standing today.
You can think of the Ten Commandments as being two pictures instead of one. After all, God used two tablets of stone to deliver the commandments of Moses. The worship of God’s majesty: that’s picture one. And love of one another, that’s picture two. They are equally beautiful, equally innovative, equally well crafted. No doubt Jesus had this two-frame approach in mind when he said that the greatest commandment calls us to both love your God and to love your neighbor as yourself.
As an ELCA pastor, I first understood this in making a volatile stand in support of the sexuality statement in my first call in the deep south, in Columbus Georgia, supporting clergy in same-sex partnerships. Clearly, these commandments are designed to help us, not to hurt us. That’s why we need to tap into the source of energy and security when we worship God rather than the powers of the world.
The very same can be said for the second frame of the Ten Commandments. Despite the repeated ‘thou shalt nots’ that it contains, there’s an enormous amount of guidance and direction to be gained from these six final commandments, despite our natural tendency to rebel against any limitations on our human freedom. When we collide, which I believe House Bill 29 is doing, with the commandments, we are going to get hurt, period.
We’ll be hanging in public view as a frame without a message, a canvas without a painting. It’s as though we ripped out of the frame the very meaning of life, the very reason for which God has placed us on earth. When an empty frame, when our lifestyle, trumpets the values of consumerism and materialism, we sacrifice our well-being for the sake of material possessions. We present our own interests as being identical to God’s interests and attempt to legitimize our ideologies and positions by attaching them to the name of God. We fail to honor and respect our elders, we carry hatred and resentments in our heart against others.
We read the New Testament and come across the great commandment of Jesus to love God and love neighbor. It is important to see the two tablets of the Ten Commandments and to post them prominently on your heart and mind. On one tablet you have the first four commandments concerning your relationship with God. And on the other, you have the last six commandments concerning your relationship with neighbor.
The Georgia discriminatory Religious Freedom Restoration Act infringes and violates the core of human ethics in our relationship with our neighbor. On one side is God; on the other side is neighbor. Both are important, both are God’s will, both are found throughout the Bible. Old Testament and New: both are close to the heart of Jesus. Let us join together with these very important sides shaping my experience as a Lutheran clergyman and know that, as Dr. Martin Luther King said, ‘We are all tied together in a single garment of destiny, in an inescapable network of mutuality.’ Thank you.
Rev. William Flippin, Jr.
January 13, 2015
Atlanta, Georgia