The President’s Health Care Mandate Imperils Compassionate Faith-Based Work

Randy Hicks, President of Georgia Family Council
February 17, 2012

One of the greatest forces for good in this country is the irreplaceable collection of faith-based institutions that, with the support of tens of millions of volunteers and financial supporters, engage in works of compassion for the underserved and disadvantaged. They provide food for the hungry, shelter to the homeless, healthcare to the vulnerable, and many other services that align with deeply held convictions about justice and compassion.

And in a single brazen act of overreach and insensitivity, the Obama administration took a step that threatens all those groups and the good work they do when it announced the mandate for religious institutions to provide health insurance coverage for contraceptives, abortion-inducing drugs and sterilizations.

After a firestorm of criticism, the President offered an alternate approach – saying that religious organizations didn’t have to cover the services, their insurance companies would. Of course, this doesn’t solve anything since the religious institutions will still be paying insurers who are providing the controversial services, just in a less direct fashion.

The administration’s mandate threatens the constitutional rights of free exercise of religion and conscience. This is why protestant groups (many of whom are comfortable with the contraception coverage) have banded together with the Catholic Church (which has taught for centuries that contraception is wrong) to oppose this mandate.

Religious leaders see this for what it is – government forcing religious people to violate deeply held religious beliefs in order to comply with a public policy demand. To be blunt, if the President isn’t actually and personally hostile toward religious institutions, his policies definitely are. The implications of this are far reaching, in that they will either force religious organizations to violate the tenets of their faith or stop providing social services.

Faith-based institutions are on the front lines in addressing very real human need, directly and personally. It’s likely that anyone reading this could pause for a moment and create a list of local voluntary organizations in our communities that are meeting needs – the food bank or pantry, the gospel mission, the women’s shelter, the children’s home, the local church, etc. – whose core mission and work flow from religious belief and conviction.

If following the law means discarding fundamental religious convictions, then what choice do these organizations have but to shut their doors or take on the legal risk of civil disobedience?

This administration seems bent on either driving these groups out of the fields of true care and compassion (more on compassion in a moment) or removing the foundation of belief upon which their good deeds of justice and compassion are built. Either way, if the administration is successful, millions of needy Americans will be left more vulnerable and, in many cases, hopeless.

Some would argue that government could or even should jump in and fill the gaps left by faith-based groups that depart their area of service to the poor and underserved. Government could try, but would never succeed, and not just because it can’t afford it. Government runs programs that measure material need only, but that can neither assess nor meet the deeper human needs related to soul and spirit, i.e. our need for meaning, purpose and relationship.

And government programs, by virtue of their centralized structure and coercive nature, can never cultivate the conditions in which genuine compassion germinates and ultimately flourishes. The very root meaning of the word “compassion” - to suffer with - necessitates the existence of faith-based groups who make transcendent moral arguments for loving one’s neighbor and then create the opportunities for people to act on their compassion.

The President fundamentally misunderstands religious liberty in America and stands to destroy the animating impulse it provides for real, transformative compassion. Left unchecked, that’s exactly what his policies will do. And those harmed greatest will be the most vulnerable among us.

I find it more than little ironic, that a President who recently quoted from the Gospel of Luke to justify higher taxes would deny the inalienable right of religious freedom to implement his health care policy.

Randy Hicks is the president of Georgia Family Council, a non-profit research and education organization committed to fostering conditions in which individuals, families and communities thrive. For more information, go to www.georgiafamily.org, (770) 242-0001, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .