Metro’s Assault on Religious Liberty

Religious freedom and religious liberty have been hallmarks of America’s exceptionalism since before the founding.  The ability to worship as one chooses without governmental interference is a fundamental right, and government exists, in part, to protect that right.

Somebody needs to tell that to the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority.

WMATA, which runs the Metro system in greater Washington, including in significant portions of Virginia from Dulles to Arlington, has been struggling over the last few years.  Faced with major safety issues, multiple accidents and fires with fatalities, demand up but ridership down, and localities unwilling to continue dumping money into a system that is seen as failing, Metro has been desperate to right itself and get its fiscal house in order.  As a result, they’ve begun looking at a variety of means to reduce operating costs.  They’ve floated a number of proposals, from additional fare increases to service cutbacks to increase maintenance time, which they say has dropped from 44 hours a week a twenty years ago to 33 hours per week today.

Metro has put forward four separate proposals that include service cutbacks.  One of those, Proposal #4, calls for Metro to keep its current hours of 5 AM to midnight Monday through Thursday, stay open until 3 AM on Friday and Saturday, and not open until noon on Sunday.

That’s right.  Metro is actually proposing to remain closed on Sunday mornings, the primary worship period for hundreds of thousands of Christians in the Washington Metropolitan Area.

Young people without cars who sing in the choir, the elderly who no longer drive but use public transit, and everybody in between – including the author whenever the Marine Corps Marathon or other events have screwed up traffic on a Sunday morning – will essentially be locked out of church on Sunday morning under WMATA’s latest proposal.

Rev. Dr. Luis Leon, rector of Washington’s most famous parish church, St. John’s Church Lafayette Square, the “Church of Presidents,” warned his congregation last week that their ministry could be “deeply impacted” if WMATA was to adopt proposal #4.  It was likely a message heard from pulpits across the greater Washington area last Sunday.

It’s unfathomable that Metro’s Board of Directors – which includes Northern Virginia Chamber of Commerce President Jim Corcoran and Hunter Mill Supervisor Cathy Hudgins from the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors – would even consider cutting the DC Metro area’s Christian community off from the primary means of public transit during peak worship hours, between 8 AM and noon on Sundays.  Yet that proposal is put next to three others that include modest curtailment of the extended late night hours that could get Metro to their desired goal of 41 maintenance hours a week.

Essentially, Metro seems to think that staying open later to make sure people get home from the bars safely is more important than allowing folks the freedom to worship where they choose, as they choose, when they choose – which is usually Sunday morning.

Make no mistake – religious freedom and liberty is more than simply being able to worship whatever faith you wish.  It includes the ability to worship in the form you wish, when you wish, where you wish.  When government provides a public transportation option and encourages people to become completely reliant upon it for their mobility, it is a direct assault on religious liberty to take away that option when most people wish to use it to get to church.  It would be the equivalent of government padlocking the doors to every church in Washington on Sunday morning for thousands of people.

What’s worse, you can guarantee that if the Washington Redskins or some other major employer in the District came to WMATA and demanded that Metro remain open to ensure their customers could get to the game or could get to their stores or jobs, Metro would fall all over itself to accommodate them.  Churches, however, apparently have to beg.

Metro is soliciting public comments on the proposed hours.  You can let them know how you feel by taking their online survey and voting for any proposal OTHER than Proposal #4.  The deadline for public comment is October 25th.

Metro has an obligation to greater Washington and her communities of faith.  Religious liberty includes the liberty to attend services, and government should not try to fix a system that has largely failed because of government incompetence on the backs of the faithful by limiting their ability to get to church on time.

This fundamentally unAmerican proposal should not be adopted.