What does the government owe to religious schools?

This article was first published in the State of Faith newsletter. Sign up to receive the newsletter in your inbox each Monday night.
It’s not unusual for government money to come with strings attached. Aid recipients, whether at the state or federal level, have to carefully track how the funds are used and show they’re abiding by rules dealing with everything from cleanliness to community service.
But even decades after faith groups got the green light to take part in government funding programs, it remains unclear whether the strings should look different when the aid recipient is a religious institution.
Should a faith-based adoption agency have to adjust how it operates to qualify for government money? Should a religious school have to agree to hire non-church members or stop speaking out against same-sex marriage?
Your answer to these questions likely depends, at least in part, on your views on religious freedom protections.
If you believe that protections for people of faith should win out when they run up against other laws, then you’d probably say it’s on government officials to ensure that religious organizations can take part in public funding programs without violating their sincerely held beliefs.
But if you believe that religious freedom laws should be balanced against other civil rights protections, then you’d probably support efforts to hold faith groups accountable to the same rules applied to any other fund recipient. You’d probably also support the federal judge who said earlier this month that Maine officials can refuse to send tuition assistance to religious schools that won’t abide by nondiscrimination laws protecting the LGBTQ community.
The judge ruled that the state’s effort to apply the Maine Human Rights Act to faith-based private schools does not violate religious freedom protections. “The plaintiffs are free to practice their religion, including the teaching of their religion as they see fit, but cannot require the state to subsidize their religious teachings if they conflict with state antidiscrimination law,” he wrote, according to The Associated Press.
The ruling follows a 2022 Supreme Court decision saying that Maine could not exclude religious schools from its taxpayer-funded tuition assistance program simply for being religious. As that case worked its way through the courts, Maine lawmakers updated the Maine Human Rights Act to make it clear that if religious schools took part in the program, they had to abide by sex and gender identity-related nondiscrimination rules.
Some religious freedom advocates argue that the updated version of the law clearly undermines the 2022 ruling and discriminates against faith-based institutions, per The Associated Press. The ongoing case over the Maine Human Rights Act will likely end up in front of the Supreme Court one day.
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The slab of sandstone that sits in the center of Stonehenge in southern England has long been known as the “altar stone” despite the fact that, even after decades of research, we still aren’t sure why the site was built or what it was used for.
What we do know, thanks to a new study, is that the 16-foot altar stone came to southern England from much farther away than it was assumed in the past.
Researchers analyzed the sandstone that makes up the altar stone and determined the rock came from northeast Scotland. It would have needed to be transported nearly 500 miles in order to be incorporated into Stonehenge, according to The Associated Press.
“While Britain is dotted with other Neolithic stone circles, ‘the thing that’s unique about Stonehenge is the distance from which the stones have been sourced,’ said Aberystwyth University’s Richard Bevins, a study co-author,” to The Associated Press.
A group of Catholic nuns based just outside Kansas City are using stock purchases to push companies to adopt more ethical policies, according to The Associated Press. Among other recent requests, they’ve asked drug companies to keep prescription costs low and asked Amazon to explain its approach to lobbying. “Some of these companies, they just really hate us,” said Sister Barbara McCracken, who leads the nuns’ corporate responsibility program. “Because we’re small, we’re just like a little fly in the ointment trying to irritate them.”
Religion News Service recently reported on a fascinating faith-based controversy in Philadelphia: a battle over whether church members should park in bike lanes on Sundays. Although the church members had permission from city officials to park on the street outside their houses of worship, they decided to seek out other parking options after bikers in the area held protests for several weeks in a row.
My colleague Mariya Manzhos published a lovely story last week about Methodists and Latter-day Saints sharing a historic church building in rural New Hampshire. “By renting space from the Methodists, Latter-day Saints from Colebrook and the surrounding area can worship closer to home without driving to the closest chapel in Randolph, a town 60 miles away. For the Methodists, welcoming the Latter-day Saints into their building offered a necessary financial boost,” she wrote.
The Baltimore Orioles hosted their first “Faith Night” last week, becoming part of a trend that’s swept up at least half the league, according to Religion Unplugged. After the game, fans were invited to stay in the stands and hear religious testimonies from players and listen to worship music.