Michigan Camp Meeting 2025: He Must Increase

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Michigan Conference of Seventh-day Adventists

Religious Liberty at a Crossroads

Jennifer Woods

01 How the Supreme Court May Impact Religious Liberty in 2025

You're about to enjoy a presentation recorded at the 2025 Michigan Conference Camp, held at Cedar Lake, Michigan.

We pray that the Lord will bless you as you listen.

I'm going to go ahead and get started because we have about an hour and I know that the next thing for everyone is relaxation and a meal and I don't want to prolong that too much.

But I will say it's been a really busy year for the Supreme Court this year when it comes to cases that deal with religious liberty.

And it's interesting because last year the Supreme Court didn't hear any major religious liberty cases, but this year the court has heard oral arguments for 3 cases with religious liberty implications.

And it's recently decided on 2 of those cases, and we're waiting on the third, because I think it's gonna have major implications no matter which way it comes down.

And these cases all deal with the First Amendment and how the court sees the boundaries of the establishment and the free exercise clauses.

And I hope that each 1 of you were able to attend the earlier Parl session given by Bettina Krauss.

I think that our sessions are really going to work off of each other, and some of the things that she mentioned will be some of the same things that I'm mentioning, maybe from a different perspective.

But 1 of the things that was brought up was the First Amendment, right?

She gave that history, that legal lesson on the Constitution.

And as she stated, the First Amendment has these 2 provisions.

We have the Free Exercise Clause and the Establishment Clause.

And the Establishment Clause prohibits the government.

So the Establishment Clause really says that government should not be involved in coercing or establishing any sort of state religion, right?

So when the country was founded, they said we don't want there to be a national religion.

We want people to be free from coercion from the state as far as who they should worship or how they should worship.

And then on the other side of things, we have the free exercise clause.

And this is saying, again, we want people to be able to worship freely within certain bounds.

If it's causing harm to someone else, of course that's an area where the free exercise clause maybe has met its limit.

But outside of that, we want people to be able to worship freely without the government restricting those abilities.

And just this year, we again have these 3 cases that are looking at these 2 areas.

So going back to this slide, 1 thing I wanted to mention was that, you know, our court currently, there's a split, right?

We have about 6 conservative justices and 3 liberal justices.

And so that, of course, impacts how some of these cases are expected to turn out.

But as we'll see, that doesn't always play out the way that we think it's going to play out.

But I wanted to kind of put that out there.

And also I wanted to make note of the fact that over the last couple of years, we've really seen the court pushing free exercise, maybe even to the detriment of the Establishment Clause.

And so this is also something to keep in mind.

We have these 2 cases from 2022, I think it was, of Carson versus Makin and Kennedy versus Bremerton, where we've seen the court really promote free exercise, again, at the detriment maybe of establishment clause.

And so we're gonna look at these cases again when we look at the current court's cases that they've decided and that are still pending.

So the first of the trio of these religious liberty cases was a case that was heard on March 31st.

And it's called Catholic Charities Bureau versus the Wisconsin Labor and Industry Review Commission.

And in this case, Catholic Charities is of course a ministry of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Washington, and this particular chapter of the diocese serves the northern part of Wisconsin and it covers a whole host of services.

They meet the needs of the disadvantaged with things such as helping the disabled and the elderly, providing for the poor through the diocese.

The mission is consistent with the Catholic Church's faith.

It's to serve all people who are in need, regardless of their religious beliefs, regardless of whether they are Catholic or not, regardless of any other status of the individual.

If there is a need, then the charity is there to meet that need.

And this means that This charity provides for thousands of people meeting the needs by offering in-home health care, housing for the elderly and the disabled, providing child care services and employment opportunities.

And what really happened in this case is that there is an unemployment insurance program through the state of Wisconsin.

Many states have unemployment insurance programs.

And this is designed to provide assistance for individuals who have faced financial loss from no fault of their own.

But under state law, there is an exemption for certain nonprofit organizations that they can opt out of this program if these organizations are operated for primarily religious reasons.

So it's in section 108.2 of the Wisconsin Statute, and the exemption applies first off to churches or conventions or associations of churches without any other qualification.

If it's a church or a religious organization, if it's the services being provided by a duly licensed or commissioned minister of the church, then they get the exemption.

But the exemption also covers other nonprofit organizations that are operated or supervised or controlled or principally supported by the church or the association of churches, but it's only if they are operated primarily for religious purposes.

And this is really where the issue comes in.

In 2016, the Catholic Charities requested an exemption from the state's unemployment program.

So they can enroll in their own program called the Wisconsin Bishops Church Unemployment Pay Program.

This is a similar program that actually has more robust benefits as the state's program.

But it's administered through the Catholic Church and so it's more streamlined for them.

Well, the state labor commission ruled that the exemption would not apply to Catholic charities despite the fact that it says it has religious motivations because its activities of feeding the poor, helping the elderly, are secular in nature and not religious.

This went all the way up to the state Supreme Court and they agreed that this exemption was not allowed.

They said, hey, even though Catholic charities may have religious motivations, it doesn't operate primarily for religious purposes because it's not proselytizing, it's not attempting to imbue people with the Catholic faith.

So, and because Catholic Charities employs people of all faiths and provides services to people of all faiths.

It says, hey, you don't meet this religious exemption.

So the interesting thing here is that if Catholic charities were actually not operated separately from the church, but as underneath the Catholic church directly, they would have gotten this exemption.

But because they're operating like separately, but still under the auspices of the church, they found that their services that they're providing aren't religious in nature.

And the legal issue here is whether a state violates the First Amendment's religion clauses by denying a religious organization an otherwise available tax exemption because the organization does not meet the state's criteria for religious behavior.

Now Catholic Charities wants to pose it another way.

They said the real question is whether Wisconsin can pick and choose which religious groups to tax based on the state's own definition of what constitutes religious activity.

Wisconsin says that unless its rejection of the exemption is based on something that's like with animosity, then it should be able to stand, that they're justified in being able to make these distinctions, that they're justified in being able to determine whether or not the activities at play are actually religious or not.

So in the brief to the Supreme Court, again, Catholic Charities makes a couple of arguments.

First they argue that this law from Wisconsin is violating church autonomy.

The idea that government should not be interfering with the internal church affairs of religious organizations.

And that the church organizations, religious organizations should be able to govern themselves.

It said again that if the Catholic Charities were part of the diocese directly, then there would have been no issue.

But because they have a different structure, a different internal way of organizing how its ministries work, then Wisconsin should not be able to say, well, we disagree with this and it no longer makes it religious in nature.

By denying this exemption for Catholic charities, they also say that it's a bar on this entanglement of church and state.

It's a violation of the free, of the anti-establishment, of the establishment clause, right, where the church is here saying, well, you can do this, but you can't do this.

It's violating the wall of separation between church and state in many ways.

So, they also say that this denial of religious exemption is amounting to discrimination among religions in the state.

That they're deciding, again, favored religions and religious practices and religious services versus maybe different ways that religions may set themselves up.

And this has huge implications for maybe minority faiths or faiths that are not mainstream because you don't want the government coming in and saying, well, this isn't religious in nature, but this is religious in nature.

This we'll give you an exemption for and this we won't.

And the court talks about that when they laid out their decision.

Wisconsin says, hey, we're not violating the First Amendment at all.

We're not excessively becoming entangled with religion.

It's okay for us to ask the basic questions to determine whether or not that an organization is actually eligible for an exemption.

We're entangling ourselves, but just a little bit.

And it says, you know, there's a reason for this.

They don't want any organization that says, hey, we're religious affiliated to be able to get the exemption, because that could open up all sorts of doors, right?

Like all sorts of entities could say, well, we're related to a religious organization, give us the exemption too.

And then the state went on to say, hey, we're not unconstitutionally discriminating against this religion.

We have certain criteria, and every religion is open to meeting this criteria, but if you fail to meet it, then you just don't get the exemption.

And they said that the point of all of this, again, is to protect employees, is to protect individuals who may become unemployed to make sure that they have some kind of safety net, some kind of benefits in the end.

So there were end of the court briefs on multiple sides, some saying yeah if if if we allow Catholic charities to be able to get this exemption.

Again, it's going to open this Pandora's box.

All sorts of entities are going to say, well, we're religious too, give us the exemption.

02 Understanding PARL: Why Public Affairs and Religious Liberty Matter

You're about to enjoy a presentation recorded at the 2025 Michigan Conference Camping, held at Cedar Lake, Michigan.

So today I'm going to be talking about understanding PARL, why public affairs and religious liberty matter, but before that, let's just have a brief word of prayer.

Dear Heavenly Father, Lord, we want to thank you just for this beautiful day that you've given us to spend time with you.

Lord, may I ask that you be with this presentation as we look at this ministry of public affairs and religious liberty and the role that it plays in furthering your work.

So I wanna start by asking you a question.

When people hear the name Adventist, or Seventh-day Adventist, what do you think comes to mind for them?

And I want you to ponder this question as I go through this presentation and we'll come back to it at the end I promise.

I want to start by talking about what PIRL is, what its mission is.

The mission of PIRL is to protect and defend the God-given gift of religious liberty.

It's to build relationships with those who may impact our freedom.

This could include individuals like civic leaders or religious groups or just others in the community that could have an impact on the work that we're engaged in in proclaiming God's message and the gospel message.

And the work of PARL is also to introduce ourselves in our community so that they know who we are as Seventh-day Adventists, as Christians, as a source of hope in a world that really does need hope these days.

For many, many years, our church has done a really good job, I think, in focusing on the religious liberty aspects of the Pearl ministry.

And this is very understandable because from our foundation, our church has understood the importance of the religious liberty work.

Of course, there is a biblical basis for the work of Pearl, and specifically for the religious liberty side of things.

Religious liberty is tied to the story of creation.

The creation story, of course, reveals this loving God who created humans with free will, with the ability to accept or to reject God's love that he showed to us.

And because God created human beings in his own image, we possess this moral conscience, right?

And we have the ability to make free choices.

The principle of love is at the heart of God's divine government, and the story of creation in the Garden of Eden reveals God's love for us because he gives us this choice of whether we're going to love him in return or reject his love.

We also see the story of religious liberty and free will throughout the Bible narrative, not just in the story of creation, But we can look at the story of the Israelites in bondage, right?

They're in bondage in Egypt and then they're set free from bondage.

But then they're given the choice again, whether they're going to serve God or whether they're going to go their own way.

And we see this played out when Joshua tells the Israelites in Joshua chapter 24, verse 15.

He says, you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served beyond the Euphrates or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living.

But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord." As we go along the biblical narrative, we see this religious liberty tied also very clearly to the story of the gospel, right?

We're in bondage, we're slaves to sin, and God comes to proclaim liberty.

And in fact, At the beginning of his public ministry, Jesus speaks of freeing us of liberty in John 8, chapter 8, verses 34 through 36, where he says, most assuredly, I say to you, Whoever commits sin is a slave of sin, and a slave does not abide in the house forever.

Therefore, if the son makes you free, you shall be free indeed.

You know, it's this freedom and this liberation that was purchased at Calvary by Christ's death.

And after the cross, humanity had the option to be free if we made that choice.

And so we value freedom, not because we're selfish or fearful, but because we value the sacrifice that Christ made on our behalf.

And this is part of the reason why we want to champion freedom for others, again, because we know that even though we have the ability to be free, it was purchased at a very high cost with Christ's death on the cross for us.

We also see that this theme of religious liberty of course tied to the great controversy which is the whole you know this is the whole story that we're that we're part of even today.

Ellen White says when she talks about God and and worshiping him in Patriarchs and Prophets page 34 that God desires from all of his creatures the service of love, service that springs from an appreciation of his character, but he takes no pleasure in a forced obedience.

And to all he grants freedom of will that they may render him voluntary service.

And she says in Desire of Ages page 22 that the exercise of force is contrary to the principles of God's government.

So throughout the story of redemption and the cosmic battle, we see both God's love and the true natures of Satan's accusations against him that he forces our worship.

And as Adventists, we see the history of the world as a great conflict between God and Satan.

And freedom of choice is an expression of God's character of love.

And this is 1 reason why we believe in freedom of conscience so strongly as a denomination.

We believe that God never forces our worship.

And Because of that, we believe that people should be free to worship according to the dictates of their conscience.

We believe the state should not coerce or incentivize or restrict worship in any way, because that is antithetical to being able to show love and worship to God genuinely.

And as Adventists, we believe so strongly in religious liberty that we have a whole department, the department that I work for at the union, the department that Andy and Laura work for at Michigan Conference, that's dedicated to promoting religious freedom.

And that department, of course, is the Department of Public Affairs and Religious Liberty.

It's dedicated to promoting religious freedom as a fundamental human right.

And we believe that those rights should be protected even for those who don't believe the same way that we do.

It's not just a right for us, it's a right for all people.

Again this comes back to the foundation, the biblical foundation, that all people are created in the image of God and so therefore we're all worthy of dignity, of compassion, and of respect.

And from the very inception of our church's history, we've been dedicated to promoting an individual's choice in matters of faith and religion.

So I have a timeline here that kind of goes through some of the history of religious liberty within our church.

And we can start back even before our church was a recognized, you know, denomination, going back to the 1850s.

So for over more than a hundred and 70 years, our church has promoted freedom of belief for all people.

For Adventists, this principle of religious freedom has strong biblical, historical, and of course theological foundations.

So the first article on this topic by an Adventist church leader was actually in 1851 by J.N.

I know we all know his name from Andrews University.

He was 1 of, you know, the first missionary.

And in this article, Andrews explored the pivotal role of religious freedom in end time events.

That is we move on into the 60s, into the 1860s that is.

In 1864, the fledgling Adventist community worked to secure non-combatant status for members during the Civil War.

So we were engaged in work with accommodations from the very early times of our church.

Andrews also expanded his initial writings, linking religious freedom to what today we would call human rights.

And then a few years later in the 80s, Adventists began a decades-long effort to oppose various initiatives by organizations such as the National Reform Association to pass religious legislation in the United States.

I think Bettina mentioned some of this earlier today and also yesterday during her talks.

The church focused a lot of its efforts on protesting against state Sunday laws and resisting proposals to introduce a national Sunday law.

During this time, as Bettina mentioned, I think yesterday she showed some pictures of some Adventists that were part of chain gangs and were arrested because of violations of some of the Sunday laws that were in place, but members were prosecuted for violating state-mandated Sunday observance.

And as our advocacy efforts grew, Adventists strengthened their commitment to the idea of separation of church and state in arguing that the government should not interfere in the religious life of its citizens.

They saw themselves as defending the legacy of American founders like Thomas Jefferson and James Madison talking about the separation of church and state at this time.

It's around this time that Ellen White wrote that we are not doing the will of God if we just sit in quietude, doing nothing to preserve liberty of conscience.

Let there be more earnest prayer and then let us work in harmony with our prayer.

She said this in Testimonies to the Church, Volume 5.

I think this is an interesting quote because what she's saying is prayer is great.

We should all be praying, but we also have to be engaged, taking action, right, to defend religious liberty and religious freedom.

So in 1884, the Adventist Church published a journal and it's called the Sabbath Sentinel and it explored some of these ideas of religious liberty and a half a million copies were circulated and this publication in 1886 became the American Sentinel.

And then in 1889, the National Religious Liberty Association was established.

And this was launched in Battle Creek, Michigan, so not too far away, and there was a declaration that was signed by 110 charter members.

And in this initial declaration, they said, we deny the right of any civil government to legislate on religious questions.

We believe it is the right and should be the privilege of every man to worship according to the dictates of his own conscience.

In 1890, the association actually was able to collect a quarter of a million signatures protesting religious legislation, and they presented those signatures to Congress.

As the activities of this association grew and expanded and spread to other countries, the National Religious Liberty Association became the International Religious Liberty Association in 1893.

And today there are over 18 country national associations that are part of IRLA.

In 1901, the Religious Liberty Department was created.

That is the precursor to PARL, but that's been in existence since 1901.

And then a couple of years later, in 1906, Liberty Magazine started to be published.

And it is the only, at that time it was the only magazine that dealt with issues of religious freedom in America.

And today it's the oldest continuously published journal dealing with religious liberty issues.

So as you can see we have a very rich history of religious liberty involvement within the Adventist church.

So I wanna take a shift now, and I wanna shift gears, and to give an overview of some of the laws in this land protecting religious liberty.

03 Culture Wars and Religious Liberty: The First Amendment Under Threat

Definitely Father Lord, we want to thank you for this day, Lord.

We just ask that you keep everyone safe and that you keep us as dry as you possibly can, Lord, and be with us now as we spend some time looking at the culture wars that are around us and how we can and should respond as people of faith where we ask this in your son's name.

So I was talking earlier, I was asking who made it to the 9.30 presentation by Bettina this morning.

And I just was saying that I think it's so interesting that even though Bettina and I hadn't talked about what we were going to talk about each day, that God kind of has worked it out so that our presentations seem to be, they seem to look as if we've talked in advance and plotted this out together.

So there'll be some things here that are a refresher, but it's okay to hear it from different perspectives and multiple times, I hope.

So I'm sure we've all heard the term culture war before, but I want to start with defining what that means when we use this term, or at least what I'm talking about when we use this term.

So the term culture war refers to a conflict between social groups with differing maybe values or beliefs or practices and oftentimes it involves disagreements over fundamental issues such as morality, religion, and social norms.

And these policy or political disagreements can become so heightened that they become disagreements over core beliefs of right and wrong.

They can lead to increased political and also social polarization with groups adopting increasingly rigid positions.

And because of this, because they're so core to our fundamental beliefs and values that we hold, it can become very difficult to hear the other side to try to engage in some kind of compromise because people find that as a compromise of their core beliefs and the core nature of who they are.

And political parties on both sides have used these hot button culture war, or sometimes called wedge issues, to build up their political base.

We've seen this in political ads, we've seen this in political rhetoric.

They will demonize their opponents, and they'll frame issues in terms of not just differing opinions, but in terms of right and wrong, instead of differing opinions that are worthy of respect, even if we don't agree with them.

And sometimes these issues are propped up so much that people will treat these issues as defining issues on how they're going to vote or who they choose to be friends with or where they choose to even go to church because sadly we've seen some of this seep into our churches as well as general society.

And I think we can all probably think of some culture war issues that have been in the news over the years.

Back to Menu

Series

Religious Liberty at a Crossroads

01 How the Supreme Court May Impact Religious Liberty in 2025

Transcript

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

Religious Liberty at a Crossroads

02 Understanding PARL: Why Public Affairs and Religious Liberty Matter

1h

Religious Liberty at a Crossroads

03 Culture Wars and Religious Liberty: The First Amendment Under Threat

50m

Religious Liberty

Adventists, Politics and the Final Crisis

56m

The Reformation & the Remnant: 500 Years of Protestant History & Liberty

3. The Reformers and Current Issues

1h 8m

True and False Religious Liberty

02 The Counterfeit Image

55m

Mastering the Meaning and Methods of Money Management

05 Leaving a Legacy

58m

Making a House a Home

06 Building a Financial Foundation

1h 3m

Religious Liberty at a Crossroads

04 Religious Accommodations: What They Are and How to Secure One

57m

His Invitation

05 Reconciliation, Unity, and Latter Rain Power

58m

Sound Doctrine