Rick Warren: Pastors May Have to Go to Jail in Defense of Religious Liberty (Video Interview)

By Napp Nazworth, Christian Post Reporter Monday, June 16, 2014

Pastor Rick Warren (Right), of Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, California, at the Southern Baptist Convention's annual meeting in Baltimore, Maryland, June 9, 2014. | (Photo: The Christian Post/Sonny Hong)

BALTIMORE — With religious liberty under assault on multiple fronts, there may come a point in which pastors have to go to jail to defend their freedom, Pastor Rick Warren told The Christian Post.

Comparing the struggle to Martin Luther King, Jr.'s fight against racism, Warren said, "I do believe in civil disobedience, resistance through nonviolence."

CP spoke to Warren, a best-selling author and pastor of Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, California, at the Southern Baptist Convention's annual meeting in Baltimore, Maryland. He was on a June 9 panel called, "Hobby Lobby and the Future of Religious Liberty," hosted by the SBC's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission.

Hobby Lobby is a Christian-owned company that is currently involved in a lawsuit before the U.S. Supreme Court. The owners are asking the Court to protect its right to run the company according to their religious conscience and Christian faith.

Warren argued that religious freedom is "being attacked on all kinds of fronts," citing Christian college groups, zoning laws and Hobby Lobby.

"There may be some religious leaders who have to go to prison in order to say, 'no, we're not going to do this. You cannot tell a church what to do. You cannot tell a Christian college what to do. Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesars and unto God the things that are God's," Warren said.

Despite Warren's grave concerns about the future of religious freedom, he believes that Hobby Lobby will win it's case.

"I don't think religious liberty is a partisan issue," he added, "... It's an American issue and it's a human dignity issue."