Vote no on Prop. 3
Laws already protect religious freedom, but barring official action puts too many at risk.
As stay-at-home orders rapidly reduced our worlds to our homes and our screens last year, one of the toughest challenges for many of us was that we couldn’t safely gather in-person with our faith communities. No longer could we safely raise our hands in praise at Sunday worship, pray together in our mosques or sing with the cantor at Friday night Shabbat.
Yet the restrictions were necessary. The best way we could show up as people of faith was to not show up.
Most congregations in 2020 went virtual for at least a few months, if not longer, as a precaution, following the advice of public health experts who recommended avoiding large gatherings. Others, however, quickly pivoted back to in-person, sometimes maskless worship, and churches in Houston and elsewhere experienced outbreaks.
Proposition 3 on this year’s ballot would enact a constitutional amendment barring any Texas jurisdiction from adopting any limits on religious services. The Texas Freedom to Worship Act, passed this year in the regular legislative session, after lawmakers, including all but three senators and all Republicans in the House and nearly half its Democrats, voted to forbid government officials from requiring churches to cancel or limit services when disaster strikes.
The idea was a bad one as a statute, and even worse as an amendment to the Texas Constitution, which would mean not even lawmakers could act to limit public worship in the face of a health emergency.
It could have severe “unintended consequences,” Rice University political scientist Mark Jones told us.
If state or local officials needed to close a church even temporarily due to fire damage or a nearby chemical spill, the congregation could simply refuse.
The amendment is also unnecessary. For decades, courts have recognized religious freedom, especially when it comes to freedom to worship as one chooses, as one of the U.S. Constitution’s most powerful protections. The Supreme Court ruled in November, for instance, that New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s order limiting congregations to 10 or 25 worshippers in areas of New York City with high infection rates violated the First Amendment. As of April, the high court had ruled five consecutive times that California’s pandemic-related limits on religious services were illegal.
But even so, the court has never gone so far as saying that no state interests can ever justify limiting religious services in public. Some dangers are just too large, and restrictions sufficiently reasonable, for such a blanket approach to make sense. Many faith leaders agree, and spoke out last spring against the legislation.
We understand the desire to gather as a faith community, especially in challenging times — but houses of faith are connected to the global neighborhood of humanity. Proposition 3 allows churches to disregard public health and ties the hands of officials trying to keep people safe. Texans should reject it this fall.