Dan Coats: “to privatize religious belief is to trivialize it. When we treat religion as purely personal--irrelevant to the way we…”

“to privatize religious belief is to trivialize it. When we treat religion as purely personal--irrelevant to the way we live our lives and write our laws--this is not neutrality to religion, it is hostility to religion. The reason is simple: because faith is more than an internal belief, it is a guide to external conduct. And for religious liberty to have any meaning, government and business must accommodate that conduct, within the bounds of reason and order. Consider one case: Ms. Jones, a line worker at Bigco Enterprises approaches her supervisor with a problem: According to her religion, she may not work on Sunday. Ms. Jones will work any other day--including Saturday evenings--without extra pay. But the mandate of her religion is absolute. If given the choice of working on Sunday or losing her job, Ms. Jones will have to resign or risk being fired. The supervisor explains that Bigco has a random shift-assignment policy which requires that every employee work the assigned shift or find a replacement worker. Unable to find a replacement worker, Ms. Jones misses two Sundays, and is fired.”