Religious leaders: repudiate civil rights commission’s attack on religious liberty
October 13, 2016
A diverse coalition of religious leaders has called upon President Barack Obama and leading House and Senate officials to repudiate a recent US Commission on Civil Rights report on religious liberty.
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“The phrases ‘religious liberty’ and ‘religious freedom’ will stand for nothing except hypocrisy so long as they remain code words for discrimination, intolerance, racism, sexism, homophobia, Islamophobia, Christian supremacy or any form of intolerance,” said commission chairman Martin Castro.
In response, the religious leaders said that “we are one in demanding that no American citizen or institution be labeled by their government as bigoted because of their religious views, and dismissed from the political life of our nation for holding those views. And yet that is precisely what the Civil Rights Commission report does.”
Signatories of the response, which was dated October 7, include Archbishop William Lori of Baltimore (the chairman of the US bishops’ Ad Hoc Committee for Religious Liberty), as well as religious leaders from the evangelical Protestant, African-American Protestant, Jewish, and Muslim traditions.
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Further information:
- Interfaith Leaders Call on President and Congress to Reject Biased Religious Liberty Report (USCCB)
- Full text of letter (USCCB)
- Prelate criticizes ‘reckless’ statement by US civil rights commission chair (CWN, 9/14)
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