[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 159 (2013), Part 4]
[House]
[Pages 4965-4967]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                           RELIGIOUS LIBERTY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 3, 2013, the Chair recognizes the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. 
Walberg) for 30 minutes.
  Mr. WALBERG. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to address 
this Chamber and to address an issue of great concern to me. I just 
heard my colleague and friend from Ohio and what he had to say, and 
certainly there is a debate that's going on that's worth being had, a 
debate about the progression of this great country, the greatest on 
this Earth, in the history of this Earth, a country that has 
distinguished itself in just a few short years, 236, 237, as a Nation 
that understands what liberty is about, but also understands the 
authority that we come under.
  Mr. Speaker, I have wrestled with coming to the floor tonight, 
because since I first began my legislative career back in 1982 in the 
Michigan House of Representatives, and when I stood in front of people 
and asked for their opportunity or their support to give me a 
privileged position in that great body, I stated clearly, and I have 
from that point in 1982 to this very day, I've stated that, as a 
Christian and as a former pastor, while I would not flaunt my religion, 
I would not hide my faith.

[[Page 4966]]

  I've continued that in coming to the U.S. House of Representatives as 
well. I truly believe that all laws are moral. Some of us would 
consider morality one way and others of us would consider it another. 
We all come through filters in life. I understand that, and I respect 
that. I believe that the Framers and Founders of this great country, 
its ideals that were based upon truth as they determined truth to be, 
as they understood it, truth coming from the revealed word of God that 
they declared to be found in the Bible at that time, and they were not 
ashamed to say that and quoted many times from Scripture, even without 
reference, because it was clearly understood by the citizens of that 
day that the basic ideals that this new government was established upon 
were ideals found and written down in the Bible and clearly understood 
to be the word of God.
  I'd wrestle with the fact that I understand that there are filters, 
and the moment that I let it out of the bag, as it were, Mr. Speaker, 
that I'm a pastor, I'm a Christian, I come from a Judeo-Christian value 
system, that that's my filter, that I would lose the opportunity to 
speak to society in general. Well, I assume that risk this evening, 
because we have come to a time in our history where the unified 
understanding, whether we acknowledged it or fully agreed with it or 
certainly lived by it, because I know, as one who has feet of clay, 
that though I understand truth, I don't always live by it, yet our 
country is at crossroads in a battle along those principles.
  I read in this greatest man-made document ever penned, the 
Constitution of the United States, I read the First Amendment, the 
Second Amendment, the Third Amendment, and on through the Tenth 
Amendment, which are classified as the Bill of Rights, Bill of Rights 
that were given and acknowledged by the Framers and Founders and the 
implementers of these amendments, the Bill of Rights, as really 
stemming from God, Himself, unalienable rights, God given, not man 
given, recognizing these rights as above simple human reasoning.
  In recent days, I've read and reread our First Amendment that says:

       Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of 
     religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or 
     abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or the 
     right of people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the 
     government for redress of grievances.

  And I go on to the final, the 10th, that gives the States the 
authority that they should have. And I see what's taking place in 
relationship at this point in time to one complex bill that was passed, 
called the Affordable Health Care Act, but with specifically one 
mandate that I clearly believe runs roughshod of this First Amendment 
when it, in fact, is a law that prohibits the free exercise thereof of 
religious beliefs. Now, again, that's my perspective, but it's a 
perspective I think is backed up by the Framers and Founders in their 
writings and their speeches and their beliefs that they implemented 
into this great, great country.
  Just recently I read an article that, more than just simply being an 
article, gave names of fellow citizens, businesspeople, who through no 
fault of their own, except for the fact that they were religious, they 
were people of faith that had firm convictions, convictions that they 
believed went beyond themselves but went to the God that they honored, 
people like Chris and Paul Griesedieck--I hope I pronounced that name 
right. I don't know them personally, but I know they run a 105-year-old 
company started by their great-grandfather, a company in St. Louis that 
employs 150 people. They are sincere Christians that believe to be 
forced to supply health insurance that provides abortifacient coverage, 
agents that will produce abortions, is against their firmly held 
Christian beliefs and would be a violation of their responsibility to 
their God.
  Now, that's their morality, that's their filter, but from the 
inception of this country, believed that that, along with all other 
religious beliefs, was protected under the Bill of Rights.
  They are at a point right now, if they violate the mandate of the 
law, which they are attempting to get an injunction and attempting 
ultimately to see themselves covered just like churches and Christian 
colleges, but if they aren't, they're looking at a $5 million fine 
under that mandate, annually. They've indicated that that will put them 
out of business.
  There's another company run by David Green--we all know it well--
Hobby Lobby. We've seen their ads at Easter and Christmastime, full-
page ads that he pays for with his own money, to declare the meaning of 
Christmas and the meaning of Easter in his faith. He pays for it, 
longstanding, and yet if he doesn't fall under this mandate and bow the 
knee to the government and not keep his knees bowed to his God that he 
serves, he'll pay a $1.3 million per day fine, which will take the 
13,000 employees that he employs and potentially put them out of a job, 
many of whom agree with his personal strong faith.

                              {time}  1800

  He said, It's come down to the point that I'm forced to either 
abandon my beliefs in order to stay in business or abandon my business 
in order to stay true to my belief. That's not the America that was 
founded by people who put the Bill of Rights together, and specifically 
the First Amendment.
  I could go on with other illustrations about other business owners. 
Well, let me point out one business owner here who is doing significant 
work not only as a very successful 85-year-old insurance executive of 
an insurance company, but he's taken those resources--like Mr. Green, 
who has given over $500 million to charitable causes, living out his 
faith--but this gentleman has done the same thing in reaching out to 
many needy people and developing a business that impacts peoples' lives 
who are in difficult circumstances. His name is Charles Sharpe. He is 
85 years old. He founded Heartland Ministries with the money that he 
developed to provide a Christian rehabilitation program for men and 
women battling drug and alcohol addiction, and a boarding school for 
troubled youth, with his own money. Yet, if he falls under the mandate, 
the employees that are employed running this organization, but more 
importantly the lives that are impacted positively by this ministry, 
will be impacted and the ministry will go under.
  As I said, I could go on and on with other illustrations of how this 
First Amendment liberty is being violated by a country that made this 
as the first of the Bill of Rights.
  Just recently we all heard, I believe, a concern that a briefing had 
been given to U.S. Army Reserve recruits which classified Catholics, 
some Jews, evangelical Christians and Sunni Muslims as religious 
extremists along with the KKK, Al Qaeda and Hamas. In America, 
religions strongly held, firmly believed religious beliefs, are being 
attacked as extremist, along with terrorist organizations like Al 
Qaeda, Hamas and KKK.
  Mr. Speaker, I submit to you this is not America. I don't care what 
the courts have said at this point. They've ruled on a tax. But on a 
constitutional question, I think it's clear for us who read it to 
understand it is more than just the document, but to understand it as a 
warning to us and a reminder that the blessings of the freedom of this 
great Nation come with a commitment to ideals that are beyond us, that 
are timeless, that are important, that we often call religion but are 
beyond that. They are faith that goes to our integrity, our 
convictions, our character.
  John Adams, one of the Founders of our country, John Adams, who 
defended liberty even when he defended the Red Coats under the same 
premise that we believe that all people deserve a hearing and a just 
trial, John Adams, who was willing to give his life, his fortune, his 
sacred honor, said:

       Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious 
     people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any 
     other.

  Why in the world would he say that? There is huge wisdom there, but 
it came from an understanding that humanity wasn't enough in itself. 
Human beings weren't wise enough in their own right, but rather had to 
flow from some truth wiser than that.

[[Page 4967]]

  Social critic Irving Kristol I think encapsulated it when he said:

       This appears to be a sociological truth. It is religion 
     that reassures people that this world of ours is a home, not 
     just a habitat, and that the tragedies and unfairness we all 
     experience are features of a more benign, if not necessarily 
     comprehensible, whole. It is religion that restrains the 
     self-seeking hedonistic impulse so easily engendered by a 
     successful market economy.

  We are a successful market economy here in the United States, and I'm 
grateful for that, and we need to do a lot of work to continue that. 
But our faith beliefs--and I'm not talking about one religion over 
another. I certainly come from a Judeo-Christian viewpoint, and I 
believe it to be true. I would not have given my life to that belief if 
it weren't. It impacts society as a whole.
  Alexander Solzhenitsyn understood it with his life. He said:

       All individual human rights are granted because man is 
     God's creature; that is, freedom was given to the individual 
     conditionally in the assumption of his constant religious 
     responsibility. Two hundred or even 50 years ago, it would 
     have seemed quite impossible in America that an individual 
     could be granted boundless freedom simply for the 
     satisfaction of his instincts and whims.

  Mr. Speaker, I submit to you that seems to be the point in time where 
we're at right now, where we're willing for our whims, our instincts, 
our desires, our own purposes to give in to the baseness of those 
hedonistic philosophies. And it's proven to be true. The results are 
there. Here are just a few of them.
  Since 1960, we have the end of the so-called ``Christian America,'' 
as the media has called it in Newsweek. The U.S. illegitimacy rate has 
rocketed from 5 percent of all births to 41 percent. Among African 
Americans, the share of births out of wedlock is 71 percent. That's up 
from 23 percent in 1960. The percentage of households that were married 
couple families with children under 18 had plummeted by 2006 to just 
21.6 percent. Since Roe v. Wade, 50 million-plus abortions have been 
performed. The Declaration of Independence? We are all endowed with the 
right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
  Between 1960 and 1990, the teenage suicide rate tripled, though the 
number then fell. As of 2006, suicide was the third leading cause of 
death of young adults and adolescents age 15 to 24, just behind 
homicide.
  And I could go on with the tragic results of going away from 
religious belief, faith belief, truth, a moral character. Again, all 
laws are moral--right, wrong or indifferent. We all have filters.
  I submit to you, Mr. Speaker, that we are challenged economically, we 
are challenged socially, we are challenged in our security and we are 
challenged in our liberty because we have wantonly walked away from or 
in complacency have given away the underpinnings that allowed God to 
bless this great country, which is still receiving the results of much 
of that blessing.
  The Founders argued very clearly that ``virtue derived from religion 
is indispensable to limited government.'' The American model of 
religious liberty takes a strongly positive view of religious practice, 
both private and public. Far from privatizing religion, it assumes that 
religious believers and institutions will take active roles in society, 
including ministers, including engaging in politics and policymaking 
and helping form the public's moral consensus. In fact, the American 
Founders considered religious engagement in shaping the public morality 
essential to ordered liberty and the success of their experiment in 
self-government.

                              {time}  1810

  John Witherspoon, a minister who signed the Declaration of 
Independence, said in talking about our Republic, ``a republic once 
equally poised must either preserve its virtue or lose its liberty.''
  Mr. Speaker, as I began, I will never intend to flaunt my religion, 
but I will not hide my faith; and I believe, in this country where 
we've given the greatest amount of freedom to all religious beliefs, we 
would do well to remember that ourselves--to not hold it back but to 
encourage faith and to encourage laws that respect that to the fullest 
degree and say to people like David Green or to the Griesediecks or 
others: we respect you for what you do, your beliefs, and we will 
certainly honor your freedom. We will not impinge upon you by mandates, 
no matter how good the law might seem, because there is something 
higher than health, physical health--and that's our spiritual health, 
our character health, in this country.
  There is a stone above you, Mr. Speaker, that's there tonight and 
that has been here since this great Chamber was put together, and it's 
a quote of Daniel Webster's. I read it often, and it says simply this:
  ``Let us develop the resources of our land, call forth its powers, 
build up its institutions, promote all its great interests--'' Daniel 
Webster could be speaking to us tonight and to our country, Mr. 
Speaker-- ``and see whether we also, in our day and generation, may not 
perform something worthy to be remembered.''
  I submit to you, Mr. Speaker, that if we would restore liberty and 
justice for all, if we were to restore the opportunity to live under 
our spiritual liberties and beliefs and not mandate people to go 
against that--bow their knees to almighty government as opposed to 
bowing to Almighty God--this Nation will be a blessed Nation under God, 
with liberty and justice for all.
  Mr. Speaker, I thank you for the opportunity tonight, and I yield 
back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________