A bill called the Religious Liberty Protection Act will be introduced on Friday, June 5, or early the following week. It is already being reported by at least one Washington news outlet that the RLPA is expected to draw broad bipartisan support.

     We would like to add that the RLPA will also draw broad bipartisan opposition. Let me explain.

     While everyone can agree on the importance of protecting the free exercise of religion, the RLPA helps in this noble cause only if religious practice can be proven to be a part of interstate commerce, or if it has been violated by a federally-funded program. This legal transformation of worship into a commercial transaction will be unacceptably offensive to a large number of religious believers.

     Under the Supreme Court’s Commerce Clause decisions, it is likely that the bill may have little impact on the religious liberty of most Americans. But the use of the Commerce Clause power is very troubling to those who believe that the federal government is one of limited powers. RLPA will encourage both Congress and the courts in the belief that the national government can regulate the lives of citizens in any conceivable way. This bill will support massive federal regulation in areas that will destroy, rather than protect, liberty.

     RLPA’s naked attempt to grab federal authority over local zoning and land use decisions is without historical precedent, and could severely damage the ability of local government to preserve and protect our rights and autonomy.

     By protecting religious freedom only for those who impact interstate commerce, RLPA would place courts in the wildly discriminatory position of preserving the rights of large, wealthy religious institutions and ignoring the claims of religious individuals, families, and small churches and ministries, the very groups whose economic and political weakness makes them most in need of the bill’s protections.

     The RLPA is a well-intended attempt to respond to the Supreme Court’s repugnant decisions in Employment Division v. Smith and Boerne v. Flores. We fully support firm congressional responses to those badly misdirected opinions. This approach is not acceptable. Because religious conservatives and other friends of freedom are so badly split over RLPA, we need to slow down the process before good friends damage each other in an unnecessary fight.

     Please, let’s think about this. Worship is not commerce.

Among those who support our position: