America is called the land of the free. Why is the Church not also called the land of the free?

The Bill of Rights is a revolutionary document that protects citizens and limits government. After the Civil War, our nation knew that we had a major discrimination problem, we wrote three new constitutional amendments that re-proclaimed our desire for liberty for all. Common place today is an anti-discrimination clause for businesses and organizations.

There is a website that connects nonprofit organizations with software and hardware donations and not surprisingly they say that these nonprofits must comply with the website’s anti-discrimination policy. I love that! If you are advocating for reading to kids, then your staff promotions should not be made with regard to gender or sexual orientation. If you are helping families remove lead-based paint, your leaders should not be chosen because of their religion or national origin.

I support these anti-discrimination policies because of my faith. My God loves everyone, always. Full stop. No exceptions. And here is where I get hit in the gut. These policies always have a statement that says religious nonprofits do not need to follow them. WHAT!?! The place that should be the most open, the most loving, the most like our God is allowed to be the most hateful, closed and discriminatory. I understand that the pastor of a Christian church should be a Christian and therefore you must “discriminate” against non-Christians, but really a religious institution gets to throw out the whole clause?

To my Christian friends, remember, this is what the world sees: religion gets to, has to, be allowed to discriminate. If we are hoping to save the lost we must change this image now. What Trump (and his “evangelical” supporters) did today does not help improve our image, though I must say our image would have been tarnished far more if the leaked draft was the final Order.