Increasingly, governments and private parties are arguing that there is only one appropriate view of the relationship between religion and money-making: Exercising religion is fundamentally patible with earning profits.

This claim has been presented recently by state governments and private parties in litigation over pharmacy rights of conscience, and by state governments enacting conscience clauses with regard to recognizing same-sex marriages (non-profits are sometimes protected, but never profit-makers). The most prominent and developed form of the argument has been made by the federal government in the HHS mandate litigation, where it is currently arguing the point in at least seventeen different cases against businesses and business owners who ply with the mandate on religious grounds.

Do our religious liberty laws protect profit-making businesses and their owners? Or is the government correct that, to borrow a phrase from the Gospels, you “cannot serve both God and mammon”?

When considered in the light of religious teachings, actual business practices, and the law’s treatment of for-profit businesses in other contexts, it is clear that there is no inherent disconnect between earning profits and exercising religion. For this reason, there is no principled basis for excluding profit-making businesses and their owners from the protection of our religious liberty laws.

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