About The NCRF
Protecting and defending religious freedom for all Americans
The NCRF Mission
The National Committee for Religious Freedom is 501(c)4 political action non-profit that exists to proactively defend the constitutional rights of religious freedom so that all Americans, their religious communities, and faith -based institutions can peacefully and publicly exercise their religious beliefs.
The NCRF is legally permitted to promote and endorse political candidates and can also support or oppose legislation or ballot initiatives.
The NCRF defends religious freedom by identifying and supporting elected officials and candidates who are committed to upholding the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Likewise, the NCRF identifies and work to replace elected officials at every level who are hostile to religious freedom for all Americans.
Introducing the NCRF
The NCRF is led by the Honorable Sam Brownback, former US Ambassador for Religious Freedom. Ambassador Brownback introduces the NCRF and shares why after years of protecting and defending religious freedom abroad, now is the time to focus on defending religious freedom for all Americans here at home.
THE MEANING AND VALUE OF RELIGIOUS FREEDOM
EQUALITY IN AMERICA
The National Committee for Religious Freedom stands with the American Founders in defending religious freedom equally for all Americans and all their religious communities.
The equal right of religious freedom, or “free exercise” of religion, has served our nation well for over two centuries. It has encouraged virtue and neighborliness among our citizens, increased our other freedoms by limiting the power of government, and supported the other fundamental rights enumerated in our Constitution, including the rights of free speech, press, assembly, and redress of grievances.
Religious freedom equality has brought millions of people to our shores seeking the right to worship and to exercise their religion as equal citizens in this great land.
Religious freedom equality has produced the most dynamic, compassionate faith-based civil society in history. It has yielded tens of thousands of religious schools and hospitals, homes for the aged and dying, services for immigrants to our nation, foster care for orphaned or abandoned children, soup kitchens and care for the homeless, and hope for men and women in prison. Our faith-based civil society has encouraged kindness and community in America and has historically made our politics more civil.
Religious efforts have limited the power and reach of government, in part because of the huge numbers of services religious communities have provided, services that otherwise might be provided by government, and in part because most religious citizens and their communities are faithful to a transcendent authority greater than government.
Our Founders reflected this understanding when they penned the radical religious truth claim of our Declaration of Independence, namely that each of us is equal because we are each created by a benevolent God. Grounded in this radical moral equality, each of us possesses certain “inalienable” rights.
These rights are not the gift of government. They are the gift of God. Any just government – especially the revolutionary Republic the Founders were launching at the risk of their lives — must nourish and protect inalienable rights, including the inalienable right of religious freedom.
With the Founders, we believe in religious freedom equality because we believe it is necessary and good – for all human beings, all religious traditions, and all societies on this earth.
Eight Guiding Principles on Religious Freedom:
Religious freedom was guaranteed by our Founders in the First Amendment because they believed religion important for America – for the flourishing of citizens and the flourishing of our Republic.
Religion is the universal human search for a greater-than-human source of being, reality, and ultimate meaning. To deny the right to engage in this search, or to live in accord with the truths discovered, is to deny the core of what it means to be human.
In America, religious freedom encompasses the right to believe, or not to believe, in religious truths.
For those who believe, the First Amendment guarantees them the right of religious free exercise, that is, the freedom to live according to their religious beliefs. All Americans are equally entitled to this right. The fundamental purpose of the ban on the establishment of religion is to encourage free exercise by limiting government power over religion.
Religious free exercise entails the rights of conscience. No man or woman may be coerced by the state or any other human agent to believe or to act in ways contrary to his or her religious conscience.
All American religious communities are equally entitled to the right of free exercise.
Historically, the right of free exercise has entailed exemptions from laws in order to avoid undue burdens on religious conscience and practice. Protecting these exemptions is vitally important and must continue. But exemptions alone do not capture the full meaning of free exercise.
Religious free exercise entails private rights, such as worship and internal governance. It also entails public rights, including:
The rights of parents to raise their children consistent with the moral values taught by their religious traditions and to participate actively in the education of their children;
The rights of students to express their religious and moral beliefs in public schools on a basis equal to the rights of expression by all students;
The rights of business owners to operate their businesses in a manner consistent with their religious beliefs and the rights of employees to manifest their religious beliefs in their places of work on a basis equal to the rights of expression of other employees;
The rights of medical professionals, clinics and hospitals, to apply religiously-informed standards in their care for patients, including in their professional judgments on how to protect human life, heal the body, strengthen mental health, and avoid harm to human dignity and flourishing;
The rights of religion-based charitable and non-profit institutions to operate in a manner consistent with their religious convictions, including the right to hire those who accept those convictions and fire those who reject them.