Cooperative Baptist Fellowship Executive Coordinator Suzii Paynter and Southern Baptist Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission President Russell Moore joined a small group of faith leaders who met with President Obama in the Oval Office April 15 to discuss immigration reform.

Suzii PaynterThe White House summarized the meeting, saying: “The faith leaders shared with the president stories about the impact the failure to fix the immigration system has on families in their congregations and communities. The president expressed deep concern about the pain too many families feel from the separation that comes from our broken immigration system. He emphasized that while his administration can take steps to better enforce and administer immigration laws, nothing can replace the certainty of legislative reform and this permanent solution can only be achieved by Congress.”

Paynter, who pledged to increase CBF involvement in public advocacy since assuming leadership last year, expressed support for congressional action on immigration reform. 

Russell Moore“It’s time to retool our laws for immigration,” Paynter said. “We can meet as a country at the intersection of moral conscience and common sense and pass reform.”

“Congress has the tools to act and, as people of conviction, people of faith in the U.S. are in agreement that common sense measures can be taken,” Paynter said. “There is a place to honor the God-given dignity of persons, honor the rule of law, ensure fairness to taxpayers and seek a path towards recognition for immigrants.” 

Other faith leaders in the meeting were JoAnne Lyon, general superintendent of The Wesleyan Church; Kirbyjon Caldwell of Windsor Village United Methodist Church in Houston; Noel Castellanos, CEO of the Christian Community Development Association in Chicago; Luis Cortes, president of Esperanza in Philadelphia; and Dieter Uchtdorf of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Utah.

Administration officials included Valerie Jarrett, senior adviser to the president, and Melissa Rogers, executive director of the White House Office of Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships.

According to the White House: “The president and the religious leaders expressed their longstanding commitment to immigration reform as a moral imperative and pledged to continue to urge Congress to act on reform as soon as possible. The president thanked the faith leaders for their leadership on this issue and their tireless efforts to encourage Congress to finish the job.”

FEDERAL WAY, Wash.—Within 48 hours, the Christian relief organization World Vision twice announced changes to its employee policy regarding gay marriage, essentially returning to its original position that prohibits same-sex unions.

In the process, World Vision received the condemnation and applause of Christians on opposite sides of the same-sex marriage issue.

Richard Stearns, seen here during a visit to Zambia, is the U.S. president of World Vision. (Religion News Service photo courtesy of Jon Warren/World Vision)
Initially, World Vision announced its U.S. branch would recognize same-sex marriage as within the norms of “abstinence before marriage and fidelity in marriage” as part of the conduct code for its 1,100 employees. In 2012, Washington, where World Vision U.S. is based, became one of the first states to legalize same-sex marriage by popular vote.

“I want to be clear that we have not endorsed same-sex marriage, but we have chosen to defer to the authority of local churches on this issue,” World Vision’s U.S. President Rich Stearns wrote in a letter to employees.

“I want to reassure you that we are not sliding down some slippery slope of compromise, nor are we diminishing the authority of Scripture in our work. We have always affirmed traditional marriage as a God-ordained institution. Nothing in our work around the world with children and families will change.”

However, the decision sparked a strong reaction from evangelical Christians opposed to same-sex marriage. The agency reportedly saw a loss of close to 5,000 child sponsorships—a drop of about $2.1 million a year.

So, the organization reversed course and apologized for misreading donor attitudes about same-sex marriage.

‘We made a mistake’

“We’ve listened,” Stearns told reporters. “We believe we made a mistake. We’re asking them to forgive and understand our poor judgment in the original decision.”

The board voted overwhelmingly for the initial decision and also voted overwhelmingly to reverse itself, he said.

“We hadn’t vetted this issue with people who could’ve given us really valuable input at the beginning,” Stearns said. “In retrospect, I can see why this was so controversial for many of our supporters and partners around the country. If I could have a do-over, it would’ve been that I would’ve done more consultation with Christian leaders.”

Stearns and board chairman Jim Beré said in a letter to donors World Vision made a mistake and was reinstituting its previous policy.

“In our board’s effort to unite around the church’s shared mission to serve the poor in the name of Christ, we failed to be consistent with World Vision U.S.’s commitment to the traditional understanding of biblical marriage and our own statement of faith,” Stearns and Beré said in the apology letter. “And we also failed to seek enough counsel from our own Christian partners.”

The letter said numerous leaders and trusted partners expressed concern about the policy change.

“We are brokenhearted over the pain and confusion we have caused many of our friends, who saw this decision as a reversal of our strong commitment to biblical authority,” the letter said. “We ask that you understand that this was never the board’s intent. We are asking for your continued support. We commit to you that we will continue to listen to the wise counsel of Christian brothers and sisters, and we will reach out to key partners in the weeks ahead.”

Conservatives welcomed reversal of the announced policy change.

Decision was ‘right’

“World Vision’s right decision, as articulated in their board letter, conveys a spirit of Christlikeness and humility in tone and content,” Al MohlerRussell Moore, head of the Southern Baptist Convention Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, commented on Twitter. Previously Moore criticized World Vision’s proposal to drop its ban on openly gay employees as anti-gospel.

Albert Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, applauded the reversal as a “historic and much-welcomed announcement” and “a singularly happy event.”

Denny Burk, associate professor of biblical studies at Russell MooreBoyce College, Southern Seminary’s undergraduate arm, described the letter announcing the policy reversal as “stunning.”

“I was heartened and encouraged by what I read in the letter,” Burk said in a blog posting. “I think this kind of public repentance is courageous, and I praise the Lord for it.”

Some Christians who support fuller inclusion of gays in church and society saw the relief organization’s decision as a huge step in the wrong direction.

Rachel Held Evans, a popular Christian blogger, had encouraged readers to donate money to make up for child sponsorships World Vision was losing because of its original policy change recognizing exployees’ same-sex marriages. After World Vision’s reversal, she noted she understood if people who followed her advice feel betrayed.

“I don’t think I’ve ever been Rachel Held Evansmore angry at the church, particularly the evangelical culture in which I was raised and with which I for so long identified,” she said on her blog. “I confess I had not realized the true extent of the disdain evangelicals have for our LGBT people, nor had I expected World Vision to yield to that disdain by reversing its decision under pressure. Honestly, it feels like a betrayal from every side.”

While World Vision’s base always has been strongest among evangelicals, it also counts on employees and support from churches that now allow same-sex marriage, such as the United Church of Christ and the Episcopal Church.

Evangelical base

“World Vision has been extremely broad in terms of church relations, but they have an evangelical base,” said David Neff, retired editor-in-chief of Christianity Today. “They were trying to figure out how to keep that broad base as things are changing. It was clearly a poorly timed misstep.”

Not all critics of the policy to recognize same-sex marriage were satisfied by its reversal. Tim Wildmon, president of the American Family Association, said the incident shows World Vision needs a leadership shakeup.

“I would say they don’t have any choice but to relieve the chairman of the board of his duties and their president—all those who made this decision to equate homosexual ‘marriage’ with a man and a woman being married,” Wildmon told the AFA media outlet OneNewsNow. “They need to go and start over with a new board.”

World Vision is the second-largest organization listed with the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability, behind Salvation Army. It also ranks among America’s top 10 charities, with revenue around $1 billion.

In 2011, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear a case involving three employees fired by World Vision, allowing the relief group to maintain its mandatory statement of faith for its workers. A ruling from the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals sided with World Vision in a case involving three former employees who were fired because they did not believe in the deity of Jesus or in the doctrine of the Trinity.

—Compiled from reports by Associated Baptist Press and Religion News Service

WASHINGTON (RNS)—The Green family that owns the Hobby Lobby craft store chain believes the federal government ran roughshod over their religious liberties when the Affordable Care Act required their company to cover the full range of birth control options in employee health plans.

As Christians, the Greens argued, they could not comply. In their view, four of those birth-control methods can cause abortion, although many major medical voices disagree. On March 25, the Supreme Court will hear the case.

Steve Green, wife Jackie, Green’s son (with wife and kids), Green’s daughter and her husband outside the coliseum in Rome in 2012; the family was in town for the opening of the Verbum Domini exhibit of The Green Collection at the Vatican. (RNS Photo courtesy of Green family)Combining fundamental questions of religious rights, corporate rights, Obamacare and abortion, the case is, for many people, the most important the Supreme Court will decide this year. It will be bundled with a similar lawsuit filed by the Mennonite owners of a wood cabinetry corporation who hold views similar to those of the Greens.

“The government is forcing us to choose between following our faith and following the law,” wrote David Green, the CEO and founder of Hobby Lobby. “I say that’s a choice no American and no American business should have to make.”

Could encourage others to ‘flout the law’

Supporters of the so-called contraception mandate fear a victory for the plaintiffs could prompt businesses to flout any number of laws by claiming a violation of religious freedom.

They ask: What about a woman’s right to be covered for the full array of birth-control options available through the Affordable Care Act? Is it really the company’s right to decide the only drugs and medical procedures they’ll cover are the ones that conform to the owner’s personal faith?

Administration supporters also argue Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood Specialties Corp. claim religious rights the Constitution bestows on individuals, not corporations.

“It’s easy to be sympathetic to the devout individual business owners behind the corporations in these cases,” said Elizabeth B. Wydra, of the left-leaning Constitutional Accountability Center. “But their rights are not implicated by the Affordable Care Act’s contraception provisions.”

Steve Green, president of Hobby Lobby, speaks at the Religion Newswriters Association conference in Austin in 2013. (RNS photo by Sally Morrow)That’s not how the Greens and their supporters see it. To them, you can’t separate the family from the corporation, because the family runs the corporation according to its deeply held Christian values. Hobby Lobby, for example, closes its more than 600 stores on Sundays, pays employees far above the minimum wage and limits store hours so employees can spend more time with their families.

For the Supreme Court to agree with the Greens, two questions must be answered:

• Does Hobby Lobby, the corporation, have religious rights protected by the First Amendment?

• If the corporation has religious rights, have those rights been violated under a 20-year-old statute that sets a high bar for government interference when it comes to protecting religious freedom?

Jeff Mateer, senior counsel at the conservative Liberty Institute, said the question of a corporation’s religious rights is not a tough one.

First Amendment rights for corporations?

“If the court determines that they do not have that right, it’s really going to change 200 years of legal precedent where we have assumed that corporations do have First Amendment rights,” he said.

He pointed to the Supreme Court’s 2010 decision in the Citizens United campaign finance case, in which the justices overturned bans on corporate political spending as a violation of freedom of speech.

Wydra, however, sees a strong argument for denying Hobby Lobby religious rights.

The Supreme Court will decide if Hobby Lobby and other corporations have religious rights. (RNS Photo)Although churches and other religious organizations enjoy the First Amendment’s protection of free exercise of religion, she has written, “these explicitly religious corporations are and always have been distinct from secular companies, even if there are unquestionably devout religious people who work for and own secular businesses.”

If the court decides Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood have religious rights, it would then have to turn its attention to the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. Congress passed it in 1993 to address concerns that the federal government needed to take greater pains to protect religious freedom.

If the government is going to tread on religious freedoms with a law such as the Affordable Care Act, RFRA requires the government to show a “compelling interest,” and that there is no less burdensome way to meet its goal.

Compelling interest test

That compelling interest test could be a hard one for the Obama administration to pass, legal scholars on both sides agree, since it has given out exemption after exemption to those who say they would have problems complying with one portion or another of the Affordable Care Act.

Churches that object to covering birth control, for example, have exemptions. So do the homeless, and people who can prove it would be a financial hardship to comply. “It’s hard to argue that you’ve got a compelling interest when you’ve exempted out so many people,” Mateer said.

Exemptions aside, medical and public health experts see a compelling government interest in ensuring women’s health through access to contraception.

Birth control has “profound” health benefits not only for the women who use it to prevent and space out pregnancies, but for the children whose mothers have access to it, said Nancy Stanwood, board chair of Physicians for Reproductive Health.

“The medical community is clear,” she said, “that contraception is fundamental preventative health care for women.”

If the Supreme Court allows a company owner’s personal belief to limit access to birth control, “what other things will get carved out?” Stanwood asked. “If someone is a Jehovah’s Witness, and they object to (blood) transfusions, then their employees don’t get transfusions?”

Outcome may not be ‘momentous’

Notre Dame Law School professor Rick Garnett, who writes about religious freedom, said the court may well agree that corporations have religious rights, but he also suggests that such an outcome won’t be as momentous as many assume.

“It doesn’t mean every single business is going to be invoking RFRA to get out of regulations it doesn’t like,” he said.

Hobby Lobby might be able to make a case, he said, but probably not Citibank or McDonald’s, since not all businesses have a religious character. And even if Hobby Lobby successfully invokes religious rights under RFRA, it doesn’t mean those rights have to prevail, Garnett added.

“Sometimes RFRA claimants will win,” he said. “And sometimes they’ll lose.”

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (RNS)—A Tennessee pharmacist and a Baptist church deacon who lost his job after an ongoing dispute over selling Plan B contraception sued his former bosses, claiming he was fired because of his religious beliefs.

Lawyers for Philip M. Hall of Jamestown, Tenn., filed suit against the Walgreens drugstore chain in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee, claiming it discriminated against Hall’s religious beliefs.

Fired in August

Hall was fired in August after working six years for Walgreens. He believes Plan B contraceptives cause abortions and refused to dispense them. Plan B is a form of birth control that can prevent pregnancy if taken within 72 hours of unprotected sex. Many medical experts say it does not cause a miscarriage or abortion and won’t work if the fertilized egg already is implanted.

For several years, Walgreens worked out a compromise with Hall. If a customer came into the store with a prescription for Plan B, Hall would refer them to another staff member.

The situation changed in the summer of 2013, when the FDA approved Plan B as an over-the-counter medication.

In the complaint, Hall said his boss informed the staff that pharmacists were expected to stock and sell Plan B. Hall told his bosses he still did not want to sell the drug. He also contacted the main headquarters of Walgreens in suburban Chicago, to express his concerns about selling the drug.

Things came to a head in mid-July, according to the complaint. Hall claims six boxes of Plan B were delivered to the store but were mislabeled as behind-the-counter drugs. He bought all six boxes for $328.43 and threw them away.

When his boss learned what happened, Hall initially was accused of stealing the drugs. After he showed the receipt, he then was asked if he would sell Plan B.

Hall said he would not and was fired, according to the complaint.

Wants them to ‘accomodate his religious beliefs’

“He doesn’t object to Walgreens selling Plan B,” said Jocelyn Floyd, a lawyer at the Thomas More Society, a Christian legal group representing Hall. “He’s just asking that they accommodate his religious beliefs.”

Hall got rid of the Plan B medication because it was mislabeled, Floyd said, asserting didn’t matter what he did with the medication.

“Walgreens is not out anything as a result of these actions,” said Floyd. “It’s an improper reason for firing him.”

Jim Graham, a spokesman for Walgreens, would not comment on the specifics of Hall’s suit but said in an email the company respects the religious beliefs of employees.

“While we cannot comment on pending litigation, we can tell you that Walgreens’ company policy allows pharmacists and other employees to step away from completing a transaction to which they have a moral objection,” he said.

“Our policy also requires the employee to refer the transaction to another employee or manager on duty who will complete the customer’s request.”

WASHINGTON (ABP)—The Southern Baptist owners of Hobby Lobby claim in a Supreme Court brief filed Feb. 10 that mandated coverage of contraceptives under Obamacare is a textbook violation of a 1993 law enacted with broad support to prevent the government from interfering in a person’s religious exercise.

Lawyers representing members of the Green family, who attend Council Road Baptist Church in Bethany, Okla., say forcing business owners to violate their deeply held religious beliefs or pay steep fines “is one of the most straightforward violations of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act this court is likely to see.”

Kyle Duncan, counsel for Hobby Lobby.RFRA, passed in 1993 with backing of a broad coalition including the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty, prohibits the government from “substantially” burdening a person’s religious exercise without a compelling governmental interest and by the least-restrictive means.

The Obama administration argues Congress’ intent was to protect religious freedoms of individuals and not large corporations like Hobby Lobby, a nationwide chain with more than 500 stores and 13,000 full-time employees with various religious beliefs.

Lawyers say the Greens, who organize their business with “express religious principles in mind” and policies including fair wages and closing Hobby Lobby stores on Sunday, exercise their faith through their business, and nothing in the law says RFRA doesn’t apply to them.

Undermines ‘compelling interest’ claim

They claim the White House undermines its own “compelling interest” claim by voluntarily exempting millions of Americans from rules of the Affordable Care Act if they have fewer than 50 employees or grandfathered insurance plans. HHS regulations also exempt certain types of religious employers that object to birth control on moral grounds.

They also dispute the government used the “least restrictive” means to achieve its interest of providing contraceptive coverage at no cost as part of preventive medical services provided by Obamacare.

“There are literally thousands of ways for the government to advance general interests in promoting public health and gender equality without implicating respondents’ religious exercise,” the brief argues. “The conflict here arises only because the government has chosen the hardly obvious path of forcing respondents to pay for religiously objectionable drugs and devices.”

Kyle Duncan, general counsel for the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty and counsel for Hobby Lobby, said the latest brief “brings into even sharper focus the issue at the heart of this landmark case.”

‘Gross violation of RFRA’

“No one should be forced to give up their constitutionally protected civil rights just to go into business,” Duncan said. “The filing demonstrates in no uncertain terms that the government’s efforts to strip this family business of its religious rights represent a gross violation of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act and the First Amendment. We are hopeful that the Supreme Court will uphold the Tenth Circuit’s strong affirmation of the Greens’ rights to live out their deeply held beliefs in every aspect of their business.”

The latest Hobby Lobby brief comes on the heels of another filed Jan. 27 asking the high court to declare RFRA unconstitutional. Before that, the Southern Baptist Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission joined other groups in a brief claiming a person’s religious exercise is protected whether or not that person owns a business.

Holly Hollman, general counsel of the Baptist Joint Committee.Holly Hollman, general counsel of the Washington-based Baptist Joint Committee, wrote in the January 2014 Report from the Capital that the religious-liberty watchdog coalition representing Baptist groups including the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship isn’t weighing in on the specific legal question before the Supreme Court — whether RFRA applies only to individuals or also to corporations — but “continues to support the strong standard RFRA embodies.”

“As in other religious liberty cases to reach the Supreme Court, the BJC has an opportunity to weigh in on this case,” Hollman said. “For us, however, the particular religious claim is less important than the need to advocate for strong standards that protect religious liberty for all.”

“It matters much less which religious group or governmental entity we are aligned with in a case (indeed our history shows cooperation with groups across the theological and political spectrums) than that strong legal principles are maintained that protect us all,” she wrote.

ARLINGTON, Va. (RNS)—Seated at a table with other chaplains who have comforted grieving military families, retired Army Chaplain John Schumacher held a red rose in his hands before he passed it along, pausing to remember those who had died on the battlefield.

The unique role of military chaplains is evident in this bronze statue in the Armed Forces Chaplaincy Center’s Chaplain Corps Prayer Garden at South Carolina’s Fort Jackson. (BP Photo by Roger S. Oldham)Schumacher then took the rose and added it to a memorial wreath. Two days later, he and another chaplain placed the wreath at the Tomb of the Unknowns in Arlington National Cemetery.

“I’ve been in combat. I’ve been with a lot of wounded men. I’ve been with dead men who were my friends,” said Schumacher, a two-tour Vietnam veteran. “Chaplains give so much and carry all that pain with them for so long. It was such a tremendous honor to feel some of that pain kind of ooze out a little bit.”

The memorial ceremony, organized for the first time by the National Association of Evangelicals Chaplains Commission, gave chaplains, who usually help others grieve, a chance to grieve themselves. This often-unspoken need now is being addressed across the country, with new training and a greater emphasis on mentoring. As these initiatives take hold, chaplains working in hospitals, hospice and the military are finding ways to cope.

Valerie Storms, president of the Association of Professional Chaplains. (RNS Photo courtesy of Johnson’s Photography, Gainesville, Fla.)Valerie Storms, president of the Association of Professional Chaplains, said many chaplains’ organizations, including Catholic and Jewish groups, tell chaplains to take care of themselves as well as others. Self-care ranges from knowing a chaplain they can contact on the spur of the moment to developing hobbies—from running to making jewelry—to maintain their spiritual and emotional equilibrium.

Storms, who is affiliated with the Alliance of Baptists, tends to her garden to help her through tough days as the manager of chaplaincy care at Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa, Fla.

“I can go mow my lawn and edge my lawn and trim my bushes, and I see what’s done,” she said. “When you deal with people, you don’t often see the results of your work.”

Kristin Lindholm Gumminger, who teaches communication at Trinity International University in Illinois, said hospice chaplains “debrief” with similar personal rituals or by talking with a professional counselor. In her 2008 dissertation on hospice chaplains, one told her personal grief was a “constant companion.”

Gumminger is developing a workshop to help hospice chaplains. Others are working to help chaplains recognize and improve the ways they deal with grief.

Later this year, the U.S. Army Chaplain Center and School in South Carolina will introduce a new training session developed by the University of Georgia that includes “secondary traumatic stress” among chaplains and grief counselors. The Army’s chief of chaplains has encouraged a “Care to Caregiver” initiative that matches retired chaplains to serve as mentors to younger chaplains.

Chaplain (Lt. Col.) Milton Johnson. (RNS Photo courtesy of U.S. Army)Chaplain Milton Johnson, a soldier and family minister at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, said he relies on fellow chaplains, his wife and pastors of his Seventh-day Adventist denomination to help him channel his grief—including when he lost his running buddy to suicide.

But the new initiatives put a sharper focus on the need for chaplains to get help as they suffer along with their comrades, he said. Chaplains need to heed the lesson of flight attendants who warn airline passengers to put a breathing mask on themselves before others, he said.

“With chaplains and other professionals, sometimes it’s just the opposite. We have a tendency to put … (the mask) on everybody else first and then put … (it) on self, and that’s really not the most healthy way to take care of self,” he said. “I think we are turning the corner on that. I think the paradigm is shifting.”

Chaplain Robert A. Miller, an instructor at the U.S. Army Medical Department Center and School in San Antonio. (RNS Photo courtesy of U.S. Army)Chaplain Robert A. Miller, an instructor at the U.S. Army Medical Department Center and School in San Antonio, recalled a 2012 remembrance ceremony for 9/11 on a Kuwait City beach, where chaplains and other soldiers were given carnations, told to recall those they had served and lost, and watch their flowers drift away into the surf.

“I saw chaplains and soldiers alike shedding tears, embracing one another and recognizing it’s OK to share the fact that all of us do grieve, all of us suffer loss,” said Miller, a Southern Baptist. “We cannot change it, but we cannot afford to let it change us so we can no longer be effective.”

Steven Spidell has measured some of that toll. In a 2009 survey, he found one-fifth of health care chaplains reported “disenfranchised grief,” or grief that was not supported in the workplace.

“Clergy are trained to be caregivers—that’s what we’re hired to do,” said Spidell, a staff chaplain at Houston Methodist West Hospital. “That we would need care is a foreign concept, I think, to most faith groups.”

Steven Spidell, a staff chaplain at Houston Methodist West Hospital.Spidell finds his job most difficult when he cares for a family that suddenly and unexpectedly lost a relative at the hospital—“sobbing and yelling and screaming and are just breaking down because their pain is so intense.”

Such an episode leaves him “physically and emotionally exhausted,” and sometimes it takes days for him to admit how tough it was. But he noted he is grateful for the time he spends with a family, which moves on to a funeral without him.

“I’m on to the next code blue,” he said. “My job continues.”

FORT WORTH (ABP)—An unusual controversy involving both ends of the “womb-to-tomb” spectrum of the sanctity of human life debate ended quietly Jan. 26 in a hospital in Fort Worth when doctors removed life support from a 33-year-old pregnant woman diagnosed as brain dead.

That ended a two-month legal battle for survivors of Marlise Muñoz, who was declared brain dead two days after her husband found her unconscious Nov. 26, possibly from a blood clot that traveled to her lungs.

Doctors at John Peter Smith Hospital in Fort Worth had refused the family’s request to take Muñoz off a ventilator, because she was 14 weeks pregnant with the couple’s second child. They cited a 1999 Texas law that requires a pregnant woman to be kept on life support until her fetus is viable.

After doctors said the 22-week-old fetus was “distinctly abnormal,” casting doubt about its ability to survive outside the womb, state District Judge R.H. Wallace ruled Jan. 24 that Muñoz should be removed from life support.

“May Marlise Muñoz finally rest in peace and her family find the strength to complete what has been an unbearably long and arduous journey,” lawyers for her husband, Erick Muñoz, said in a statement reported in the media.

Right ro die

The case, along with another in California surrounding a 13-year-old girl who went into cardiac arrest after having her tonsils removed, reignited the debate over whether there is a right to die. The Muñoz dispute took on added weight, because it pitted the woman’s stated wishes not to be kept on life support against her baby’s right to be born.

“My opinion, based solely on news reports, is that both the family members and the judge were correct in their judgments in this case,” said David Gushee, distinguished university professor of Christian ethics at Mercer University serving this year as theologian-in-residence for the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship. “My heart goes out to the Muñoz family as they grieve their losses.”

While the U.S. Constitution doesn’t specifically mention a right to privacy, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1891 common law protects “the right of every individual to the possession and control of his own person, free from all restraint or interference of others, unless by clear and unquestionable authority of law.”

In 1914, the Supreme Court established the principle of “informed consent” in medicine, finding: “Every human being of adult years and sound mind has a right to determine what shall be done with his own body; and a surgeon who performs an operation without his patient’s consent commits an assault for which he is liable in damages.”

Early on, cases of patients refusing treatment were rare and usually involved medical practices forbidden by religious beliefs, also bringing the First Amendment into play. With advancements in medical technology allowing life to be sustained increasingly longer, however, the ethics of refusing treatment got more complicated.

The New Jersey Supreme Court determined in 1976 Karen Ann Quinlan, a young woman who suffered severe brain damage as the result of anoxia and entered a persistent vegetative state, could be taken off a respirator.

Right of privacy

The decision, left standing by the U.S. Supreme Court without review, established a right of privacy grounded in the federal Constitution to terminate treatment. The court recognized the right is not absolute, however, and must be balanced against asserted interest of the state.

In 1990, the high court refused to allow removal of artificial feeding and hydration equipment from Nancy Beth Cruzan, a Missouri woman who remained in a persistent vegetative state—a condition where a person exhibits motor reflexes but shows no evidence of cognitive function—seven years after a car wreck because her parents could not prove she would have wanted to die.

The Cruzan ruling sparked the movement of advance medical directives, including the living will, a legal document that spells out what kind of life-prolonging treatment an individual does or does not want. A medical power of attorney authorizes someone to make end-of-life decisions if you cannot make them yourself. Another advance directive is the do-not-resuscitate order, a request not to receive CPR if an individual goes into cardiac arrest.

Today, all 50 states have laws regarding an individual’s right to create an advance directive. In at least 31 of those states, however, according to a 2012 paper by the Center for Women Policy Studies, there is a pregnancy clause requiring life support to continue either until the fetus is declared not viable or the baby is born alive, even if the woman has indicated previously she does not want her life prolonged.

Abortion rights also have been a moving target since the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision establishing a woman’s right to have an abortion.

Prenatal life

While striking down most state laws at the time banning abortion, the Supreme Court acknowledged the state’s interest increases as prenatal life advances. Under Roe, a woman could seek an abortion freely in her first trimester, in an authorized clinic during the second trimester and states could prohibit abortions during the third trimester.

The Supreme Court abandoned the trimester framework in 1992, saying the state’s interest surpasses the woman’s rights at viability. In 1973 that was typically about 28 weeks of gestation but with advances in neonatal treatment had been reduced to about 23 or 24 weeks by the early 1990s.

Last year, Gov. Rick Perry signed a law pushing the cutoff back to 20 weeks, the time when some scientists say the fetus is developed enough to feel pain. That gave Texas one of the most restrictive abortion laws in the country. A federal judge blocked enforcement of the law, and a federal appeals court is in the process of deciding whether it is unconstitutional.

The Muñoz family said the 1999 law requiring a pregnant woman to be kept alive until her fetus is viable did not apply to her, because even though machines kept her breathing and her heart beating, she was not terminally ill but already dead.

Anti-abortion groups like Texas Right to Life and Operation Rescue campaigned to keep Muñoz hooked up to give her baby a chance at survival. NARAL Pro-Choice America petitioned Texas Attorney General Greg Abbot to respect the family’s wishes to remove her from life support.

DALLAS (BP)—Department of Justice attorneys appealed a federal judge’s ruling declaring the ministers’ housing allowance unconstitutional.

The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago will hear the appeal.

The November decision by federal Judge Barbara Crabb was stayed pending appeal, meaning it had no immediate impact on ministers. The Freedom from Religion Foundation brought the court challenge to the ministers’ housing allowance.

The appeal provides an opportunity for the federal appeals court to uphold the longstanding statute that allows churches to provide a tax-free housing allowance to ministers.

“Pastors and others in ministry are facing challenges here in the United States that would have been unthinkable as little as a decade ago,” said Tim Head, GuideStone executive officer for denominational and public relations.

“While we welcome news of the government’s appeal, we recognize this case is far from settled, and we remain engaged to advocate for the housing allowance benefit.”

GuideStone, as part of a longstanding coalition of ministerial benefit boards, intends to file a friend-of-the-court brief supporting the government’s position that the ministers’ housing allowance is constitutional.

NASHVILLE, Tenn.—More than 50 years after Martin Luther King Jr. declared 11 a.m. on Sunday the most segregated hour of the week, racially diverse congregations remain more dream than reality for most Protestant pastors, research reveals.

More than eight in ten—85 percent—say every church should strive for racial diversity, according to a survey from Nashville-based LifeWay Research. But few have diverse flocks, with most—86 percent—acknowledging their congregation is predominately one racial or ethnic group.

Diverse churches remain rare largely because of human nature, said Ed Stetzer, president of LifeWay Research.

“Everybody wants diversity,” Stetzer said. “But many don’t want to be around people who are different.”

The research study also found 91 percent say, “Churches should reflect the racial diversity in their community.” And 79 percent believe their congregations look very similar to the people in their neighborhood.

But Mark DeYmaz, pastor of Mosiac Church, a multi-ethnic congregation in Little Rock, Ark., is skeptical. DeYmaz, who also helped found the Mosaix network of multi-ethnic churches, said pastors aren’t always aware how diverse their communities have become.  

“Pastors would do well to look into the diversity of nearby public schools and gauge this against the diversity of their church to really understand their context,” he said. “They might, too, spend one hour sitting at the front of the … local grocery to see if in fact their church reflects the community.”

America is becoming increasingly diverse

Data from the U.S. Census Bureau shows America is becoming increasingly diverse.

About 17 percent of Americans identify as Hispanic. African-Americans make up 13 percent of the population, followed by Asian-Americans (5 percent), and 1 percent Native American or Native Alaskan. Another 2.4 percent identify with more than one racial group.

Non-Hispanic whites make up 63 percent of the population. That number drops to about 49 percent for children under 5 years old, according to a recent report from the Associated Press.

DeYmaz sees the widespread support for the idea of diversity in the LifeWay Research poll as a good sign.

“We have gained tremendous ground over the past 10 years or so,” DeYmaz said.

Ten years ago, the first meeting of the Mosaix network drew about 30 people, he noted. A similar meeting in November 2013 drew more than 1,000.

In the past, DeYmaz and other leaders in multi-ethnic churches spent much of their time trying to convince other pastors about the need for diversity. Now they spend more time talking with pastors about strategies for creating diverse churches, he said.

“Increasingly, their question is not, ‘Why should I?’ but ‘How can I?’” he said.

Derwin Gray, pastor of Transformation Church, a multi-ethic congregation in Indian Land, S.C., said if pastors want a diverse congregation, they need to change their sermons.

He worries pastors support diversity for pragmatic rather than theological reasons. Early Christian churches were racially diverse, but that idea was lost as churches divided along racial and ethnic lines, Gray said. He wants pastors to go back to the Bible to discover why churches should be diverse.

‘The gospel brought people together’

“We shouldn’t long for racial diversity. We should long for the proclamation of Jesus, which creates ethnic diversity,” he said. “The Apostle Paul didn’t start one church for Jews and one church for Gentiles in the New Testament. The gospel brought people together.”

More focus on racial diversity in church could find a welcome audience. A second LifeWay Research survey—this time an online panel of 1,036 Americans—found three quarters of respondents (78 percent) said, “Every church should strive for racial diversity.”

More than half—51 percent—said they would be most comfortable visiting a church where multiple ethnicities are well represented. Three quarters also said churches should reflect the diversity of their communities.

Some signs indicate a growing number of diverse churches in the United States. The 2010 Faith Communities Today survey, which included 11,000 congregations of different faiths, found about 12.5 percent of Protestant churches were multi-ethnic. That means in those churches, no one ethnic group makes up more 80 percent of the congregation.

Hard work ahead

Moving diversity from a dream to a reality will take hard work, DeYmaz said.

“Wishful thinking in this regard will not bring increasing diversity to local churches for the sake of the gospel,” he said.

LifeWay Research conducted the telephone survey of Protestant pastors Sept. 4-19, 2013. Researchers randomly drew the calling list from a stratified list of Protestant churches and conducted each interview with the senior pastor, minister or priest of the church called. The survey weighted responses to reflect the geographic distribution and denominational groups of Protestant churches. The completed sample is 1,007 phone interviews.

LifeWay Research conducted the online survey of adult Americans Sept. 6, 2013. Researchers invited a sample of an online panel representing the adult population of the United States to participate and weighted their responses by region, age, ethnicity, gender and income to reflect the population more accurately. The completed sample is 1,036 online surveys.

In both surveys, the methodology and sample size provides 95 percent confidence the sampling error does not exceed plus or minus 3.1. Margins of error are higher in sub-groups.

Fifty years after Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech envisioned unity between blacks and whites, a new study finds a growing gap in racial attitudes and experiences in America.

“We do not live in a post-racial nation, … but in a land of two Americas divided by race, and less willing than ever to find a common ground of understanding,” David Briggs of the Association of Religion Data Archives wrote, describing findings of the 2012 Portraits of American Life Study.

The study, a second wave of a major study on religion and race led in 2006 by sociologists Michael Emerson of Rice University and David Sikkink of the University of Notre Dame, found increases in the percentage of both whites and blacks who felt they have been treated unfairly because of their race. One in four agreed with the statement: “It’s OK to have a country where the races are basically separate from one another, as long as they have equal opportunity.”

In 2012, nearly half of blacks, including 52 percent of black Protestants, said they thought about their race daily. Just 10 percent of whites reported the same degree of racial awareness.

Nearly six in 10 white Americans — including 69 percent of white evangelical Protestants — believe one of the best ways to improve race relations is to stop talking about race. That’s up from 45 percent in 2006. The percentage of black Americans saying the same thing also rose from 31 percent in 2006 to 39 percent in 2012, including 44 percent of black Protestants.

Nelson Mandela and Phil RobertsonIn 2006, slightly more than a third of white respondents said the government should do more to help minorities increase their standard of living. In 2012, just a quarter of white respondents favored such government action. During the same period, the percentage of black respondents favoring a greater role for government rose from 71 percent in 2006 to 79 percent in 2012.

Both races increasingly view themselves as victims of racial prejudice. Fourteen percent of whites said they had been treated unfairly because of their race in the last three years, up from 8 percent in 2006. The percentage of blacks reporting prejudice rose from 36 percent in 2006 to 46 percent in 2012.

Observers termed the findings sobering in a year that saw 50th anniversary commemorations of the Civil Rights Movement — including Dr. King’s Aug. 28, 1963, words at the Lincoln Memorial, considered one of the top 100 speeches in American history, and the Dec. 5 death of Nelson Mandela, a symbol of racial reconciliation for his work to end apartheid in South Africa.

A recent controversy over a television reality show hinted at how differently Americans perceive the issue of racism. “Duck Dynasty” star Phil Robertson, in the news for expressing his views on homosexuality in a magazine interview, also commented that he never heard blacks he knew in pre-Civil Rights Louisiana complain about their treatment by whites.

Fred LuterDwight McKissic, a prominent black Southern Baptist pastor who has in the past pointed out his own denomination’s shortcomings in matching its rhetoric on racial reconciliation with concrete action, gave Robertson a pass, saying there was some truth to his comment and that it didn’t suggest all Southern blacks were happy under Jim Crow.

Fred Luter, the first African-American to be elected president of the Southern Baptist Convention, said that he agreed with Robertson about homosexuality but took exception to his views on race.

Luter, pastor of Franklin Avenue Baptist Church in New Orleans, said in a story distributed by Associated Press that there was nothing happy about segregation or “being hung in a tree because of your race,” adding that blacks were definitely complaining, if not to Robertson.

Alan Bean, a white American Baptist minister who leads Friends of Justice — a ministry that spotlights racial inequality in America’s criminal justice system — said people like Robertson and Fox News personality Megyn Kelly, criticized for saying both Santa Claus and Jesus were white, “don’t mean to be mean” but think like they do because of “social isolation.”

“This is probably too obvious to need saying, but I’ll say it anyway,” Bean wrote in a blog Dec. 20. “African-Americans in the pre-civil rights South didn’t complain to their white overlords, especially the poor whites who sometimes worked next to them. Uttering complaints about the way you were being treated or about the heartbreaking unfairness of Jim Crow segregation was an excellent way to get fired or, if the good old boys within earshot were so inclined, lynched.”

HOUSTON (ABP)—A federal judge in Texas ruled Dec. 27 in favor of two Baptist universities who claimed in a lawsuit the Affordable Care Act’s required coverage of birth control violates their religious liberty.

U.S. District Judge Lee Rosenthal in Houston said forcing East Texas Baptist University and Houston Baptist University to provide health insurance coverage for employees to obtain all FDA-approved emergency contraceptive devices, products or services without cost would violate the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, a federal law passed in 1993 to make it harder for government to infringe on a person’s free exercise of religion.

One of 90 lawsuits

The case is one of about 90 lawsuits challenging rules by the Department of Health and Human Services requiring preventive services, including contraception and sterilization in group health plans. Lower courts have ruled inconsistently, prompting the U.S. Supreme Court to accept a case involving the Southern Baptist owners of Hobby Lobby, who claim the contraceptive mandate unconstitutionally violates their sincerely held religious beliefs.

Final regulations include an accommodation for eligible organizations like the two schools affiliated with the Baptist General Convention of Texas. They are not required to contract, arrange, pay or refer for contraceptive coverage they oppose for religious reasons. But their employees still would benefit from separate payments for contraceptive services without cost sharing from their group health-plan issuer or a third-party administrator.

Lawyers for the two Baptist schools and a third plaintiff, Presbyterian-affiliated Westminster Theological Seminary, contended the “self-certification” process facilitates access to free emergency contraceptives, and participating in it “requires them to take an action that triggers and facilitates their employees’ free access to abortion-causing drugs, making the plaintiffs complicit in the taking of innocent life and causing them to violate their belief that they must protect the innocent human life that is a fertilized egg.”

Guidestone challenge

In mid-December, a federal judge in Oklahoma City said 187 religious organizations, including the Southern Baptist Convention’s GuideStone Financial Resources, can proceed with their similar challenge to the Affordable Care Act. The judge issued a preliminary injunction barring the government from enforcing the law through penalties or fines until the case is finalized.

The ETBU/HBU ruling goes a step further, granting a motion for summary judgment, a procedural device used during civil litigation to dispose of a case without a trial if “no genuine issue of material fact exists and the moving party is entitled to judgment as a matter of law.”

Judge Rosenthal enjoined the government “from applying or enforcing the regulations” that require the plaintiffs to provide health insurance coverage for FDA-approved emergency contraceptive devices, products or services under the Health and Human Services guidelines.

Government argument used Kaemmerling precedent

The government’s argument relied in part on precedent established by a case involving Russell Kaemmerling, a one-time leader in the so-called “conservative resurgence” in the Southern Baptist Convention in federal prison after being indicted for fraud.

Kaemmerling, who from 1980 to 1985 edited the Southern Baptist Advocate, an independent magazine that aided the conservative resurgence cause, lost his case. He claimed a law authorizing the Bureau of Prisons to collect body-tissue samples to create a bank of DNA identifiers for felons was “tantamount to laying the foundation for the rise of the anti-Christ.”

Rosenthal said the universities’ case is different, because they object on religious grounds to something the government requires them to do, not merely to actions by a third party.

OKLAHOMA CITY (BP)—A federal district judge issued a preliminary injunction Dec. 20 against a government mandate that requires employers—including some religiously affiliated ones—to provide contraceptive drugs and devices they believe cause abortions.

Although churches and closely related ministries are exempt from the mandate of the Affordable Care Act, many Christian universities, children’s homes and other ministries were not exempted.

O. S. HawkinsFederal District Judge Timothy DeGiusti’s ruling means organizations that use health plans through GuideStone Financial Resources—the Southern Baptist Convention’s insurance and retirement agency—will be protected from a mandate to provide abortion-inducing drugs or devices. A trial date to make a final decision has not yet been set.

O.S. Hawkins, president of GuideStone Financial Resources, said the ruling by the Oklahoma City federal judge “reflects common-sense legal principles, respects the rights of religious institutions to provide benefits consistent with their convictions, and provides needed relief from the government’s attempt to co-opt ministry health plans.”

“We appreciate Judge DeGiusti’s timely protection of religious liberty and give thanks to God for this victory and for the many thousands who have made this a matter of prayer,” Hawkins said.

Only concerns abortion-inducing drugs

Hawkins noted that the injunction only concerns abortion-inducing drugs and devices, not other contraceptives.

“While our Catholic friends oppose contraceptive in most every form—a belief that they should be free to exercise under the First Amendment—our plans reflect the convictions of most Southern Baptists and evangelicals that the use of contraceptives is a matter of personal conscience,” Hawkins said. “Our plans will continue to provide coverage for the vast majority of FDA-approved drugs that do not cause abortions.”

Russell Moore, president of the SBC’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, called the injunction a “first step toward a historic win for religious liberty.”

“A government that can coerce the conscience is a government that had overstepped its God-appointed bounds,” Moore said. “We are thankful for Guidestone and the gospel grit of President O.S. Hawkins. We’re still early in this fight, but this is good news.”

Other groups involved

The ruling also encompasses Truett-McConnell College, a Georgia Baptist Convention-affiliated school, and Reaching Souls International, an Oklahoma-based missions organization.

“We are pleased to see that Judge DeGiusti, along with many other courts, is recognizing these mandates go too far,” said Emir Caner, Truett-McConnell’s president. “We join with our partners in ministry at Reaching Souls and GuideStone in celebrating this ruling and praising the Lord for this outcome.”

Dustin Manis, CEO of Reaching Souls International, said the ruling “protects our ministry from this offensive, objectionable and onerous requirement. We pray this injunction will lead to an eventual full repeal of the abortion-drug mandate and continued protections for religious organizations under the First Amendment.”

One of nearly 90 lawsuits

This case is one of nearly 90 lawsuits brought against the abortion-drug mandate. Hawkins urged likeminded Christians to continue to pray for these cases as they wind through the courts.

“Whether the cases relate to family businesses like Hobby Lobby or for nonprofit ministries like GuideStone, the religious freedom concerns cannot be overstated,” Hawkins said. “It’s time for Christians to stay informed, get involved and pray for wisdom for all in authority.”