Foggy beliefs lead to church-state crisis in hospital

January 9, 2013 By

One of my graduate-school professors had a saying that summed up one of the central truths of church-state law in the United States of America. Your religious liberty, he liked to remind students, has been purchased for you by a lot of people with whom you would not necessarily want to have dinner.

What did he mean by that?

It is rare for cases involving the beliefs of mainstream religious groups to reach the U.S. Supreme Court. Methodists and Baptists and Reform Jews and other cultural mainliners rarely clash with the principalities and powers of the state because, well, their beliefs tend to be viewed as safe and normal. Most of the edgy cases that draw the borders of First Amendment law are linked to the beliefs and actions of folks whose faith claims are viewed as suspect by run-of-the-mill believers.

We’re talking about Pentecostal and Christian Science believers who don’t want to take their young children to see a doctor, because they believe in divine healing — period. How about people who handle deadly snakes during worship services? Native Americans whose rites have, for generations, required them to consume mind-altering substances declared illegal by our legal authorities? How about Jehovah’s Witnesses and their belief that God does not want them to receive blood transfusions (a doctrine that has led to important research into low-blood-loss surgical techniques).

Want to have dinner and talk theology with these folks?

Methinks that few journalists would answer in the affirmative. Still, it’s important to know that courts have, time and time again, defended the rights of a wide range of religious groups, so long as their actions were not consistently linked to fraud, profit or a clear threat to life and health. It’s this last element that has caused such fierce debates, especially when the religious beliefs of parents appear to threaten the lives and health of their own children.

Thus the key, when covering these stories, is to provide as much factual detail about the doctrines and practice of the believers at the heart of the controversy. What do they believe? What do their scriptures — written or oral — teach? How long has this group practiced this ritual or acted on a given doctrine in a particular way?

I thought about all of that when reading a recent Elkhart Truth article about a controversy in a local hospital. Here’s the top of this hard-news report:

GOSHEN – Joyce Gingerich, an oncology nurse at IU Health Goshen Hospital, had two options — get a flu shot or lose her job.

It was a tough choice, but Gingerich and seven others at the hospital stood their ground and refused to receive the vaccination. …

“I knew that I could not compromise my personal belief system for a job,” explained Gingerich, who had worked at the hospital on and off since 1987. “It was really sad to leave that job. In all my years of nursing, it was my favorite.”

In early September, IU Health Goshen Hospital informed its staff that flu shots would no longer be optional. Beginning this year, all of the hospital’s staff, affiliated physicians, volunteers and vendors are required to receive a flu vaccination or apply for an exemption. The hospital’s requirements came as a recommendation from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or CDC, the American Medical Association and other major regulatory health agencies, according to hospital spokeswoman Melanie McDonald.

“As a hospital and health system, our top priority is and should be patient safety, and we know that hospitalized people with compromised immune systems are at a greater risk for illness and death from the flu,” McDonald said. “The flu has the highest death rate of any vaccine preventable disease, and it would be irresponsible from our perspective for health care providers to ignore that.”

OK, looking at this from a religion-story point of view, as well as from a church-state legal perspective, what are the most important questions that need to be answered in this story?

Let’s start with the obvious: Are her beliefs rooted in a specific, ongoing commitment to a religious tradition? What are its teachings? What scriptures or laws are linked to this conscience claim? If this person is taking this stand on her own, then how did she arrive at it.

Now, the fact that there are SEVEN nurses caught in this bind make it a near certainty that specific religious traditions and doctrines are involved.

So what do readers find out?

[Read more...]

Filed Under: People, Religion, Science, Social Issues, Worship Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Got news? That other 2012 Supreme Court case

January 2, 2013 By

Does anyone out there in GetReligion reader land remember that narrow U.S. Supreme Court decision that cleared the way for arguments to continue about the Obama administration’s health-care law? On one level, that decision was about money and taxes, but buried down in one of the opinions written on the winning side was a highly significant, yet mostly overlooked, quote linked to the religious-liberty battles that dominated the religion-news beat in 2012.

At the time, I wrote a GetReligion post that pointed readers toward that important material buried deep inside the blog world at The Washington Post:

“I think the court’s decision makes clear Obama is still subject to legal challenges and that the Supreme Court is willing to entertain that the HHS regulations violate the rights of religious freedom,” said Hanna Smith, senior counsel at the Becket Fund, a D.C. firm involved in some of the 23 pending lawsuits against the White House. The lawsuits all focus on opposing a mandate announced by the Department of Health and Human Services after the law was passed.

Mark Rienzi, another Becket attorney, said in a phone conference call that the ruling today only spoke to whether Congress had the right to pass the act — not on the details of how it’s implemented. …

The attorneys honed in on two parts of Thursday’s ruling. One, from the majority opinion, said: “Even if the taxing power enables Congress to impose a tax on not obtaining health insurance, any tax must still comply with other requirements in the Constitution.”

The second, from Justice Ruth Ginsberg, (sic) said “A mandate to purchase a particular product would be unconstitutional if, for example, the edict impermissibly abridged the freedom of speech, interfered with the free exercise of religion, or infringed on a liberty interest protected by the Due Process Clause.”

The key is the Ginsburg quote, especially since it came from one of the most important voices on the court’s left wing.

In my mind, I coupled that quote with another Supreme Court decision that received some attention. However, to my surprise, this other decision didn’t make it into the list of the year’s Top 10 stories produced by the Godbeat pros voting in the poll posted by the Religion Newswriters Association.

I’m talking about that 9-0 decision in which the court defended the “ministerial exception” that allows churches and religious organizations to take doctrine into account when hiring and firing employees. Yes, the U.S. Justice Department actually argued against religious groups on that issue. Yes, the court then voted 9-0 against the White House on that religious-liberty issue.

Yes, I still think that was one of the most important religion-news stories of the year. I ranked it No. 2 on my RNA ballot.

Bobby has served up scores of interesting links and viewpoints wrapping up Godbeat 2012, but I thought I would show GetReligion readers my whole ballot — in the form of last week’s column for the Scripps Howard News Service.

I started with a blast from a prominent pulpit in Dallas:

‘Twas the Sunday night before the election and the Rev. Robert Jeffress was offering a message that, from his point of view, was both shocking and rather nuanced.

His bottom line: If Barack Obama won a second White House term, this would be another sign that the reign of the Antichrist is near.

Inquiring minds wanted to know: Was the leader of the highly symbolic First Baptist Church of Dallas suggesting the president was truly You Know Anti-who?

“I am not saying that President Obama is the Antichrist, I am not saying that at all,” said Jeffress, who previously made headlines during a national rally of conservative politicos by calling Mormonism a “theological cult.”

“What I am saying is this: the course he is choosing to lead our nation is paving the way for the future reign of the Antichrist.”

That’s some pretty strong rhetoric, until one considers how hot things got on the religion beat in 2012. After all, one Gallup poll found that an amazing 44 percent of Americans surveyed responded “don’t know” when asked to name the president’s faith. The good news was that a mere 11 percent said Obama is a Muslim — down from 18 percent in a Pew Research Center poll in 2010.

Could church-state affairs get any hotter? Amazingly the answer was “yes,” with a White House order requiring most religious institutions to offer health-care plans covering sterilizations and all FDA-approved forms of contraception, including “morning-after pills.” The key: The Health and Human Services mandate only recognizes the conscience rights of a nonprofit group if it has the “inculcation of religious values as its purpose,” primarily employs “persons who share its religious tenets” and primarily “serves persons who share its religious tenets.”

America’s Catholic bishops and other traditional religious leaders cried “foul,” claiming that the Obama team was separating mere “freedom of worship” from the First Amendment’s sweeping “free exercise of religion.” In a year packed with church-state fireworks, the members of Religion Newswriters Association selected this religious-liberty clash as the year’s top religion-news story. Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York, the point man for Catholic opposition to the mandate, was selected as the year’s top religion newsmaker – with Obama not included on the ballot.

The story I ranked No. 2 didn’t make the Top 10 list. I was convinced that the 9-0 U.S. Supreme Court decision affirming a Missouri Synod Lutheran church’s right to hire and fire employees based on doctrine could be crucial in the years — or even months — ahead.

So let’s move on to the rest of my version of the RNA Top 10 list, after the HHS mandate conflict.

[Read more...]

Filed Under: Announcements, First Person, Godbeat, Got news?, Journalism, Politics, Religion Tagged With: , ,

Pod people: Can the MSM find centrists in gay-rights wars?

December 3, 2012 By

As a journalist, there are few things that I find more interesting than listening to the views of liberal thinkers who ask questions that make liberals nervous, or upset, and conservative thinkers who ask questions that make their fellow conservatives nervous, or upset.

As a rule, I am pro-sweaty palms when it comes time to cover heated debates in the public square.

Thus, I have long been fascinated with the following passage in an essay at The Advocate by the gay commentator Jonathan Rauch. This is a rather long section of the piece, in which he discusses strategies in support of gay marriage, yet taking religious liberty concerns into account:

Two important strategic changes would go a long way toward doing that. First, accept legal exceptions that let religious organizations discriminate against gays whenever their doing so imposes a cost we can live with. Second, dial back the accusations of “bigot” and “hater.”

In the gay community, taking any kind of nonabsolutist attitude toward discrimination is controversial, to say the least—largely because we carry in our heads the paradigm of racial discrimination. In today’s America, though, the racial model is overkill for gays. Injustice persists, unquestionably, but the opposition is dying on its feet and discrimination is in decline. And, unlike white supremacism, disapproval of homosexuality is still intrinsic to orthodox doctrines of all three major religions. That will change and is already changing (younger evangelicals are much more accepting of same-sex relations than are their parents), but for now it is a fact we must live with.

Before we shrug and reply, “So what if it’s religious? It’s still bigotry, it’s still intolerable,” we need to remember that religious liberty is America’s founding principle. It is embedded in the country’s DNA, not to mention in the First Amendment. If we pick a fight with it or, worse, let ourselves be maneuvered into a fight with it, our task will become vastly harder.

Rauch wrote that in 2010 and I have wanted to write a column about that essay ever since.

Here was a prominent gay voice advocating a strategy for compromise that would (a) make it more likely for the gay-rights cause to survive a U.S. Supreme Court test and (b) one that undercut some of the arguments made by the more radical voices on the cultural right, simply by conceding that religious-liberty concerns are real in these debates. He is calling for gay-marriage, or civil gay unions, with conscience clauses strong enough to protect religious organizations, very broadly defined, and the rights of individual religious believers. In effect, he is saying to the cultural left, “We are winning. We must not botch this.”

So I wrote a Scripps Howard News Service column on this topic, focusing on the potential for compromises that protect religious liberty. The column was also inspired by the recent blue-sky remarks by Catholic conservative George Weigel, in which he suggested that it might be time for the Catholic Church — yes, and by implication religious traditionalists in other flocks, be they Jewish, Muslim, Protestant or whatever — to get out of the business of signing off on civil marriages, period.

All of this ended up being the hook for this past week’s Crossroads podcast. Click here to listen to that.

Meanwhile, Rod “friend of this blog” Dreher responded with the sad, but realistic note, that recent events have made Rauch’s commentary even less mainstream, on the left, than it was when he wrote it.

Yes, there is a religion-news, mainstream journalism hook in what Dreher has to say.

Rauch is right, but he’s not as right today as he was in 2010, when he wrote that piece for The Advocate. By which I mean that I don’t think it’s nearly as much of a liability to gay rights supporters to be seen as religious liberty opponents as it once was. That’s in part because the mainstream media have not explored the inherent clash between gay rights and religious liberty, and conservatives opposed to gay marriage have for some reason chosen not to make much of an issue of it.

It is certainly true that the loudest voices on the cultural right have been just as reluctant to talk about compromise as the liberal voices involved in all of these shouting matches.

So what’s up with the rest of my Scripps Howard column? In this case, I think — to set the stage for the podcast — the best thing I can do is run the second half of my piece, which focuses on the views of a conservative who is studying the compromises and then on the views of another pro-gay marriage thinker who also sees the reality of the coming high-court showdown on religious liberty.

So here goes, opening with the viewpoint of Stanley Carlson-Thies, director of the Institutional Religious Freedom Alliance, that Weigel’s strategy is powerfully symbolic, but beside the point.

Even if traditional religious leaders attempt to legally separate Holy Matrimony from secular marriage, it is still the government’s definition of marriage that will decide a variety of issues outside sanctuary doors, especially in public life.

“The other question, ” he said, “is whether those on the cultural left will be willing, at this point, to settle for civil unions. … We will need people on both sides to work together if there are going to be meaningful compromises.”

One divisive issue in these gay-marriage debates overlaps with current fights over White House mandates requiring most religious institutions to offer health-care plans covering sterilizations and all FDA-approved forms of contraception, including so-called “morning-after pills.” These Health and Human Services requirements recognize the conscience rights of employers only if they are nonprofits that have the “inculcation of religious values” as their primary purpose, primarily employ “persons who share … religious tenets” and primarily serve those “who share … religious tenets.”

Critics insist this protects mere “freedom of worship,” not the First Amendment’s wider “free exercise of religion.”

Here is the parallel: In gay-marriage debates, almost everyone concedes that clergy must not be required to perform same-sex rites that violate their consciences.

The question is whether legislatures and courts will extend protection to religious hospitals, homeless shelters, summer camps, day-care centers, counseling facilities, adoption agencies and similar public ministries. What about religious colleges that rent married-student apartments or seek accreditation for their degrees in education, counseling or social work? What about the religious-liberty rights of individuals who work as florists, wedding photographers, wedding-cake bakers, counselors who do pre- or post-marital counseling and other similar forms of business?

These are only some of the thorny issues that worry many activists on both sides of the gay-rights divide. Law professor Douglas Laycock, then of the University of Michigan, provided this summary in a letter (.pdf here) to the governor of New Hampshire.

“I support same-sex marriage,” he stressed. Nevertheless, the “net effect for human liberty will be no better than a wash if same-sex couples now oppress religious dissenters in the same way that those dissenters, when they had the power to do so, treated same-sex couples in ways that those couples found oppressive.

“Nor is it in the interest of the gay and lesbian community to create religious martyrs in the enforcement of this bill. … Every such case will be in the news repeatedly, and every such story will further inflame the opponents of same-sex marriage. Refusing exemptions to such religious dissenters will politically empower the most demagogic opponents of same-sex marriage. It will ensure that the issue remains alive, bitter, and deeply divisive.”

So what journalistic issues should we discuss here, since your GetReligionistas strive (and often fail) to prevent folks in the comments pages from yelling at each other about the political and religious issues at the heart of these issues?

In this case, I will simply ask two two-part questions: Have you seen, in mainstream news coverage, the centrist, compromise-friendly viewpoints of people like Rauch, Laycock and others (because they are out there) and, if so, where did you see them? If you have not seen their viewpoints represented in mainstream coverage, then why is that and is that void good, in the long run, for public discourse on these crucial issues?

Enjoy the podcast.

Filed Under: Catholicism, People, Podcasts, Religion, Same-sex marriage, Social Issues, Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , ,

Preachers and politics: Be careful out there folks …

November 16, 2012 By

Today’s digest from the Religion News Service (sign up for this very helpful service, if you have not already done so) points readers toward a very important story in the wake of this year’s White House race. Come to think of it, this story has been highly relevant in every single national election year since, oh, 1973. Here is the short RNS blurb for this story:

Church-state and atheist groups have long complained about churches endorsing candidates; now they’re going to court in a bid to force the IRS to do something about it.

The key word in that statement? The answer is “candidates.”

Thus, the actual RNS news report, as it should, provides the following crucial information:

IRS rules state that organizations classified as 501 (c) (3) non-profits — a tax-exempt status most churches and other religious institutions claim — cannot participate or intervene in “any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any political candidate.” …

IRS rules do allow for some nonpartisan activity by religious institutions, including organizing members to vote and speaking out on issues. But endorsing or supporting specific candidates could jeopardize their tax-exempt status.

Thus, it is acceptable for religious organizations to discuss the specific doctrinal stands taken by their faith and then to apply them to specific issues in the public square. It’s fine for African-American congregations to tell members that the God of Holy Scripture demands that his people fight to defend the poor and the weak. It’s fine for Catholic bishops to tell their flocks that, for those in sacramental relationships with ancient churches, it is a sin to support the killing of unborn children and the unnatural deaths of the elderly.

But this is where things get interesting, in light of the new lawsuits by the Freedom From Religion Foundation and others. Thus, the RNS report notes:

The lawsuit … challenges the legality of several full-page newspaper advertisements paid for by the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, another 501 (c) (3), that exhorted voters to vote along “biblical principles.”

Other complaints include:

– Roman Catholic Bishop David Ricken of Green Bay, Wis., who wrote an appeal on diocesan letterhead inserted in parish bulletins warning voters that they could “put their own soul in jeopardy” if they voted for a party or candidate that supports same-sex marriage or abortion rights.

– Roman Catholic Bishop Daniel Jenky of Peoria, Ill., who criticized President Obama in a homily and then exhorted parishioners that “every practicing Catholic must vote, and must vote their Catholic consciences.”

– Roman Catholic Bishop Robert Morlino, who, in an article appearing in the local diocesan newspaper, wrote of “non-negotiable” political issues, and that “No Catholic may, in good conscience, vote for ‘pro-choice’ candidates (or) … for candidates who promote ‘same-sex marriage.’ ”

Now, that second Catholic case — the Jenky case — is interesting. One must assume that it would also be illegal for pastors in African-Americans to praise Obama and then to urge the faithful to vote according to their consciences.

In light of surveys from the Pew Research Center, it does appear that journalists need to be probing these issues on both sides of church aisles. We know that it is illegal for churches to endorse specific candidates by name, which, for example, the Graham advertisements did not do. We also know that it is legal for churches to preach on specific issues, to relate them to church teachings, and then to remind their members what actions their churches consider sinful and what actions they consider to be faithful to scripture and tradition (whether we are talking about the environment, the death penalty, health care, abortion, gay rights or whatever).

This chunk of the Pew report is long, but essential reading:

While many regular churchgoers say they have been encouraged to vote by their clergy, relatively few say church leaders are discussing the candidates directly or favoring one candidate over the other. Black Protestants are far more likely than white Protestants or Catholics to say they are hearing about the candidates and the importance of voting, and the messages they are hearing overwhelmingly favor Barack Obama.

Among those who attend religious services at least once or twice a month, about half (52%) say their clergy have spoken out about the importance of voting over the past few months. Just one-in-five (19%) say their clergy have spoken about the candidates themselves, according to the survey, conducted by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life and the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press.

Nearly eight-in-ten (79%) black Protestant churchgoers say their clergy have spoken out about the importance of voting, compared with about half of white evangelical Protestant (52%) and white Catholic (46%) churchgoers. Only about a third (32%) of white mainline Protestants who attend services say their clergy have discussed the importance of voting.

Black Protestants are twice as likely as churchgoers overall to be hearing about the candidates at church. Among regular churchgoers, four-in-ten (40%) black Protestants say their clergy have spoken directly about the candidates, compared with 17% of white Catholics, 12% of white evangelicals and just 5% of white mainline Protestants.

Most regular churchgoers say the messages they are hearing in church are neutral when it comes to the 2012 election — whether or not they mention the candidates directly. Only about three-in-ten say what they are hearing at church is more supportive of one candidate or the other. Among those who feel their clergy’s messages favor a candidate, roughly equal numbers say the messages support Obama (15%) as Romney (14%).

What people are hearing varies greatly by race. Nearly half (45%) of black Protestant churchgoers say the messages they hear at church favor a candidate, and every one of those says the message favors Obama. Fewer white churchgoers say they are hearing things that favor a candidate, but among those who are, the messages are far more favorable to Romney than Obama. In particular, white evangelical churchgoers say their clergy have tended to be more supportive of Romney (26%) than Obama (5%). Among white Catholic churchgoers, 21% say their clergy’s messages have been more supportive of Romney, compared with 4% who say the messages have been more supportive of Obama.

What, precisely, does it mean to say that sermons “favor a candidate” or that they are “more” supportive of one candidate or another?

This is where journalists must be very, very precise about the actual language that preachers are using. Is it illegal for a black pastor to urge church members to vote for the candidate who will best understand the concerns of African-Americans, in a race involving a black candidate? Is it illegal for a Catholic priest to remind parishioners that abortion is intrinsically evil in a race in which one candidate has a muddled record on sanctity of life issues and the other has one of the most faithfully pro-abortion-rights records possible in American politics? It’s easy to do similar equations when dealing with other cultural, moral and political issues that, beyond all doubt, are linked to centuries of doctrine.

Journalists must remember that activists on both sides — left and right — are wrestling with these issues. Be careful out there, because God is in the details and the same is true of the First Amendment.

Stay tuned.

Filed Under: Catholicism, Evangelicals, Godbeat, Politics, Same-sex marriage, Social Issues, Worship Tagged With: , , , , , ,