In a Wall Street Journal article, Michael W. McConnell says, "The Supreme Court weighs whether the feds can decide which church employees are clergy and which aren't."

Today, the Obama administration will invite the Supreme Court to open a new front in the culture wars. Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School v. EEOC concerns a commissioned minister, Cheryl Perich, who taught elementary school and led chapel devotions at a small Lutheran school outside Detroit. Ms. Perich became ill and was replaced in the classroom by a substitute. In the middle of the school year she sought to return and then, instead of attempting to work out the dispute through the church’s reconciliation process, she threatened to sue.

As relations broke down, the church congregation voted to withdraw her “call” to the ministry, and she ceased to be eligible for her prior job. She sued under the Americans with Disabilities Act, with the support of the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

The federal statutes outlawing employment discrimination based on race, sex, age and disability contain no express exception for church employers. But for 40 years lower courts have applied a “ministerial exception,” which bars the government from any role in deciding who should be a minister. Courts have reasoned that the separation between church and state protects the ability of churches to choose their own clergy just as it protects the state from any control by churches. The Supreme Court has never spoken to the issue.

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Occupy Portland - In Peaceful Solidarity with Occupy Wall Street

Beginning in New York city on Wall Street, we now have an organized group of protesters ready to help folks “Reclaim Your Voice.”  What are they protesting against? Pretty much anything that seems worth protesting about: Apartheid in Israel, loss of jobs, loss of pensions, union busting, decline in housing values, political corruption and cronyism, war, poverty, world hunger, student debt, greed, injustice, racism, CAPITALISM, and on goes the list. I have linked picture above to the Occupy Portland website so that you can see for yourself what they are saying.

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Dave Ramsey has begun a new program to extend the influence of Biblical principles into who communities and our nation, which he has called The Great Recovery.

“The Great Recovery is a grassroots movement spread by people who are tired of looking to Washington for answers. The truth is that the government can’t fix this economy. It’ll be restored one family at a time, as each of us takes a stand to return to God and grandma’s way of handling money.”

Here is the kick-off of the program. Although it is a titch long, and there would be a few small things to quibble about – it’s well worth the time and attention you’ll give to it.  Ramsey is an engaging speaker, and is very inspiring and motivating.  May we all take seriously the call to handle money God’s way!

Rousseau in 1753, by Maurice Quentin de La Tour

E.L. Hebden Taylor points out that a significant problem for Western Civilization as it turned away from God, His Word and a Christian worldview (in the 16^th & 17^th centuries) was how to balance human freedom with the needs of society as a whole.

“Rousseau attempted to solve this problem by means of his theory of the “social contract” which in order to be valid must include precisely the clause that each individual delivers himself with all his natural rights to all, collectively, and thus through becoming subject to the whole by his participation in the “general will” gets back all his natural rights in a higher juridical form…The “general will” is, by Rousseau’s definition, always right. It is the common will of the people. If man himself is the only criterion for moral and political behavior, then the benefit of the majority of men in a given community becomes irresistible. Instead of our doing good to others, it is they who do good to us by allowing us to exist.” (The Christian Philosophy of Law, Politics and the State, pp. 214-215)

And so we see the seeds planted in the soil of intellectual thought that grew to become a Statist view of life, blooming into a form Totalitarian Democracy. Hebden Taylor continues by quoting Rousseau:

“As nature gives each man absolute power over all his members, the social compact gives the body politic absolute power of all its members also; and it is this power which, under the direction of the general will bears…the name of Sovereignty…The most general will is always the most just also, and the voice of the people is in fact the voice of God.” (The Christian Philosophy of Law, Politics and the State, pp. 216)

Hebden Taylor asserts: “With these ominous words, Rousseau, the so-called apostle of human freedom, ushered in the age of totalitarian democracy. His religion stands revealed as the deification of society…Rousseau invented modern democracy. He invented first the dogma that every man has an equal right to a say in government, and secondly, that democracy alone has the right to silence it critics or opponents.”

The storming of the Bastille, 14 July 1789

Thus, Rousseau also became the direct influence of those who led the French Revolution, and the Marxist revolutions to follow.

“Once the mystical idea of the general will was born, once society was credited with the common will, superior to the will of its individual members, eighteenth century rationalism became the instrument of revolutionary violence instead of benevolent despotism.” (The Christian Philosophy of Law, Politics and the State, pp. 218)

Peter Leithart

In an article published in First Things called Solicitous Nation, Peter Leithart recently wrote of The United States of America:

“We are founded on principles, not nationality, and the founding principles, we claim, are universal ones. “All men are created equal” and all are endowed by the Creator with natural rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. If we take the Declaration of Independence at all seriously, we cannot remain neutral if rights are ignored and infringed. For better or worse, we are a democratic republic with universal ambitions, a very strange species indeed.”

“No particular policy prescriptions immediately follow from this insight into the contradictory dynamics of our national institutions, ideals, and character. What should follow instead is a more realistic assessment of who we are. America’s aspiration to be a “Redeemer Nation” has risen and fallen. Americans have not always been seething with crusading zeal. But solicitude for all humanity has marked our relations with the world from the beginning , and this solicitude was inevitable from the moment the ink dried on the Declaration. Indifference has never been an American option. The truth is, we cannot not care.”

That we continue to have this impulse toward universal salvation and peace is remnant of our Christian heritage. For us to continue this impulse without perversion and selfish ambition will require a return to submission to Jesus the Savior, the Prince of Peace.