Under pressure from religious and conservative groups the Obama administration has offered another compromise on the issue of birth control coverage within the Affordable Care Act. While exempting churches and some religiously affiliated institutions such as hospitals and universities from supplying the coverage the new proposal calls for their employees to receive stand-alone private insurance policies providing birth control coverage at no cost. Insurance companies will foot the bill but only the naive can possibly think the cost wont find its way back to the institution in the form of higher health premiums.
Numerous lawsuits filed against this and other portions of Obamacare will proceed and for good reason: the federal government seems intent on setting rules on matters of conscience and worse defining what constitutes a church or religious institution.
One of the litigants is Hobby Lobby a chain of craft stores whose CEO David Green is an evangelical Christian. Green says We simply cannot abandon our religious beliefs to comply with this mandate. That mandate includes in addition to contraceptive coverage in employees health care preventive services including morning-after pills and other drugs which Green considers abortifacients. After Hobby Lobbys appeal to Justice Sonia Sotomayor was rejected the Christian Post reports the company then made plans to ...shift the beginning of its employee health plan to temporarily avoid $1.3 million a day in fines for each day since Jan. 1 that it did not comply with the Affordable Care Act. (According to the new health care law businesses with more than 50 employees that refuse to comply can be fined by the IRS $100 per day per employee.) Hobby Lobbys appeals continue.
The core issue as I see it -- and there are others -- is whether the government has the right to define a church as a building in which people congregate on Sundays and whether a private company headed by a religious person qualifies for conscience exemptions. For government to decide such things violates the establishment and free exercise clauses of the First Amendment which state Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof... and appears to put the state in the position of supreme authority and arbiter of what constitutes legitimate religious faith and practice. The Supreme Court will likely have to resolve its constitutionality.
Permit me to offer the justices some assistance.
The early church was not a building with a towering steeple. The early church met in homes. If one accepts New Testament teaching (and what higher authority on the church could there be?) the concept of the church being an organism that resides in each individual believer is clearly spelled out in several passages.
Paul the Apostle writes in his letter to the Colossians (1:24) about the body of Jesus Christ which is the church. By this he means the body of believers in whom Christ dwells. Wherever that body is whether an individual or a group of believers thats the church. It was only later that this concept of church was turned into something with expensive buildings tax exemptions and denominations.
The same theme can be found in Revelation where John is asked by Jesus to write letters to several churches. Those too were bodies of believers not physical structures.
In the Old Testament God told Solomon that while He was too big to live in buildings He would dwell in the Temple Solomon built for Him. Ultimately though He said He had other intentions: I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God and they will be my people. (Jeremiah 31:33)
That was and remains for believers the authentic church so when people say I am going to church it is an impossibility because they cant go to themselves.
The administrations efforts to effectively gerrymander lines between what it considers legitimate religious practice and the secular is what the Founders hoped to avoid when they linked the establishment clause with the free exercise clause.
That is why among other reasons government should not mandate birth control coverage as part of any national health care plan.
Cal Thomas is co-author (with Bob Beckel) of the book Common Ground: How to Stop the Partisan War That is Destroying America.
Under pressure from religious and conservative groups the Obama administration has offered another compromise on the issue of birth control coverage within the Affordable Care Act. While exempting churches and some religiously affiliated institutions such as hospitals and universities from supplying the coverage the new proposal calls for their employees to receive stand-alone private insurance policies providing birth control coverage at no cost. Insurance companies will foot the bill but only the naive can possibly think the cost wont find its way back to the institution in the form of higher health premiums.
Numerous lawsuits filed against this and other portions of Obamacare will proceed and for good reason: the federal government seems intent on setting rules on matters of conscience and worse defining what constitutes a church or religious institution.
One of the litigants is Hobby Lobby a chain of craft stores whose CEO David Green is an evangelical Christian. Green says We simply cannot abandon our religious beliefs to comply with this mandate. That mandate includes in addition to contraceptive coverage in employees health care preventive services including morning-after pills and other drugs which Green considers abortifacients. After Hobby Lobbys appeal to Justice Sonia Sotomayor was rejected the Christian Post reports the company then made plans to ...shift the beginning of its employee health plan to temporarily avoid $1.3 million a day in fines for each day since Jan. 1 that it did not comply with the Affordable Care Act. (According to the new health care law businesses with more than 50 employees that refuse to comply can be fined by the IRS $100 per day per employee.) Hobby Lobbys appeals continue.
The core issue as I see it -- and there are others -- is whether the government has the right to define a church as a building in which people congregate on Sundays and whether a private company headed by a religious person qualifies for conscience exemptions. For government to decide such things violates the establishment and free exercise clauses of the First Amendment which state Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof... and appears to put the state in the position of supreme authority and arbiter of what constitutes legitimate religious faith and practice. The Supreme Court will likely have to resolve its constitutionality.
Permit me to offer the justices some assistance.
The early church was not a building with a towering steeple. The early church met in homes. If one accepts New Testament teaching (and what higher authority on the church could there be?) the concept of the church being an organism that resides in each individual believer is clearly spelled out in several passages.
Paul the Apostle writes in his letter to the Colossians (1:24) about the body of Jesus Christ which is the church. By this he means the body of believers in whom Christ dwells. Wherever that body is whether an individual or a group of believers thats the church. It was only later that this concept of church was turned into something with expensive buildings tax exemptions and denominations.
The same theme can be found in Revelation where John is asked by Jesus to write letters to several churches. Those too were bodies of believers not physical structures.
In the Old Testament God told Solomon that while He was too big to live in buildings He would dwell in the Temple Solomon built for Him. Ultimately though He said He had other intentions: I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God and they will be my people. (Jeremiah 31:33)
That was and remains for believers the authentic church so when people say I am going to church it is an impossibility because they cant go to themselves.
The administrations efforts to effectively gerrymander lines between what it considers legitimate religious practice and the secular is what the Founders hoped to avoid when they linked the establishment clause with the free exercise clause.
That is why among other reasons government should not mandate birth control coverage as part of any national health care plan.
Cal Thomas is co-author (with Bob Beckel) of the book Common Ground: How to Stop the Partisan War That is Destroying America.
