Freedom of Conscience

Floor Speech

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Mr. WALBERG. I thank the gentleman from Nebraska. I thank you for your leadership, and I thank you for the opportunity to stand with principled legislators. We are not talking about parties here. We are talking about people who understand rights and responsibilities.

The First Amendment to our Constitution says so clearly that Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. Tonight, we are talking about rights of conscience. Our First Amendment liberty affirms that for us. It affirms us for greater principles than just political or even governmental.

In approximately the year my father was born, 1903, Abraham Kuyper, a theologian--and I take great comfort in the fact that theologians sometimes aspire to political life in coming from the pastorate myself and pastoring for over a decade--this theologian who became the Prime Minister of the Netherlands, said:

When principles that run against your deepest convictions begin to win the day, then battle is your calling, and peace has become sin. You must at the price of dearest peace lay your convictions bare before friend and enemy with all the fire of your faith.

That's a powerful statement. It's a statement that, I'm sure, Mr. Kuyper would have said to his brethren in the Netherlands is not coming simply from my religious convictions but, rather, is coming from my conviction for freedom and the right given us by the Creator God. So he fought. Sadly, as we know the course in the Netherlands, they've gone away from the freedom of life, and we know the impact upon the unborn. We know the impact upon the infirm. We know the impact upon the elderly. We know the impact upon the frail, upon the disabled in the Netherlands. Their lives are cast off. Their lives are not as secure.

So here tonight, Mr. Speaker, we stand for rights of conscience that go way beyond just issues of medicine and issues of government. It goes to the core of life and to the sanctity of it and to the humanity of each and every individual.

We have talked about some people and about their convictions of things like life, abortifacient, contraceptives, and people who are compassionate to businesses and compassionate in using their businesses for the good of people, like the Greens already referred to with Hobby Lobby, who allegedly have given over $500 million to charities and who give to their employees and benefit them and see that as an outflow of their religious life as well;

Or we go over to St. Louis, where Chris and Paul Griesedieck, who run a 105-year-old business that they've carried on from their father and grandfather, with 150 employees who have taken stands for their religious beliefs, as well, and have very clearly stated that they will not abandon their beliefs in order to stay in business. The impact is upon all of their people;

Or we look at an 85-year-old gentleman by the name of Charles Sharpe, also from northeast Missouri, who has made millions in the insurance business, but who took that and founded Heartland Ministries in 1992, providing rehabilitation services to men and women who are battling drug and alcohol addiction, and employing 170 employees. Yet if this HHS mandate comes down on them, those employees will lose their jobs because of millions of dollars in fines.

I can go to businesses in my district like Eden Foods, which has challenged the insurance rule on religious grounds; or a garden center in Oakland County, Michigan doing the same--employing many, many employees and providing benefits--and is now being challenged with this HHS mandate. I could go on and on.

Mr. Speaker, it is time for us who understand what America is about to stand firmly with our convictions and to uphold liberties that go way beyond ourselves. Our Framers and Founders understood that. John Witherspoon said that a Republic once equally poised must either preserve its virtue or lose its liberty.

We are losing our liberty.

John Adams--and I close with this--the second President of the United States said that our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.

Mr. Speaker, the people of the United States are great people, and this government is a great government; but when the attack comes on what makes America America--its liberty and its freedom and its moral and traditional value heritage that is now being impinged upon to the point of violating rights of conscience--we must stand and stand firmly.

So I thank the gentleman from Nebraska for pulling us together so as to speak out clearly tonight; and I would hope, Mr. Speaker, that those who are listening and watching tonight on C-SPAN will speak out very strongly to their communities and their families, calling us back to decency, order, conviction--and a conscience that even God can honor.

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