Dr. Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, will testify Thursday, Nov. 10, in support of the Workplace Religious Freedom Act, H.R. 1445. He will deliver his testimony before the Employer-Employee Relations Subcommittee of the House of Representatives Committee on Education and the Workforce.
Land will also participate in a press conference preceding the hearing at the Rayburn House Office Building in Room 2257 at 10:00 a.m. tomorrow. The hearing and testimonies will begin at 10:30 a.m. in Room 2175 of the Rayburn Building.
“As Southern Baptists, we believe God has endowed all people with the freedom to believe and express religious faith, and we are thankful the Declaration of Independence recognizes that right as a gift from our Creator,” Land said.
“Americans should not have to check the freedom to exercise their faith at the door of their workplace. This first of our freedoms, guaranteed by the Bill of Rights, is in need of defending in our day. The Workplace Religious Freedom Act would address this need and re-establish the protection Congress put in place three decades ago before court rulings undermined it. We call on Congress to pass this bill in a timely manner and restore religious liberty for all Americans in the workplace.”
Other individuals scheduled to testify include Rep. Mark E. Souder (R-Ind.); Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-N.Y.); Richard Foltin, legislative director and counsel, American Jewish Committee; Samuel A. Marcosson, associate dean and professor of law, Louis D. Brandeis School of Law; and Camille A. Olson, partner, Seyfarth Shaw LLP.
The Southern Baptist Convention is America’s largest non-Catholic denomination with more than 16.3 million members in over 43,500 churches nationwide. The Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission is the SBC’s ethics, religious liberty and public policy agency with offices in Nashville, Tennessee, and Washington, D.C.
