JEFFERSON CITY — Reaction within the Missouri Baptist Convention (MBC) to the recent Obamacare mandate that most religious employers provide health care coverage for contraception was both swift and fiery.
MBC President John Marshall, pastor, Second Baptist Church, Springfield, got right to the point. He called it “reprehensible.” David Krueger, chairman, Christian Life Commission, and pastor, First Baptist Church, Linn, agreed.
“This is one of the vilest decisions any American administration has ever perpetrated against American churches, and is one more example that the Obama administration has declared war on Christianity,” Krueger said.
MBC Executive Director John Yeats called it “a frontal attack on our religious liberty.” He then posed a question.
“Shall the stroke of a pen by a bureaucrat devalue the blood that men and women shed on the battlefields of Europe and Asia to guarantee this liberty? I pray not so.”
Yeats noted that Missouri Baptist universities are now being forced to deal with a ruling that “seeks to secularize the institutions of faith we have built for purposes of faith.”
The presidents of Southwest Baptist University (SBU) and Hannibal LaGrange University (HLGU) spoke as if they were now under siege.
“I am personally offended by it, and our institution is offended by it,” said SBU President C. Pat Taylor.
“This violates our liberties and freedom of choice,” said HLGU President Woodrow Burt said. “We are totally opposed to the imposition, to put it mildly.”
Taylor called it “a serious breach of our right to religious freedom. We see it as the wrong direction. This is one step. What will the next step be?”
Part of the difficulty with a school like SBU being hit with a federal government action like this is the reality that in the 2010-2011 academic year, SBU students received nearly $24.4 million in Pell grants and other government subsidized loans.
“I think we’ll be forced to comply with it,” Taylor said. “It may not be optional for us. We are tied to the federal government, but it’s through students.”
Taylor said the remedy may rest in litigation. In December, Colorado Christian University filed a federal lawsuit with Belmont Abbey College, a Catholic school in North Carolina, to challenge the mandate. Taylor said he plans to speak with trustees at their Feb. 21 meeting about possibly joining the lawsuit. Burt added that HLGU is also weighing that option.
Another MBC entity affected by the mandate is the Missouri Baptist Children’s Home (MBCH). Russell Martin, MBCH executive vice president and treasurer, expressed the same sentiment as the university presidents in that he said the Children’s Home feels as if the action is creating a violation of conscience.
“We don’t know yet exactly how it would affect us,” Martin said. “I’m meeting with our human resources office and speaking with our insurance provider to try to get a better idea.
“It’s on our radar. Staff members have come to me asking how this will affect us.”
Yeats mentioned a legislative remedy that could emerge through a religious freedom restoration act being sponsored by Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla. A companion bill is being introduced in the House of Representatives by Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer, R-Mo. But Yeats is also a realist. He knows who occupies the Oval Office.
“The tragedy is that this bill will most likely pass the House by a wide bi-partisan majority, but the Senate will refuse to give it the light of day and if it did, the president would veto it,” Yeats said.
“Who says that values voting does not matter?”