Why does religious freedom matter? The answer extends far beyond the U.S. Constitution.

Among a plethora of subject matter, Dr. Angela Wu Howard identifies the importance of the “freedom to be wrong” and why you should care deeply about it.

Be sure to follow us to stay up to date with all the latest content! New episodes every Wednesday.

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nogreyareasbook/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/NoGreyAreasBook/

Want to dive deeper into the story? Check out the link below!

https://linktr.ee/NoGreyAreas

Host

You're listening to the No Gray Areas podcast with Patrick McCullough. Today's guest is Dr. Angela Howard, Oxford grad and International Law Fellow back at Law Firm. She breaks down the importance of having diversity and religious freedom. Let's dove in.

Patrick McCalla

So, Angela, you might be the smartest person that I've had on this podcast because you you went to law school at Harvard. You got your Ph.D. from Oxford, correct?

Dr. Angela Wu Howard

Yeah. Well, I might be the guest with the most number of letters behind her name, but without question, because I know your podcast and have listened to it, I'm not going to be the smartest person. You're certainly not the one with the most wisdom.

Patrick McCalla

Yeah, well, you do have a lot of letters behind your name, so that's that that shows tenacity and grit and perseverance.

Dr. Angela Wu Howard

You know, that's what it was about. It was about not quitting because it was some of that, especially the last degree, the DFL, the party was the hardest thing I've ever done, and I wasn't very good at it. I mean, and I'm not this isn't false modesty speaking. I just had so many friends and colleagues who were so much more talented at doing legal philosophy than I was.

Dr. Angela Wu Howard

But I. I think God wouldn't let me quit. Yeah. And now I tell people who are struggling through their Ph.D.. The only thing I've got for you is just don't quit. You just keep doing it. What you need to do in front of you every day, and that's it. So it, it actually was, it was tenacity a lot more than intelligence.

Dr. Angela Wu Howard

Well, I'll.

Patrick McCalla

Tell you what, though. That's pretty good advice for all of our listeners and for me as well. Just don't quit for life. Yeah, for life.

Dr. Angela Wu Howard

Yeah.

Patrick McCalla

Quit Acity. And so. Well, congratulations on that. I think you just. Right. You got that was last.

Dr. Angela Wu Howard

Just about a year ago. Yeah. Yeah.

Patrick McCalla

What what was your your dissertation on?

Dr. Angela Wu Howard

Oh, so some in the field of legal theory. And I wrote about religious exceptions as an example or just kind of a very specific area of study in a broader conversation about what makes a good rule.

Patrick McCalla

What makes a good rule?

Dr. Angela Wu Howard

Yeah. Good governance. Yeah. Yeah.

Patrick McCalla

Because I I emailed you and I was like, Hey, we should talk about your dissertation. Yeah. And you said, well, that people would be that interested in it. I would like to unpack that at some point. We won't do it today, but I would like to unpack that at some point. But just briefly, what why how do you write a whole dissertation on what makes a good rule?

Patrick McCalla

I'm sure a lot of the audience is like, I never even thought about that.

Dr. Angela Wu Howard

We have all thought about it. We just don't. Mm. Describe it that way. Right. So every time you as a employer, as a parent, as a friend with bound with appropriate boundaries act, you're acting according to a rule you're thinking about. You know, you're using a combination of principle and prudence to make decisions. Your values are coming into it.

Dr. Angela Wu Howard

The practical aspects of your life are coming into it. What you can handle and what you can't, what's right and wrong. We make rules that govern our lives all day. Long, and yeah, we do. Yeah. And people who you especially, I think see this and parenthood is every day you're thinking through the kind of rules that your children are going to follow.

Dr. Angela Wu Howard

And it's it's not that.

Patrick McCalla

Usually pushing back a.

Dr. Angela Wu Howard

Little bit. They are. Yes. They're testing the limits. And it's actually so good for our thinking to be tested because there there are many times when my daughter will say I want to do something else. And because of X, Y, and Z and she's nine and has become quite persuasive. Yes. Yes. And I'd say about half the time I listen to her, I realize there's something I didn't think about, you know, and, you know, we can modify that.

Dr. Angela Wu Howard

We can change that. We can. And then there are other times when that's not going to work for the family rhythm or that's not going to be good for you. That's not in your best, best interests. But so I think we're exercising that skill all the time, but we don't necessarily think of it that way. And we don't necessarily think of our public square as being a set of rules that needs to be kind of properly enacted.

Dr. Angela Wu Howard

And we get we get it especially with sort of culture war issues. We get caught up in stories that matter, but we kind of forget what the contours should be, you know, for living together in harmony, even though we have all of this disagreement and what what you do in the home, in your personal life, what you do, you know, in your company that you're running, that's just what our lawmakers are doing.

Dr. Angela Wu Howard

At a much grander scale. So, I mean, I found it interesting enough to stick with it for I must have broken a record at my at Oxford. Yeah, at my university. For how long? It took me. But I found it interesting the whole time I sort of joke that nobody else wants to hear about it because it it I you know, it was quite boring at some level.

Dr. Angela Wu Howard

And one of my supervisors used to say that the title of your dissertation and I probably don't barely remember it at this point, interest me.

Patrick McCalla

But I remember.

Dr. Angela Wu Howard

The title of your dissertation should be so boring that nobody would ever pick that book up in a bookstore. Well, really? Yeah. He was trying to focus on.

Patrick McCalla

Did you succeed at that.

Dr. Angela Wu Howard

It's pretty.

Patrick McCalla

Probably because.

Dr. Angela Wu Howard

You want your boring title. Yeah. Long and boring. Yeah.

Patrick McCalla

But Angela, I find that a fascinating subject, though. I know you're saying it's, you know, maybe a little boring to most people, but it what makes a what makes a good rule, it's it's something that we've been asking since we were kids. We realized, like, you're saying yes. And as adults or as lawmakers, as parents, as friends, people in marriages.

Patrick McCalla

Yeah. Those are all questions we should be asking. Yeah, right. Like we have this boundary. Is this a good boundary? What makes a good boundary? Should we move the boundary a little bit? Those are all those are legitimate questions, right?

Dr. Angela Wu Howard

And we're doing that. We're doing that all day long, and we're you know, we're doing that when we're driving and thinking about traffic rules and whether they make sense. And, you know, 99% of them make sense. It's amazing to me when I see systems that work, I get very excited because so much work and so many people went into designing this thing.

Dr. Angela Wu Howard

And when it works, it's a thing of beauty. It kind of shows us that we can we can figure things out if we have kind of the proper foundation for that conversation.

Patrick McCalla

As kids, we all dreamed of having being in a society or a home or a culture where there were no rules but if you think about it very long at all, philosophically, that's that is a maybe a picture of hell take. It is not a pretty picture to think of a culture, society or anything without rules, right?

Dr. Angela Wu Howard

I mean, it has it's it's the circle of hell to be governed by your passions. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So you are not right. Yeah. Governed like ruled actually. Yes. By your passions. Yeah.

Patrick McCalla

Yeah. Well, we're both people of faith and so we know that we have a God who, again, we want to kick against some of those rules or those guidelines that he's put in in our lives. But they're there for a reason. Especially when we realize he's good, right? He's a good God. So, yeah, and parenting is the same thing.

Patrick McCalla

I remember being a kid and hating some of the rules that my parents had. And guess what rules I had for my kids.

Dr. Angela Wu Howard

The same ones.

Patrick McCalla

Because you find out there's a reason.

Dr. Angela Wu Howard

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Patrick McCalla

OK, so you're currently working for who.

Dr. Angela Wu Howard

I work for? Becket, OK? And it's a little law firm based out of Washington, DC. We defend people of all faiths. We only do religious freedom work we do what we call impact litigation. So we're looking at mainly at kind of law making cases, cases that are law changing cases, rather cases that are going to have a pretty broad impact set precedent, good precedent, hopefully.

Dr. Angela Wu Howard

So a lot of our work is in appellate courts, in courts of appeal, and at the Supreme Court.

Patrick McCalla

Now, you said a couple of things in there that I think are really good. We got to unpack a little bit. You said you defend people of all faiths. Yeah, right. Yeah. Why is that important?

Dr. Angela Wu Howard

One, it's the right thing to do. So our founder, Seamus Hassan, is a deeply believing Catholic, and he based the Becket Fund on Vatican two document called Dignitaries Human. And it was a statement on religious freedom from the Catholic Church. And it laid out why religious freedom was important from a Catholic perspective. And it argued from reason why religious freedom should be should apply to people of all faiths, even if they did not agree with Catholic doctrine, which the Catholic Church would defend as being actually theologically correct.

Dr. Angela Wu Howard

So the argument isn't that there isn't a truth or there isn't a right answer, or that the inquiry for that is an important and the pursuit of the truth is an important, but rather that everybody should have everybody does have a God given right to pursue it in the manner that their conscience directs. So those are the roots and I agree with dignity testimonies argument.

Dr. Angela Wu Howard

But there are many practical reasons, too. I mean, I think that it's essential to making our country, our republic, our world, a place where people can pursue the God given desire to follow their conscience, to ask questions about what is true and what is not about who we are. So Seamus is sort of fond of saying, well, we don't all agree about who God is, but we do all agree about who we are.

Dr. Angela Wu Howard

We are people who have inherent dignity. We are people who care about the truth, where people who want to be guided by our conscience. And even when we don't want to be guided by your conscience because it's inconveniently telling us to do or not do things that we don't or do you want to do, there is that voice that kind of tells you whether to go right or to go left right.

Dr. Angela Wu Howard

And you know, there are other practical reasons, too. I think it keeps us honest as lawyers. So we're not only defending, you know, Christians or Hindus or Muslims or Jews or six. I'm not like, you know, going down the alphabet with people we get we sort of say our clients of faith from A to Z. There's Amish through the Zoroastrians and we defend people.

Patrick McCalla

That's a real one.

Dr. Angela Wu Howard

Yes.

Patrick McCalla

I didn't know that. You just taught me.

Dr. Angela Wu Howard

So I learned so much about different religion. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And this job. Well, but it keeps us honest because we can't. We can't. I'm sorry. Yeah.

Patrick McCalla

No, you're it.

Dr. Angela Wu Howard

Keeps inspiring.

Patrick McCalla

You. So you get to go with whatever you want.

Dr. Angela Wu Howard

I mean, because we can't we can't only defend one client, right? When we when we advocate for a rule change, when we argue a case, we have to think, is this going to be good for everybody? Yeah. Yeah. So I kind of like that. That's. Yeah, that's what we have to do.

Patrick McCalla

Well, and I'm glad that you went on, because what you said there at the end is so important, right? Because someone might be listening who who maybe isn't of any religious background, you know, they would. So they may go. It doesn't matter to me. Why does it matter?

Dr. Angela Wu Howard

Yeah.

Patrick McCalla

But you would I'm assuming argue that it does it should matter to everybody that you're fighting for religious freedom. Why should it matter to everybody?

Dr. Angela Wu Howard

Oh.

Patrick McCalla

It's a whole nother dissertation.

Dr. Angela Wu Howard

You can I think people have written books of. Yeah, yeah. You know, I think that it goes back to this idea that we know who we are right and that we know who others are. And a lot of I think a lot of our private and public lives are sorting through that and finding the best way to respond to that knowledge.

Dr. Angela Wu Howard

And I think that that's true. Even if you don't believe in it in a transcendental being, if you don't believe in God and you want to have the freedom to pursue that that call. So I, I don't really I can't I think it's a really inherent part of being human to do that. Yeah. And we have, we actually do have atheists and agnostics who support our work and are strong supporters.

Dr. Angela Wu Howard

They don't have very strong faith or even sometimes any on their own. But they see the value of what we're doing is we're fighting for diversity. In the public square for and our founder actually wrote a book with this title for the right to be wrong, right. Within Certain Boundaries. So, you know, it's wrong to murder people. There's really no.

Dr. Angela Wu Howard

Yeah, yeah. There are certain lot bright lines that we draw. This is an sort of there's no boundaries, but we certainly want the right to be wrong in our public discourse and our debate so that we can be persuaded, so that we can persuade others and religious freedom is a really integral part of it. It pulls in a lot of other freedoms that people don't always think about when they think about religious freedom.

Dr. Angela Wu Howard

You know, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly to act as a church. You know, we're sitting in a in a studio house within a church right now and to collectively act freedom of the press to print Bibles. I mean, these are all.

Patrick McCalla

They're all tied.

Dr. Angela Wu Howard

Together. They're actually all intimately tied together.

Patrick McCalla

And isn't it true when we look back through history, it never really goes well when we start taking away the freedom of religion, right? Like we see it time and again, that doesn't end well.

Dr. Angela Wu Howard

Yeah. It's it doesn't. And we continue to make make mistakes today. So I started it back at actually doing almost all international work. So almost all international cases in in other countries and other jurisdictions. My work is a little bit more kind of academic now. So I'm doing more sort of tying philosophy and practice our cases in theory, because I happen to have done this, you know, philosophy, middle class pedigree, and focused mostly on domestic work, although I do still do some international.

Dr. Angela Wu Howard

But when I was doing more work abroad and lecturing and doing a certain amount of training in other countries, particularly in countries that had jurisdictions that were just starting to either had been more had been more recently formed. So we've been fighting about religion and religious freedom for I mean, 200 yeah. 50 years. I mean, you know.

Patrick McCalla

In.

Dr. Angela Wu Howard

A long time. Yes, yes. I mean, not as long as England has been doing it, but a long time versus Constitution and democracies around the world that were formed primarily after World War Two and modeled their societies on a kind of post-World War Two Universal Declaration of Human Rights that came out of the U.N. and, you know, kind of adopted our legal system of balancing rights, for example, and declaring that these are rights.

Dr. Angela Wu Howard

And but then you have to negotiate them. You have to say, when do they apply, when do they not? What are the boundaries? Right and a lot of times there was sometimes this feeling of, you know, are you an American just lecturing me about the right way to do this? And I can easily say we're sharing our our struggles with you because we've been arguing about this for a really long time.

Dr. Angela Wu Howard

And what I can offer is not to tell you exactly what to do or that we're better, but just I mean, I have to speak for American perspective because I'm American. I don't know. There's not another nationality from which I can. But I can tell you the mistakes that we made and we've made a lot of them we've made a lot of them in the founding of our country.

Dr. Angela Wu Howard

Began with those mistakes. And I think our founders were reacting to it. Right. I mean, they came here looking for a lot of things. And one of the key things was religious freedom and then many of them repeated the mistakes that they were trying to escape from. I mean, most Americans don't know that Quakerism used to be outlawed from from colony to colony.

Dr. Angela Wu Howard

I mean, they literally would drag Quakers to the borders of colonies because they dared to preach and because they would not stop stop preaching. And I mean, we did things like we bore holes in their tongues, we cut off their ears, we tarred and feathered them, and they wouldn't stop, which is kind of tells you how compelling the conscience is and how people will fight for what they believe the right thing.

Dr. Angela Wu Howard

Yes.

Patrick McCalla

Well, and it's so interesting that you're bringing this history up because you mentioned two things that are important to get. I think, first of all, that we did our country the U.S. was founded with this idea of religious freedom, but we haven't always done it well. And even even some of those very ones that were founding it on that principle didn't always do it well.

Patrick McCalla

Yeah. Which surprise, that's kind of been a human right. Like, again, you and I being people of faith, we don't always live out what we what we claim to believe deep within our souls, in our hearts. Right. But you mentioned something else, too, post-World War Two. You said that this whole thing came out and but that was in a reaction to what we saw as a world, right?

Patrick McCalla

Like the whole world, the U.N., most of the world got together. But is it a reaction to what we saw happened when you took away those religious freedoms? Mm hmm. Right.

Dr. Angela Wu Howard

Yeah. You know, the Holocaust, rampant anti-Semitism throughout Europe. It wasn't it wasn't only in Germany.

Dr. Angela Wu Howard

And I think we saw the devastating effects of that. And it was it was a reaction. I mean, the the UDR the Universal Declaration of Human Rights really lists rights that and I think we always.

Patrick McCalla

That was that.

Dr. Angela Wu Howard

In that. Yeah. Post, too. It was a reaction to World War Two. But it's sort of important to recognize that a lot of the rights that are all of the rights there listen there I can recognize something that was already there in it, but it was an effort to kind of unite countries around this idea and say, this is something, this is what we're going to pursue.

Dr. Angela Wu Howard

Now, I have kind of major I have a lot of respect for colleagues and friends who work at the U.N. who really care and do great work and have a lot of integrity. I think the institution itself, like most institutions, is deeply corrupted in many ways. This is because they're run by human beings. So I don't mean this is to sort of endorse everything that the U.N. does, which I absolutely do not.

Dr. Angela Wu Howard

But to say that as a concept, it was capturing something that I think is valuable was valuable then. It is valuable today, but more is recognizing something that was always there. And you see a lot of the marks of that in our Constitution, right? So we talk about yeah, I mean, even the way the language of the Constitution really recalls us, too.

Dr. Angela Wu Howard

Yeah. How we're born with an inalienable rights, you know, also, of course, a declaration of independence and. Yeah, but it was already there is what I mean, like, we're not making this up yeah.

Patrick McCalla

This is we're.

Dr. Angela Wu Howard

Recognizing who we are. Yes. And shame is, is language.

Patrick McCalla

You know, what's so interesting is if someone had been listening to these podcasts that we've been doing for about a year now that they they will see this theme that keeps being dropped in by multiple gasps. And you brought it up a couple of times. Inherent dignity. Yeah. And that is something that's brought up often. But it's such a core I mean, again, people being people of faith, the narrative starts with showing why we should have inherent dignity, right?

Patrick McCalla

We're image bearers of the creator. And so even when you and I don't agree right there, you still have dignity. Even when you have a different religion, you have you still have dignity even when fill in the blank.

Dr. Angela Wu Howard

Even when I do bad things. And this is so we actually it's less controversial today. It was probably more controversial when we started but we've had a number of prisoner cases, quite a few. And in fact, our one of our most recent ones is in our most recent prisoner case. I'm not sure at the Supreme Court, I hope, because in on behalf of a Muslim convict, a Muslim prisoner who was in for a very serious violent crime and we defended his right as a Muslim to grow a quarter inch beard which he felt was and in most Muslims feel is a dictate or a or is a requirement of the faith and for for Muslim

Dr. Angela Wu Howard

men. And that decision we won unanimously. It was 90 vote and you know, it was a really I think, a pretty seminal case. But we we say you don't lose your rights once you. Yeah. You lose some of your rights. Yes. Right. You can't travel. Yes. It is. Go wherever you want. Yeah. And in fact, in the religious freedom realm, you also lose some of your ability to practice your religion.

Dr. Angela Wu Howard

He can't just go to any mosque that he wants in the country freely the way he could before he was convicted of a crime and thrown into jail. But there but what we do is we we minimize as much as possible government restrictions so that people can pursue their conscience. And there's actually a legal standard, a legal rule that the courts use in America to kind of capture that idea.

Dr. Angela Wu Howard

So the the rule that is most prevalent in religious freedom cases says that the government can only restrict a substantial a religious exercise that you want to pursue that causes you a substantial burden, that puts a substantial burden on your religious exercise or a religious act if it satisfies two criteria. And one is that it has a compelling government interest can't just be any government interest has to be really compelling.

Dr. Angela Wu Howard

Yeah. And two, that is the least restrictive means to do it. Right. So the idea is that if there's another way for us to do this without restricting religious freedom but still accomplishing our public interest here, then you have to do it that way. And it actually some of that really gets at what makes a good rule. Like rules shouldn't be overbroad.

Dr. Angela Wu Howard

You don't want to compress too much. You know, you rules should be should should specifically follow a particular good or compelling government interest and when a substantial burden on one of somebody's fundamental constitutional rights is at stake, those two things should really be acting in concert so. Well, you.

Patrick McCalla

Know, and why would you? So I think probably a lot of the listeners might be going like, it doesn't matter that much. You grow a quarter inch beard.

Dr. Angela Wu Howard

Yeah.

Patrick McCalla

But I hear you saying it does and it actually matters to us when you filter down. Why is that? Like, why do you think it is important that your law firm defended that.

Dr. Angela Wu Howard

There's a much broader principle at stake than the quarter inch beard of this one man and a lot of, you know, sort of famous constitutional law cases? Yeah, get it. This right is a story of one person. And but the personal becomes political very, very quickly because it represents a principle that we should all really care about. So it's not just about his right to grow a beard and live according to his conscience that way.

Dr. Angela Wu Howard

We have cases having to do with access to kosher and halal food for Jewish and Muslim prisoners. One of our clients has been Prison Fellowship to Colson's Ministry. So it's about access, too. It's not just, you know, the prisoners access to religious texts like the Bible the prisoners access to being able to attend religious services the prisoner has access to.

Dr. Angela Wu Howard

Now, I'm like Naomi, I'm naming things that a Christian audience would relate to a little bit more access to being able to attend mass and take communion and also prison fellowships, ability to go into prisons and to do their work of rehabilitation. And and they have an incredibly high rate of success right I mean, they run really stringent programs that prisoners volunteer.

Dr. Angela Wu Howard

They're never forced to go go through. But they're also waiting on the outside when they come out. And their rate of recidivism is so much lower than president than prisoners who were not thinking in a conscience driven way while they were serving their time and who don't have communities waiting to support them when they come out. So, I mean, this is something that we should.

Patrick McCalla

Ask religious freedom that. Yes. The dignity of. Yeah. And, you know, it's so interesting again, because it goes back to that core about inherent dignity I mean, when you start when you when you start not worrying about certain populations or they'd be prison or color of skin or gender or whatever, it is, a society starts to unravel, doesn't it?

Patrick McCalla

I mean, that's what we've seen in history. It may not be overnight.

Dr. Angela Wu Howard

But, you know, you're right. So I used to sort of say, give me any country and show me any jurisdiction and show me how they treat their least favored religious minority. And I'll tell you how how good they're doing or how well they're doing and how good they're and I'll tell you how how how how good their justice system is.

Dr. Angela Wu Howard

Right? It's how we treat the least of these. And and I would modify that today to to a lot of other people who are very vulnerable. I mean, you can say that about the poorest people in our society. You can say that about the people who have the greatest disabilities in our society. You can say that about, you know, people who have suffered the most racial injustice.

Dr. Angela Wu Howard

What does it look like for them today? And it's going to tell you a lot about how we're doing. If you're if you're a well-off, if you have a lot of privilege in your life, if you either came from or was adopted into or formed, you know, a very stable family, eventually you have been through a lot. And eventually, you know, your own story formed an incredibly strong, flourishing family.

Dr. Angela Wu Howard

And if you're in that situation and all and your litmus tests or your you know, barometer for how the country is doing is yourself and your friends who all look and act like you. It's not accurate. That is so it's not accurate.

Patrick McCalla

So good for us to get.

Dr. Angela Wu Howard

Yeah.

Patrick McCalla

That is so good for us to get because I think that's what we naturally do as humans. Is we look and we go, Well, I made it or I'm doing OK or it's OK. And but that's not the test we need to.

Dr. Angela Wu Howard

And I had it really hard and I pulled myself up by my boots. Yes. And, you know, I'm sort of sympathetic to that because my my parents came here. They immigrated from Taiwan without really anything you know, my dad just they they just worked really, really hard.

Patrick McCalla

So you grew up in a family to live that out?

Dr. Angela Wu Howard

Oh, yeah. I mean, I feel like my life has been sort of the American dream illustrated. I mean, they really came here with hardly anything, but they also did have help that we have to recognize other people. Don't you know, my father got a full scholarship to get his MBA from a school in the middle of nowhere in Missouri, and that was what he could get.

Dr. Angela Wu Howard

And it was his kind of ticket out of a society where he didn't feel or, you know, as a country where the socioeconomic circumstances weren't what he felt he could where he could flourish. I mean, Taiwan looks very different now. It's in one of these eight Asian tigers. It is flourishing many ways. But back then, it was very, very different, was very, very poor.

Dr. Angela Wu Howard

There was political instability and he came here with nothing. And they worked so hard. But they they had certain things, right? I mean, he had he had a stable marriage. My mother supported him. He had family that cared about him. He had a scholarship to go to school. He had an incredible work ethic that he picked up somewhere along the way.

Dr. Angela Wu Howard

And he used he used it. So we you know, Catholics talk a lot about about cooperating with the grace of God gave you. You know, just take God's grace and go, well, that should be enough. I'm just going to hang out here. You cooperate with that. And that's where faith and work really get married, right? Yes. And I feel like my parents did cooperate with the many gifts that they were given, but they also they worked really hard.

Dr. Angela Wu Howard

And I see that. I see that because I grew up watching them work so hard and sacrificed so much for our family and for the most part depend on themselves. But they were they also had amazing employers who wanted to sponsor them as immigrants in this country. Yeah. You know, they had the scholarship and they they also had other things.

Dr. Angela Wu Howard

They had they had they had debt. And they you know, the first place they ever lived was this basement apartment apartment in Harlem before it was gentrified. And it didn't have a full bath, you know, I mean, so they struggle and I see the value of that kind of grit. Yeah. I lament that. I feel like that the value of grit is being lost.

Dr. Angela Wu Howard

Right? And I try to instill that in our admittedly, I think, very privileged children who haven't known a hungry day their lives. But but I also realize that we are not atomized beings like and every but everybody who has made it can remember for the most part that even if everything else was going to hell in a handbasket, my lips say, yes, you can.

Dr. Angela Wu Howard

Yes, there was that one mentor. There was that one teacher who believed in them and wouldn't give up. You know, there was like, yeah, there was a one advocate who, when they were popping back and forth to different foster homes that might have been abusive was just the one constant in their lives that made them feel like they could get out of it.

Dr. Angela Wu Howard

And I feel like our society and my going to I feel like our society is losing the grip of how these things work together and how we're actually all responsible for it. So, you know, the story of Mr. Holt wasn't just about him. You know, it really entailed all of the things that went into how he decided to convert to Islam.

Dr. Angela Wu Howard

He was a convert, you know, went into what made him start to think in moral terms. And as Christians, we don't believe what Muslims do. In fact, I think my Muslim friends and I are very comfortable saying, I think you're wrong about that extremely important thing that you believe, and that's a conversation worth having. But to preserve his ability to pursue that is incredibly important.

Dr. Angela Wu Howard

And he doesn't he doesn't even do it alone. He doesn't do it alone. He does it in concert with organizations like Prison Fellowship who are out there, you know, thinking about him and the rest of society about what happens to everybody else. And prisoners come out. They're thinking about the recidivism rate. They're not thinking about just one thing, you know, and I might just end this little rant with somebody comes to me, a Michael Michael McConnell is a is a law professor at Stanford.

Dr. Angela Wu Howard

He's a constitutional law scholar. And he talks about how liberalism is not just the government on one side and a bunch of atomized individuals on the other. There are a whole host of mediating institutions in between. You know, there are churches and there are hospitals and their civic centers and there are schools. And there I mean, there are all of these mediating institutions and religious freedom just doesn't just cover the one individual.

Dr. Angela Wu Howard

And what you you know, or I want to do, it also is protecting.

Patrick McCalla

Which is why it's so important, isn't it?

Dr. Angela Wu Howard

The institutions so that they present they not only can help to enact the common good. Yeah, right. Yeah. But they act as mediators, that is, they also present alternatives to state power. Yeah. It's incredibly dangerous if all we care about is state power. Yeah. And power resides entirely there. And the government tells you what your rights are and what the limits are and there's no mediating conversation there or individuals are so alone and powerless that they can't in community sometimes do these institutions, but sometimes just through some random, you know, protest with springs up, start to say there are alternatives to this.

Dr. Angela Wu Howard

Like the state isn't the arbiter of what God given rights we have. It's it's a whole conversation.

Patrick McCalla

Which is what you guys are involved in and why it should matter. You know, I thought of this analogy when you were just talking there, and I don't know if this works really well, but the problem is sometimes when we think you just pull yourself up by your bootstraps, you know, because, you know, your family made it law.

Patrick McCalla

Everyone should make it. But it's almost like taking ten little kids who don't know how to swim and throwing them deep in the deep end of the pool. And the problem is, as we build our our philosophy sometimes off of that one out of ten kids that just figured it out and got to the side and then we go, we'll see.

Patrick McCalla

Right. They did it. So and we ignore the fact that nine others drowned. Yeah, but but I think I added a little bit. I've used that analogy before, but you just helped me add something to it. Religious freedom helps those organizations that will jump in and help. So sometimes one of those kids, it may be a Jewish organization that helped.

Patrick McCalla

Maybe it was a Muslim organization. I mean, there's all there's a lot more to it. But our society is better because you throw nine kids in that that don't know how to swim. One will get there on their own. Yeah. Nine would drowned if they didn't have some help. Yeah. And there's a lot of organizations from different religious backgrounds that will help those other nine.

Dr. Angela Wu Howard

Yeah. I think today Americans don't come. I think, you know, don't understand just how much religious organizations are doing in religious ministry. I think you're right. And for free I think you're right. Yeah. It's it's a lot is a lot of books, hospitals and education in almost every sector. So a client comes to mind the Little Sisters of the Poor they are a they are an order of of of Catholic sisters more popularly known as nuns.

Dr. Angela Wu Howard

But it's actually a misnomer because nuns are cloistered and the sisters are out there in the world doing work in order of taught.

Patrick McCalla

Me something.

Dr. Angela Wu Howard

And orders of religious sisters who whose entire charism is dedicated to caring for the elderly poor so all they do is is is have homes and, and medical facilities and help, you know, health care for people who are elderly and poor. And what they offer many times is a dignified end of life. Some of their residents are there for decades and others are are are, you know, really, really at the end.

Dr. Angela Wu Howard

So they're offering also a dignified death and they were involved inherent dignity. Yes, they were involved, sadly, in multiple Supreme Court cases because under the Affordable Care Act, one of the category of drugs that was mandated to be provided by insurers was all forms of FDA approved birth control. And there is something like 20 or 21 of them.

Dr. Angela Wu Howard

Now, there was a previous case of this that probably a lot of listeners may have heard of involving Hobby Lobby, and that was really about whether, you know, the corporation which was privately held, is owned by a family could object to four of those contraceptives because they felt that they were abortifacient. So they were happy to provide all of the other ones, you know, 16 of them or something like that, but they didn't want their own insurance plan to cover for because they felt that they were obliged, sufficient.

Dr. Angela Wu Howard

They, you know, in one case the mechanism of the birth control was essentially to remove or make the uterus inhospitable to the fertilized egg so it could no longer grow and that that case is more about sort of, you know, private action, how far religious freedom could extend to a privately held corporation. And in my mind and in Beckett's mind, that goes to collective action to whether or not, you know, a group of people should be able to to use their religious freedom rather than just, you know, individuals acting alone.

Dr. Angela Wu Howard

And if you think about that, it makes sense relatively easy, easily. Once you think about the fact that you can ask, does The New York Times have press freedom, freedom of the press? If they don't, they can probably can do what they're doing. And that's a corporation in theory. So there was that. But the Little Sisters actually objected to all of the contraceptives.

Dr. Angela Wu Howard

And, you know, to be fair, number one, they're celibate sisters. They don't really need it. But beyond that, they do have people working for them who are not religious visitors. Sisters and haven't taken vows of celibacy. And so this is under the Obama administration at the time, sort of said, no, you have to provide this. And not only that, we want you to sign on the dotted line to allow us to interact with your insurance company so that, you know, we can make sure that there is this provision and then that way you are not standing there handing out birth control.

Dr. Angela Wu Howard

Fine. We agree. You don't have to do that. But we want to use your insurance plan and we want you to sign this piece of paper. And the administration actually tried to argue that it was a meaningless piece of paper and shouldn't is really not a substantial burden at all on their conscience rights. And I mean, when I think about this argument, I just think that's a little bit bonkers because if it's so meaningless, why do you need them to sign it?

Dr. Angela Wu Howard

So there is a sort of real philosophical question there that was super interesting, which is at what point is the government going to accept that this is a degree of complicity with evil, that we're going to respect and in both of those cases, that test that I talked about earlier, the least restrictive means came into play. So both we won both of those cases at the Supreme Court Hobby Lobby was a more divided court.

Dr. Angela Wu Howard

Little Sisters was unanimous. But the government said, if you want to provide people, women with free contraceptives, there's a less restrictive means to do this instead of going through Hobby Lobby as insurance plan or instead of forcing the Little Sisters to be complicit in this, you can just give it away. So, yeah, I mean, so I think that, you know, that I think that case actually really illustrates how the Little Sisters whole life view is is one thing.

Dr. Angela Wu Howard

You cannot actually divorce their beliefs at one end of life from the other end. So they believe in the dignity of human persons from womb to tomb, from the beginning of life, all the way until the end. And the religious the Christian faith and the, the, the, the the beliefs that they carry, that enable them to dignify people who have no resources, nowhere else to go, you know, are indigent to dignify them.

Dr. Angela Wu Howard

And I've been in their homes. They're they're not really that barebones. They're beautiful places to live, right? Yeah. I mean, and they provide excellent, excellent medical care at the end of life. But what enables them to dignify somebody at the very end of life is intimately tied to what brings them to have have have their beliefs. So that about the beginning and their beliefs about the dignity of human beings from the very beginning of their life is absolutely what's informing their belief that human beings have complete dignity at the end, regardless of their capacities.

Dr. Angela Wu Howard

A lot of people at the end of life are incapacitated. They lose one or more, you know, mental or physical functions. And regardless of whether or not they have resources. So I don't think that you can you can divorce people's beliefs and say, well, why can't you bring this into the public square? But not that.

Patrick McCalla

Yes. And I and I hear you saying, Angela, that that's one things that that Becket is doing and why religious freedom is is so important, because you go down a dangerous road when you're asking someone to take it to divorce this little piece here with everything else they believe. And and again, I think history shows that that society unravels pretty fast.

Patrick McCalla

So again, as we as we wrap up your say again what you said earlier when you said because that was to me that was so deep where you said something about you show me how a society treats the least.

Dr. Angela Wu Howard

Oh yeah, yeah.

Patrick McCalla

Yeah.

Dr. Angela Wu Howard

Yeah. I mean, show me any society, any jurisdiction, any country and how they are treating the least among them. Right. So the least favored religious minority, the most disabled person the person who has suffered sort of the most social pressures because of who they were born as an I'll tell you how much justice they really have.

Patrick McCalla

So here's the convicting part for me. I heard you say that and I thought for us as listeners, for me, for you, that applies to us as individuals. Doesn't it, as well. You show me how I treat or we treat the least of these and I'll probably show it probably will display where my life is now, which is again being people of faith.

Patrick McCalla

No wonder. From cover to cover in the Bible, God guts heart is for the least of these. And He tells us to care for the widows and the orphans, at least of these, because it does display where we are as individuals, as a family, as a culture, as a society.

Dr. Angela Wu Howard

So this is I mean, you're you're you're bringing up something that's kind of become a passion of mine. And I'm still working through what that looks like in my personal life and our life as a family. And that is that we it's not just that we sit and we judge what's going on right and that we or that we said and we just try not to do harm, actually think that we are called to do good, that we are called to be exceptional, to be as a church, to be that city on the hill.

Dr. Angela Wu Howard

And I see every day I see ministers you know, I see missionaries, I see laypeople, I see religious orders doing extraordinary things that really, really encouraged me. And I also see us failing. So, you know, in one, if you'll permit me to bring up the abortion context, I have very firm pro-life convictions, but something that I'm much more interested in than arguing about that or even about when life begins, which I think is a really, really important, important discussion to have, is actually, you know, what are we doing about helping mothers keep their babies?

Dr. Angela Wu Howard

The vast, vast majority of abortion cases, I mean, we're talking 90 plus percent are for socioeconomic reasons. And shame on us. Shame on us. That that's why because the vast majority of these women would say, if I didn't have these certain social pressures, if my family was intact, if I had the economic resources, if I had any support in my life as a mother at all with the four kids that are already overwhelming me or even just with the first child.

Dr. Angela Wu Howard

But I'm 16 years old, you know, I would want to keep my child and what are we doing to help them? So in every city we've lived in, we actually have found crisis pregnancy centers that provide, you know, housing, health care, continued education. I mean, all of the things that I think are so not visible, especially in the mainstream media.

Dr. Angela Wu Howard

And so show the other side here about what we do. There's a lot of that. Every place we've lived in we found places like that in our very modest way found a way to help. But I sort of sometimes look at these places. I know that they're underfunded and you know, I know that Planned Parenthood, which doesn't offer any of these things, gets many, many, many times more tax dollars.

Dr. Angela Wu Howard

For any of their programing. I know that there there are waiting lists for many of these places. And the question is, why does it have to be like that? And I am talking to Christians to say, why are we not stepping up to do a lot more to take away the demand? But I sometimes say this also to friends of mine who are a great deal more morally liberal than I am and who are pro-choice to say, why are you not doing like, why are we not agreeing on this?

Dr. Angela Wu Howard

Let's sure, let's keep arguing about the legality of abortion, right? Like we can have that civilized argument.

Patrick McCalla

But what we should all agree on.

Dr. Angela Wu Howard

Why are we not agreeing on paid family leave? Why are we not agreeing on the fact that there are people who just need help for some period and that we all receive that in some way? And I'm not just talking about government programs because I've been I've been I've lived in D.C. long enough to work with you on long enough saw inside the belly of the beast with government long enough to realize that there's incredible inefficiencies.

Dr. Angela Wu Howard

And frankly, some of those programs do work really well. I believe in them. I believe in the people who are running them. And some of them really don't it's full of waste. And the best programs that I've seen have been mostly privately run, oftentimes in partnership with public agencies. But sometimes they're just on their own and it's because those programs are able to individualize.

Dr. Angela Wu Howard

And a lot of times those programs are faith based because they're asking not just what widget can I give you you know, what meal and how many can I deliver to you, but who are you as a human being? How can I dignify you as a human being? How can I accompany you in this like journey with Multi-billion Problems?

Dr. Angela Wu Howard

And I started thinking about this honestly when I arrived at Becket a lot more because Seamus, our founder, created a workplace that was incredibly family friendly. I mean, so he has seven children of his own. And I think he wanted to create a place where lawyers would stay as their families instead of just get out and be a lawyer.

Dr. Angela Wu Howard

Right. So, you know, a living wage is very popular in the loft and not so popular in the in among conservatives. But let's own that phrase and say, you know, if it's fair pay for for actual labor. Right. And to say we're going to have really great family leave for fathers and mothers because you are not babysitting your children.

Dr. Angela Wu Howard

You are fathering them when you're with them. Yeah. And and he also created the circumstances. And this is long before, you know, COVID19 and remote work became popular. But he made it possible for women and men to be working remotely for, you know, part of their time, all of their time, if what they needed was to be home with their families.

Dr. Angela Wu Howard

And it's enabled, I think, a disproportionate number of women to become senior lawyers in our firm and, you know, to stay with their jobs even through multiple children. And that was such and this is you know, this is long before I think the conversation became popular. Right. And that was a it told me whatever is out there and the people aren't getting it is actually possible for us to do this.

Dr. Angela Wu Howard

And there there it's not easy to negotiate. But I'm saying, why is not every Christian employer in the land setting the example for what that looks like? Because when you're when you're a lawyer or your secretary or your administrative assistant walks into the room into their job, they're coming as a whole human being. It's not like they came in wearing just the one hat, right?

Dr. Angela Wu Howard

So their expectations about performance, but they come with them. And your job as an employer is to enable their flourishing in life. Now, they might not be there forever. And some people are not cut out for certain jobs, right? People get laid off, they get fired, they move on to other opportunities that are better fits for them, hopefully is how we think of it when we have to let somebody go.

Dr. Angela Wu Howard

But while they are in your employ, why? Why do we as Christians and I think many Christians do, but we need to do this at scale. You know, I just want the rest of the world to look at Christian institutions and model. Yes. As a model, as a city on the hill, like, oh, there is another way to do this.

Dr. Angela Wu Howard

Women don't single women don't have to do this alone. You know, families don't have to totally crush us. We can be a we there is a way to be life giving. There's a way to like take care of the least among us.

Patrick McCalla

Angela.

Dr. Angela Wu Howard

And still flourish all of us and make money even. Yeah.

Patrick McCalla

It's interesting because this this started what you were saying here in the last moments, started with me saying going off of what you said about you, show me a country where they how they treat the least of these and I'll show you how their justice system is. And I said, man, we need to apply that to ourselves. And I don't know if the listeners caught it.

Patrick McCalla

I bet they did. You came alive and came alive. But I love that. Well, we need to wind down here, but thank you so much for what you're doing. Thank you for the impact that you're having. I thank you just for what we learned today. I'm walking away. This is my my truth that I'm taking as I walk away.

Patrick McCalla

Is it really matters how we treat the least of these. It really matters what I do with what I say. I believe, you know, if I say I'm pro-life, then I should be pro-life from from from the beginning to the end. How did you put it before?

Dr. Angela Wu Howard

Yeah, from room to room to.

Patrick McCalla

Tomb and care about all of that. I'm caring about people, you know, how people are leaving their dignity. And so that I'm walking away with that truth and that I appreciate that. One things that we do on here that's kind of fun, though, to finish is we do the to treat this in a way. So do you have two truths in a life?

Dr. Angela Wu Howard

I think.

Patrick McCalla

It's ironic. Yeah. Yeah, it's ironic. She's for people that are listening and not watching. She's jotting some notes down. I'm not going to look at them because I'm trying to guess this to trees in life.

Dr. Angela Wu Howard

So, Pete, when you had my husband on here, he he's lived a more exciting life. Is he give you some kind of a hard, hard to guess phrase a logger?

Patrick McCalla

Yeah. Inside a Russian camp and.

Dr. Angela Wu Howard

Yeah, yeah, I know. OK, well, let me preface that by saying thank you and also thank you for letting me be passionate. I hope it wasn't too much. It wasn't too much. And, you know, I'm grateful for our friendship is I feel like those relationships are going to keep us accountable because it's not easy to do these things.

Dr. Angela Wu Howard

I mean, we've had this very high minded conversation, and until you every day, there's something that I kind of fall down on. Me, too.

Patrick McCalla

Yeah, me too.

Dr. Angela Wu Howard

OK, so two truths and a lie. I once was hiking for a month by myself in New Zealand and got lost in a mountain OK? Um, I was in a horrible car accident in Bangladesh, and the only thing that saved me from going over a cliff was a, was the fact that we hit a tree and about a million villagers coming out in the night to help us I had an amazing trip to Kenya.

Dr. Angela Wu Howard

I'm visiting some friends from law school and I climbed Kilimanjaro with them.

Patrick McCalla

Those are good. Those are good. Middle one is true. The car wreck.

Dr. Angela Wu Howard

Yeah, OK. Why so fast? You know, because.

Patrick McCalla

You you just shared some details that I was like, that's got to be true.

Dr. Angela Wu Howard

Oh, I have to remember this the next time we play this. Yeah.

Patrick McCalla

I'm not I'm trying not to encourage you to be a better life person. So that one's true. And then I'm going to say the Kilimanjaro one you did not do.

Dr. Angela Wu Howard

You are cheating because you know that my husband is outdoorsy. Yes.

Patrick McCalla

That's kind of true because right before we turned on the lights, we were talking. Yeah. Saying like, yeah, I love to hike and everything, but other people have to kind of initiate. So that's right.

Dr. Angela Wu Howard

Yeah. I was hiking in New Zealand.

Patrick McCalla

Yeah, but you did that. That one's true.

Dr. Angela Wu Howard

I got lost and. Yeah, so I have been to the foothills of Kilimanjaro and was there I no. And it's kind of a lifelong dream to climb Kilimanjaro.

Patrick McCalla

People did.

Dr. Angela Wu Howard

So there's a little wish fulfillment in here.

Patrick McCalla

If your husband, Pete Draper.

Dr. Angela Wu Howard

Get them excited. He's never taken me up on it.

Patrick McCalla

And there will be some adventures any time I'm with Pete, there's some adventures.

Dr. Angela Wu Howard

Well, he's traveled so much, I think he's tired of it. Yeah. So so.

Patrick McCalla

Well, Angela, thank you so much. Appreciate it. Thank you. As a guest.

Dr. Angela Wu Howard

Yeah, it was such a gift. Thank you.

Host

Thanks for listening to the No Gray Areas podcast to Dove Deeper into the story. Be sure to subscribe. Follow us on social media and check out No Gray Areas dot com.