In 1993, the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (or as it was then known, the Christian Life Commission) helped engineer a piece of legislation that had not only Southern Baptists, but religious Americans of all stripes, cheering.
The organizations that worked to pass the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), which broadened protections for religious exercise, were a motley crew that ranged from staunch conservatives like the Christian Legal Society and Home School Legal Defense Association to well-known liberals like the ACLU and People for the American Way, the group founded by left-wing Hollywood icon, Norman Lear.
For more than two years, this diverse coalition met monthly at the ACLU’s offices on Capitol Hill. There, they devised a statute that would bar the government from forcing individuals, ministries, and businesses to violate their sincerely-held religious beliefs. The beliefs could not be violated unless the government could demonstrate it had a “compelling interest” and ensure that any regulation employed the “least restrictive means” of achieving that interest. In other words, it was meant to restore the free exercise standard that had been lost with the 1990 Supreme Court case, Employment Division v. Smith.
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