By far the most important story of the day comes by way of The Anchoress:
The Supreme Court of the United States has ruled unanimously in favor of a church’s right to be itself, and its freedom to assign its ministries:
This is an enormous and timely victory for religious freedom:
In a groundbreaking case, the Supreme Court on Wednesday held for the first time that religious employees of a church cannot sue for employment discrimination.
But the court’s unanimous decision in a case from Michigan did not specify the distinction between a secular employee, who can take advantage of the government’s protection from discrimination and retaliation, and a religious employee, who can’t.
It was, nevertheless, the first time the high court has acknowledged the existence of a “ministerial exception” to anti-discrimination laws — a doctrine developed in lower court rulings. This doctrine says the First Amendment’s guarantee of freedom of religion shields churches and their operations from the reach of such protective laws when the issue involves employees of these institutions.
In practice, had the court decided differently, they would have handed the Obama and all subsequent administrations the kind of power that China exercises over churches, including their ongoing struggle to appoint representatives of the Roman Catholic Church. You have to say, though, that China is consistent, insofar as it also reserves the right to select a new Dalai Lama whenever the opportunity shows.
Please go over to Elizabeth’s and read the whole thing, and three cheers for the Supremes.
This is as big a slapdown to Obama as the zero-vote “budget,” but strangely enough it’s nowhere represented at Memeorandum. Wonder what that’s about.
Will on January 11, 2012 at 9:08 pm said:
So if a Sunday school teacher is fired because her Pastor was hitting on her and she rebuffed his advances, she has no legal recourse? How is that protecting the theological basis of the institution? Or if a minister tripped on the church steps and broke his ankle he wouldn’t be entitled to sue for his job should the church decide to replace him? Why are these non-theological issues a victory for the church. This isn’t big government imposing its will on a religious institution. It’s the recognition that a religious institution, just like government and private enterprise, can be abusive to its employees, ministerial or secular, and they should be afforded some basic protections.
Dan Collins on January 11, 2012 at 9:28 pm said:
There are civil remedies for abuse and for firing on false grounds. Those protections—a wide variety of civil remedies—are still in place.
What’s different is that the EEOC can’t impose its values on institutions whose own values have historically been different. For example, an employer is not permitted as a legal matter to reject a candidate for employment because of their religion, or their lack of it. Do you really think that it’s fair that the Salvation Army, for example, should be required to hire an atheist? Should the NAACP be required to observe quotas for whites and Hispanics? La Raza for Anglos?
Should Catholic hospitals be forced to provide abortion services or give up any federal funding? Is it justifiable that they go out of business? Should religious schools be required to hire people who despise Christianity?
Separation of church and state was contemplated by the founders as a mutual non-aggression pact, but liberals always place the emphasis on one side. And as they scream about “Christianists” and others oppressing them, they actually have no problem with oppression in the other direction.
What Obama and his academic priests and priestesses of progressivism have said in effect is that The State is a jealous God, and thou shalt have no other gods before thee.
John on January 12, 2012 at 9:04 am said:
She has a perfectly legel recourse: First, she confronts him alone. If he is unrepentant, she brings along a couple witnesses and confronts him again. If he remains unrepentant, then she stands up during services during the next time he gives a sermon, and when all eyes are on her, confronts him openly before the whole congregation.
This is all according to the Lord’s command, BTW.
jefferson101 on January 11, 2012 at 10:43 pm said:
Not to put too fine of an edge on it, but if Will lives in a world where Sunday School Teachers are paid employees of the “system”, he’s gotten a fair way away from the Church as I know it.
I’ve personally declined several invitations, requests, and outright pleadings to teach Sunday School classes for the young, as I have also declined any suggestions that I ought to become a Deacon. I go all Catholic on them. “Domine non sum dignus.” I’m best used as a bad example, most days.
I’ll lead adult Sunday School discussions, but that’s about it. However, before we had to pay someone to do it, I’d reconsider.
However, if the Pastor is hitting on the Sunday School teacher, I might be one of the first to hear about it. I’m not “official” in any way, shape, or form, but when the time comes to start drawing lines and parsing scriptures, I’m generally involved, or at least consulted, even when I decline to become involved.
In my Church, there’s a simple solution to problems where the Pastor gets out of line. We fire him.
Fundamentalism Rocks that way, sometimes. Particularly if you are not in so large a Church that that sort of thing can go unnoticed for more than a week or so.
Dan Collins on January 11, 2012 at 10:47 pm said:
Yeah, Enoch got canned from teaching Catholic doctrine for saying that not everyone was going to heaven.
enoch_root on January 11, 2012 at 10:53 pm said:
I am as radical as the Magisterium!
Everyone prefers Catholics to be better with crayons than with, you know, Scripture.
jefferson101 on January 11, 2012 at 11:17 pm said:
I’ve had enough experience with “Scriptural Catholics” that I’m a total PITA at my Church some days.
When the Pastor is off and we have a visitor who starts off on the “All the Catholics are going to Hell” thing, (Which usually winds up including the Methodists, Pentecostals, the members of the Church of Christ, the Campbellites, and probably most of the Southern Baptists….), I start getting looked at about halfway through the sermon. They don’t come back twice.
It’s a product of my bad upbringing, and part and parcel of why I don’t choose to be anything except a member of a Church. There are very few doctrines that have a Dogma that I couldn’t be heretical toward, one way or another.
1st Corinthians 15, Verses 1-4, is wherein I stand, and is all that is required. Anything else is window dressing to get the neighbors to come visit, but none of it matters, beyond that part.
Rocketman on January 12, 2012 at 12:33 am said:
Speaking actual truth to power! Vaya con Dios, Hermano Grande
enoch_root on January 12, 2012 at 10:19 am said:
Rocketman on January 12, 2012 at 12:30 am said:
Thanks be to God…
John on January 12, 2012 at 9:18 am said:
Now was Kagan ruling according to what she believes, or (seeing that the overall ruling was going the way it did), did she take the opportunity to pose as someone independent of the current administration’s wishes, to perhaps quell some of the calls for her recusal from the upcoming Obamacare case?
We don’t get 9-0 from this bunch very often. Usually at least one of them has to decide that plain 18th century English need not mean what it says.
enoch_root on January 12, 2012 at 10:37 am said:
Interesting.