{"id":26533,"date":"2015-01-25T16:25:14","date_gmt":"2015-01-25T21:25:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/?p=26533"},"modified":"2015-01-25T16:25:14","modified_gmt":"2015-01-25T21:25:14","slug":"in-mark-of-the-beast-case-eeoc-defends-the-religious-liberty-to-belief-it-thereby-proves-to-be-factually-untrue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2015\/01\/25\/in-mark-of-the-beast-case-eeoc-defends-the-religious-liberty-to-belief-it-thereby-proves-to-be-factually-untrue\/","title":{"rendered":"In ‘Mark of the Beast’ case, EEOC defends the religious liberty to belief it thereby proves to be factually untrue"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

The federal government struck a blow for religious liberty this month in a Clarksburg, West Virginia courtroom. The case is fascinating and hilarious, and the winning argument has the paradoxical benefit of upholding a man\u2019s right to a religious claim that the court\u2019s ruling proves to be factually ludicrous.<\/p>\n

The case also neatly disproves the absurd \u201cChristian persecution\u201d narrative promoted by perpetually aggrieved privileged hegemons and the hucksters who rile them up, like for example Fox News TV-talker Todd Starnes.<\/p>\n

Matt Harvey has the story for the local paper, the Exponent Telegram,<\/em> \u201cJury rules for worker in religious discrimination suit against Consol Energy<\/a>\u201d (via<\/em> Christian Nightmares<\/a>):<\/p>\n

A federal jury Thursday [Jan. 15] ruled in favor of a general laborer at the Consol Energy\/Consolidation Coal Co.\u2019s Mannington mining operations who said he was forced to retire because of his religious beliefs.<\/span><\/p>\n

The jury returned $150,000 in compensatory damages for Beverly R. Butcher Jr. \u2026<\/span><\/p>\n

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission had sued Consol Energy on behalf of Butcher. The federal agency\u2019s filing asserted Butcher, an evangelical Christian, was told he must submit to biometric hand scanning for time and attendance tracking, even though that is against his religious beliefs. \u2026<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

The jury found that Butcher \u201chad a sincere religious belief that conflicted with an employment requirement\u201d and that Butcher informed his employer of that belief.<\/p>\n

The jury also found that Consol Energy failed to provide a reasonable accommodation for Butcher\u2019s beliefs and that it wouldn\u2019t have been an \u201cundue hardship\u201d to do so.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

That\u2019s a pretty good summary of the legal questions at stake. A conflict arose between employment requirements and the sincere religious beliefs of a worker. When that happens, the worker has a free-exercise right to a reasonable accommodation of their religious beliefs \u2014 provided that such an accommodation is possible without creating an undue hardship for the employer.<\/p>\n

Note that all of these legal matters are a bit fuzzy and subjective.\u00a0Questions of sincerity, reasonableness and whether or not a solution would be an \u201cundue hardship\u201d are not easily quantifiable. They all involve judgment \u2014 which is why cases like this often wind up in court.<\/p>\n

\"Theology\"<\/a>But while they may be subjective, such questions have unavoidable legal significance. The trickiest of these is probably the matter of sincerity. Courts do not usually want to be the arbiters of religious sincerity \u2014 they lack the capacity and the clear jurisdiction to evaluate such a thing, and often prudently seek to avoid getting entangled in such a murky matter. Yet sincerity has a clear legal significance in cases like this.<\/p>\n

Suppose, for example, that I decide I\u2019d prefer not to work on Saturdays, and so, between bites of a cheeseburger, I inform my employer that I\u2019ve suddenly converted to Orthodox Judaism. The\u00a0EEOC wouldn\u2019t take up my case because my religious claim would be obviously and demonstrably insincere, and my employer is not legally bound to find a reasonable accommodation for my unreasonable, insincere religious claim. Sincerity and insincerity are not always easily determined, but the point of that example is to show why such a determination is legally necessary.<\/p>\n

In this Consol Energy case, the worker\u2019s religious sincerity is not in dispute. Both the EEOC and the coal company mostly agree that Mr. Butcher\u2019s religious beliefs are genuine.<\/p>\n

Consol Energy apparently did attempt to show that Butcher\u2019s religious beliefs were, if sincere, somewhat incoherent. But even though they were right about that, it didn\u2019t help their case against the EEOC.<\/p>\n

This is, for me, the fun part, because Mr. Butcher, it turns out, is an End Times, \u201cBible prophecy\u201d Rapture enthusiast and a devotee of the pseudo-Christian folklore promoted by the likes of Tim LaHaye, Hal Lindsey and Jack Van Impe.<\/p>\n

Butcher, in other words, is not so much an \u201cevangelical Christian\u201d as he is a devotee of anti-Antichrist-ianity. He\u2019s obsessively worried about the Antichrist, and he balked at his employer\u2019s use of hand-scanners because the weird, Barnum-esque folklore he\u2019s swallowed has taught him that such devices are a tool of Nicolae Carpathia.<\/p>\n

The company that makes those hand scanners, Recognition Systems Inc., seems all-too-familiar with the\u00a0fear that causes anti-Antichristians to recoil from their technology. They\u2019ve tried to engage those fears by taking these folks\u2019 concerns seriously. Over the years, I\u2019m sure, they\u2019ve heard from a lot of people like Beverly Butcher or Tim LaHaye \u2014 people who say they are opposed to the use of hand-scanners because they \u201ctake the Bible literally.\u201d And Recognition Systems recognizes that the Bible passage at issue is this one, from Revelation 13 (quoted here in the King James Version preferred by anti-Antichristians):<\/p>\n

And I beheld another beast coming up out of the earth; and he had two horns like a lamb, and he spake as a dragon. And he exerciseth all the power of the first beast before him, and causeth the earth and them which dwell therein to worship the first beast, whose deadly wound was healed. And he doeth great wonders, so that he maketh fire come down from heaven on the earth in the sight of men, And deceiveth them that dwell on the earth by the means of those miracles which he had power to do in the sight of the beast; saying to them that dwell on the earth, that they should make an image to the beast, which had the wound by a sword, and did live. And he had power to give life unto the image of the beast, that the image of the beast should both speak, and cause that as many as would not worship the image of the beast should be killed.<\/p>\n

And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads: And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.<\/p>\n

Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Recognition Systems takes these people literally when they claim to take the Bible literally. That was the premise of the letter they provided for Consol Energy to give to poor, frightened Mr. Butcher:<\/p>\n

Butcher\u2019s employers handed him a letter written by the scanner\u2019s vendor, Recognition Systems Inc., according to the lawsuit.<\/p>\n

Addressed \u201cTo Whom it May Concern,\u201d the letter \u201cdiscussed the vendor\u2019s interpretation of Chapter 13, Verse 16 of the Book of Revelation contained in the Bible; pointed out that the text of that verse references the Mark of the Beast only on the right hand and forehead; and suggests that persons with concerns about taking the Mark of the Beast \u2018be enrolled\u2019 (meaning, use the hand scanner) with their left hand and palm facing up,\u201d the lawsuit asserted.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe letter concludes by assuring the reader that the vendor\u2019s scanner product does not, in fact, assign the Mark of the Beast,\u201d the lawsuit asserted.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That last assurance is naively optimistic. It won\u2019t help to reassure folks like Mr. Butcher that the hand scanner \u201cdoes not, in fact, assign the Mark of the Beast,\u201d because that\u2019s exactly what they\u2019d expect the Beast to say.<\/em> \u201cHe deceiveth them that dwell on the earth,\u201d after all.<\/p>\n

Recognition Systems\u2019 suggestion that Butcher simply scan in with his left hand is a perfectly logical response to his claim to be motivated by a \u201cliteral\u201d reading of Revelation 13:16. But it, too, is naive \u2014 too credulously accepting that he is using the word \u201cliteral\u201d to mean anything of the sort.<\/p>\n

In any case, it doesn\u2019t matter whether Recognition Systems Inc. or Tim LaHaye has the more \u201cliteral\u201d interpretation of Revelation 13:16. The jury in Clarksburg was not being asked to adjudicate between competing interpretations of the Bible, and no jury should be asked to do that. Their task, rather, was to look at employment law \u2014 at Mr. Butcher\u2019s rights as a worker \u2014 and to determine whether or not Consol Energy complied with that law.<\/p>\n

And Consol Energy did not. The main problem, legally, turned out to be that the vendor\u2019s use-your-left-hand suggestion was the only<\/em> proposed accommodation that Consol Energy was willing to provide for Butcher\u2019s religious belief (his whackily unorthodox, stupid,\u00a0and laughably incoherent \u2014 but questionably sincere<\/em> \u2014 religious belief).<\/p>\n

And that was why Consol Energy lost this case. That was why Consol Energy deserved<\/em> to lose. They broke the law.<\/p>\n

Religious liberty, if it is ever to mean anything at all, must include the freedom to be wrong. It cannot matter, legally, whether or not a religious belief is orthodox, or coherent, or part of a longstanding established tradition. Protecting religious liberty means protecting the right to believe in the implausible, the idiosyncratic, the offensive, the stupid, the factually insupportable, the demonstrably false. Otherwise we\u2019d wind up putting the state in the position of adjudicating between legitimate and illegitimate religious beliefs.<\/p>\n

And that, we should have learned by now, never ends well. That\u2019s a recipe for inquisitions and for sectarian violence. That reduces religious liberty from an inviolable human right to a privilege contingent on the religious perspective of the current regime.<\/p>\n

Beverly R. Butcher Jr. is wrong. And he has every right to be wrong \u2014 even to be ludicrously<\/em> wrong, as he is. Defending religious liberty means we have to defend the right of people like him \u2014 or like Tim LaHaye, or Ken Ham, or Cindy Jacobs, or Tom Cruise, or David Green \u2014 to be ludicrously, offensively, exuberantly wrong<\/em>.*<\/p>\n

So the absurdity, stupidity and foolishness of Butcher\u2019s religious beliefs can have no bearing on his legal right to a reasonable accommodation. Such an accommodation should have been easy for Consol Energy to provide, but they refused to do so:<\/p>\n

Company officials rejected Butcher\u2019s counter offer to either keep a written record of his hours, as he had been doing, or to check in and check out with his supervisor, the lawsuit contended.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

At many\u00a0different jobs, I\u2019ve checked in and out using old-fashioned punch-card time clocks, digital time clocks, written time sheets, and informal nods to the boss. I\u2019ve never used a hand scanner. Most people haven\u2019t. Most companies haven\u2019t. So allowing Butcher to clock in using any of those other methods surely wouldn\u2019t have been\u00a0an \u201cundue hardship\u201d for the company.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s why the EEOC won this case for Butcher and why Consol Energy lost.<\/p>\n

But consider the delicious irony of\u00a0what that outcome means for the content<\/em> of Mr. Butcher\u2019s religious claim. The good guys here \u2014 the advocates defending his case \u2014 were the feds. And the feds actions here proved\u00a0that the existence of hand-scanner technology does not mean that \u201cno man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.\u201d<\/p>\n

By winning his case, the EEOC proved that the substance of Butcher\u2019s religious claim \u2014 his \u201cBible prophecy\u201d religious objection to hand-scanners \u2014 was nonsense. By defending his religious liberty, the EEOC proved that the content of his religious claim was false.<\/p>\n

The EEOC just proved that Beverly R. Butcher Jr.\u2019s religious beliefs are wrong \u2014 and that he has the right to be wrong.<\/p>\n

\u2013 \u2013 \u2013 \u2013 \u2013 \u2013 \u2013 \u2013 \u2013 \u2013 \u2013 \u2013<\/p>\n

* Note, however, that the right to be absolutely wrong does not entail an absolute right to force others to agree or to comply with you. Every belief, no matter how obviously wrong, has the right to a \u201creasonable accommodation,\u201d but not to an unreasonable accommodation. Everyone has the right to be wrong, but we do not have the right to create an undue hardship for everyone else.<\/p>\n

Thus, for example, as a Scientologist, Tom Cruise has every right to refuse psychological and psychiatric care, and we can reasonably accommodate his religious liberty on that point. But accommodating Tom Cruise does not mean that health insurers cannot be allowed or required to insure psychiatric care for everyone else.<\/p>\n

Similarly, David Green is a devout anti-abortionist. That\u2019s his religion \u2014 a religion even more dubious than Scientology in that it includes the factually untrue dogma that equates contraception with abortion. Green\u2019s religion may be loopy and dumb, and it may be dependent on false claims about human biology, but he has every right to be so utterly, demonstrably wrong. His sincere foolishness, like Cruise\u2019s, should be afforded reasonable accommodation.<\/p>\n

But, just like\u00a0Cruise, Green\u00a0does not therefore have the right to create an undue hardship for everyone else. He does not have the right to require others to be wrong as well. Just as Scientologists do not have the religious liberty to prohibit everyone else from having psychiatric care or insurance for such care, so too anti-abortionists do not have the religious liberty to prohibit everyone else from using contraception or from insurance that covers it. That\u2019s why the Hobby Lobby<\/em> decision was incorrect \u2014 why it makes about as much sense, legally, as Cruise\u2019s ideas about Xenu and Dianetics.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Religious liberty, if it is ever to mean anything at all, must include the freedom to be wrong. It cannot matter, legally, whether or not a religious belief is orthodox, or coherent, or part of a longstanding established tradition. Protecting religious liberty means protecting the right to believe in the implausible, the idiosyncratic, the offensive, the stupid, the factually insupportable, the demonstrably false. 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A former managing editor of Prism magazine, Fred worked in the parachurch nonprofit world for a decade and then for a decade in the newspaper biz. He began blogging in 2002. In 2003 he began writing a review of the best-selling Left Behind series. Eight years later he still hasn\u2019t finished reviewing the second book of that series and the experience has left him a broken shell of a man. Fred knows the difference between the possessive \u201cits\u201d and the contraction \u201cit\u2019s,\u201d and he is acutely bothered when others mistakenly confuse the two, yet he himself just kind of instinctively types the apostrophe whether or not it belongs there. Some feel this is his greatest hypocrisy, but those who know him better know better. He\u2019s guilty of much greater hypocrisies. Jesus loves Fred far more than Fred loves Jesus, but he at least has the decency to recognize the unfairness of that lopsided relationship and he has long wished that he were better at maybe kind of sort of doing something more to correct that some day. A Baptist, an amateur, a Gen-Xer, a Gemini and a Mets fan, Fred lives in Southeastern Pennsylvania with his wife and two teenage daughters. You can reach him via email at slacktivist at hotmail dot com.\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/author\/fredclark1\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"In 'Mark of the Beast' case, EEOC defends the religious liberty to belief it thereby proves to be factually untrue","description":"Religious liberty, if it is ever to mean anything at all, must include the freedom to be wrong. It cannot matter, legally, whether or not a religious belief is orthodox, or coherent, or part of a longstanding established tradition. 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The EEOC just proved that Beverly Butcher's \"Bible prophecy\" beliefs are wrong -- and that he has the right to be wrong.","og_url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2015\/01\/25\/in-mark-of-the-beast-case-eeoc-defends-the-religious-liberty-to-belief-it-thereby-proves-to-be-factually-untrue\/","og_site_name":"slacktivist","article_published_time":"2015-01-25T21:25:14+00:00","og_image":[{"url":"http:\/\/wp.production.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/files\/2015\/01\/Theology.jpg"}],"author":"Fred Clark","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Fred Clark","Est. reading time":"11 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2015\/01\/25\/in-mark-of-the-beast-case-eeoc-defends-the-religious-liberty-to-belief-it-thereby-proves-to-be-factually-untrue\/","url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2015\/01\/25\/in-mark-of-the-beast-case-eeoc-defends-the-religious-liberty-to-belief-it-thereby-proves-to-be-factually-untrue\/","name":"In 'Mark of the Beast' case, EEOC defends the religious liberty to belief it thereby proves to be factually untrue","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/#website"},"datePublished":"2015-01-25T21:25:14+00:00","dateModified":"2015-01-25T21:25:14+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/#\/schema\/person\/32666545e535b697afb93d9848dcfc47"},"description":"Religious liberty, if it is ever to mean anything at all, must include the freedom to be wrong. It cannot matter, legally, whether or not a religious belief is orthodox, or coherent, or part of a longstanding established tradition. Protecting religious liberty means protecting the right to believe in the implausible, the idiosyncratic, the offensive, the stupid, the factually insupportable, the demonstrably false. The EEOC just proved that Beverly Butcher's \"Bible prophecy\" beliefs are wrong -- and that he has the right to be wrong.","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2015\/01\/25\/in-mark-of-the-beast-case-eeoc-defends-the-religious-liberty-to-belief-it-thereby-proves-to-be-factually-untrue\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2015\/01\/25\/in-mark-of-the-beast-case-eeoc-defends-the-religious-liberty-to-belief-it-thereby-proves-to-be-factually-untrue\/"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2015\/01\/25\/in-mark-of-the-beast-case-eeoc-defends-the-religious-liberty-to-belief-it-thereby-proves-to-be-factually-untrue\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"In ‘Mark of the Beast’ case, EEOC defends the religious liberty to belief it thereby proves to be factually untrue"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/","name":"slacktivist","description":""Test everything; hold fast to what is good."","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/#\/schema\/person\/32666545e535b697afb93d9848dcfc47","name":"Fred Clark","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/7083ccd514d4fb8d5043041756d766a0?s=96&d=identicon&r=pg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/7083ccd514d4fb8d5043041756d766a0?s=96&d=identicon&r=pg","caption":"Fred Clark"},"description":"Fred Clark is a graduate of Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary (now called Palmer Seminary), of Eastern College (now called Eastern University) and of the fundamentalist Timothy Christian High School (still fundamentalist and still called Timothy Christian High School, but not really thrilled to have a snarky, liberal, tree-hugging, pro-choice, pro-GLBT, peacenik, commie, evolutionist as such a vocal alumnus). A former managing editor of Prism magazine, Fred worked in the parachurch nonprofit world for a decade and then for a decade in the newspaper biz. He began blogging in 2002. In 2003 he began writing a review of the best-selling Left Behind series. Eight years later he still hasn\u2019t finished reviewing the second book of that series and the experience has left him a broken shell of a man. Fred knows the difference between the possessive \u201cits\u201d and the contraction \u201cit\u2019s,\u201d and he is acutely bothered when others mistakenly confuse the two, yet he himself just kind of instinctively types the apostrophe whether or not it belongs there. Some feel this is his greatest hypocrisy, but those who know him better know better. He\u2019s guilty of much greater hypocrisies. Jesus loves Fred far more than Fred loves Jesus, but he at least has the decency to recognize the unfairness of that lopsided relationship and he has long wished that he were better at maybe kind of sort of doing something more to correct that some day. A Baptist, an amateur, a Gen-Xer, a Gemini and a Mets fan, Fred lives in Southeastern Pennsylvania with his wife and two teenage daughters. You can reach him via email at slacktivist at hotmail dot com.","url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/author\/fredclark1\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26533","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/141"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26533"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26533\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26533"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26533"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26533"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}