Enjoy!
Wednesday, September 3, 2014
Weekly Email Update
Labor Day marked the “end of summer” although summer is officially still going on, but we are back to our fall schedule at Highland. We had a great kickoff to fall with Dr. James Peoples. The Holy Spirit surely moved and blessed. Each of the messages is on our website under the media tab; watch them for yourselves and pass them along to others around. What a blessing!
I also want to say a huge “Thank You” from our family, especially my Mom and Dad. Highland as my church family has ministered to us, you have blessed us, and I say “Thank You.” Please keep praying for Mom, she has five more chemo treatments to go. God has and continues to be faithful and gracious. Hallelujah! What a Savior.
AWANA had her big kickoff Wednesday night, and it was a great time. The hotdogs and fellowship were wonderful, the kids were excited and so were the parents. I absolutely love it that our kids are so challenged to “hide God’s word in their hearts, that they might not sin against God.” Pray those verses stick in their minds and hearts. Pray those verses find fertile soil in our kids. Pray God changes the world through them.
I love REACH. Through this structure in our Life Groups we have made hundreds of contacts with individuals and families by way of phone calls, cards, notes, and letters. We have prayed more intentionally and specifically for families in our church and community, and I believe that we are making inroads into the harvest. Thank you for playing your part in the outREACH arm of Highland.
I also want to make sure you are aware that we are hosting another PLACE weekend this month. The dates are September 12-13. Sue Drake and her team are ready to take another group through this amazing experience. Sue and Jeff will also be teaching a six (6) week Life Group elective covering the same material. It will begin on September 14, and will meet in the choir rehearsal room. If you have any questions contact Sue or Janet.
I have several preaching engagements over the next two months and I covet your prayers as I preach these services. I will be preaching two homecomings and two revivals. Thanks in advance for your prayers.
Lastly, I want to make you aware of an opportunity to be part of something the North American Mission Board of the SBC is doing in Nashville, TN. August 3-4, 2015. They are hosting a Send North America conference. This is a conference about strategic church planting in North America. I think it is vital for us to begin strategically preparing to be involved in church planting. The Book of Acts makes it very plane that God expects the church to multiply, and there is no better way for Highland to multiply than to participate in church planting. I am looking at and having conversations with leaders in our church about making a financial commitment to church planting in our budget, and looking for ways for us to get involved through our Mission Team at Highland. Please pray that all the right doors will be open to us.
Wednesday, August 6, 2014
Think it through Mom and Dad
A post by Willy Rice. Pastor of Calvary Baptist Church in Clearwater, Florida.
Pastor Willy's Blog - Complete Post
08-06-14
Christ and His Church Go Together
Parents who allow their children to opt out of church attendance and involvement have abdicated their role of leadership and set their children up to abandon the faith altogether. The Church is the “Body of Christ”. The American fad to separate Christ, a personal relationship with Him, from The Church, a corporate commitment to Christ through His body, is unbiblical, toxic, and hurtling a generation toward apostasy and eternal destruction. You might as well kick your kid off a cliff at the Grand Canyon.
But it’s boring. How many parents have heard that? First, let me say that I am not advocating boring ministries, boring messages or boring music. We should work hard as church leaders, volunteers and pastors, to be creative, compelling and relevant. BUT since when is it the greatest crime of the century to be boring? There are plenty of things I do that need to be done because they are vitally important that are also occasionally routine and even boring. School is boring at times. I mean how exciting can algebra be? But I don’t hear parents allowing kids to opt out of attending class because a certain teacher is boring. Preparing your taxes can be boring, but that is not an to excuse to break the law. Most jobs can be boring at times. I’ve eaten plenty of boring meals and even read through a few boring books from time to time. Try sitting for hours on end in an ICU. It can be pretty boring. But all those things can be important and even life saving.
Life does not exist to entertain you or your kids. Entertainment is not the great aim of life! When you allow your kids to opt out of church, whether it is student ministry or worship with the larger church body, because they find something boring, be it the music, teaching or something else, you reinforce the heretical notion that the Church exists for their amusement. The Church exists for the glory of God, and our commitment to it is about our love and devotion for Christ. In a Christian family there are certain things that should be non-negotiable…ever! Christian parents fail spectacularly and tragically when their actions teach their children that church is merely for their amusement or entertainment. It is not.
Paul warns us that failing to discern the Lord’s body invites great judgment upon ourselves (1 Corinthians 11:29). While the context of that deals with Communion, those who view the Body of Christ as existing merely for their own entertainment or usage are in fact failing to discern the Lord’s body. To reject the Body of Christ is to reject Christ visible and present in the world and to bring great judgment upon ourselves.
I am afraid some Christian parents have invited judgment upon themselves and their children by failing to impress upon them the beauty and importance of the Body of Christ. If you teach them to hate the Church, you have taught them to hate Christ. If you allow them to neglect the Church, you have encouraged them to neglect Christ. Jesus did not come to entertain you. He came to save you. Jesus is not some side street performer begging you to come and watch His latest tricks. He is the Holy God of the universe who deserves our praise, worship and reverential fear.
Teach your children to love the Lord your God with all their heart, soul, mind and strength. This is the greatest aim of the Christian parent. You cannot do that if you make a connection to the Body of Christ optional or relegate it to the role of a peripheral activity that we do when we find it convenient or amusing.
Thursday, July 24, 2014
Let your voice be heard
https://www.votervoice.net/Shares/BLfcMA4YACW-IAd7vYL7FAA
Please click on the link and send a message to your senators in Washington that you oppose the appointment of liberal judges who will knowingly undue the constitution and legislate from the bench.
Please click on the link and send a message to your senators in Washington that you oppose the appointment of liberal judges who will knowingly undue the constitution and legislate from the bench.
Sunday, July 13, 2014
My Grandfather
A mighty warrior of Christ's kingdom, Rev. Ed Madaris, 97, of Wingate, NC, was promoted to glory Friday, July 11, 2014, at his home. Born February 28, 1917, in Tuscaloosa, AL, he was a son of the late Barney and Mabel Blake Madaris. He was also preceded in death by a brother, Henry Madaris of Asheboro, NC, a sister, Lola Shropshire of High Point, NC, a sister, Edith Bryant of Tucson, AZ, and a grandson, Paul Jewell of Pensacola, FL.
A service to celebrate the life of "Preacher Ed" will be held Sunday at 7 PM at Faulks Baptist Church. The family will receive friends on Sunday from 5-7 pm in the fellowship building. Burial will be on Monday at 10 AM in the Faulks Baptist Church cemetery.
Rev. Madaris is survived by his loving wife of 75 years, Fannie Lee M. Madaris of the home; son, Rev. Tim Madaris of Pageland, SC; daughters, Linda M. Franklin of Pageland, SC, and Patsy M. Jewell of Orange Park, FL; sister, Lucille Welborn of High Point, NC; 10 grandchildren, 22 great grandchildren and 1 great-great grandchild.
He was married and came to know the Lord when he was 22 years of age, and shortly after was called to preach. He and his bride faithfully served the Lord in ministry for over 70 years. He graduated from Piedmont Bible Institute, now Piedmont International University, in Winston Salem, NC, and eventually became a trustee. He received the Alumni Achievement Award in 1997 for distinguished service to the Lord Jesus. He served churches in North Carolina and Florida as pastor, conducted numerous revival meeting across North Carolina, Tennessee, West Virginia, and Florida, often using a tent for the revival crusades during the early days of his ministry, and he also had a daily radio program for 10 years. He helped develop and lead Camp Teen Haven in Asheboro, NC for 13 years, seeing numerous young people come to know Christ as Lord and Savior. The eternal impact of Preacher Ed's ministry cannot be expressed in numbers, however, we know of numerous men and women who surrendered to gospel ministry as a result of his influence. Both of his daughters married men called to pastor, his son, two of his grandsons, and one grandson-in-law are pastors of local churches. The family can only imagine the glorious reunion of those who have gone before him and were there to welcome him home.
Please take time to leave a comment, share a story, of how Preacher Ed influenced your life. The family will treasure them.
In lieu of flowers, the family has requested that donations for Bibles be given as memorials to the Gideons International.
He was one of the greatest men I have ever known. I love you Granddaddy. I will miss you. BUT I will see you again!
A service to celebrate the life of "Preacher Ed" will be held Sunday at 7 PM at Faulks Baptist Church. The family will receive friends on Sunday from 5-7 pm in the fellowship building. Burial will be on Monday at 10 AM in the Faulks Baptist Church cemetery.
Rev. Madaris is survived by his loving wife of 75 years, Fannie Lee M. Madaris of the home; son, Rev. Tim Madaris of Pageland, SC; daughters, Linda M. Franklin of Pageland, SC, and Patsy M. Jewell of Orange Park, FL; sister, Lucille Welborn of High Point, NC; 10 grandchildren, 22 great grandchildren and 1 great-great grandchild.
He was married and came to know the Lord when he was 22 years of age, and shortly after was called to preach. He and his bride faithfully served the Lord in ministry for over 70 years. He graduated from Piedmont Bible Institute, now Piedmont International University, in Winston Salem, NC, and eventually became a trustee. He received the Alumni Achievement Award in 1997 for distinguished service to the Lord Jesus. He served churches in North Carolina and Florida as pastor, conducted numerous revival meeting across North Carolina, Tennessee, West Virginia, and Florida, often using a tent for the revival crusades during the early days of his ministry, and he also had a daily radio program for 10 years. He helped develop and lead Camp Teen Haven in Asheboro, NC for 13 years, seeing numerous young people come to know Christ as Lord and Savior. The eternal impact of Preacher Ed's ministry cannot be expressed in numbers, however, we know of numerous men and women who surrendered to gospel ministry as a result of his influence. Both of his daughters married men called to pastor, his son, two of his grandsons, and one grandson-in-law are pastors of local churches. The family can only imagine the glorious reunion of those who have gone before him and were there to welcome him home.
Please take time to leave a comment, share a story, of how Preacher Ed influenced your life. The family will treasure them.
In lieu of flowers, the family has requested that donations for Bibles be given as memorials to the Gideons International.
He was one of the greatest men I have ever known. I love you Granddaddy. I will miss you. BUT I will see you again!
Thursday, July 10, 2014
A Week of Winshape Camp for Communities
This week has been a blast. Highland Baptist Church has had the amazing privilege of hosting a kids camp this week. The camp is put on by Connect Ministries and Winshape Foundation. The Winshape Foundation was originated and funded by the Truette Cathy Family of the Chick-Fil-A corporation. It has been the Cathy family's desire to make an impact on local communities across the county by hosting camps for kids and teenagers. I would encourage you to check it out. It's amazing.
Winshape has overnight camps in Georgia and then they fill 8-9 teams of 23 college students each, train them, and send them out to conduct these day camps for 8-9 weeks each summer. It has been our privilege to host a camp for Stanly county the last 2 years (2013-14). And I will say we have already been given a camp for next year, July 6-10, 2015. We are looking for churches and organizations beyond those already partnering with us to join us for next year. We have 223 kids from all over Stanly and Rowan counties here this week. Most of them have received some kind of scholarship to be able to attend. We raised over $20k last year, and were able to raise $28k+ this year to help kids come to camp. It's been hard work getting everything together, and so many have worked so hard to make this "the best week ever!"In addition to the kids and money, I was so amazed that we had 40+ people volunteer this week, many of them taking a week of vacation to be able to be here. Talk about commitment to Christ and kids. I love it! Thank you for serving Jesus by loving on these kids this week. A huge Thank You goes out to our children's director Janet Childress for her hard work, dedication, and love for the kids of this community. Thank You to the rest of the staff at Highland, Robert and Joy Whitley, and Matthew A. Wilkinson for your hard work in making this years camp a great success. It wouldn't have happened like it did without you.
Those are some amazing facts, but there is one fact that outshines and outweighs them all. It's the fact that these kids have heard about and experienced the love of Jesus Christ this week. The Winshape staff and the volunteers have been the hands and feet of the Lord Jesus this week to these kids. As a result of this experience, some of these kids gave their hearts and lives to Jesus yesterday and today. They have come to experience for themselves the forgiveness, salvation, grace, and mercy of the King Jesus. Eternity will never be the same. Join us now and in the future in doing what King Jesus has called us to do to reach the world with the gospel (the good news). Remember this, it's only good news if they hear it in time.
We also had two special guests this week that I want to tell you about. First, Dan Cathy, CEO of Chick-Fil-A dropped in yesterday for a surprise visit. It was awesome to meet a man who faithfully serves Jesus through a very public venue. He was so gracious and humble. He took time to talk with the kids and volunteers. He even posed for a few selfies! It was awesome. Second, we were able to let the Winshape staff spend some time with Joe Teti of the Discovery Channels show, Dual Survival. Joe is very neat guys with a special past. He faithfully served our country in two different special forces units during his military career. You can check Joe out through social media and his website. Pray for Joe as he seeks to represent the Lord Jesus to the best of his ability.
In closing, pray for the Winshape staffers as they spend the next 3 weeks in communities sharing the love of Jesus with other kids. Only heaven knows the whole impact made in the lives of thousands of kids across the country. May we, through them, see the Holy Spirit bring about a great revival before Jesus comes.
Winshape has overnight camps in Georgia and then they fill 8-9 teams of 23 college students each, train them, and send them out to conduct these day camps for 8-9 weeks each summer. It has been our privilege to host a camp for Stanly county the last 2 years (2013-14). And I will say we have already been given a camp for next year, July 6-10, 2015. We are looking for churches and organizations beyond those already partnering with us to join us for next year. We have 223 kids from all over Stanly and Rowan counties here this week. Most of them have received some kind of scholarship to be able to attend. We raised over $20k last year, and were able to raise $28k+ this year to help kids come to camp. It's been hard work getting everything together, and so many have worked so hard to make this "the best week ever!"In addition to the kids and money, I was so amazed that we had 40+ people volunteer this week, many of them taking a week of vacation to be able to be here. Talk about commitment to Christ and kids. I love it! Thank you for serving Jesus by loving on these kids this week. A huge Thank You goes out to our children's director Janet Childress for her hard work, dedication, and love for the kids of this community. Thank You to the rest of the staff at Highland, Robert and Joy Whitley, and Matthew A. Wilkinson for your hard work in making this years camp a great success. It wouldn't have happened like it did without you.
Those are some amazing facts, but there is one fact that outshines and outweighs them all. It's the fact that these kids have heard about and experienced the love of Jesus Christ this week. The Winshape staff and the volunteers have been the hands and feet of the Lord Jesus this week to these kids. As a result of this experience, some of these kids gave their hearts and lives to Jesus yesterday and today. They have come to experience for themselves the forgiveness, salvation, grace, and mercy of the King Jesus. Eternity will never be the same. Join us now and in the future in doing what King Jesus has called us to do to reach the world with the gospel (the good news). Remember this, it's only good news if they hear it in time.
We also had two special guests this week that I want to tell you about. First, Dan Cathy, CEO of Chick-Fil-A dropped in yesterday for a surprise visit. It was awesome to meet a man who faithfully serves Jesus through a very public venue. He was so gracious and humble. He took time to talk with the kids and volunteers. He even posed for a few selfies! It was awesome. Second, we were able to let the Winshape staff spend some time with Joe Teti of the Discovery Channels show, Dual Survival. Joe is very neat guys with a special past. He faithfully served our country in two different special forces units during his military career. You can check Joe out through social media and his website. Pray for Joe as he seeks to represent the Lord Jesus to the best of his ability.
In closing, pray for the Winshape staffers as they spend the next 3 weeks in communities sharing the love of Jesus with other kids. Only heaven knows the whole impact made in the lives of thousands of kids across the country. May we, through them, see the Holy Spirit bring about a great revival before Jesus comes.
Sunday, July 6, 2014
ANALYSIS: No 'war on women' - examining Ruth Bader Ginsburg's Hobby Lobby dissent
ANALYSIS: No 'war on women' - examining Ruth Bader Ginsburg's Hobby Lobby dissent
Posted on Jul 3, 2014 | by Gregory Tomlin
WASHINGTON (BP) -- Within hours of the Supreme Court's decision in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, politicians and media outlets were accusing conservative justices of fueling the "Republican war on women." The critics predicted a tidal wave of new cases caused by conflicts between workers and employers who hold "religiously grounded objections" to blood transfusions, antidepressants and medicinal products made from pigs.
Presumptive presidential candidate Hillary Clinton called the Supreme Court's 5-4 ruling "deeply disturbing" and a "slippery slope," likening it to crimes against the rights of women around the world. Clinton said business owners who oppose abortion-inducing drugs in their health plans might be leading the U.S. to create laws like those in countries "prone to extremism."
Clinton also asked if insurance companies could now deny blood transfusions when a business owner objects on religious grounds.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said the Hobby Lobby decision "could permit for-profit corporations to pick and choose which laws to obey." The "deeply misguided and destructive decision," Pelosi said in a statement, is a devastating blow to women's ability to make their own medical decisions in consultation with their doctors. Women will now have to "jump through extra hoops" to get the contraceptive care they need, Pelosi claimed.
The White House offered a similar interpretation of the ruling, equally foreboding, through the prism of the president, referred to by Press Secretary Josh Earnest as the "constitutional lawyer in the Oval Office."
"There is a problem being exposed that a group of women of an indeterminate size no longer have access to free contraception because of religious views, not their own religious views, but their boss's religious views," Earnest told reporters.
Predictably, and not surprisingly, media outlets supportive of abortion rights, such as Huffington Post and RH Reality Check, echoed the White House narrative.
A commentator with Huffington Post mused that Christians could now "pick and choose" which laws to obey and a "senior legal analyst" with RH Reality Check, which exists solely to champion reproductive and gay rights, cited the court's "deeply ingrained misogyny" as the origin of its decision. The analyst said storm clouds of discrimination are gathering as emboldened Christians prepare to rain frivolous lawsuits on an already overburdened court system --"even though (wink wink, nudge nudge) the Court is only concerned with the contraceptive mandate."
Key source of discontent
Such objections to the ruling by the court's majority have drawn from the dissenting opinion of Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Appointed to the Supreme Court in 1993 by President Clinton, Ginsburg is an experienced ACLU litigator and activist for women's rights.
Ginsburg's 35-page "scathing dissent," as it has been uniformly described by dozens of newspapers and websites, at times reads more like a political policy statement on women's health issues than a legal opinion. Ginsburg extols the benefits of universal health care, particularly with respect to contraception, and claims "the mandated contraception coverage enables women to avoid the health problems unintended pregnancies may visit on them and their children" -- though she surely is not referencing the children terminated by federally mandated abortifacients.
The exemption sought by Hobby Lobby, Ginsburg wrote, would "deny legions of women who do not hold their employers' beliefs access to contraceptive care" and force their religious viewpoints on employees. Clinton, Pelosi and the White House press secretary echoed the claim, agreeing with Ginsburg that religious people shouldn't be free to choose whether they want to obey the law.
In an analysis of the case, Eric Posner, a University of Chicago law professor, wrote that Ginsburg had set up the case "as a clash between women's rights and religious rights." At best, that reading "is not an entirely fair characterization of the case," Posner said.
At worst, it is patently false.
Stubborn facts
Lawyers for the two key litigants in the case -- the Green family, who own Hobby Lobby and Mardel, and the Hahn family, who own Conestoga Wood Specialties -- never argued, as Ginsburg and some politicians suggest, that a denial of all contraceptive care was the goal of the Christian families who own the businesses, or that Christians should be allowed to obey only the laws they like. Instead, lawyers for companies argued that they only sought relief in their insurance coverage plans from providing four of the 20 federally mandated contraceptives, including Plan B or the "morning after pill."
The drugs cause the spontaneous abortion of a fertilized egg implanted in the uterus and also may prevent the implantation of a fertilized egg. Associate Justice Samuel Alito, in his opinion for the majority, wrote that "the owners of three closely held for-profit corporations have sincere Christian beliefs that life begins at conception and that it would violate their religion to facilitate access to contraceptive drugs or devices that operate after that point."
"By requiring the Hahns and Greens and their companies to arrange for such coverage, the HHS mandate demands that they engage in conduct that seriously violates their religious beliefs," Alito wrote, adding, "If the Hahns and Greens and their companies do not yield to this demand, the economic consequences will be severe."
How severe? Perhaps as much as $475 million annually, which no company could possibly sustain.
Secondly, Ginsburg claimed in her dissent that religious exemptions under that Affordable Care Act should be confined "to organizations formed 'for a religious purpose,' 'engage[d] primarily in carrying out that religious purpose,' and not 'engaged … substantially in the exchange of goods or services for money beyond nominal amounts.'"
In other words, according to Ginsburg, religious liberty ends where a third party enters the equation, or where people are gathered for a purpose other than public worship.
Alito, however, wrote that the majority of the court believed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), signed into law by President Clinton in 1993, grants citizens the rights of conscience (religious liberty) even if they are voluntarily associated in a "closely-held" company, or one owned by an individual or a family.
"Congress provided protection for people like the Hahns and Greens by employing a familiar legal fiction: It included corporations within RFRA's definition of 'persons.' But it is important to keep in mind that the purpose of this fiction is to provide protection for human beings," Alito noted. "A corporation is simply a form of organization used by human beings to achieve desired ends. An established body of law specifies the rights and obligations of the people (including shareholders, officers, and employees) who are associated with a corporation in one way or another."
Alito continued, "When rights, whether constitutional or statutory, are extended to corporations, the purpose is to protect the rights of these people … protecting the free-exercise rights of corporations like Hobby Lobby, Conestoga, and Mardel protects the religious liberty of the humans who own and control those companies."
Russell D. Moore, president of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, aptly summarized the issue: The government cannot confine religious liberty to the hours Christians are inside the church or make Christians surrender the right because they own a corporation, especially one made up of employees who have voluntarily agreed to work for the pay and benefits offered.
"The government cannot set itself up as lord over the conscience," Moore said after the June 30 Hobby Lobby ruling. "What the Supreme Court has done today is reaffirm a basic American principle that our Baptist ancestors fought for in the revolutionary era."
Moore claimed two different views of religious liberty were in conflict in the United States. In the first, shared among the administration and judges like Ginsburg, religious liberty is believed to guarantee Americans the right to worship in an organized, religious setting.
But, Moore argued, this isn't the view of classical Baptists or "originalist" justices like Alito.
Ginsburg's prediction
Ginsburg contends in her dissent -- and her argument is being repeated by abortion advocates with regularity -- that the Supreme Court had "ventured into a minefield" of questions about judging the merits of religious opinions in cases where companies request exemptions from federal mandates based on religious grounds.
Ginsburg asked if Alito's use of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, or RFRA, to protect religiously grounded objections to the use of certain contraceptives extends "to employers with religiously grounded objections to blood transfusions (Jehovah's Witnesses); antidepressants (Scientologists); medications derived from pigs, including anesthesia, intravenous fluids, and pills coated with gelatin (certain Muslims, Jews, and Hindus); and vaccinations (Christian Scientists, among others)?"
Alito, however, never claimed the majority's ruling carried weight for any case beyond the abortion-inducing contraceptives in the Hobby Lobby case and cases like it.
"Our decision should not be understood to hold that an insurance coverage mandate must necessarily fall if it conflicts with an employer's religious beliefs," Alito wrote. The decision could not be used, for example, to justify discrimination in hiring based on religious belief, he wrote.
In the end, Ginsburg offers fears and speculation about what "might" occur in American jurisprudence with respect to religious freedom because of the Hobby Lobby case and the decision resulting from the constitutional protections confirmed in the RFRA.
Ironically, Ginsburg said during her confirmation hearing in 1993 that such speculation is generally something a judge should avoid.
"Were I to rehearse here what I would say and how I would reason on such questions, I would act injudiciously," Ginsburg told members of Congress. "A judge sworn to decide impartially can offer no forecasts, no hints, for that would show not only disregard for the specifics of the particular case; it would display disdain for the entire judicial process."
Beyond the rhetoric
While there has been a significant amount of alarmist rhetoric about the Hobby Lobby decision, the Supreme Court did not -- contrary to the reporting of CBS News' Craig Boswell -- exempt Hobby Lobby from the contraceptive mandate in the Affordable Care Act (also known as Obamacare). The judges exempted Hobby Lobby only from paying for the items to which the company's owners conscientiously objected -- abortifacients.
Alito, in his ruling, stated that the government had at its disposal a much less restrictive means of providing abortion-inducing drugs to Hobby Lobby's employees, such as the government paying for it.
Hobby Lobby did not cease providing and has never stopped providing insurance to employees covering 16 other forms of birth control. And the Hobby Lobby case was also only the Oklahoma City-based company and others exactly like it. Certainly, there are other groups that immediately benefitted from the ruling, such as the Eternal Word Television Network, five Catholic charities in Wyoming and Wheaton College.
But other businesses with other claims of conscience will -- as Justice wrote -- have to seek relief from the court by demonstrating that the government's compelling interest in providing components of health care would substantially burden the free exercise of their religion. The court's ruling is not a blanket decision for all cases everywhere.
Finally, the Hobby Lobby ruling is anything but a broader attack on women's reproductive health, as suggested by the Obama administration. As Kathryn Jean Lopez, editor for National Review Online and founding director of Catholic Voices USA, noted, "That the Hobby Lobby case and other objections to the Obamacare mandate are about basic American freedom becomes clear once removed from slogans and accusations about supposed partisan or religious wars being waged on women."
As faith-and-gender blogger Ashley McGuire pointed out at The Federalist, the case wasn't nefarious; it was simply about whether the Constitution accords religious liberty to a family seeking to be faithful to their core beliefs about the origin of life.
"So don't be duped when you hear activists from Planned Parenthood and friends trying to make David Green and Hobby Lobby public enemy number one," McGuire wrote. "He's just a guy who started a business from his garage, one that he runs according to moral principles like any other corporate CEO, a guy who is abiding by the law and treating the people for whom he is responsible with care and concern."
--30--
Gregory Tomlin is a writer based in Fort Worth, Texas, and assistant professor of church history and a faculty instructional mentor with Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary. Get Baptist Press headlines and breaking news on Twitter (@BaptistPress), Facebook (Facebook.com/BaptistPress) and in your email (baptistpress.com/SubscribeBP.asp).
Presumptive presidential candidate Hillary Clinton called the Supreme Court's 5-4 ruling "deeply disturbing" and a "slippery slope," likening it to crimes against the rights of women around the world. Clinton said business owners who oppose abortion-inducing drugs in their health plans might be leading the U.S. to create laws like those in countries "prone to extremism."
Clinton also asked if insurance companies could now deny blood transfusions when a business owner objects on religious grounds.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said the Hobby Lobby decision "could permit for-profit corporations to pick and choose which laws to obey." The "deeply misguided and destructive decision," Pelosi said in a statement, is a devastating blow to women's ability to make their own medical decisions in consultation with their doctors. Women will now have to "jump through extra hoops" to get the contraceptive care they need, Pelosi claimed.
The White House offered a similar interpretation of the ruling, equally foreboding, through the prism of the president, referred to by Press Secretary Josh Earnest as the "constitutional lawyer in the Oval Office."
"There is a problem being exposed that a group of women of an indeterminate size no longer have access to free contraception because of religious views, not their own religious views, but their boss's religious views," Earnest told reporters.
Predictably, and not surprisingly, media outlets supportive of abortion rights, such as Huffington Post and RH Reality Check, echoed the White House narrative.
A commentator with Huffington Post mused that Christians could now "pick and choose" which laws to obey and a "senior legal analyst" with RH Reality Check, which exists solely to champion reproductive and gay rights, cited the court's "deeply ingrained misogyny" as the origin of its decision. The analyst said storm clouds of discrimination are gathering as emboldened Christians prepare to rain frivolous lawsuits on an already overburdened court system --"even though (wink wink, nudge nudge) the Court is only concerned with the contraceptive mandate."
Key source of discontent
Such objections to the ruling by the court's majority have drawn from the dissenting opinion of Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Appointed to the Supreme Court in 1993 by President Clinton, Ginsburg is an experienced ACLU litigator and activist for women's rights.
Ginsburg's 35-page "scathing dissent," as it has been uniformly described by dozens of newspapers and websites, at times reads more like a political policy statement on women's health issues than a legal opinion. Ginsburg extols the benefits of universal health care, particularly with respect to contraception, and claims "the mandated contraception coverage enables women to avoid the health problems unintended pregnancies may visit on them and their children" -- though she surely is not referencing the children terminated by federally mandated abortifacients.
The exemption sought by Hobby Lobby, Ginsburg wrote, would "deny legions of women who do not hold their employers' beliefs access to contraceptive care" and force their religious viewpoints on employees. Clinton, Pelosi and the White House press secretary echoed the claim, agreeing with Ginsburg that religious people shouldn't be free to choose whether they want to obey the law.
In an analysis of the case, Eric Posner, a University of Chicago law professor, wrote that Ginsburg had set up the case "as a clash between women's rights and religious rights." At best, that reading "is not an entirely fair characterization of the case," Posner said.
At worst, it is patently false.
Stubborn facts
Lawyers for the two key litigants in the case -- the Green family, who own Hobby Lobby and Mardel, and the Hahn family, who own Conestoga Wood Specialties -- never argued, as Ginsburg and some politicians suggest, that a denial of all contraceptive care was the goal of the Christian families who own the businesses, or that Christians should be allowed to obey only the laws they like. Instead, lawyers for companies argued that they only sought relief in their insurance coverage plans from providing four of the 20 federally mandated contraceptives, including Plan B or the "morning after pill."
The drugs cause the spontaneous abortion of a fertilized egg implanted in the uterus and also may prevent the implantation of a fertilized egg. Associate Justice Samuel Alito, in his opinion for the majority, wrote that "the owners of three closely held for-profit corporations have sincere Christian beliefs that life begins at conception and that it would violate their religion to facilitate access to contraceptive drugs or devices that operate after that point."
"By requiring the Hahns and Greens and their companies to arrange for such coverage, the HHS mandate demands that they engage in conduct that seriously violates their religious beliefs," Alito wrote, adding, "If the Hahns and Greens and their companies do not yield to this demand, the economic consequences will be severe."
How severe? Perhaps as much as $475 million annually, which no company could possibly sustain.
Secondly, Ginsburg claimed in her dissent that religious exemptions under that Affordable Care Act should be confined "to organizations formed 'for a religious purpose,' 'engage[d] primarily in carrying out that religious purpose,' and not 'engaged … substantially in the exchange of goods or services for money beyond nominal amounts.'"
In other words, according to Ginsburg, religious liberty ends where a third party enters the equation, or where people are gathered for a purpose other than public worship.
Alito, however, wrote that the majority of the court believed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), signed into law by President Clinton in 1993, grants citizens the rights of conscience (religious liberty) even if they are voluntarily associated in a "closely-held" company, or one owned by an individual or a family.
"Congress provided protection for people like the Hahns and Greens by employing a familiar legal fiction: It included corporations within RFRA's definition of 'persons.' But it is important to keep in mind that the purpose of this fiction is to provide protection for human beings," Alito noted. "A corporation is simply a form of organization used by human beings to achieve desired ends. An established body of law specifies the rights and obligations of the people (including shareholders, officers, and employees) who are associated with a corporation in one way or another."
Alito continued, "When rights, whether constitutional or statutory, are extended to corporations, the purpose is to protect the rights of these people … protecting the free-exercise rights of corporations like Hobby Lobby, Conestoga, and Mardel protects the religious liberty of the humans who own and control those companies."
Russell D. Moore, president of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, aptly summarized the issue: The government cannot confine religious liberty to the hours Christians are inside the church or make Christians surrender the right because they own a corporation, especially one made up of employees who have voluntarily agreed to work for the pay and benefits offered.
"The government cannot set itself up as lord over the conscience," Moore said after the June 30 Hobby Lobby ruling. "What the Supreme Court has done today is reaffirm a basic American principle that our Baptist ancestors fought for in the revolutionary era."
Moore claimed two different views of religious liberty were in conflict in the United States. In the first, shared among the administration and judges like Ginsburg, religious liberty is believed to guarantee Americans the right to worship in an organized, religious setting.
But, Moore argued, this isn't the view of classical Baptists or "originalist" justices like Alito.
Ginsburg's prediction
Ginsburg contends in her dissent -- and her argument is being repeated by abortion advocates with regularity -- that the Supreme Court had "ventured into a minefield" of questions about judging the merits of religious opinions in cases where companies request exemptions from federal mandates based on religious grounds.
Ginsburg asked if Alito's use of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, or RFRA, to protect religiously grounded objections to the use of certain contraceptives extends "to employers with religiously grounded objections to blood transfusions (Jehovah's Witnesses); antidepressants (Scientologists); medications derived from pigs, including anesthesia, intravenous fluids, and pills coated with gelatin (certain Muslims, Jews, and Hindus); and vaccinations (Christian Scientists, among others)?"
Alito, however, never claimed the majority's ruling carried weight for any case beyond the abortion-inducing contraceptives in the Hobby Lobby case and cases like it.
"Our decision should not be understood to hold that an insurance coverage mandate must necessarily fall if it conflicts with an employer's religious beliefs," Alito wrote. The decision could not be used, for example, to justify discrimination in hiring based on religious belief, he wrote.
In the end, Ginsburg offers fears and speculation about what "might" occur in American jurisprudence with respect to religious freedom because of the Hobby Lobby case and the decision resulting from the constitutional protections confirmed in the RFRA.
Ironically, Ginsburg said during her confirmation hearing in 1993 that such speculation is generally something a judge should avoid.
"Were I to rehearse here what I would say and how I would reason on such questions, I would act injudiciously," Ginsburg told members of Congress. "A judge sworn to decide impartially can offer no forecasts, no hints, for that would show not only disregard for the specifics of the particular case; it would display disdain for the entire judicial process."
Beyond the rhetoric
While there has been a significant amount of alarmist rhetoric about the Hobby Lobby decision, the Supreme Court did not -- contrary to the reporting of CBS News' Craig Boswell -- exempt Hobby Lobby from the contraceptive mandate in the Affordable Care Act (also known as Obamacare). The judges exempted Hobby Lobby only from paying for the items to which the company's owners conscientiously objected -- abortifacients.
Alito, in his ruling, stated that the government had at its disposal a much less restrictive means of providing abortion-inducing drugs to Hobby Lobby's employees, such as the government paying for it.
Hobby Lobby did not cease providing and has never stopped providing insurance to employees covering 16 other forms of birth control. And the Hobby Lobby case was also only the Oklahoma City-based company and others exactly like it. Certainly, there are other groups that immediately benefitted from the ruling, such as the Eternal Word Television Network, five Catholic charities in Wyoming and Wheaton College.
But other businesses with other claims of conscience will -- as Justice wrote -- have to seek relief from the court by demonstrating that the government's compelling interest in providing components of health care would substantially burden the free exercise of their religion. The court's ruling is not a blanket decision for all cases everywhere.
Finally, the Hobby Lobby ruling is anything but a broader attack on women's reproductive health, as suggested by the Obama administration. As Kathryn Jean Lopez, editor for National Review Online and founding director of Catholic Voices USA, noted, "That the Hobby Lobby case and other objections to the Obamacare mandate are about basic American freedom becomes clear once removed from slogans and accusations about supposed partisan or religious wars being waged on women."
As faith-and-gender blogger Ashley McGuire pointed out at The Federalist, the case wasn't nefarious; it was simply about whether the Constitution accords religious liberty to a family seeking to be faithful to their core beliefs about the origin of life.
"So don't be duped when you hear activists from Planned Parenthood and friends trying to make David Green and Hobby Lobby public enemy number one," McGuire wrote. "He's just a guy who started a business from his garage, one that he runs according to moral principles like any other corporate CEO, a guy who is abiding by the law and treating the people for whom he is responsible with care and concern."
--30--
Gregory Tomlin is a writer based in Fort Worth, Texas, and assistant professor of church history and a faculty instructional mentor with Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary. Get Baptist Press headlines and breaking news on Twitter (@BaptistPress), Facebook (Facebook.com/BaptistPress) and in your email (baptistpress.com/SubscribeBP.asp).
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