R. Scott Clark wrote on Heidelblog,
One might not have expected this Department of Justice to be advocating on behalf of religious liberty and one might not look at this case as good news but arguably one might be wrong.
The Department of Justice is suing a school district in the west suburbs of Chicago for refusing to allow a Muslim teacher to make a three-week pilgrimage (Hajj) to Mecca. Before you roll your eyes or moan about the growing cultural influence of Muslims in North America consider this: how might this case affect sabbath-keeping Christians?
First, religious liberty is what God says religious liberty is. Does God call it religious liberty to allow the growth, promulgation, and approval of ant-Christ religions “liberty”? Does the God of the Bible think it is a good idea to give Allah equal time and equal consideration with Himself?
So, I question Scott’s premise that what is being advocated here is, by God’s standard, religious liberty.
Second, religious liberty has always been the pretext that is used by a religion in the ascendancy to insure that the present ascendant religion won’t snuff out it’s progress in replacing the currently ascendant religion. For example, Christianity was once the ascendant religion in these united States but by the use of the mantra of “religious liberty” humanism, as the ascending religion, has replaced Christianity as the ascendant religion.
This work by the Obama administration to invoke religious liberty on the behalf of Islam, it could be argued, is a small stepping stone on the way to America becoming Sharia compliant. Don’t laugh. Twenty five years ago could one have predicted the Muslim influence in Western Europe?
Third, note here though the God that is the god to which Scott is turning. It is the god that is the State who is going to determine whether or not Allah’s subjects will be allowed to be obedient. Scott apparently finds it good news that the State will be the god of the gods determining how seriously the subjects of the respective gods will take the requirements of their gods. This reveals, once again, that there is no religious liberty in this country that is not consistent with the demands of the god of the public square … i.e. — The State. For Scott, it is hard to see how it is not the case that we live and move and have our being in the State.
R. Scott Clark writes,
“One of the great challenges of being a Christian in a post-Christian culture is the challenge of the sabbath. If the Barna studies from a few years back are accurate, that only about 10% of Americans really attend church weekly and only 50% of those attend twice weekly, then it seems likely that most Americans have never actually met anyone who observes the Christian sabbath as prescribed by the Westminster Standards. In such a case the traditional, confessional Reformed approach to the Christian sabbath is likely to lack plausibility in a 24/7 culture.”
First, I’m pretty sure that R2Kt doesn’t believe in such a thing as Christian culture. If that is true then there is no way that I can understand what Scott means when he say’s “post-Christian.” If it is not possible, by R2Kt standards, for a culture to be Christian than how can R2Kt adherents write in terms of “post-Christian?” Does Scott’s statement that we are in a post-Christian culture mean that he admits that there is such a thing as Christian culture?
Second, my biggest problem in the above blocked paragraph is a subtle underlying assumption beneath the idea of being a Christian in a post-Christian culture. This underlying assumption seems to be that it is possible for a culture to be post-Christian without being explicitly something else. All cultures are dependent upon a faith in order to give definition to a culture. So, since this is true, if a culture is post-Christian that means it is currently pinned on some other belief system. I would argue that we are in a post-Christian culture that is pinned on the faith of religious humanism (forgive the redundancy) that still retains a ever decreasing Christian memory. However, I do think there is a desire by some to broaden the influence of Islam, as this pursuit of the Justice department indicates.
R. Scott Clark writes,
“It is certainly true that Christians committed to Reformed sabbath observance face considerable pressure from their employers to work on Sunday. Supreme Court rulings on this are mixed. In Sherbert v Verner (1963) the court overturned the Supreme Court of South Carolina in favor of a Seventh-Day Adventist who was denied unemployment benefits because she was unable to work on Saturday. One might note it was Justice Brennan who wrote the majority opinion. In Thorton v Caldor (1985), however, the court held that a private employer who opened his business on Sunday (after the laws requiring businesses to close on Sunday were revised). Thornton was a Presbyterian who invoked a Connecticut law that states:
No person who states that a particular day of the week is observed as his Sabbath may be required by his employer to work on such day. An employee’s refusal to work on his Sabbath shall not constitute grounds for his dismissal.”
It is my conviction that Scott is mistaken to try and extrapolate this Justice department pursuit of Muslim “equity” to mean that Christians might be treated better in regards to sabbath observance. I believe this is a mistake because I don’t believe that there exists a social order that does not favor the religion that of which it is the incarnation. The fact that the Justice department is pursuing “equity” for Muslims, in my estimation, should be extrapolated to be seen as an open door to greater Muslim influence and Hegemony vis-a-vis Christianity and definitely not the harbinger of greater freedom for Christians. It is my conviction that such a pursuit by the Holder Justice Department for Hagjj for school teachers portends not promising consequences for Christians but rather further casting Christianity into the brackish backwaters of the social order.
R. Scott Clark wrote,
“Nevertheless, Justice Burger, who wrote the majority opinion, held that Thornton was protected from infringement by the state but not by a private employer.
Some observations:
# It’s interesting that an ostensibly “liberal” justice wrote in favor of religious liberty and an ostensibly “conservative” justice has arguably written against the interests of religious liberty (in favor of the interests commercial liberty?). Did the founders envision that an employer would have a right to require employees to work 7 days a week? Probably not. Did the founders envision the sort of no-holds barred market capitalism that has developed in the modern period? Probably not. Did they imagine that there would be conflict between religious liberty and commercial interests? I don’t know but a society necessarily expresses some hierarchy of values in legislation and court rulings and those rulings and laws occur on some basis. Which is a higher value for a society? Religious liberty or freedom of commerce? Late modern society has restricted freedom of commerce in other instances. Since 1964 a business cannot refuse to serve customers based on the color of the customers’ skin. That’s a limit and a hierarchy of values. I’ve argued before, in that case, private property seems also to be infringed and that could be a detriment to religious freedom.
First, I’m glad Scott called a SCOTUS Justice who voted in favor of Roe vs. Wade, and who authored the Court’s opinion upholding the right of trial judges to order busing as a remedy for school segregation, and who by his infamous “Lemon Test” drove Christianity out of the public square, “ostensibly conservative.” Warren Burgher was no conservative.
Second, it is not surprise at all that a liberal Justice would vote in favor of religious liberty because the intent of such votes has always been to dilute the influence of Christianity and to dismantle the remnants of a Christian social order. We are post-Christian, in part, because of liberal Justices voting for “religious liberty.”
Third, Scott wrote something very interesting in that above blocked paragraph that needs to be isolated and examined.
a society necessarily expresses some hierarchy of values in legislation and court rulings and those rulings and laws occur on some basis.
And the “some basis” is a people’s religion, whether explicitly or implicitly stated. The fact that somebody was required to work on the Sabbath was not primarily a “commercial interest,” as Scott tries to sell, but rather it was, at its foundation, a religious interest on the part of employer to require the employee to work. The employer’s religious interest in making the employee work was so that the employer could better serve his god (Mammon). And what is really interesting here is that Scott seems to believe that the “religious liberty” of the employer to require the employee to work on the Sabbath is less important than the “religious liberty” of the employee to not want to work on the Sabbath. This is an example of how one can’t grant “religious liberty” to one group without taking them from somebody else.
When looked at this manner, it is easy to see that it is never a matter of choosing “commercial interests” over “religious interests” as Scott posits but instead always a matter of choosing which religious interests of different people will be given hegemony. The school teacher has religious interests in going on Hajj. The School teachers employer has religious interests in making sure she works. Now, we don’t typically frame it this way but if one were to get to the nub of the matter we would see this as a contest between the gods.
R. Scott Clark wrote,
“# It’s also interesting that the Obama Justice Department is pursuing this case. Some cultural-religious-Christian conservatives may see this move as an attempt to further advance a “Muslim agenda” in the USA. Perhaps but, depending on the outcome, it may also yield benefits to Christians who want to work but who also want to observe a weekly sabbath. If the courts rule that Muslims have a right to take unpaid leave to go on a Hajj then might not Christians also be granted the right to take unpaid leave to observe the Sabbath? This possibility raises the question of whether Christians are willing to place their religious commitments above their commercial and financial commitments. Would Christians take that deal?”
It is my conviction that it would be most unwise for anyone to see this as anything but a revelation of the mindset of the Obama administration to advance a Muslim agenda. Scott, assumes that his version of “religious pluralism” will prevail but no other religion suffers from the weakness of thinking that it has to play fair with the adherents of religions that are contrary to the one that is informing the prevailing social order. As Scott himself has noted, we are living in a post-Christian culture, and one of the dynamics of a post-Christian culture is that Christians aren’t treated even-handily. The fact that Muslims are given unpaid time off to go on to Hajj will not translate into employers being required to give Christians unpaid Sabbath leave anymore then it being criminal to cause a woman to miscarry by assault and battery is translated into it being criminal to abort a viable baby. One set of laws that would seemingly imply another set of laws often don’t go together.
Now the question that Scott ends with in the blocked quote above reduces down to, “Will the Christian accept the honoring of false gods in their culture if it means that they can honor, without consequence, the true God.” If Christians work on the sabbath it is not because their commercial or financial interests are above their religious interests but rather it is because their true religious interests are above their stated religious interests. The fact that they might be bribed to gain the opportunity to practice their stated religious interests at the price of allowing the religious interests of false gods to prevail is to add the insult of making room for false gods in the social order to the injury of doing something (work on the Sabbath) that they say they are against.
Overall, Scott’s main problem is he keeps wanting to compartmentalize. Religious interests are compartmentalized from financial interests or commercial interests but at bottom all interests are religiously motivated interests.
R. Scott Clark wrote,
“Look, you can have Sundays off but we’re not going to close on Sundays and I have to hire someone to take your place so you’ll have to take unpaid leave on Sundays.
# This isn’t exactly spoiling the Egyptians but maybe in between the times this is the best for which we can expect, an unexpected blessing? Will Reformed Christians be prepared to capitalize (pun intended) on this opportunity or has our piety and practice become indistinguishable from generic American Protestant mainliners and evangelicals?
One thing that is sure is that this is the best that an amillennialist can expect. If Reformed people really believed that they shouldn’t work on the Sabbath then it wouldn’t take the allowance of the honoring of false gods as incentive for them to actually do what they said they believed.
Religious pluralism is a myth. The sooner people like Scott learn this the sooner we will have a higher best to expect.
Good work, Pastor.
So Clark is saying that actual law should allow for Sabbath observance? I thought that the moral law was something that we kept in our hearts and just followed, no matter what actual law is?
Does R2kt say that actual law should honor moral law? I thought that these were two entirely separate entities for them.
Where exactly do they get the notion that “religious liberty” should be the basis of law?
Another issue is what is “Sabbath observance” for R2kt. The 4th commandment is delivered to leaders and states outright that entire communities should observe it: “you shall not do any work—you, your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or the alien resident in your towns.”
Is this clause no longer in effect for the R2Kt guys? Why does the commandment apply now only to me but not to my sons and daughters and my “servants” (e.g., businesses I might employ on the Sabbath, like the gas company and the electric company)? Should I not think about the fact that the “alien resident” is not supposed to do work to? If I am a civil magistrate and I look at that commandment, am I supposed to honor “religious liberty” and allow various religious groups to work? If so, why? How does that square with the clause that says everybody should rest on the Sabbath?
I ask because I honestly don’t know what Clark means by “keeping the Sabbath.”
JM, R2kt typically argues that the Sabbath -as a First Table commandment- applies to the covenant community in the redemptive/grace realm, and that the magistrate is concerned only with Second Table matters, enforcing justice in the realm of nature/works.
Of course, if Clark was consistent with his R2kt, you’d expect him to have argued that the Justice Department shouldn’t be getting involved with this First Table matter *at all*, rather than lauding alleged benefits to Christians from the magistrate advancing Muslim worship practices.