By Americans United for Separation of Church and State / Church & State magazine
This is an abbreviated version of the story. For the full story, click here.
Editor’s Note: J. Brent Walker has served as executive director of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty (BJC) since 1999. An ordained Baptist minister and an attorney, Walker has been a strong advocate for separation of church and state for decades. The BJC is a close ally of Americans United; together the two organizations have opposed mandatory school prayer, private school voucher plans and other attempts to link church and state.
Walker recently announced that he will retire from the BJC at the end of this year. He spoke with Church & State last month about his time with the BJC and the importance of church-state separation.
Q. You’ve worked in the field of religious liberty and church-state separation for a long time. What made you decide to dedicate your professional career to this issue?
Walker: After a 10-year law practice in Tampa, Florida, I sensed a call to ministry and decided to go to seminary. I had initially thought about pastoring or teaching. But, while attending an Americans United National Conference during my third year in seminary in the fall of 1988, I met up with James Dunn and Buzz Thomas from the Baptist Joint Committee. I was fascinated by what I learned at the AU conference and started thinking about combining my law and theology as a ministry of a different sort. I was later hired to help with the BJC’s legal work and, upon James Dunn’s retirement in 1999, I became executive director. My association with the BJC has provided a near-perfect blend of law, theology, Christian ethics, politics and the fun of living in Washington, D.C., to boot. These years have been the pinnacle of my professional career.
Q. As you look back on your tenure, what pleases you most about your time with the BJC?
Walker: The ability to have a rewarding and fruitful ministry on issues that matter. Having the opportunity to influence the U.S. Supreme Court through friend-of-the-court briefs, working with Congress and advising the White House on critical church-state issues have presented a rare opportunity to blend my interests and expertise for a worthy cause. It has also given me a unique chance to do “bucket list” kinds of things. These would include having significant and substantive time with four U.S. presidents, personally meeting eight Supreme Court justices, appearing in the national media (both on television and in print), teaching church-state law for 10 years at the Georgetown University Law Center with Rabbi David Saperstein, traveling worldwide and meeting hundreds of interesting people.
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Q. The BJC and Americans United worked with other groups in the 1990s to pass the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA). The legislation has been interpreted by the Supreme Court in ways that many people believe harms the rights of the others. Is there a way to fix RFRA?
Walker: The Religious Freedom Restoration Act was a much-needed statute to restore a high level of protection for religious exercise after the Supreme Court gutted such protection from the First Amendment in 1990. RFRA strikes a delicate balance between protecting the rights of conscience and the rights of others and society generally. When government imposes a substantial burden on one’s exercise of religion, the claimant can insist upon an accommodation or an exception, unless the government can show it is pursuing a compelling interest – an interest of the highest order based on the health, safety or welfare of others – and that it is doing so in a narrowly tailored way. …
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Click here to read the article on Americans United website.
