“It is not just churches that have these religious rights, but all Americans who gather in voluntary association for distinctively religious purposes, such as Christian education.”  Justice Jackson

American Evangelicals and Catholics have not always been the best of friends. But in recent years, many in both camps have moved from suspicion to mutual understanding and appreciation.

Charles Colson, the evangelical founder of Prison Fellowship, began one such effort with Richard John Neuhaus, the Catholic editor of First Things, 20 years ago. The fruit of their labor was a document titled “Evangelicals and Catholics Together.”

That statement shows that alongside our theological differences, we hold important beliefs in common. For example, the statement says, “we contend together for religious freedom. . . . In their relationship to God, persons have a dignity and responsibility that transcends, and thereby limits, the authority of the state and of every other merely human institution.” Recent efforts by the Department of Health and Human Services to implement the Affordable Care Act have brought us together to defend that freedom.

On Wednesday, represented by the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, the trustees of Wheaton College joined The Catholic University of America in filing a lawsuit against the Department of Health and Human Services. They did so because the HHS mandate requiring the college to provide and subsidize insurance coverage for abortion-inducing drugs violates the conscience of the school and its members, and denies their First Amendment freedom of religion.

When Catholic University began its own legal action on May 21, it asserted a moral and a constitutional right to practice its religion without government interference. Defending liberty is also deeply rooted in Wheaton’s identity as a Christian liberal arts college, founded by abolitionists on the Illinois prairie at the outset of the Civil War.

Wheaton’s first president, Jonathan Blanchard, believed that slavery was something more than an “ordinary political problem.” He felt a religious imperative to act in defense of freedom. “A command against my conscience,” he said, “I would not obey.”

Our institutions do not agree on all points about HHS’s mandated services. The regulations require religious institutions (except churches) to guarantee coverage for all government-approved contraceptives. Wheaton College does not, as Catholics do, view all forms of artificial contraception as immoral.

But the list of required services includes “morning after” and “week after” pills that claim the life of an unborn child within days of its conception. During the period for public comment, Wheaton and many other evangelical colleges and universities objected that this requirement violated their belief in the sanctity of human life.

We must cherish life, not destroy it. This belief is shared by both campus communities. The Catholic Church’s unqualified defense of the unborn is too well known to need restatement. Wheaton’s commitment is equally firm.

As a systemically Christian college, all of Wheaton’s students, faculty and staff undertake to live a distinctive lifestyle. In its Community Covenant, the college affirms “the God-given worth of human beings, from conception to death.” Because abortion destroys innocent human life, the college regards the HHS mandate as contrary to its deepest convictions.

Many Americans disagree with our shared belief in the immorality of abortion. That is their right. But there should be no dispute about a second point we hold in common: Religious schools like Wheaton College and Catholic University should have the freedom—guaranteed by the United States Constitution—to carry out our mission in a way that is consistent with our religious principles.

“If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation,” Justice Robert Jackson wrote in West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette (1943), “it is that no official . . . can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein.”

[Editor’s note: This article is incomplete. The source for this document was originally published on online.wsj.com – however, the original URL is no longer available.]