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Reflections on SCOTUS' Hobby Lobby ruling

"Hobby Lobby in Mansfield, Ohio" by Nicholas Eckhart is licensed under CC BY 4.0

Religion is taking up less and less space in our culture. In his book American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us (2012), Harvard professor Robert Putnam unveils his research on the decline of social capital in American culture, which are the voluntary networks people engage in. He indicates that each succeeding generation is ten percent less likely to have a religious affiliation, which is but one form of social capital. The fastest growing religious affiliation in America is that of people who claim no religious affiliation.

This is a disturbing trend. Religion has its roots in the Latin word religio, which means to bind people together. And so if there is less religion, it follows that there will be less threads to bind us together. The decline of religion in our culture is giving people more confidence to say that they are spiritual and not religious.

It is also producing a disturbing backlash. While the recently issued Supreme Court decision on the Hobby Lobby case has been decided on legal merits, I can’t help but feel that it is yet another example of an attempt to create a retaining wall against the decline of religion in our culture.

And that won’t work.

The binding together of people, which is what religion is designed to do, only works if people choose it. It cannot be imposed. I understand and support the desire to protect religious practice – because religion has the capacity to nurture, celebrate and empower community. But it is voluntary community; not a mandated one.

Most of us inherited our religion. Many have walked away from it, in part because they didn’t feel they had a choice in accepting it; or much of religion on the world’s stage is presented as networks of certainty and coercion – and people want no part of that. I don’t either.

I am comforted by the fact that Jesus invited people into the community of faith. He told stories, gave demonstrations – and ultimately surrendered his life for the sake of voluntary community. Acceptance of his invitation can bind us to each other and God in life-giving ways. But it always needs to be our choice.

Photo credit: "Hobby Lobby in Mansfield, Ohio" by Nicholas Eckhart is licensed under CC BY 4.0

Comments

I am not really sure what you are trying to say in your article above, however there is nothing wrong with Hobby lobby not wanting to offer abortion birth control methods with their insurance. Period.

The Court's Alito-written decision argues, "The owners of the businesses [Hobby Lobby and Conestoga] have religious objections to abortion, and *according to their religious beliefs* the four contraceptive methods at issue are abortifacients." Whether or not the contraceptives in question can induce abortions is an empirical question, a question for medical science, not 'belief,' religious or any other kind. We have beliefs about those things we cannot know by empirical observation, but we do know about the contraceptives in question--if we credit medical research. SCOTUS also knows--if the justices bothered to read the amici briefs submitted by 23 medical scientists, including obstetricians, gynecologists, Physicians for Reproductive Health, nurses' associations and others.

From one such brief: "None of the FDA-approved emergency contraceptives or IUDs cause abortion; rather, they prevent unintended pregnancy from occurring and thereby prevent situations in which a woman may consider abortion. See Brief of Amici Curiae Physicians for Reproductive Health et al. in Support of the Government’s Petition for a Writ of Certiorari in Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc., No. 13-354."

I find it a very dangerous precedent that SCOTUS would privilege an unscientific 'religious belief' against the available medical evidence. Galileo, it seems, is still under house arrest, and the five Supremes are the arresting officers. If the Justices are trying to promote the social capital of religion (actually Religious Right politics), they're doing so at the expense of the social capital of science and of reason itself. "Reason"--isn't that one of the core values of ECUSA?

Was it not the government that MANDATED business fund ALL types of birth control under the new Health Care act? How does the recent Supreme Court ruling that allows some businesses to opt out of providing ALL forms of birth control impose a religious belief? Bishop, I have great respect for you but but your logic is twisted and illustrates how your political leanings influences your spiritual leadership.

That branch of our government that is charged by the Constitiution with making laws did NOT mandate the provisions Hobby Lobby found objectionable. Said provisions we mandated by the President, by executive fiat. Please don't confuse the form of government instituted by our founders with executive overreach.

Mark, your remarks seem spot on about the decline in religious affiliation as a disturbing trend and a loss of social capital. The Hobby Lobby decision, however, also reflects what a recent NY Times op-ed piece calls the disappearance of an agreed upon consensus that the marketplace itself will be a neutral, secular zone relatively free from the religious or cultural wars. More and more companies now market values as well as products, and, inevitably, a Christian company like Hobby Lobby uses its conservative Christian identity as both a real internal value and a market-savvy advertising value. This makes the marketplace more and more a minefield in the culture wars that then, in turn, fuel the drive to disaffiliate among the young who grow up in a culture that has little sense of need or respect for inherited traditions, like religiously-based morality and ritual.

Op Ed piece "Hobby Lobby is only the beginning" at: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/02/opinion/for-the-supreme-court-hobby-lo...

Mark, this is a powerful,low-key comment in the context of public fury.

“While the recently issued Supreme Court decision on the Hobby Lobby case has been decided on legal merits, I can’t help but feel that it is yet another example of an attempt to create a retaining wall against the decline of religion in our culture.” S-a-y-What? How does the determination that a for-profit company can have a: “Religious Belief” (other than the religion of Capitalism) promote religious institutions?

To me, the SCOTUS decision is one more step towards a Theocratic America where the agenda of the nation is determined by a handful of televangelists, Radio Talk-Show Hosts and wealthy people hiding behind religion to advance their personal political agenda. What the SCOTUS decision does is allow corporations to make decisions about the intimate details of the lives of their employees, something that those same individuals would never allow the government to do.

We live in an age where being religious is defined as being enraged along with a strong political/social agenda to have self-appointed theocrats run the nation (The Handmaid’s Tale?). The reality is that most people will avoid the angry, spittle flying, red-eyed, angry, vehement, science denying, and self-aggrandizing expression of: “Religion” where obedience to the commands of the so-called religious leaders is demanded and disobedience is tantamount to treason.

The SCOTUS decision may put a wall around religion but most of us want to stay outside that wall and live in a pluralistic society, not a theocracy.

"What the SCOTUS decision does is allow corporations to make decisions about the intimate details of the lives of their employees, something that those same individuals would never allow the government to do."

Actually the decision does the exact opposite. The corporation was removed from the intimate details of the lives of its employees and from being required to pay for it. Citing conscientious differences Hobby Lobby was not comfortable having its group insurance, for which they pay more than 50%, cover abortifacients. There is nothing in the decision that prevents anyone from obtaining these drugs on their own. Hobby Lobby employees are free to do as they choose but not to require their employer to pay for it.

And therein lies the problem with government and employer subsidized medical insurance. If someone else is going to cover more than half the cost of the "intimate details of [our] lives" then they are by default involved in the intimate details of our lives.

Posey too thinks that Hobby Lobby is within its rights not to fund an insurance policy that would "cover abortifacients." To reiterate the point I made yesterday, I'll quote an accessible-by-non-scientists article by Aaron E. Carroll that appeared in the New York Times June 30, 2014 (at www.nytimes.com/2014/07/02/upshot/how-hobby-lobby-ruling-could-limit-acc... ). Mr. Carroll provides links to the sources of his medical information:

"Research does not support the idea that [IUDs] prevent fertilized eggs to implant. The journal Fertility and Sterility published a study in 1985 that followed three groups of women for 15 months. One group had an IUD, one group had their tubes tied, and one group was trying to get pregnant. They then measured hormone levels to see if fertilization occurred. It did so only in the group trying to get pregnant.

"Another study found that a telltale sign of fertilization — a surge of the hormone human chorionic gonadotropin — occurred in only 1 percent of 100 cycles in women using IUDs. This would be consistent with the failure rate of IUDs in general. In other words, IUDs do not appear to work by aborting a fertilized egg.

"Emergency contraception, which is really just a large dose of the hormones in a birth control pill, works in a similar manner. The pills can thicken the mucus in the cervix to make it difficult for sperm to reach the egg, and they prevent ovulation from occurring in the first place. Because the doses of medication are very short-term, they probably cannot affect the uterine lining in such a way as to affect implantation.

Moreover, the fact that both of these forms of contraception can fail, and allow pregnancies to occur, provides evidence that if a fertilization occurs, it can move on to implant and grow."

Notice the date of the first study Carroll cites--1985. We've had this information for a long time, but religious right-wing lobbying groups have continued to strew the public forum with misinformation. Let's not be duped by an ideological fantasy of how women's bodies work. An ethical approach to women's reproductive health should be based on moral assessment of relevant facts, not mistaken beliefs that the Court has removed from scrutiny by labeling them "religious." There's real information out there, and it's relevant to how we deal with the consequences of this atavistic ruling by SCOTUS.

In order to test the impartiality of the SCOTUS decision let us flip the argument and see if it would stand up to the same test.

The owners of “Keep on Working” a privately held company have a real problem with the employees who take unplanned absences from the scheduled work hours and don’t put in copious overtime. Their research has shown that all of the employees who take the unplanned absences and don’t work copious overtime all have children. Therefore, the owners of KOW object to the laws that require them to provide medical insurance the covers pregnancies and children as it constitutes an infringement on their religious belief in unfettered capitalism. They are also taking steps to provide medical care that will cover the costs of abortion, contraception and sterilization for their employees as an alternate to funding coverage for the legally mandated pregnancy and child insurance. The owners have stated that if the employees don’t like those provisions they are welcome to work elsewhere.

Does the SCOTUS decision protect their legal right to practice their religion as they define it? In addition, would you defend their action?

"The binding together of people, which is what religion is designed to do, only works if people choose it. It cannot be imposed. I understand and support the desire to protect religious practice – because religion has the capacity to nurture, celebrate and empower community. But it is voluntary community; not a mandated one."

No one at Hobby Lobby is being forced to accept the tenets of the religion of its owners. By the same token, Hobby Lobby is not being forced to pay for certain practices of its employees. Each is now freed from the other. Once upon a time everyone was taxed to support the Church of England. These days we, the people in this pluralistic society, are more and more being required to support tenets with which we are growing increasingly uncomfortable as the government increasingly attempts to intervene in the intimate details of our lives.

The government can do nothing to "create a retaining wall against the decline of religion in our culture". Religion is supposed to be the retaining wall against the decline in culture. Culture is going to continue to push the boundaries of acceptable norms. If we as a Christian community do nothing or are accepting of that then we're the ones tearing down the wall. If we as a Christian community are in no way differentiated from government imposed cultural norms then there is no need for a wall.

We used to love the sinner and hate the sin. Now we shy away from calling anything a sin except what the government defines as sin, only they wouldn't dare use that word. The government is hardly inclined to stop us if we desire to be irrelevant and accept its definition.

Religion is about belief and the life style of ones being.So as the "religious" shouldn't we want to provide the proper needs of health and wellness for our fellow brothers and sisters? As Christians Christ has called us to help the church, THE CHURCH IS NOT THE BUILDING BUT THE PEOPLE IN IT.

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