Chuck Colson thinks so. [Update: see Colson's 4 minute video] So does Christianity Today:
"Freedom of worship" has recently replaced the phrase "freedom of religion" in public pronouncements from the Obama administration. Experts are concerned that the new rhetoric may signal a policy change.
"Freedom of worship" first appeared in President Obama's November remarks at the memorial service for the victims of the Fort Hood shooting. Days later, he referred to worship rather than religion in speeches in Japan and China.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton echoed the shift in language. In a December speech at Georgetown University, she used "freedom of worship" three times but "freedom of religion" not at all. While addressing senators in January, she referred to "freedom of worship" four times and "freedom of religion" once when quoting an earlier Obama speech.
The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom noted the shift in its 2010 annual report. "This change in phraseology could well be viewed by human rights defenders and officials in other countries as having concrete policy implications," the report said.
Freedom of worship means the right to pray within the confines of a place of worship or to privately believe, said Nina Shea, director of the Center for Religious Freedom and member of the commission. "It excludes the right to raise your children in your faith; the right to have religious literature; the right to meet with co-religionists; the right to raise funds; the right to appoint or elect your religious leaders, and to carry out charitable activities, to evangelize, [and] to have religious education or seminary training."
The State Department does acknowledge that worship is just one component of religion, said spokesperson Andy Laine. . . [more . . .]
Writing in First Things, Ashley Samelson notes:
Any person of faith knows that religious exercise is about a lot more than freedom of worship. It’s about the right to dress according to one’s religious dictates, to preach openly, to evangelize, to engage in the public square. Everyone knows that religious Jews keep kosher, religious Quakers don’t go to war, and religious Muslim women wear headscarves—yet “freedom of worship” would protect none of these acts of faith.
Those who would limit religious practice to the cathedral and the home are the very same people who would strip the public square of any religious presence. They are working to tear down roadside memorial crosses built to commemorate fallen state troopers in Utah, to strip “Under God” from the Pledge of Allegiance, and they recently stopped a protester from entering an art gallery because she wore a pro-life pin.
The effort to squash religion into the private sphere is on the rise around the world. And it’s not just confined to totalitarian regimes like Saudi Arabia. In France, students at public schools cannot wear headscarves, yarmulkes, or large crucifixes. The European Court of Human Rights has banned crucifixes from the walls of Italian schools. In Indonesia, the Constitutional Court is reviewing a law that criminalizes speech considered “blasphemous” to other faiths. Efforts to trim religion into something that fits neatly in one’s pocket is the work of dictators, not democratic leaders. So why then have our leaders taken a rhetorical scalpel to the concept of religious freedom?
This shift in semantics could have huge implications for how the United States promotes religious freedom in countries such as these, as well as how we engage in international institutions regarding the ongoing efforts to restrict religious expression around the world.
In just a few weeks, the Human Rights Council will once more review the “defamation of religions” resolution in Geneva. The resolution, passed every year at the United Nations since 1999, claims that speech deemed offensive to another faith is a violation of international law. While the resolution is relatively toothless, it provides cover for domestic blasphemy laws used to restrict proselytism and religious speech around the world. However, the Ad Hoc Committee on Complimentary Standards, a rogue UN body with a nebulous and expansive mandate, is currently reviewing a proposed amendment that would criminalize defamation of religion to the International Convention for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (ICERD), a treaty to which the United States is a signatory.
Given that a fundamental element of any religion are truth claims that by nature may conflict with or offend those of another faith, the efforts of international institutions to restrict expression of these claims go right for the religious jugular. And in reducing freedom of religion to “freedom of worship” in its political and diplomatic pronouncements, the United States can no longer invoke the First Amendment and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, thus weakening its ability to combat the international movement to criminalize religious speech.
This early, one is left only with conjectures as to why “freedom of worship” seems to be the favored phraseology of this administration when discussing religion of late. It could just be sloppy work coming out of someone’s press office. But rhetoric matters—particularly when one is the leader of the free world. In Secretary Clinton’s Georgetown address she said, “Freedom doesn’t come in half measures.” The Obama administration should heed its own words when it comes to religious freedom.