Pastor Rick Warren of Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, Calif., went on record with The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty with a scathing indictment of the U.S. government’s handling of its current issue with crafting giant Hobby Lobby. The company recently took on Obamacare’s contraception mandate by refusing to provide coverage for abortion-inducing contraceptives for employees, and the courts responded by imposing huge fines for every day the coverage isn’t granted.
Warren wrote in a blog post for The Becket Fund: “Every American who loves freedom should shudder at the precedent the government is trying to establish by denying Hobby Lobby the full protection of the First Amendment. This case is nothing less than a landmark battle for America’s FIRST freedom, the freedom of religion and the freedom from government intervention in matters of conscience…”
“Today, the government has tried to reinterpret the First Amendment from freedom to PRACTICE your religion, to a more narrow freedom to worship, which would limit your freedom to the hour a week you are at a house of worship,” Warren continued. “This is not only a subversion of the Constitution, it is nonsense. Any religion that cannot be lived out … at home and work, is nothing but a meaningless ritual.”
“I predict that the battle to preserve religious liberty for all, in all areas of life, will likely become the civil rights movement of this decade. If it takes a popular movement to reign in overreaching government, then Hobby Lobby’s courageous stand, in the face of enormous pressure and fines, will likely be considered the Birmingham bus boycott, where good citizens finally got fed up with having their rights trampled on, and decided to challenge those who favor conformity over freedom.”
