A Clear Ruling on Religious Accommodation
The Supreme Court made it clear that the Constitution does not “‘compel the government to purge from the public sphere’ anything an objective observer could reasonably infer endorses or ‘partakes of the religious.’” Now, the court is ensuring that religious Americans need not leave their faith at home when they go to work.
In a unanimous, landmark decision handed down today, the Supreme Court of the United States granted a major victory to former postal carrier Gerald Groff against the United States Postal Service, after Groff lost his job for observing the Sunday Sabbath.
The court held that federal law requires workplaces to accommodate their religious employees unless doing so would cause substantial costs for the business. Previously, employers could avoid granting religious accommodations to employees of faith simply by pointing to minimal effects.
This decision means that more employers with at least 15 employees in every state in the country will be legally required to respect their religious employees by granting them accommodations. Employees of faith often seek religious accommodations to honor their holy days, to take prayer breaks during the day, to dress according to their religious beliefs, or to otherwise not be forced to violate their religious beliefs on the job.
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Minority Reports, CCB, & the SJC – Part 2: Why This is Important
The General Assembly retained one critical aspect of control over its judicial affairs by appointing CCB to review SJC’s minutes and report any possible exceptions, so that the General Assembly may direct SJC to retry cases where exceptions may arise. Within our procedural rules, the Assembly also retains the right to hear a minority report from CCB, and to substitute that minority report for the committee’s report…The General Assembly has delegated tremendous power to the SJC, and absent the ability of CCB to conduct a robust review of the SJC’s minutes — including the presentation of minority views to the Assembly — the SJC could violate its rules, leaving the parties to a case with no recourse.
In my last article, I detailed the parliamentary rules[1] which require minority reports from the Committee on Constitutional Business (CCB) the right to be presented to the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) for consideration. Further, I showed how our parliamentary rules for handling such minority reports establish a process for the Assembly to substitute the minority report from CCB’s (majority) committee report.
This process is important, because it gives the Assembly its full freedom to oversee the procedural accuracy of the Standing Judicial Commission’s (SJC) business. If the final CCB report — whether the original committee report, or a substituted minority report — discovers procedural errors in the operations of the SJC, our Book of Church Order (BCO) enables the Assembly to redress any errors by directing the SJC to retry a case if the Assembly judges such a step to be necessary for justice to be realized in the proceedings of church courts.
In this article, I lay out three reasons for why it is important for the PCA’s General Assembly to protect this procedure within the Church’s polity.The General Assembly has Retained Oversight over the SJC by the Review of the SJC’s Minutes
We must remember that the General Assembly has delegated to the SJC nearly absolute authority to conclude judicial appeals and complaints that arise from the Presbyteries. Unlike judicial commissions designated at the presbytery level, the General Assembly has not reserved to itself the right of approving or disapproving the decisions of the SJC (BCO 15-3, 5).
Nevertheless, the Assembly has retained one crucial aspect of direct control over the SJC: the annual review of SJC’s minutes through CCB (BCO 15-5.a; RAO 17-1). As some noted during floor debate at the 49th General Assembly, the review of the SJC’s minutes is very different from the work of the Committee on the Review of Presbytery Records (RPR). Our polity tasks RPR with reviewing the minutes of the PCA’s 88 presbyteries as one feature of the Assembly’s proactive work of “General Review and Control” of the lower courts of the presbyteries (BCO 40; RAO 16-1). Thus, RPR brings recommendations that the Assembly must approve.
The annual review of the SJC’s minutes, however, is not the proactive review of the proceedings of a lower court. Instead, it is a reactive identification of any issues (within a very limited scope) that the General Assembly then may cite as grounds for directing the SJC to retry a case (RAO 14-11.d.(2); 17-1). The report of CCB is non-binding, advisory, and for information only; however, without a report from CCB identifying possible exceptions in the SJC minutes (whether in the committee report, or in a substituted minority report), no motion is in order for the General Assembly to direct the SJC to retry a case. The identification of possible exceptions in a CCB report is the necessary prerequisite for a motion to retry a case.
Since this review of the SJC’s minutes is the only line of defense against an error in the SJC, it is a crucial check that the Assembly must not abdicate.The General Assembly has Authority over its Committees and their Reports
Retaining the Assembly’s constitutional check on the SJC necessarily includes the right to substitute a minority report from CCB for the committee’s (majority) report. Therefore, minority reports differ from dissenting opinions by providing a procedural mechanism to give the full Assembly the final say in the case of differing opinions within the committee. The PCA’s committees operate under the authority of the Assembly, and not the other way around.
The authority of the Assembly over its committees rests on a fundamental principle of parliamentary law articulated in Robert’s Rules of Order, Newly Revised, that a deliberative assembly may “establish and empower an effective leadership as it wishes, and at the same time to retain exactly the degree of direct control over its affairs that it chooses to reserve to itself” (RONR [12th ed.], “Principles Underlying Parliamentary Law,” emphasis added).
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[1] That is, the parliamentary rules governing the deliberations of the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA), namely those procedures outlined in Robert’s Rules of Order, Newly Revised (RONR) and the PCA’s Rules of Assembly Operation (RAO).
[2] I am thankful to RE Matt Fender for suggesting this paragraph.
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Gay Marriage Isn’t the New Interracial Marriage
The difference between gay people and black people is homosexual behaviour is a sin, dark skin isn’t a sin. Therefore, although interracial marriage was illegal in some states decades ago, it’s never been immoral. Gay “marriage,” however, has always been immoral.
The Respect for Marriage Act doesn’t respect marriage at all. A more accurate name for the bill is the “Disrespect for Marriage Act.”
Alliance Defending Freedom described the bill as not merely a law that codifies the Supreme Court’s ruling on Obergefell (gay marriage) as federal law, but a “misnamed bill that expands not only what marriage means, but also who can be sued for disagreeing with the new meaning of marriage.”
They also said, “The Respect for Marriage Act threatens religious freedom and the institution of marriage in multiple ways:It further embeds a false definition of marriage in the American legal fabric.
It opens the door to federal recognition of polygamous relationships.
It jeopardizes the tax-exempt status of nonprofits that exercise their belief that marriage is the union of one man and one woman.
It endangers faith-based social-service organizations by threatening litigation and liability risk if they follow their views on marriage when working with the government.The truth is the Respect for Marriage Act does nothing to change the status of same-sex marriage or the benefits afforded to same-sex couples following Obergefell. It does much, however, to endanger religious freedom.”
As always, Alliance Defending Freedom’s explanation of the legal and cultural ramifications of the law are helpful. But the Respect for Marriage Act disrespects the institution of marriage in another way.
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When God’s Sovereign Will Seems Inscrutable: Elisabeth Elliot
Elisabeth reached a number of solid conclusions about such incomprehensible developments: (1) Sometimes God’s sovereign will is inscrutable and defies easy explanation. Our “why?” questions may not be satisfactorily answered for a very long time, or perhaps not ever in this life, although they doubtless will be in eternity. (2) Such situations provide Christians with the opportunity to continue trusting and obeying God even in the face of incomprehensible, painful developments and stubbornly-persistent questions about them.
Sometimes God’s sovereign will seems inscrutable, especially when it involves His allowing overwhelming trial or crushing disappointment. Or when He permits the thwarting of what consecrated Christians had become thoroughly convinced was in keeping with His plan and would bring great glory to Him.
Elisabeth Elliot (1926-2015), a prominent American missionary, writer and speaker, as well as one of the most influential Christian women in the second half of the twentieth century, experienced God’s imponderable sovereign will more than once in her life and ministry. To follow is an account of an early occasion when that happened to her. It has some important lessons to teach us about responding properly to God’s will in the midst of our own distressing, perplexing circumstances of life.
In 1952 Elisabeth went to Ecuador as a single missionary. There she joined three other single lady missionaries in seeking to minister to the Colorado Indians from a ministry base in San Miguel. The Colorado Indians lived nearby in the jungles of Ecuador’s western rainforest.Elisabeth, a trained linguist, had as her primary objective there to render the Colorado language into written form. She needed to hire a Colorado Indian language “informant” who could patiently work with her in learning the vocabulary and phonetics of their native tongue. But none of the Indians she met had any interest in doing so. They were proud, independent and a bit disdainful of the white women’s presence in their world.
Elisabeth, however, was confident that God would answer her prayers and grant her success in learning the Colorado language, harnessing it into an alphabet, and teaching the Indians to read and write in their own tongue. They would then be able to read the Bible for themselves, thus facilitating their coming to saving faith in Christ and their subsequent Christian growth and service. Great glory would be brought to God.
The Lord provided an even better informant than Elisabeth could have imagined in an Ecuadorian named Don Macario. He had grown up on a hacienda with Colorado children, and was completely bilingual in Spanish and Colorado. He was a Christian and was willing to work with Betty for what she could afford to pay him.
The Colorado Indians called their own language Tsahfihki, “the language of the people.” Macario taught Elisabeth Tsahfihki vocabulary, vowel pronunciations, inflections, parts of speech and sentence structure. She created detailed notecards and charts as well as orthography (spelling) lists, using phonetic symbols that represented Tsahfihki sounds. For several months the language work progressed well.
Then suddenly, tragically Don Macario was murdered! He had been clearing brush on a piece of property when a group of men showed up, claiming the land belonged to one of them. When Macario insisted the property was his, one of the men pulled out a gun and shot him in the head several times at point-blank range.
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