Why a Southern Baptist witness before the executive branch is vital

Today, we’re continuing our series focused on our work in Washington D.C. by discussing why a Southern Baptist witness before the executive branch is important. Welcome to The ERLC Podcast where our goal is to help you think biblically about today’s cultural issues.

We’re able to interact with the executive branch of our federal government, advocating for policies that positively affect issues Southern Baptists care about and pushing back against harmful policies that violate our biblical convictions. 

The ERLC’s presence in our nation’s capital allows us to speak up, for, and from our Southern Baptist churches before various audiences. More specifically, we’re able to interact with the executive branch of our federal government, advocating for policies that positively affect issues Southern Baptists care about and pushing back against harmful policies that violate our biblical convictions. 

To help us better understand the executive branch, why Christians should care about this part of our government, and how organizations interact with it is Rachel Morrison. Rachel is a Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, where she directs EPPC’s Administrative State Accountability Project. As an attorney, her legal and policy work focuses on religious liberty, health care rights of conscience, the right to life, nondiscrimination, and civil rights. She is also a member of an SBC church. 

Episode Transcript: Why a Southern Baptist witness before the executive branch is vital

Narration:

Welcome to the ERLC podcast, where our goal is to help you think biblically about today’s cultural issues. I’m Lindsay Nicolaet, and today we’re continuing our series focused on our work in Washington DC.

The ERLC’s presence in our nation’s capital allows us to speak up for and from our Southern Baptist churches before various audiences. More specifically, we’re able to interact with the executive branch of our federal government advocating for policies that positively affect issues Southern Baptists care about, and pushing back against harmful policies that violate our biblical convictions. To help us better understand the executive branch, why Christians should care about this part of our government, and how organizations interact with it is Rachel Morrison. Rachel is a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center where she directs PPC’s Administrative State Accountability Project. As an attorney, her legal and policy work focuses on religious liberty, healthcare rights of conscience, the right to life, non-discrimination, and civil rights. She’s also a member of an SBC Church. 

Now let’s turn to Elizabeth Bristow’s conversation with Rachel.

Elizabeth Bristow:

Rachel, thanks for joining us today.

Rachel Morrison:

Thanks for having me.

Elizabeth Bristow:

My first question is, why should Christians care about what goes on in the executive branch of government, and what are various elements that they should be aware of?

Rachel Morrison:

Well, I think the obvious answer for why Christians should care is because what happens at the executive branch and the federal government will affect them. It could affect their businesses, their jobs, and their daily life. It could affect their churches. It could affect religious ministries that they are part of or support, and it affects their neighbor. And the policies that come out of the executive branch and the federal government that have these impacts, they can be good and support human flourishing and religious liberty and the ability to spread the gospel and serve our neighbors, or they could be bad and inhibit those efforts. And so that’s the bottom line of why Christians should care about what’s going on federally.

Elizabeth Bristow:

So tell me a little bit more about that. When you say they should care, is it more of an awareness or at what point should they take action?

Rachel Morrison:

I think it’s both. It’s important to both know what’s going on because if regulations are affecting you or affecting others that you care about or the church, it’s important to know that. And it’s also important to promote good policies and to oppose bad policies that are inhibiting religious liberty or promoting things like abortion that we do not support.

Elizabeth Bristow:

So what is the relationship between the president and federal agencies within the executive branch, and to what extent is agency policy dictated by the elected president?

Rachel Morrison:

That’s a great question. So the president will set the policy for the executive branch, and this often comes through executive orders that are directing federal agencies to promote certain policies and to issue certain types of regulations. And it also comes through the secretaries and the other political appointees that the president puts into the various agencies that are then implementing the policies throughout those agencies and the various aspects that they are in charge of. And so for folks who might not be aware, there’s a bunch of different federal agencies involved in different areas of federal life. We have the Department of Health and Human Services, which is the largest federal agency by budget, and it involves healthcare. So the FDA, the CDC, the National Institutes for Health that do a bunch of research, but also a bunch of social service programs that help poor people, that help people that are sick, that help provide support and foster care and the like. And so that’s just one example of an agency that’s involved in lots of different facets of life. 

We also have agencies that deal with employment discrimination like the Department of Labor and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and Foreign Policy like the State Department. And so all these different agencies are engaged in different aspects of public and private life and setting regulations. And the agencies are often referred to as the fourth branch of government because they function under the executive branch, but they also end up making a lot of laws through regulations. 

And so what happens is Congress will pass a law that’ll direct an agency to issue more specific rules and regulations that have legal force and bind the public. And so there’s a process that they go through in order to do this, but the rules and regulations in response to the laws that Congress passed are made by unelected officials at these agencies. And they provide a lot more detail that Congress never voted on. And some of these can have big impacts on businesses, on your ability to live out your faith in the public sphere, and the ability of religious organizations to be able to partner with the federal government to provide social services and other things like that to folks in need.

Elizabeth Bristow:

So right out of the gate, we know that President Trump will likely sign executive orders. What are you looking forward to? What are you anticipating and what particular executive orders do you feel Christians should particularly notice and be ready to react to?

Rachel Morrison:

When we look at the Biden Harris administration and the issues I deal with affect human dignity, so the right to life type issues, religious liberty, and a lot of non-discrimination issues come up in that space. So these are the issues that I am focused most closely on. And so in that regard, the Biden Harris administration was radically pro-abortion. It issued a number of executive orders trying to promote abortion through various programs and agencies in the federal government to provide and pay for abortion. Even though federal law does not mandate that the federal government pay or provide abortions for folks, the administration has also radically redefined sex discrimination to include sexual orientation and gender identity. And so a lot of those policies have a lot of impact on people of faith, whether that’s doctors that are being coerced into performing transition procedures on children and even adults, whether that is a faith-based organization that wants to have hiring criteria based on their religious beliefs involving marriage, gender, sex, and having folks that align with that and whether they’re able to do that, whether these organizations are able to partner with the federal government if they have those religious criteria for hiring their employees.

And so there’s been a lot of policies pushing those policy priorities coming out of the Biden administration. And at the same time, there’s been efforts to minimize healthcare rights of conscience in the healthcare field for doctors and hospitals that don’t want to provide abortions or gender transition procedures. And there’s also been a minimization of religious protections for religious employees and faith-based organizations, especially in the ability to live out your faith at work, whether you have to use someone’s self-selected pronouns, whether you have to share a sex specific space with an individual of the other sex who identifies differently than their biological sex and the ability of the faith-based organizations to hire or fire based on their religious beliefs and codes of conduct that they have. And so this is a lot of what I’ve seen coming out of the Biden Harris administration.

And I suspect that there’s gonna be a lot of executive orders that Biden issued on those policy priorities that are going to be done away with probably on day one. The Trump administration has really dug into fighting gender ideology and the importance of recognizing that there are two sexes and having that be established in federal law as it is, and not just trying to reinterpret all of these different provisions prohibiting sex discrimination to include sexual orientation and gender identity. So I suspect that that’s going to be a theme of one or more of the executive orders, probably on day one or the first few weeks. I think there’ll also be executive orders promoting religious freedom more generally, which will be a good thing, but I think we’ll just have to wait and see exactly what all comes down because there’s a lot of different priorities on other areas like immigration and other issues that I don’t deal with in my work as well.

Elizabeth Bristow:

Let’s transition now to talk about the role of public comments in the rulemaking process. Why are they important?

Rachel Morrison:

So the rulemaking process for folks who are not familiar, is the rules and regulations that the agencies issue after Congress has passed a law directing the agencies to provide more specifics. And so this is a fairly lengthy process that can take years. And so the agency will draft a proposed rule that has the specific text to the regulations that would bind the public, and then there’s a preamble that explains why they’re doing what they’re doing, providing the need, justifying the benefits, weighing the costs, and then laying out that proposal. And so once it’s drafted, it goes through a lot of inter-agency review and then intra-agency review. So other agencies and the White House will review it after that stage. It will be published in the Federal Register. And there is a public comment period where members of the public are able to submit written public comments, supporting it, opposing it, providing suggestions, asking questions.

And the beauty of these comments is it can be as little or as much as you want. It can talk about one aspect of the rule, it can talk about the entire rule. It can provide anecdotes, personal stories, research data or just general policy principles. It’s really anything goes when it comes to the public comment. But that’s the opportunity for the public to participate and provide their insights and feedback on what the agency is proposing. Now, after the public comment period closes, it’s often 30, 60, and sometimes more days the agency will review the public comments and they’ll have to respond to the public comments. And after they revise their regulations and have responses to the arguments and the data and the other things raised in public comments, then it will go again through the inter-agency review, the intra-agency review. And then if they decide to continue moving forward, it will be published in the Federal Register, and it’ll go into effect in a number of days after it’s finally published. And then it is what will have the legal force of law and bind the public. 

And so the public comments are very important because this is the public’s opportunity to participate in this process. As I mentioned earlier, the agencies are not elected officials. And so the ability of the public to have their voice be heard in this process on the specifics when it’s coming not through your elected members of Congress is very important. And then as far as the substance and the impact of what is said, we have seen positive changes in response to what has been raised. One theme that has been consistent in a lot of the regulations we’ve commented on, and I know the ERLC and others have commented on, is the importance for respecting the First Amendment free speech, free exercise of religion, and other religious protections in law for individuals and faith-based organizations and the like.

And we’ve seen a change in how the agencies respond to religious rights in federal law. At the beginning, there weren’t very many references or acknowledgements. And now there’s a lot more preemptive statements about the importance of respecting those rights and how they don’t believe that their proposals will impact those rights. Now they’re not always true that it won’t impact those rights, but just the fact that they seem to overwhelmingly recognize that they need to address this and this isn’t something that they can just ignore, and that it’s something that’s important, I think has been a big win from folks who have engaged in the public comment process. Now, some other reasons why folks might want to engage are the folks at the agencies don’t necessarily understand how these rules and regulations will impact you in your daily life or impact your business. They’re not working where you’re working or in your community.

And so this is the chance to provide that insight that they might not have when they’re deciding on how to regulate. We’ve also seen the importance of public comments when it comes to laying the groundwork for litigation to challenge bad rules and pointing out some of the arguments. If you don’t raise it during the public comment process, then you can’t raise it in litigation later. And so that’s been an important part of the process to support litigation that challenges some of the bad proposals that have come out. And it also lays the groundwork for future good rulemaking and the concerns raised in public comments, even if they’re ignored because an agency doesn’t have to agree with your arguments, they just have to respond to it. And it has to be reasoned decision making. So there’s no guarantee that whatever you say will then happen. And it’s not like it’s a vote where if you have more comments that say we don’t like it, and less comments that say we do like it, then they have to go with the majority.

They just have to respond to what is said. But it lays that groundwork for rulemaking in the future that would respect those comments. And so I focused a lot on, I think, opposing bad regulations and the impact that can have because that’s what we’ve seen a lot of out of the Biden Harris administration. I suspect under the Trump administration, there will be a lot more opportunities to support good policy. And we did this under the Biden Harris administration as well. There was a disability rule that provided protections for folks with disabilities and healthcare and ensuring that they receive equal access to treatments and things like that. And that was something, an example of good policy that we supported. There were some other aspects of that rule that we opposed, but it’s not to say it’s all or nothing in any one administration. But supporting good policy is also important because it provides, again, that justification for the reasoned decision making and that support it can support the need for the rule in litigation when someone else is challenging a rule that you think is good.

And so there’s a lot of interplay between what happens in the public comment process and how the agencies respond, and then the ability to have those rules either upheld or struck down in the court. And then as a final note, I think it’s also important because not everyone in an administration has the same policy priorities or might not understand or appreciate or respect religious freedom to the same extent. And so providing these comments on something concrete that folks can point to has been beneficial for folks in the administration that are trying to advocate for religious freedom and conscience rights is something to point to in the need or to the extent that a certain groups or constituency that the administration wants to support or cares about those comments will then help influence the policy. And so I think there’s a lot of great opportunities, and it’s really important because we’ve seen recently that there’s been a number of rules that have been withdrawn.

And the number one reason they cite is that they withdrew the rules, and these were rules that would impact religious freedom. They would promote abortion, they’d impose gender ideology. The number one reason that they withdrew these rules was concerns raised in public comments. And they weren’t quite sure what to do with that. And so without those public comments, those rules could have easily gone through, and it wouldn’t have made the agency consider those important and complicated aspects of what they were actually proposing on the ground. And so I think that it is a big win for everyone who commented on those bad policy proposals, that the administration realized that it wasn’t actually good and that it wasn’t something that they were going to be able to finalize and then probably uphold in court as well.

Elizabeth Bristow:

I’m glad you brought that out here at the very end because I know for a fact that the ERLC had an involvement in filing comments on several religious liberty and pro-life rules where the Biden administration did come back and withdraw those rules, just like you said, because of the impact of groups like ours and yours who are out there advocating for good policy. And so it is such a tangible reminder that the work that we’re doing truly is making a difference and that we should not shy away or feel that we’re insignificant to not even attempt to try. So thanks for explaining to our audience how they can be a part of federal rulemaking and filing these comments to help our government better understand why we advocate for these things. 

Speaking of the ERLC’s work, we like to think of our work in four main categories, life, religious liberty, marriage and family, and human dignity. And I know you said you work in the human dignity sector. And so as we look ahead at 2025 and various policies that the Trump administration might take up, what are you foreseeing as their top priorities on these issues that matter most to Southern Baptists and other conservative Evangelicals? 

Rachel Morrison:

As I mentioned earlier, the Biden Harris administration has tried to radically redefine sex discrimination to include sexual orientation and gender identity. And I anticipate that there’s gonna be a rollback of those regulations. A number of these regulations that have been finalized have been challenged in court. There’s been injunctions on a number of them, but I suspect that there’s going to be the formal withdrawal of those regulations and then new regulations to replace those. And so I think that’s going to be a good thing because there’s been a lot of religious liberty concerns for faith-based organizations or individuals when it comes to these expansive non-discrimination requirements and what all is covered. And of course, non-discrimination sounds good, but when it means that you have to use biologically inaccurate pronouns, when you have to share sex specific spaces with someone of the other sex, when you have to compete in sports <laugh> with someone of the other sex, when an employer has to pay for insurance for a gender transition, or a doctor has to perform a gender transition procedure, these really matter.

And if this is all coming through a sex discrimination framework that has been expanded to include sexual orientation and gender identity, then that’s really problematic when there’s not those protections. And I think it’s also problematic because it’s not just people of faith that have objections to especially the gender ideology that’s being pushed, but other folks have reasons that are not faith-based. And we would say as Christians, that like this isn’t good for humans. And so it’s not something that the religious folks over in the corner can kind of get their exceptions, but it’s something that other folks shouldn’t have to participate in or be a part of as well, regardless of whether their objection is based on religion or on medical or other reasons. So I suspect we’re gonna see a big change there. I also think that on the issue of abortion, the Biden Harris administration has been radically pro-abortion.

And the Trump administration’s not going to be pro-abortion. Now, I don’t think they’re going to be as pro-life as probably I or you or other folks at SBC churches would prefer. But my colleague and I wrote a piece for the Wall Street Journal last year about how Trump’s left abortion to the state’s policy requires the federal government to actually get out of the business abortion. And right now, the federal government is trying to provide abortion benefits. They’re trying to force others to accommodate abortions. They’re trying to pay for abortions and fund abortion providers. And even just getting the federal government out of doing all of those things and stopping the federal government from trying to push others to be involved in abortion. And then on the flip side, respecting the conscience rights of those who are in the healthcare field and enforcing those protections that doctors and hospitals have would be a big win for life, even if it’s not going steps farther and regulating abortion at the federal level, which I think would also take congressional action.

And then there’s constitutional concerns of whether it’s the proper role of the federal government in various ways, but just getting the federal government out of abortion. And so I’m hopeful that the Trump administration will at least take steps to move towards more of a neutral, which would be a big win for life, even if it’s not going to go farther or as far as many of us would like to see. So on those issues, I think that there is definitely going to be a lot of room for improvement in the new administration and movement going on.

As a member of an SBC church in northwest DC I’m particularly pleased to see the ERLC engaging in these issues. Other faith-based groups engaged. A lot of, you know, friends in the Catholic faith tradition, Jewish friends and other Protestant denominations engage. And so I think while a lot of the concerns and priorities that we have is very similar to those other groups when it comes to respecting life or religious liberty and the like, there are distinctions and it’s important that SBC folks have their voice heard because it does affect, and it’s something that I’ve been so pleased to see ERLC engaged. While we’re excited to see everyone engaged, it’s very close to my heart that the ERLC and the community that I’m a part of also thinks it’s important to engage.

Elizabeth Bristow:

Thank you. Yes, we do represent a large body of believers who want to stand up for biblical values in the public square. So we appreciate you and your work that you do and for the ways that we can partner with your organization on these issues that matter most. So thanks for joining us today. 

Rachel Morrison:

Thanks, Elizabeth. Great to be here.

Narration:

As you heard from Rachel, interacting with the executive branch of our government is essential because the policies they put forth affect our lives, our communities, and our churches. While some of the details of how this branch operates may seem mundane and arbitrary, understanding these processes gives us insight into how the ERLC’s advocacy works and how you can get involved. A Southern Baptist witness before our leaders ensures we are able to share the hope we have in Christ, the goodness of his word, and why his ways are best for our nation’s flourishing. 

Thanks for listening to this episode of the ERLC podcast. Join us next time as we continue our series focused on our work in Washington DC.