Welcome to the Liberty Insider.
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This is the
program bringing you news,
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views, discussion,
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little
argumentation on occasion,
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but insights into
religious liberty events
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in the United States
and around the world.
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My name is Lincoln Steed,
editor of Liberty Magazine,
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and my guest is Greg Hamilton,
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President of the Northwest
Religious Liberty Association.
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You're sounding a little
better right now, Lincoln.
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Yeah.
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I'm struggling
with getting it out
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but you can help me on that.
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Sure.
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'Cause I really
want to draw out of you
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which should come easy.
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What does the Northwest
Religious Liberty Association
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been doing?
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Of course what is it,
and what's have been doing?
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And I think in many ways,
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you've become a model
for similar organizations
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and groupings all
around North America.
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Thank you. I appreciate that.
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The Northwest
Religious Liberty Association
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actually had its
beginnings in 1906,
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when there were
Sunday laws being considered.
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By the way, same
year Liberty began.
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Yes, 1906, yes.
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So, you know, Sunday
laws were being considered
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in state legislatures
all across the country,
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Alonzo T. Jones,
otherwise known as A.T Jones
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was very frantic
about it and rightly so.
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And he started emphasizing
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that we are to have
government relations programs
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in every state
legislature across the country
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and indeed we did that.
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Every union had there own
religious liberty association.
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Most of them had
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their own government relations
programs intact and in place.
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In 1906,
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when the North
Pacific Union Conference
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of Seventh-day Adventist,
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the Northwest headquarters
for the states of Alaska,
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Idaho, Montana,
Oregon and Washington
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and all the
Adventist churches in it.
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They developed as
its first department.
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They called it
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the North Pacific
Religious Liberty Association,
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in fact if you get
a Liberty Magazine out
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or even a
Centennial, Liberty Centennial,
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it says North Pacific Religious
Liberty Association in there
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very prominently along
with all the other associations
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at each union conference.
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Yeah, we're talking about
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structure within
the Adventist church.
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Yes, yes.
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And Alonzo Jones was the
editor of the precursor Liberty.
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Yeah.
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But was he...
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I know he worked in
California, was he administrator
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at the time of the
beginning of the Northwest?
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No, he wasn't, no, no, no.
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That's I believe
that was Byron White
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or somebody like that,
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that actually formed
North Pacific Union Conference.
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I'm not sure
that's the correct name,
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but anyway in
1906 they developed
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North Pacific
Religious Liberty Association,
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because of their
fear of Sunday laws.
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And A.T Jones,
of course you know
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was a Pacific Northwest guy.
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Yes, that's what I was asking.
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Originally from
Oakland, California
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but he was stationed
when he was in the military
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at Fort Walla Walla where he,
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when he as a military
soldier there in the...
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just after the Civil War,
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he was stationed
there at Walla Walla
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and at Fort Walla Walla,
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and he became a
Seventh-day Adventist Christian.
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His first church is
right there in Palouse,
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in Farmington, Washington,
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and his history is very
rich there in the North Pacific,
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including the beginnings
of Oregon camp meeting
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and Ellen White coming to
speak there and everything.
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And it was all
A.T Jones connected
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and people forget about
his legacy in the Northwest.
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Well, the Northwest Religious
Liberty Association rises
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out of that particular legacy,
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and it was renamed Northwest
Religious Liberty Association
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in 1991 under
Richard Fenn's leadership.
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My predecessor
more than 18 years ago
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and he did a fabulous job
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in envisioning the
restoration of the spirit
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of Alonzo T. Jones by developing
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a bona fide professional
government relations program
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where we have capital
pastors covering each capital.
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I like that answer.
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And yeah, it's nice
because actually saves us money,
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the conference is
already employing them,
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they get their paychecks
from the local conference
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and they also work with us.
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So I work with the
conference presidents
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in conjunction with
each of the capital pastors.
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That means that each
capital is routinely covered.
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When you're doing
from a central point,
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maybe something, you
will miss something there
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because you know, you...
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Well, we don't catch everything
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but in terms of
each legislative session,
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yes, my guys are
covering each legislate session,
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they're doing prayers whether
in the house or the Senate.
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They're very much
involved in meeting legislators
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to see what's
needed in terms of bills,
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in terms of blocking bad
religious freedom legislation
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or legislation that
would harm religious freedom
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and putting forward majors,
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if we can unite
with other groups
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to promote religious freedom
or putting forth our own majors
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such as the Oregon
Workplace Religious Freedom Act.
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What was it? Oh, the workplace.
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I was going to
throw out a bone to you.
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You know, a lot of our viewers
I'm sure in North America
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have noticed
mostly negative news
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lately on the Religious
Freedom Restoration Acts
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that are being
passed in many, many states.
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Yes, and that's when
we started in Oregon.
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And you, I know
you've done a lot on that.
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In fact that's where
we get started in Oregon.
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But yours is not negative.
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Well, it was...
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No, ours was a
positive endeavor in Oregon.
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We never got
anything passed in Oregon
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regarding a State Religious
Freedom Restoration Act.
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But we did in Idaho, in fact
it was our first big victory
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in the 2000 legislative session
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and the bill was signed by
then Governor Dirk Kempthorne
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and the main sponsor of the bill
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and we need to pray for him,
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former senator
Grant Ipsen in Idaho
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suffering from
pancreatic cancer.
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We need to pray for him.
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His family is, needs
our prayers right now
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and he needs our prayers.
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But he was the
sponsor of our what's called
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Idaho's Free
Exercise Religion Act of 2000
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which is a State Religious
Freedom Restoration Act.
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And what it did is,
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it restored the
compelling state interest
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and least restrictive means,
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test to free
exercise jurisprudence
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basically essentially
saying that the burden of proof,
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when any religious institution
or religious individual
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is accused of
practicing a religion
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that's harmful
to the good of all.
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The state has to demonstrate
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it's the burden
of proof is on them
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to demonstrate
that it indeed is,
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whereas before
that it was absent.
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In other words,
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the burden of proof was
immediately on the individual
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or the institution,
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the religious
institution and that's all
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because of
Justice Antonin Scalia
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who lot of people
want to have some one
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just like Justice
Scalia on the Supreme Court.
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I want to remind all of you
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that this man was an
enemy of religious freedom.
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So if you say that he is a man
that was for religious freedom.
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The presidential
candidates who say that
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do not know what
they're talking about.
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So what he did?
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He was a partisan
for religious view points
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but not for the
separation of churches.
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He was a partisan
for the Catholic faith
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but not for the
free exercise of religion
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understood in American
context or Protestant context
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or for the
constitution of separation
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of church and state
in that same context.
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And so we've to
remember that in 1990
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and a case called
Oregon Employment Division,
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Employment Division of Oregon
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versus Smith and Mr. Galen,
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actually Galen Smith
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and another guy
by the name of White.
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They were two
native American Indians
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that had smoked their peyote
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during the ritual
sessions on the weekend
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but didn't came in
still drugged up so to speak
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and high when
they came in to work
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for their
ironically the anti-drug
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or the drug enforcement
agency for the state of Oregon
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came in hallucinated
and were let go and fired.
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And so they appealed
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all the way up to
the Oregon Supreme Court.
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Supreme Court says
we've no problem with you
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smoking your peyote and
having your religious rituals.
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But you can't
come in stoned, okay?
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So that basically was
the conclusion of that,
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but then Justice Antonin
Scalia from the Supreme Court
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pluck that case out
of nowhere and said that,
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wait a minute,
no you know, these,
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yes, these are
generally applicable laws
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but you basically,
you don't have essentially
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a right to your
religious freedom.
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And basically took
away the two religious,
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the two tests,
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the compelling
governmental interest
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and least
restrictive means test,
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that went all the way
back to the US Supreme Court
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in a case called
Sherbert versus Smith,
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which involved a
Seventh-day Adventist woman
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in South Carolina who
was dismissed from her job
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because she
wanted her Sabbath off
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and the company
wouldn't let her have it.
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She was a longtime worker
there that converted midstream
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and they said no,
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so she appealed all the way
up to the state Supreme Court,
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then she lost her
all the court system
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including the
federal appeals court
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and then it got to
the US Supreme Court
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and she won by a vote of 7 to 2.
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That had been the benchmark,
but still said it a lot.
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But that's where they developed
the compelling state interest
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and least restrictive means test
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basically saying, hey, you know,
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and she worked
for government agency
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there in South Carolina.
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You have to demonstrate
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that you have the
compelling interest
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to deny someone
their religious practice
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and their faith,
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their free exercise of religion.
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And Justice Scalia wrote, hey...
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He is very dismissive.
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Religious freedom is a
luxury we can no longer afford,
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he wrote in his appeal.
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I've just one,
you know, his views
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I think would have expressed
themselves like that anyway.
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But I wondered
whether that got through,
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because at that time the
war on drugs was really...
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Yeah.
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Eating up and there
was not much sympathy
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in the larger
community for, as you say,
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they even came to
work with the aftereffects
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with this drug use.
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He was saying
basically, hey, you know,
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religion is important to me
but it's not that irreligion,
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that not that important to
laws, more important to me.
00:10:57.89\00:11:00.32
And so, he was
very stringent about it
00:11:00.36\00:11:02.96
and even pharisaical,
and it really hurts me.
00:11:02.99\00:11:07.83
It had set back,
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religious
freedom back for years.
00:11:09.23\00:11:10.70
In fact to this day,
there are still only I think
00:11:10.73\00:11:13.67
it's like 19 states that
have or maybe it's 20, 21,
00:11:13.70\00:11:17.91
that have State Religious
Freedom Restoration Acts.
00:11:17.94\00:11:19.94
And right now, it's
even harder to get pass,
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because of the
concerns by the gay community
00:11:22.88\00:11:27.42
who seem to say that restoring
the compelling state interest
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and least restrictive
means test is somehow,
00:11:33.79\00:11:36.99
or bring you about
these religious freedom acts
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are inherently discriminatory
towards gays in the workplace
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and everywhere else.
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As you know, and I
wanted to say this earlier,
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what you said is very true
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and the unfortunate part of this
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is there's an element of
truth in what they claim,
00:11:53.51\00:11:56.14
because some more rabid
right wing religious groups
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to put referral of bills
through their particular state
00:12:00.25\00:12:04.72
where they've added language
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that would indeed
give Christians rights
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of prejudice
election against courts.
00:12:10.63\00:12:12.99
In 1999 we wrote the
legislation in Alaska,
00:12:13.03\00:12:16.20
actually I wrote the bill,
00:12:16.23\00:12:17.57
because the first
bill was crafted so badly
00:12:17.60\00:12:20.40
by senator up in Alaska.
00:12:20.44\00:12:23.14
Good, a wonderful
gentleman, a fisherman,
00:12:23.17\00:12:25.77
who didn't have much education.
00:12:25.81\00:12:27.84
And so, I asked
Legislative Council
00:12:27.88\00:12:30.85
there in Alaska, if
I could write the bill,
00:12:30.88\00:12:33.25
so overnight at a
good member's home
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there I was consulting
with James Standish at the time
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and he helped me
craft new language for it.
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He was our legislative liaison
for the church in Washington.
00:12:42.99\00:12:45.93
Yes, in Washington DC.
00:12:45.96\00:12:47.40
And we crafted that
thing together in one night,
00:12:47.43\00:12:51.90
and we put it together,
there's lot of hard work
00:12:51.93\00:12:54.07
and he really knew his stuff,
00:12:54.10\00:12:55.80
I miss James in
that respect a lot.
00:12:55.84\00:12:58.87
And so we got that through,
00:12:58.91\00:13:01.18
but it went through
five different committees
00:13:01.21\00:13:03.55
in four years and
we still failed, okay.
00:13:03.58\00:13:07.48
So in fact the
senate majority leader
00:13:07.52\00:13:09.72
who was one of the
House, at that time in the House
00:13:09.75\00:13:12.69
and was one of our
legislative sponsors.
00:13:12.72\00:13:15.82
Senator John Coghill,
who is the majority leader
00:13:15.86\00:13:18.06
there in Alaska Senate
right now our good friend
00:13:18.09\00:13:20.90
and a wonderful
reader of Liberty Magazine.
00:13:20.93\00:13:24.07
I think I remember a story of...
00:13:24.10\00:13:25.87
He loves Liberty
Magazine and but he said,
00:13:25.90\00:13:30.51
if we had gotten that pass
00:13:30.54\00:13:31.87
then we wouldn't
have the big hurdle
00:13:31.91\00:13:34.41
that we have now,
00:13:34.44\00:13:36.34
dealing with gay
marriage as we see it now.
00:13:36.38\00:13:40.25
Let's take a bit of a
break and we'll be back.
00:13:40.28\00:13:42.32
And I'll quiz my
guest quite a bit more,
00:13:42.35\00:13:45.62
on what the Northwest
Religious Liberty Association's
00:13:45.65\00:13:48.29
been up to.
00:13:48.32\00:13:49.66
Stay with us.
00:13:49.69\00:13:51.03