South Florida Sun-Sentinel / By James D. Davis
PALM BEACH – What’s the biggest threat to religious freedom?
Some might blame secular humanists, or maybe Al-Qaida. But for Baptist leader J. Brent Walker, the danger is as clear as George’s face on dollar bills.
“What the government funds, it always regulates,” said Walker, executive director of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty. “Government-sponsored religion is always bad for religion.
“How can we raise a prophetic fist with one hand and take government money with the other?”
Almost as threatening: ignorance. Walker said a recent poll found that only 17 percent of Americans even know that religious freedom is protected by the First Amendment of the Constitution.
Walker gave his comments recently in Palm Beach, where leaders of the Anti-Defamation League held their annual conference. His very presence — a Christian leader at the dais of a prominent Jewish organization — spoke to the progress in interfaith cooperation in recent decades, he told his 200 listeners.
But he said a new round of activism is vital, in order to explain and defend religious freedoms.
Even those who know the First Amendment — including some Jews and Baptists — don’t always believe in separation of church and state, Walker said.
“They want to claim the benefits of Free Exercise but not the supposed inconvenience of No Establishment,” Walker said. “This is entirely wrong-headed. Both clauses ensure religious liberty, but in different ways.
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