I really struggle to stay awake during Boston Globe sermons.
"High court gives churches latitude in hiring, firing" January 12, 2012|By Adam Liptak
WASHINGTON - In what may be its most significant religious liberty decision in two decades, the Supreme Court yesterday for the first time recognized a “ministerial exception’’ to employment discrimination laws, saying that churches and other religious groups must be free to choose and dismiss their leaders without government interference.
“The interest of society in the enforcement of employment discrimination statutes is undoubtedly important,’’ Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote in a decision that was surprising in both its sweep and its unanimity. “But so, too, is the interest of religious groups in choosing who will preach their beliefs, teach their faith, and carry out their mission.’’
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Whatever its precise scope, the ruling will have concrete consequences for countless people employed by religious groups to perform religious work. In addition to ministers, priests, rabbis, and other religious leaders, the decision appears to encompass, for instance, at least those teachers in religious schools with formal religious training who are charged with instructing students about religious matters....
Asked about professors at Catholic universities like Notre Dame, Douglas Laycock, a law professor at the University of Virginia who successfully argued the case, said: “If he teaches theology, he’s covered. If he teaches English or physics or some clearly secular subjects, he is clearly not covered.’’
The case, Hosanna-Tabor Church v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, No. 10-553, was brought by Cheryl Perich, who had been a teacher at a school in Redford, Mich., that was part of the Lutheran-Church Missouri Synod, the second largest Lutheran denomination in the United States. Perich said she was fired for pursuing an employment-discrimination claim based on a disability, narcolepsy.
Is it just me or is the IRONY there a LAUGH RIOT!
You don't need a pill to cure insomnia. Just get religion.
Perich had taught mostly secular subjects but also taught religion classes and attended chapel with her class.
“It is true that her religious duties consumed only 45 minutes of each workday,’’ Roberts wrote, “and that the rest of her day was devoted to teaching secular subjects. The issue before us, however, is not one that can be resolved with a stopwatch.’’
Instead, the court looked to several factors. Perich was a “called’’ teacher who had completed religious training and whom the school considered a minister. She was fired, the school said, for violating religious doctrine by pursuing litigation rather than trying to resolve her dispute within the church.
Roberts devoted several pages of his opinion to a history of religious freedom in Britain and the United States, concluding that an animating principle behind the First Amendment’s religious liberty clauses was to prohibit government interference in the internal affairs of religious groups generally and in their selection of their leaders in particular.
“The Establishment Clause prevents the government from appointing ministers,’’ he wrote, “and the Free Exercise Clause prevents it from interfering with the freedom of religious groups to select their own.’’
The decision was a major victory for a broad swath of national religious denominations who had warned that the case was a threat to their First Amendment rights and their autonomy to decide whom to hire and fire.
Some religious leaders had said they considered it the most important religious freedom case to go to the Supreme Court in decades.
Many religious groups were outraged when the Obama administration argued in support of Perich, saying this was evidence that the administration was hostile to historically protected religious liberties.
The whole government seems hostile to any civil liberties these days, from direct activism like protests to blog commentators such as myself.
The administration had told the justices that their analysis of Perich’s case should be essentially the same whether she had been employed by a church, a labor union, a social club or any other group with free-association rights under the First Amendment. That position was soundly rejected in yesterday’s decision.
“That result is hard to square with the text of the First Amendment itself, which gives special solicitude to the rights of religious organizations,’’ Roberts wrote. “We cannot accept the remarkable view that the religion clauses have nothing to say about a religious organization’s freedom to select its own ministers.’’
Requiring Perich to be reinstated “would have plainly violated the church’s freedom,’’ Roberts wrote. And so would awarding her and her lawyers money, he went on, as that “would operate as a penalty on the church for terminating an unwanted minister.’’
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"Judge rejects breakaway churches’ case" January 12, 2012|By Michelle Boorstein
WASHINGTON - A Virginia judge has ruled against seven conservative congregations that broke away from the Episcopal Church in 2006, rejecting their contention that they should be able to keep valuable church property that the national denomination also claims.
The case has drawn worldwide attention because it involves a cluster of large, prominent churches with well-known conservative pastors and because the issues at hand - particularly the Episcopal Church’s continued acceptance of same-sex relationships as equal to heterosexual ones - are roiling much of organized religion. Various Protestant congregations, in particular, have wound up in litigation across the country....
If they decide to not appeal, the seven congregations would have to vacate their churches, including some of the largest and most prominent in the region. Among them are The Falls Church and Truro Church in Northern Virginia, where thousands of people worship.
I imagine this case will be making its way to the Supreme Court.
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Huh, what? Sermon over?