I am aware that some members of the Southern Baptist
Convention have argued the Hobby Lobby case is, as one person put it, the “most
consequential religious liberty case in a generation.”[1] As a lawyer and low level theologian,
obviously this case sparked significant interest for me. Nonetheless, it seems to me the
chicken-little cry emanating from so many evangelicals and lawyers of
evangelicals[2]
misses the mark severely. We are taking
our eyes off the author and finisher of our faith, Jesus Christ, and looking
too hard for Caesar’s help.
Please understand. I
don’t claim to be a First Amendment expert.
I can read, though, and do understand that it has been badly mangled by
many who want to erase religion from the public square. My fear, however, is that too many on the
evangelical side of the equation are overly excited about what this case
means.
First, a brief history.
Hobby Lobby as a company has provided health care benefits to employees
for many years. So, primarily, this case
isn’t about whether the company wants to continue providing benefits. It does. However, Hobby Lobby has not previously
provided the various drugs which it feels impinge on its owners’ beliefs
regarding birth control and, in particular, abortion inducing medications and
devices. Prior to the passage of the Patient
Protection and Affordable Care Act, which we now euphemistically call
Obamacare, Hobby Lobby was under no constraint to offer these things. Now, however, the Act requires employers who
provide health benefits to provide these things. Hobby Lobby has objected, claiming this
violates the First Amendment’s requirement that “Congress shall make no law
respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise
thereof.” Congress did, in fact, pass
this law, so the first part of the amendment is clearly met. The question is whether this law is
prohibiting Hobby Lobby’s “free exercise” of religion.
I will not bore the readers with a history of Supreme Court
decisions about “free exercise.” One
case, however, of interest here is Church of the Lukumi Babalu Aye, Inc.
v. Hialeah, 508 U.S. 520 (1993) in which the Supreme Court declared as
unconstitutional a local ordinance prohibiting the killing of animals in a
private or public ritual or ceremony, except for consumption as food, within the city limits of Hialeah, Florida.
Clearly, if such a case passes muster as an exercise in freedom of religion,
then a case about a company desiring to stay away from specific birth control medications
and devices shouldn’t really raise an eyebrow as part of the “free exercise” of
religion. I suspect the Justices will
take the First Amendment claim very seriously.
My concern, however, goes beyond this. We evangelicals cannot afford to be seen by
the viewing public as overly concerned about whether Hobby Lobby wins or
not. The stark reality here is that we
do have “free exercise” of religion, whether the US Supreme Court says so or
not. I am thinking particularly of the
narratives in the biblical book of Daniel regarding Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego facing the fiery furnace and
Daniel facing the lion’s den. In both
instances these Jewish exiles were told by the secular authorities to worship
a god other than Yahweh and in both instances the men refused. They were “free” to exercise their religion;
there was, however, a cost. These men
determined that the cost of exercising their religion was less than the cost of
bowing down to a false idol. Daniel, in
particular, likely had significant influence and may well have had an ability
to appeal to the secular authority to do something, but he did not. We, too, must stop whining about our rights
under the First Amendment and worrying about what the secular authority does or
does not “give” us and start standing up, knowing the cost that we might face
for doing so. Do our rights emanate from
God, or from Caesar?
I am not suggesting here that Christians should never engage
in any political or legal action of any kind.
Nor am I suggesting Christians should withdraw from the public
square. Quite the contrary, as I am
right now writing a blog which I will publish for public consumption. Nonetheless, Christians are too used to not
having to count the cost of their exercise of religion in the United
States. We have become squishy in the midsection
and, as a result, lost the respect of many who would otherwise be open to
hearing the Good News. If the Hobby
Lobby case goes bad, then maybe it will help us focus more clearly on the cost
of our salvation – the very death of God’s son on an ignominious, bloody cross
because of my sins and yours. In turn,
perhaps as we stop assuming we have “rights” we’ll have real opportunities to
be like the fellas from Babylon and actually stand up when it really costs us
something.
[1]
Denny Burk at DennyBurk.com accessed March 31, 2014.
[2]
Jay Sekulow http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2014/03/25/hobby-lobby-case-three-reasons-why-corporations-must-have-religious-freedom/ accessed March 31, 2014.
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