Jews Join Other Religious Groups to Support Religious-freedom Bill

A broadbased coalition of religious groups joined together this week to support the introduction in Congress of the Religious Freedom Restoration” Act, a bill that would make it harder for the government to encroach on free exercise of religion.

Sponsors of the bill, introduced Thursday in the House and Senate, predicted early passage.

President Clinton, a supporter of the legislation, sent a letter Thursday to co-sponsor Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.), saying he looks “forward to working with the Congress to secure speedy enactment” of the bill.

The legislation has broad support in most religious communities. It was designed to circumvent a 1990 Supreme Court ruling that gave state governments greater leeway in outlawing certain religious practices.

While the 1990 case dealt with ritual use of the hallucinogen peyote in Native American religious practice, Jewish groups consider the ruling a dangerous precedent for laws that could restrict such ritual practices as kosher slaughter.

At a news conference Thursday introducing the legislation, Kennedy praised the U.S Catholic Conference for adding its support to the bill.

The important group had previously opposed the legislation, concerned that its provisions could be used to challenge government programs benefiting religious organizations.

Rabbi Mark Winer, interreligious affairs chair of the Synagogue Council of American, a Jewish umbrella group represented the Jewish community at the news conference.

Winer said the act would “largely eliminate any conflict between the religious observance of Judaism and full participation of our community in American society.”

He added that since the 1990 peyote decision, Oregon Employment Division vs. Smith a number of religious-freedom cases have “directly undermined the religious rights of American Jews.”

With successful passage of the bill Winer said, “no longer will a Jewish prisoner have to choose between eating pork at a given meal or no food at all. No longer will an Orthodox Jewish family be forced to submit to the arbitrary autopsy of their loved one’s body contrary to their religious dictates.”

‘REVERSED 50 YEARS OF PROTECTIONS’

Many of the speakers at the news conference which included representatives from the Catholic, evangelical Christian, and Mormon communities, noted the broad spectrum of religious groups supporting the bill and the broad political spectrum represented by its sponsors.

In addition to Kennedy, who is viewed as a liberal, the bill is co-sponsored in the Senate by Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), a noted conservative.

In the House the bill is sponsored by Reps. Charles Schumer (D-N, Y.) and Christopher Cox (R-Calif.), ideological opposites on some other issues.

Among the Jewish groups supporting the bill are Agudath Israel of America, American Jewish Committee, American Jewish Congress, Anti-Defamation League B’nai B’rith, Council of Jewish Federations, Hadassah, Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism and the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America.

Rabbi David Saperstein director of the Religious Action Center, a group which has been active in pushing the legislation, said in a statement that if the bill is not passed soon, “we may well see dry communities ban the use of ritual wine in the Jewish Sabbath service and Catholic Mass.”

Abba Cohen, director of Agudath Israel’s Washington office said it was up to Congress to respond to the challenge posed by the Supreme Court.

“When the Supreme Court can assert the opinion as it did in the peyote case — that Americans can no longer afford the luxury’ of treating religious liberty on a part with other fundamental rights the message is profoundly troubling.” Cohen said.

Robert Lifton, president of AJCongress, said in a statement that the Supreme Court in the 1990 case “reversed 50 years of protections for the right to practice one’s religion without interference from the state, unless the government proved it had a compelling interest in enforcing the law.”

The Council of Jewish Federations said in a statement that the bill is important to the Jewish community because “as a religious minority we are acutely concerned with the preservation of the free exercise of religion.”

“It is ironic” AJCommittee said in a statement, that while the United States was celebrating the 200th anniversary of the ratification of the Bill of Rights the Supreme Court was fatally weakening religious liberty. We must recapture this basic freedom” by passing the legislation.

The bill now has 32 co-sponsor in the Senate and 137 in the House. In the last Congress the legislation died because Congress ran out of time during a busy election year, Kennedy said at the news conference.