A bill was introduced in Congress this past week that is of particular interest to churches like ours, which are seeking to get zoning approval for their buildings. The bill is called "The Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act" (RLUIPA), and it seeks to prevent local zoning and land-use laws from denying religious citizens the right to erect houses of worship, and to protect the religious freedoms of those institutionalized in state facilities, whether hospitals, nursing homes or prisons. This is a recognition of the reality that people of traditional religious faith are having a rougher time of it in our culture than in previous generations. The laws and regulations of our society are increasingly hostile to religious faith and we are increasingly having to exempt and protect ourselves from them. This bill would require the state or local authority to show that they had a compelling interest in denying the religious communities their rights and that they have used the least restrictive means available to accomplish that governmental interest.

This bill also reinforces one of my chief concerns in the last few years, the need for Christians to be active voters and citizens. People in government who are hostile to our values and beliefs will be far more wary of tampering with our rights and privileges if they know that we have a large community, that we are attentive to what they are doing, and we vote. But, while evangelicals register at higher percentages than the general population, our voting patterns tend to follow the general pattern. In the '98 elections, about a third of the general populace voted, and about the same percentage of eligible evangelicals did. That is not satisfactory at all. We have a lot of clout with our vote, and a consistent, muscular turnout will head off much of the mischief which secular zealots have in mind. My dentist in Atlanta had a sign in his office that said, "Ignore your teeth, they'll go away." The same may be said of our rights. There are reasons for those two well-known axioms: that eternal vigilance is the price of liberty, and that the only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing. If any century in the history of mankind demonstrates the danger of state repression of religious freedom it is the one we've just ended, the 20th. We need to learn from that history, as if the multiple examples in the Bible of the same phenomena are not enough! Radical, secular zealots find the family and the church, those little platoons of civilization, to be hindrances to their utopian schemes and they make war on them incessantly. While our founders had the view that a government which governs least governs best, the secular utopians' view is that a government which governs most is best. They seek to micromanage every dimension of our lives through government edict, and traditional religious belief is not in their plans.

I hope your are registered to vote in November. Every Christian who will be 18 years of age on or before Nov. 7th should be registered. There is a deadline, so make sure you don't neglect this. You can register when you renew your license, and libraries as well as the McCoart Building have registration forms. Phone numbers for voter registration offices are found in the governmental sections of phone books. Please, make sure your are registered to vote so you can use your share of the sovereignty here in America to protect the liberties we prize and the liberties the church needs to fulfill its mission in this age. Voting every two years is not too much to ask when so much is at stake.--Tim