Who will indeed.
Will it be one of their own?
Will it be one of their own choosing?
Or may it be one imposed on them by some religious or political cartel?
I confess amazement at the Supreme Court’s decision yesterday:
In one of the clearest rulings for religious freedom in years, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously decided that courts may not intervene in church hiring decisions, protecting the “ministerial exception” that the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission sought to eliminate in Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School v. EEOC.
“[T]he authority to select and control who will minister to the faithful is the church’s alone,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the court’s opinion. Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Elena Kagan wrote separate concurring opinions that said the ministerial exception should be even broader than Roberts allowed in his opinion.
[…]
The high court has never ruled on the ministerial exception before, a standard created in the lower courts…
[…]
(Alito, perhaps dryly, added 1 Corinthians 6:1-7 in the notes of his concurring opinion, verses that tell believers not to go before “the ungodly for judgment.”)
“She was fired simply for asking for a hearing,” Justice Anthony Kennedy said in the arguments. But the court’s unanimous opinion said the question of whether the church used religious reasons as a pretext for firing Perich “misses the point of the ministerial exception,” which requires courts to preserve churches’ autonomy in selecting leaders.
[…]
Roberts concluded, “The church must be free to choose those who will guide it on its way.”
And it’s a unanimous decision at that. Like I said, Amazing!
Furthermore, I’m super-intrigued by Alito’s note of 1 Corinthians 6:1-7. How far the American churches have strayed from that! (Interestingly, one of our minister’s preached from that passage just this past Sunday morning.)
As I close this piece, I admit, though, to wondering if the other branches of government will honor this decision…
And who will apply it to our hurt…
We live in perilous times.