WASHINGTON -- One of the country's most prominent advocacy groups pushing to protect the boundaries between religion and government is getting its first new leader in a quarter-century.
Rachel Laser, a lawyer and longtime advocate on issues related to reproductive freedom, LGBT equality and racism, is the new executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State. She is the first woman and, as a Jew, the first non-Christian to lead the 71-year-old group.
Laser, 48, takes over the organization at a time when religion's role in public life has come to the forefront. From President Donald Trump's travel ban on people from multiple Muslim-majority countries to a pending Supreme Court case over whether American businesses can legally refuse to serve same-sex couples on religious grounds, religion is colliding in new ways with other issues and rights.
And in an increasingly diverse America, there is little agreement on what is meant by "religion" and when the state is becoming too involved or not enough.
What those who picked Laser agree upon: They want a fighter, and think they've found one.
"In my lifetime, I don't think I've experienced such an overall assault on the freedom of religion and conscience as I have since the election of Donald Trump," said the Rev. Neal Jones, a Unitarian Universalist minister who leads Americans United's board. "It seems the ploy by the religious right these days is to use freedom of religion -- in quotes -- as an excuse to violate people's civil rights. We were looking for a leader who is up to the fight, understands the issues and has a real fire in the belly to carry on the banner of separation."
Even as America is becoming by some measures less "religious" -- and certainly less religious in an orthodox or conservative sense -- there isn't yet a solid middle ground on how to juggle so many competing forces.
Data show the lack of consensus. The Pew Research Center found in January 2016 that 27 percent of Americans said political leaders talked too much about religion, while 40 percent said they talked too little. At the same point in the 2012 presidential race, Americans leaned in the other direction -- 38 percent said there was too much religious talk while 30 percent said there was too little.
Laser has experience building bridges.
For five years the University of Chicago Law School graduate worked for Third Way, a progressive think tank aimed at finding common ground with evangelical Christians in particular on issues such as reproductive health, gay equality and torture. She worked with Trump adviser Sam Rodriguez and Florida megachurch pastor Joel Hunter -- who pastored President Barack Obama -- on a measure that supported contraception access and sexual health education, as well as help for pregnant mothers and new parents.
The measure was never voted on, Laser said, and divisions over the Affordable Care Act "blew up the moment of common ground" but the relationships endure, she said.
Laser said a key challenge of this moment is to capture the energy and anger many Americans have felt since Trump's election while simultaneously reintroducing church-state separation as a nonpartisan one.
"We need to awake that awareness, we need to awaken the notion that religious liberty undergirds the separation of church and state," Laser said. "The two can not only coexist but are tied at the waist."
The "church-state separation" movement needs a branding overhaul, said Jacques Berlinerblau, a professor at Georgetown University who has written several books on secularism and religion in politics. Berlinerblau said the movement has often been too male, too atheist and too fringe -- focused on things unpopular with most Americans such as ending the tax-exemptions for houses of worship.
Many of the church-state issues on people's minds have women at the center, he said, including contraception, abortion and women's rights in the workplace.
"This should be a great time for secular activism," Berlinerblau said, but when it comes to the issue of church-state separation "where is the mobilized coherent social action? It hasn't been there."
Laser said her goal is to rebrand the fight for the separation of religion and government, "so we can win big like we did with marriage equality."
Religion on 04/21/2018