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According to a recent federal court ruling, California churches are cleared from having to provide elective abortion coverage in their employee healthcare plans. After a long legal battle, three churches won their lawsuit opposing a 2014 California Department of Managed Health Care policy mandate that requires religious institutions to cover the procedure. Straight Arrow News contributor Star Parker takes a look at how this is a victory for religion and the freedom to practice it:
Three pastors and their congregations stood up and stood firm, and now the largest populated state in the nation has lost in their fight to force abortion. And the other critical issue here at hand is that of religious liberty, that of the sacred versus the secular. America was founded by those seeking religious freedom.
Recall the famous sermon in 1630 by Puritan John Winthrop, founder of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, one of the nation’s first colonies.
“For we must consider, that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us. So that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken, and so cause Him to withdraw His present help from us, we shall be made a story and by-word through the world.”
But the religion, and the freedom to practice it, that was most important to John Winthrop and many of the founders of this country is least important to many people with political power making decisions today.
Faith and freedom go together, but too many with power push a belief that church must be subjugated to government. As our nation moves further away from these founding ideals, from our faith, and towards sin, especially the sin of taking an unborn life, it can be disheartening to consider the future of our nation.
