Q & A: Philip Ryken on Wheaton’s Contraception Mandate Lawsuit: 'A Last Resort'
Photo by William KoechlingQ & A: Philip Ryken on Wheaton’s Contraception Mandate Lawsuit: 'A Last Resort'
Wheaton College today joined other religious institutions in filing lawsuits over the Obama administration’s Health and Human Services mandate. President Philip Ryken spoke with Christianity Today about the college’s decision.
How did you decide to pursue the lawsuit?
The Wheaton College Board of Trustees has been concerned about the Health and Human Services mandate from the very time that it was first delivered to us, back in September. The Wheaton College board has been keeping abreast of developments throughout the year. I have written on several occasions both to the secretary of Health and Human Services and to the President expressing our concerns on issues of religious liberty as it relates to the mandate. We’ve also been working in concert with other evangelical institutions here at the Council of Christian Colleges and Universities throughout the year on these issues. By May, the Wheaton College Board of Trustees decided that no remedy was yet forthcoming and therefore it was important for us to file a lawsuit. However, we decided we wanted to wait until the Supreme Court made its decision on the health insurance mandate generally, at the end of June, in case there would be some remedy forthcoming through the Supreme Court decision. When that proved not to be the case, we were ready to file a lawsuit.
Is there any danger in at least appearing political with this lawsuit?
Wheaton College is not a partisan institution and the effect of our filing on any political process has played no part at all in any of our board discussions on the issue. The timing of things is driven primarily by the mandate itself. Wheaton College stands to face punitive fines already on January 1, 2013, and I am welcoming incoming freshmen in two weeks. It’s already an issue for us in terms of our health insurance and what we provide for this coming academic year. Although we wanted to wait for the Supreme Court decision out of respect for the legal system, we do not believe that we can wait any longer.
Is there a particular angle you’re taking in this lawsuit that other Christian colleges aren’t taking?
The circumstances of each college or university will be unique, depending on the structure of the health insurance they provide or on specific ethical standards within their community. I probably can’t comment on any specific differences between Wheaton and Geneva, say, or Colorado Christian University. I see a strong similarity in that the issue for us is abortion-inducing drugs, as it is for them. But more broadly, because of our Christian convictions on that issue, we believe there’s a very important religious liberty issue at stake in all of this. I think the other institutions that have filed are also doing it primarily because of their concern to protect the freedom of religion in the United States.
You did a press conference this morning with the leader of a Catholic institution. Is there any danger of watering down theological differences between evangelicals and Catholics, or is it advantageous to work together on this issue?
Our board felt strongly that if the possibility presented itself, we had a strong interest in filing alongside a Roman Catholic institution. This is fully in keeping with Wheaton’s convictions. We’re clear on our Protestant identity and there are many areas of theological disagreement that we have with Roman Catholic colleges and universities. This filing is not a way of suggesting that those differences have in any way been erased. But here’s an issue where we have strong agreement, and that is the value of religious freedom for all people everywhere. We also believe that we have a stake in the success of Catholic institutions winning their religious freedom arguments. Even if [contraception] is not a universal point of conviction for Protestants the way that it is for Roman Catholics, we believe that Catholic institutions should have the freedom to carry out their mission without government coercion. That struggle for liberty is a struggle for our own liberty and, we would argue, a struggle for the liberty of all Americans.
La complejidad hispana: Todo cambió en el 2012
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Pilgrim Progress
This man is a liar and a poseur. Wheaton College has had full coverage for women, including birth control, abortion choices, and full gynecological services (Personal and Private) for years. Wheaton kicked up a storm cloud on false pretenses. AFTER they started their Morality Campaign against women's choice, they discovered that they have always funded Choice. They dropped that coverage, just so they could take the Moral Stand of suing the government. Any decent, fair, educated person (including some of us at Wheaton) will admit these facts. Nothing good or real is accomplished by lies and hypocracy. The secret of their prevarication is out, and we all know it. Shame on this charlatan. Is he running for a republican office?
Welby Warner
How come the author of the article said nothing about the fact that Wheaton College already had the provisions for covering contraception before they filed the lawsuit, and now they are trying to get rid of that coverage to obtain some other perceived benefit? Do the writers at Christianity Today do their homework properly to keep readers properly informed, or is there some agreement to avoid full disclosure so that readers are presented a twisted view of events? There were no questions about the correct status of the coverage that Wheaton already had in place. I always thought that CT was for presenting all relevant facts on an issue being covered in their magazine, but what does this show? Further, how does Wheaton College look before the watching world after all that it said about how its "religious freedom" was being violated when there was no issue since they already had the coverage required by law. So why, according to reports elsewhere, is Wheaton eliminating it?
Welby Warner
Jeff Thurmond, the problem is that I have not seen any evidence that the requirements of the law have anything to do with religious freedom. Can an organization just say that an ordinance is an affront to its religious freedom without showing in what way this is true? The government has set a requirement for health benefits that employers are to provide for their employees, there is no requirement to disobey any perceived moral or secular law. A religious institution should be the last one to fight for discrimination in employee benefits. The organization is asking for permission to discriminate against its own employees. On what ground is this called for? The benefit will not cost the organization anything more than what they have been paying so the only freedom that is being lost is the freedom of its employees. The issue is a distortion of logic and not worthy of an organization like Wheaton that I always believed had sterling academic and intellectual credentials.