Trinity Western, Religious Education and Equality Rights

There will be those who settle easily on one side or the other of the Trinity Western (TWU) law school issue. As it stands right now, TWU law school grads cannot be certified to practice in Ontario, BC, or Nova Scotia. Although there are various conflicting court rulings on this matter, the Ontario Courts recently ruled against TWU. You can find the story: here. (If you have not been following this issue, TWU is a BC Christian university that has a faith test, as it were, for admission or employment. In effect, one has to promise that one is either straight or  celibate; and not having sex if one is not married. Some provinces have refused to accredit TWU grad on the grounds that the university discriminates against LGBTQ.)

The question is: should the court have ruled in this way? Ontario is the big lawyer prize, after all. I think TWU would view it as a problem if BC and NS were not on side and would continue to press for accreditation but Ontario, well, that is a big hunk of the market since TWU seems uninterested in Quebec. The other provinces have agreed to accreditation, although the matter is far from settled in some provinces and I expect this story will not end until the Supreme Court decides whether or not it will hear the case and, if it does, until there is a verdict.

The easy answers come from simplifying the issue. Those who support TWU argue that they are just an educational option -- something similar to Crandall with a law school -- and that freedom of religion (which is actually freedom of conscience) protects their students. Hence, even if TWU has some strict rules that intrude on people's personal lives (something other universities do not) and which, de facto and I believe intentionally, discriminate against LGBTQ people ... well, that is, say its proponents, just a matter of worship in which the state should not be involved.

Hold it, say TWU's opponents. Religiously based schooling is problematic precisely because it is discriminatory. Look at what has been going on in the US where the evangelical offensive has limited equality rights and promoted some odd sets of views that seem to say it is OK to discriminate against people as long as you do it for religious reasons. Do we really want that in Canada? Moreover, should a lawyer -- a member of the bar -- sworn to uphold the Constitution and the Charter actually be in a position where they support a law school that denies Charter rights? Is that not a bit too much to swallow?

One of the bigger issue is one I touched on some time ago: how do Christians make a place for themselves in a late modern pluralistic society where their views can no longer be taken for granted and where they, themselves, cannot influence public policy the way they used to? This is not an issue that would have been an issue, say, 50 years ago simply because every university would have accepted -- at least discursively -- the place where TWU now stands. What does that place look like? I tried to suggest that one approach Christians had taken was to create parallel institutions and then try to claim that their institutions allowed them full participation in society writ large. Thus, their schools -- even if they discriminate -- should be taken as the same as any other school. I'm not sold on this as a prescription, but it is one approach that Christians have taken.

I suspect that TWU has a long road to hoe on this one. Why? Well, because TWU is -- without recognizing it -- playing with fire. They are so convinced that this issue is about them versus secular society and efforts on the part of someone in secular society to deny them equal rights that they are missing the bigger picture. I'll argue below that the Supreme Court needs to take that bigger picture into consideration if it gives leave to TWU to hear this case. In fact, it is the Supreme Courts job to look at the bigger picture.

On the other hand, I can't agree with those who dismiss TWU out of hand either. TWU is doing nothing wrong by using the legal channels to advise its case. We might disagree with them -- I have some serious problems with discrimination as I suspect most of the people reading this blog do -- but citizens have the right to use the courts and to advance any argument they so choose. Rosa Luxembourg once said that freedom is freedom for the other. That is, the test of our commitment to democracy was not our insistence on the exercise of our rights but our willingness to ensure and protect other people's rights. Thus, if we are interested in rights, we need to think about our willingness to defend the rights of others with whom we disagree ... and perhaps passionately. I have limits (and I've spelt these out before and so I won't again) but the TWU folks and their advocates have obeyed the law and attempted to make their case in a reasoned and legal way that is -- they at least allege -- consistent with the Charter. We cannot, then, fault TWU for doing what we expect citizens to do in a mature democracy: use peaceful, legal, reasoned and constitutional means to voice decent in an effort to get change in specific laws.

(Nor do I think that this one case will transform Canada into Alabama or even Indiana. The political culture, electoral system, etc., is so different that we Canadians are not about to run into the problems with the denial of rights that has occurred in some states in the US.)

This said, the other bigger issue is likely the one that most people want to talk about: should TWU be accredited? The answer to this question is complicated by three factors:

1. A denial of accreditation affects graduates and not necessarily the law the school and the people who run it. Accrediting the school means allowing graduates to practice law in that province. This is important to note because we do not necessarily know what those graduates themselves think.  Safeguards could be put in place to ensure that our legal profession in each province does indeed support the Charter. Private firms have the right to hire who they will and they would be completely -- as far as I can tell -- at liberty to say to a prospective hire "look, we need to know that you support the Constitution and the Charter and that means that you must be committed to equality. We hire women, we hire straights and gays, we hire on merit, not on faith. If we are going to hire you, we need to know that you are on board with that. Are you? You will not use your position here to place this law firm in the awkward position of standing outside the law."

Private firms can ask that because they are spending their money. They are not refusing to hire anyone on the basis sex or faith or anything. Instead, they are making a commitment to the Constitution a condition of employment. And, to be honest, if I ran a law firm, I'd want to know that my co-workers were committed to the law that they are supposed to be upholding and sustaining (all lawyers must agree to uphold the law in order to practice).

Said differently, I am not 100% sure that we should judge the lawyer by the school from which he or she came. I've said this before but it goes double for law schools ... we don't know why some people chose particular schools and we don't know their views. I go to a church that has made a strong commitment to ensuring that religious education gets the same funding as the public system. If you've read my blog, you know that I'm far more ambiguous on that issue and I don't want to be judged by what others in my church say, particularly when I disagree with them. So, before we scratch TWU off the list -- and we might end up doing that anyway -- we should pause and think that we might be scratching people off the list who actually share our views. Is that a good thing to do?

The state can make the same qualifications requirements of the job, but more so. My wife works in the NS Public Prosecution Services and they have an even higher burden to maintain the law than those in private practice. They cannot reject the Constitution because they are the ones who are supposed to uphold it. Thus, the state can say to prospective new lawyers: look, you have to uphold the Constitution and that means that you will have to defend equality for gay people and -- potentially -- argue against funding for religious institutions like the one from which you graduated or you might have to take the same side as gay and lesbian plaintiffs against discriminatory religious institution (FYI, I don't believe this is going to happen but follow the argument). Can you do this? Said in other words: the state is more than at liberty to say "we're in the Charter enforcing business and we can only hire lawyers who are in that business. We are the state. We have to treat everyone equally and personal religious perspectives are not good enough to opt out of that obligation."

2. The second thing that we need to bear in mind here as a complicating factor is that, unlike Crandall, TWU's faith-based requirements really might impose some level of material harm on LGBTQ people. There are, by design, only a limited number of law school positions in Canada. If a certain percentage of those are not accessible to LGBTQ people and only accessible to those who mirror the faith-based criteria of TWU ... then, we do have a more substantial problem than a small primarily undergrad institution like Crandall, where substitutes are readily available.  In effect, Christians are saying that a percentage of the legal profession will be de facto reserved for them and will, de facto, exclude LGBTQ people.

Since, as I have explained previously in this blog, the law in Canada must work in a way that promotes equal benefits (and I explained why previously), this is something more than a minor issue. In effect, to accept TWU's claim is not simply to allow freedom of conscience, it is to allow a situation where there is *not* equal benefit of the law. Christians are not prohibited from applying any law school in Canada. They are not required to abrogate their faith to attend those schools or to enter into social or marital or sexual arrangements which contravene their faith. They may -- for their own reasons -- prefer to attend TWU but those are personal reasons, not legal ones. The fact is this: neither Dal nor UNB nor any other law school has an admission requirement that prohibits admission to straight Christians (the TWU market). Thus, we have discrimination one way but not the other.

What I am trying to say is this: TWU is not simply asserting freedom of conscience, something I can get behind, as I suspect can most people, but they are a legal institution that is engaging in a practice that is denying equal benefit of the law.  This does not mean that the Supreme Court will rule against them but it does, in my view, damage the case they are making.

3. The third complicating factor is precedent. And, I suspect that this may weigh heavily on the Court's mind (because, of course, it has to since their rulings establish precedents). Several years ago there was a bit of a stink about Sharia law in Ontario. It was never a serious option (we don't need to get into the details) nor a seriously considered option, including by the vast vast majority of the Muslim community. But, it briefly incited a significant debate about the boundaries between religion and the state. My view at that time was that religious groups did not have a right to call on the state to enforce religious laws that stood outside the criminal code or civil or administrative or regulatory or constitutional, etc., law in Canada.

What TWU needs to think about -- why I think they are playing with fire -- is that they are moving to establish a precedent that I suspect they will regret trying to establish: religion in law is OK and discrimination is OK if you can claim it is religiously based. TWU's case, in other words, is that their discrimination is based in faith and therefore protected by freedom of conscience. The state, IOW, must protect and facilitate the very thing that upset people about Sharia law. The state can be called upon to enforce religious law: in this case allowing accreditation to a legal educational institution that denies equal benefit of the law and -- apparently -- rejects the equality provisions of the Charter.

Because the Canadian state must treat people equally, the state cannot, then, deny rights to other groups that it upholds for TWU. Just about anyone can, then, provided they use a religious defense, create institutions that discriminate and the state must accept and accredit its graduates. What if that freedom of conscience meant prejudice against black Canadians (don't say "no way" Christianity does not have a good record on slavery), or Native people, or that women should not have certain jobs (I know Christians who fundamentally believe that women should not be in leadership roles and can site scripture to that purpose) or ... the converse: an atheist who believes that Christians should be second class citizens and denied equal rights?

Said differently, TWU thinks it is defending its rights and the rights of its graduates but it is doing something, the implications of which are far broader and deeper than they realize. They are, as it were, asking the court to legalize Sharia law. And, as Canadians, might ask: are we happy with that?

The Implications of Our Choices: Free Tuition and Religious Education

Free tuition -- whatever that precisely means -- has become oddly controversial in New Brunswick. In previous blogs, I tried to address some of the controversies but I tended to focus on those who opposed free tuition in order to make the case that education was good and that improving access to it carried with it a series of positive effects for the wider society. I also tried to argue that using the educational system and guaranteeing access to it (allowing one meets certain standards) regardless of incomes is neither a new nor a radical idea. It is generally consistent with the mainstream of post-WW II equality ideals that have animated the Canadian polity and that are, in my view, widely supported by the vast majority of the Canadian electorate. In fact, they are so widely supported that I suspect that the vast majority of Canadians would be surprised that anyone would question that idea that expanding access to education is a good thing.

More recent controversies are not in the public eye as much but are interesting to note because they raise interesting questions about the scope of state support for post-secondary education. Here in NB there are several small Christian universities. The only one of any size -- and, hence, the one around which controversy swirls -- is Crandall, a "private" Baptist university in Moncton, NB. Crandall is one of those institutions that, if it did not exist, someone would have to invent it. Both its opponents and proponents seem to desperately need it. Its opponents -- and I've addressed some matters relating to Crandall in the past -- see it as a discriminatory institution that is duplicitous (at best) in the perpetuation of homophobia. It is discriminatory - in that it maintains a faith test - that eliminates non-practicing Christians or people from other religious groups (say, Muslims or Jews) - as well as member of the LGBTQ  communities and -- potentially -- those of us who support them -- from employment or education.

It proponents, of course, have a different view. They tend to argue that Crandall provides educational choice and that the state should not censor or limit educational choice. As I've tried to indicate before in this blog, I am not in favour of a religious means test as a condition of state support for such things as grants. I would not necessarily consider myself a proponent of Crandall University -- in fact, I've argued against their faith test and its theology in the past -- but I do feel that having the state impose religiously-based conditions for is support (that is, in the case of Crandall that it needs to support a specific religious point of view with regard to equality for gays and lesbians) is problematic and a matter of concern. I've also tried to argue that there might be far more ground than we generally believe to accommodate different religious views within the mainstream of Canadian institutions without, in any way, harming those institutions or lessening our commitments to equality (be it religious or with regard to LGBTQ).

This kind of discussion has been raised again regarding NB policies for free tuition because Crandall -- as a private institution -- is disqualified.  The free tuition programme is intended to support so-called "public" post-secondary institutions (NBCC, Mt A, etc.). Hence, students at Crandall, because it is a private institution, do not qualify for the low-income free tuition programme.  Crandall proponents -- including one of its administrators -- have expressed concern about this and tend to argue that this see this as discrimination. Crandall's students, they argue, should not be excluded from this programme simply because they are attending a Christian university. The Crandall spokespeople whose comments I have read have, in fact, approached this issue in a measured and balanced way.  They are, in my view, involved in a bit of spin but the comments that I have read have been measured, logical and reasoned.

Not so, some of Crandall's other supporters who have used much more extreme language. They have mocked the current government (particularly but not exclusively its decision to create a Ministry of Celtic Affairs), accused it of lying about tax policy, and suggested that this free tuition policy amounts to an attack on religious freedom. They have organized a petition, brought it to Baptist churches to sign, and suggested that further attacks on religious might be forthcoming. Indeed, political pressure needs to be brought to bear on this government -- one chap at my church said that we need to show the government that "Christian votes count" -- potentially to the point of campaigning against the government so as to have it defeated.

This is a different question and begs important questions that I write about here because, I think, they go to heart of key issues in contemporary Canadian public life. These include (but are not limited to):

• Should the state fund institutions that do practice discrimination if that discrimination is deeply believed, say for religious reasons? 
• Is religion -- and particularly Christianity -- under attack? 
• Should the state modify its position with regard to religion, say removing the tax free status of religious institutions? 
• Should private institutions be included in free tuition programmes? 

I can't -- and likely shouldn't! -- answer all these questions today but I really do want to address one. It is this: religion is *not* under attack in New Brunswick today. The failure of the current government in NB to *not* include Crandall in its "free tuition" programme has nothing to do with religion. In my next blog, I'll try to address the question of whether or not it should have included Crandall, a question that, I want to argue, is far trickier than either the proponents or opponents of Crandall seem to believe or want to concede. 

There could be any number of reasons for excluding private institutions from this legislation. The most obvious one is that the taxpayers of NB are going to put some cash on the line and it is very difficult to regular private institutions (I'll leave the merits of this to one side). It is far easier to regulate "public" institutions like Mount A. Although it *does not* do this, because Mount A is a semi-public institution, the government can relatively easily regulate it. If it wanted -- and it does not want -- it could legislate my pay, change the way in which Mount A is administered, tell us (and it does do this) what we can charge students for tuition. It could, if it wanted, even insist that we meet certain standards say regarding pedagogical objectives. Mount Allison (the institution at which I work and so I use it as a handy example) is, moreover, bound by the specific requirements of the Charter. I personally do not consider these a burden (and you'll see why I make this point in a minute) but they do require that we conform to equality and human rights legislation. Unlike Crandall, for instance, we cannot specify a faith test for employment or enrollment. Said differently, the more extreme Crandall proponents make it seem like institutions like Mount A have all the benefits that have been denied to Crandall by virtue of their status as "public institutions" but this is not actually the case. There are, in fact, a series of obligations -- to conform to the Charter (which, again, I support) -- and to accept state regulation from which Crandall is exempt.

And Crandall is exempt from these obligations by virtue of its own design. The government did not choose to make Crandall a "private" institution. Crandall did. And, it did this to precisely to avoid the obligations under which Mount A operates. In other words, and more specifically, it did not want to be committed to the equality provisions of the Charter. There are, no doubt, other reasons as well but for one reason or another, the LGBTQ issue has come to the fore in recent years. Crandall also looks to impose (and I don't think this imposition is, in fact, a heavy burden for its students or staff but it is an imposition) specific moral standards and modes of living  as well as promoting certain beliefs to be held in common. This, too, is something that Mount Allison (as an example) is simply not allowed to do. Thus, while I do not consider a commitment to equality, say, to be a burden, the folks at Crandall did and they defined themselves as a private institution precisely to avoid this burden. 

Fair enough. I'm not at all certain I agree, but at the time these decisions were made and when they were revisited (as I am sure they periodically are), Crandall was operating within the framework of post-secondary educational law in NB and within the framework of the federal Constitution. We may not like the decisions that the folks who run and support Crandall made but ... that was their decision to make and they did not step outside the law or the Constitution to do it. 

The question of whether or not a self-defined private institution that has made that decision -- to be "private" as opposed to "public" --  in order to avoid Constitutional and legal obligations imposed by the state should have the benefit of state support is a different matter. And this -- not the question of religious free or religion being under attack -- is the question that is actually at issue. To the best of my knowledge, no serious person, institution or government official questions freedom of conscience in Canada (including NB). I have never heard any serious person question it and where I have heard religious freedom questioned (from people who are best considered unusual or extremist) it has been regarding non-Christians groups, particularly but not exclusively Muslims. 

Said differently, the question that the proponents of Crandall would have us ask -- should we have freedom of religion? -- is not actually the question that is at issue. The issue is *not* the right of Crandall to exist; it is not the right of students to attend Crandall; or even the right of students graduating from Crandall with their BEds, say, to be certified as teaches. The question is actually this: can Crandall live with the implications of its own choices? 

There is more to this and I'll get to that in a while, but when asked in this way, we have a different question. After all, as I said, no one opposes religious freedom. But, whether or not a religious institution that does not have to conform to post-secondary obligations imposed on other institutions should also be allowed to take part in programmes designed for those institutions ... is a different question. Said differently, and perhaps far too simply, should Crandall have its cake and eat it too? 

Asked in this -- what I would argue is a more accurate -- way, the extremism of some of Crandall's supporters becomes difficult to stomach. It becomes, at best, misinformation that is produced by fuzzy thinking that clouds (as opposed to clarifies) an important issue that New Brunswick should be discussing. 

I'll break off here because this blog is already too long but I suspect my point is now clear: we need to discuss the issue of "free tuition" accurately if we are going to advance this policy. 

Moral Standards

Sorry folks: this one is long.

One of the low level on-going debates here in New Brunswick relates to Crandall University, formerly Atlantic Baptist University. Crandall receives modest amounts of public support. That public support is larger then one might think if we were to properly calculate it, but let’s use the existing definition that Crandall’s critics seem to be using: direct grants from state bodies. The federal government provided some infrastructure spending last year (or, over the last two years, apologies I did not check out the facts) and the City of Moncton provides a very small grant, somewhere between $100 000.00 and $200 000.00 dollars. For those of you who go, gee … that ain’t small, for comparison Mount A (where I work) has a total budget approximating $40 million and we are a small university. Crandall is primarily supported through tuition fees and the Atlantic Baptist Convention. To be sure, then, we are not dealing with regularized state support (infrastructure grants are not regular) or on-going support in any significant way. In terms of university funding, to say this again, we are dealing with tiny amounts of money.

I feel I need to make this point because reading some of the critics of Crandall, particularly those who argue that something is horribly amiss if the institution receives state support, might lead one  to believe that mass amounts of public money are flowing to religiously based institutions. Point number one of this discussion should be to acknowledge that this ain’t the case.

Point number two should be to acknowledge that the problem with Crandall is not its statement of faith. I listened -- courtesy of a friend who sent me the link -- to the CBC discussion of whether or not religious institutions violate academic freedom. I think that anyone who seriously believes in diversity will accept the idea that in a vibrant civil society there will be all kinds of institutions. Some of these will be secular (in NB UNB), some will be semi-secular (STU), some will be secular in practice and ignore their religious heritage (Mount A), etc. In other words, different institutions will do different things and provides services to different communities. Moreover, these institutions will change over time as they direct their future. I see nothing wrong with this. I do think, however, that the argument made by critics of religiously-based education -- that it is somehow wrong -- is completely off the mark. One would need to do something more they theorize here. I’d need some evidence. In other words, I would say that one is innocent until proven guilty, a fact that a lot of the critics of religiously-based schools seem to have neglected. They assume the worst.

So, is Crandall’s statement of faith a problem? Does it hamper freedom of speech? Is anyone making that allegation who works there (as opposed to people who have visited for an afternoon and have no knowledge of how it works)? Are any students alleging that their voices are being silenced? To date, the critics of Crandall have provided no one single case. Now, I am not trying to be hard on the critics. If there is a case, let’s here about it. But, the fact of the matter is that the facts seem to be for Crandall on this point. When its president argues on CBC that the statement of faith does not hamper academic freedom, he seems to have the weight of evidence on his side.

This is important to me as a scholar. Anyone can speculate and speculation can be fun. But, we need to remember that speculation is speculation. It is not empirical reality. So, for those who don’t like Crandall, don’t speculate: send in your evidence. Post it on this blog. No “if X then  Y but also maybe Z” but actual cases.

In point of fact, if we accept the idea of freedom of religion, as guaranteed by the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, Crandall’s statement of faith is fairly innocuous. It basically says you have to be a Christian to work here. As I understand it, everyone who works at Crandall has to sign this statement of faith. Those who oppose Crandall will say that this is wrong but this raises another issue. Do we want the state telling universities who they can and cannot hire? Would not that be a violation of academic freedom? Gee … Mount A, I see that you are semi secular and you don’t have enough agnostics on staff, your next six hires will have to be agnostics. I’d argue that this would not be good. Yet, oddly, in asking for sanctions against Crandall -- financial penalties, in effect -- this is what Crandall’s opponents argue. The state should use its financial power to punish those people who take seriously the freedom of conscience provisions of the Canadian constitution.

The real issue and the crux of the matter is something other than the statement of faith. It is Crandall’s “Statement of Moral Standards.” In fact, I’d go so far as to say that the real issue is not its anti-porn provisions (most academics, I suspect, will accept that having already been convinced by feminist arguments against pornography) but its anti-gay provision. In other words: one line is cause the problem.

I am less certain how applicable this. I don’t know whether one must agree to this statement as well. Here those people like me who defend Crandall run into difficulties for a couple of reasons. Let’s start with big reason number one:

1) the theology is faulty. Yep: this statement is based on a pretty loose and weak reading of The Bible.  Let me give you two examples: the anti-gay provision is simply debatable. Sorry. If anyone takes the Bible seriously, there is no way that they can make a hard and fast statement that “God doesn’t like gay people.” End of discussion. Only an ideologue could make this statement. Jesus, for instance, never mentioned anything about homosexuality. (Again, I’m a bit of an empiricist: prove me wrong. Post your evidence. Give me a quote from Jesus.)

Moreover, this statement is a bunch of “thou shalt nots.” That is pretty shaky Christianity. Where is the “thou shalt.” For instance, references to helping the poor are mentioned frequently by just about everyone in the Bible (I read there are something like 2000 references to helping the poor). That is absent from Crandall’s statement and that is just plain wrong from a Christian perspective. I’d argue, in fact, that Crandall should be embarrassed about this absence and about their neglect of God’s word.

2) The “Statement of Moral Standards” readily acknowledges that it is not based on the Bible. Here is a direct quote: “Every community has standards.  As a Christian community, Crandall University upholds Christian standards of behavior to which faculty and staff are required to conform.  These standards derive not only from the Christian scriptures, but also from the culture of the supporting evangelical constituency.”

Here is the problem, you are not asking me to defend your freedom of religion any longer but your culture. I’m more than willing to argue that culture  is culture. The government should not be in, say, the assimilation business. Someone moves to Canada from, say, England, nothing should be done to force them to change their accent or change their diet or religion. A silly example, to be sure, but you get my point. We can defend freedom of religion and argue that this is important. It is another thing to defend the intrusion of institutions into people’s lives on the basis of something as vague as “the culture of the supporting evangelical constituency.” I consider myself part of that constituency. I don’t donate a lot of money to Crandall but they are on my list of missions to which I will be contributing this year. Yet, the anti-gay part of their moral statements clearly contravenes my culture. Culture is notoriously slippery. If the supporting culture favours Italian food, does it become a requirement?

Moreover, and this is the key point, we need to be really careful here. Crandall advocates can say “this is God’s will” (or this is Biblically grounded) but, as I have already demonstrated, they have made selective use of the Bible, neglecting key elements of God’s desire for us (care for the poor) and substituting others that are far more shakey. This is not the word of God but human beings claiming the right to tell us what the will of God is. And, let us be clear, this is something different. Christians have a bad history of interpreting the will of God for other people and imposing it on them. We don’t need to review the history such things in Canada because we can simply use the words “residential school” and that should be enough for anyone to be cautious about too much certainty.

Let’s not go overboard. If there is no requirement to sign the moral statements and agree to it, no harm has been done: no harm no foul. If Crandall permits and encourages open discussion of their statement of faith, how far it can be applied, whether or not it should be modified, etc., academic freedom has been preserved. Their president seemed to be suggesting this and so I will take him at his word. What I would suggest is that just about everyone in this low-grade debate is wrong. Those who reject state funding are wrong and, in fact, in violation of the very document -- the Charter -- on which they base their arguments. There is no mass movement of public dollars to religious institutions and, in fact, Crandall is part of a broader post-secondary educational system that includes all matter of different institutions (it is not a secular v religious black and white dichotomy). Crandall, on the other hand, needs to rethink their moral statements and needs to make them more pro-active. God is about many things, but among the things he is about are mercy, justice, and love. I’d like to see those things more directly stated.