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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Jonathon Cherne

What is Religious Liberty?

I forgot this was Valentine's and a love weekend.

But I thought my message is kind of right on cue, right?

We want to all fall in love with religious liberty.

So I hope you all fall in love with religious liberty by the end of my sermon.

Father in heaven, Lord, it's a joy to be here.

A joy, Lord, to be able to worship together, Lord, to have community and fellowship, not in fear, Lord, but just to be able to worship you in freedom, in spirit and in truth, Father.

Lord, I ask that you bless us now as we enter this worship hour, Lord, please give me your words.

May you only put your words in my mind, Lord, and not my own.

And may the people hear the words that you want them to hear.

May your spirit be present and felt, we pray in Jesus name, Amen.

We're going to talk a little bit about religious liberty.

So, as you heard, I'm a religious liberty attorney, and just a quick background.

Last year, 1 of my cases I was working on went up to the Supreme Court, the Groff case.

It was against the post office And that was a postal worker.

He keeps Sundays as his day of observance.

And the post office struck a deal with Amazon and wanted to, people wanted the post office to deliver their packages on Sundays.

Groff, said I can't do that, that's when I go to church.

And they said, well, just come in afterwards and you can deliver packages afterwards.

And he said, no, actually, I keep all of Sunday as a Sabbath.

And so they ended up writing him up and He was at the last step right before termination.

And so people ask me, how'd you get to the Supreme Court?

I was like, well, the way you get to the Supreme Court is by losing.

We lost at the trial court, and so we appealed to the appellate court, and we lost at the appellate court, and so then we appealed to the Supreme Court.

So that's how you get to the Supreme Court.

So sometimes, you know, you have to lose in life to gain.

And so it's okay if you lose or have setbacks.

So the issue in the case, you know, when you get to the Supreme Court you're not really deciding your specific case, you're deciding a question about the law.

And the issue was under the law, under Title VII, it says that employers can't discriminate based on your religious beliefs unless it would be an undue hardship on the business.

And the Supreme Court had defined undue hardship back in the 70s as anything that's more than a de minimis cost to the business.

Now, de minimis means trivial or nothing, right?

And a hardship is something that's really hard.

So it didn't really make sense, the definition there.

And so we argued to the Supreme Court that the way they had defined undue hardship wasn't correct, that a hardship means what it means, something that would be very difficult for the employer, that they should have to accommodate unless there would be a significant cost or some sort of significant difficulty.

And so we got a 9-0 decision, which was very hard to do in this polarized environment.

We weren't sure that we would get some of the more liberal-leaning justices.

But that helped a lot because then it kind of took away the whole political element of the case.

Because it wasn't really political, it was about religious liberty for all.

And that's what we stand for as Seventh-day Adventists, is religious liberty for all, which is why we took the case.

And so we need to remember that religious liberty isn't just for ourselves, for our beliefs, but it's for everyone, for everyone's beliefs.

And so we need to remember to stand up for everyone's beliefs.

Now religious liberty is kind of something we've taken for granted here in the United States because it's never really been much of an issue for us, at least not during our lifetime.

The biggest issues are whether the government can display a cross or the 10 Commandments or you know nothing that really impacts us personally but there's a lot of people around the world that are suffering and a lot of Seventh-day Adventists in other parts of the world that are worshipping today in fear of their government and we need to remember to pray for those people and pray for strength and encouragement for them.

Says, our own land is to become a battlefield on which is to be carried on the struggle for religious liberty." It says right here, you know, where we're comfortable, where we've never really had religious liberty fight, it says to be a battlefield.

The struggle for religious liberty to worship God according to the dictates of our own conscience.

And so this is really the essence of religious liberty, is to be able to worship God according to the dictates of your own conscience.

You can worship God according to the dictates of your conscience, and you can according to yours, and everyone has the freedom to think and believe their own conviction, right?

It's not just the freedom to think and believe, but it's also the freedom to act on your conscience.

If I just have the freedom to think and believe that the Sabbath is the Sabbath, but I'm not able to go and worship on the Sabbath, then that's not real religious freedom, right?

And so religious freedom, religious liberty, is also acting out that belief, being able to act out that belief.

She says, Then can we not discern the work of the enemy is keeping men asleep who ought to be awake, whose influence shall not be neutral, but holy and entirely on the Lord's side.

Shall men cry, peace and safety now when sudden destruction is coming upon the world.

And so we know that at some point, you know, from Revelation 13, that religious liberty won't be something that we get to experience here in the United States.

And so we need to be grateful and thankful for that.

I'm going to have a little quiz for you here.

How many of you think wearing a scarf is a religious liberty issue?

Anyone think killing animals is a religious liberty issue?

Is wearing a skirt a religious liberty issue?

Is having lunch with a neighbor a religious liberty issue?

Anyone think, no, that can't be a religious liberty issue?

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What is Religious Liberty?

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