Link: Melissa Rogers: The Religious Freedom Plank of the Evangelical Reform Movement.

We have long needed more Christians, and more evangelicals in particular, to preach and teach that there should never be any governmental or civic hierarchy of faiths and to take stands against policy proposals and rhetoric that suggest otherwise. Too many Christians have been reluctant to take this stand, seeing it as somehow contradictory to the belief that the Christian faith is the one true faith. There is no contradiction. One does not have to believe that all religions are equally true in order to believe that the government should treat all religions equally. It is both a Christian and a civic obligation to protect equal rights of conscience for all. Greater acceptance of this equality principle clearly would not end all church-state debates, and the principle itself does not represent the full scope of religious freedom. But it can serve as a crucial point of unity amidst our disagreement about other church-state issues. A philosophical commitment to this principle is good; a pledge to act on that commitment is better. The next step is to pledge to go to bat for this principle in some specific debates about policy and law over the next year. If more evangelicals take this step, the cause of religious freedom will be advanced in important ways.