October 5, 2011 | 10:49 pm

Supreme Court wrestles with ministerial exception case

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

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I didn’t get a chance to hear oral arguments today in Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School v. EEOC, but here is the transcript from the proceedings. As a reminder, the case, now before the U.S. Supreme Court, concerns the definition of a minister. This matters because, under the ministerial exception, federal authorities cannot intervene in a dispute between religious organizations and the leaders they hire and fire.

Here is an excerpt of oral arguments from Lyle Denniston at SCOTUSblog:

In short, what outwardly seemed like a fairly simple question over whether a parochial school teacher who teaches mostly non-religious subjects is or is not protected against workplace discrimination was, on close examination, anything but simple — or even judicially manageable.  Nothing more clearly illustrated the Court’s difficulty than the extended exchanges over whether the government may properly inquire into what Lutherans believe about congregational solidarity but dare not examine the Catholic belief about confining its clergy to men.

Much, much more here.

October 5, 2011 | 4:02 pm

One Jew’s efforts to take back Tripoli synagogue

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Gaddafi is out and Libya is free, but for one Libyan Jew there is another battle to fight. David Gerbi is trying to repatriate Tripoli’s synagogue and cemetery. And he’s running up against a lot of opposition. NPR reports:

Gerbi, a 56-year-old psychoanalyst who has lived in Italy, said he had permission for the restoration from the local Muslim cleric and members of the Transitional National Council, the force that ousted Moammar Gadhafi back in August.

But two days into his effort, it came to an abrupt end.

“The building is not safe. The area is not safe. There are a lot of people armed. We don’t know what happens. So the best thing for him is to leave,” said Hadi Belazi, one of many people in a crowd that gathered outside the synagogue in the city’s old Jewish Quarter.

In the above video, Rabbi Abe Cooper (coincidentally of the Simon Wiesenthal Center) Skypes with Gerbi about his efforts.

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October 5, 2011 | 12:23 pm

Jewish Journal on your iPad

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

There’s a Jewish news app for that?

TRIBE Media Corp., parent company of The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles, has launched the first Jewish news app designed specifically for the iPad.

The Jewish Journal app, which became available for download from Apple’s app store on Oct. 2, offers readers a new way of accessing the Jewish world’s up-to-date news articles and unique blogs, as well as video and photographic content.

“The first Jewish news came down from Mount Sinai on stone tablets,” said Rob Eshman, publisher and editor-in-chief of TRIBE Media Corp. “We believe the digital tablet will be the most important news delivery system of the future, so we committed to developing the best and first Jewish news app for it.”

Among the most awesome aspects of the app, at least as I see it, is getting a more mobile-friendly version of The God Blog on your iPad. So download it now, and read often.

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October 5, 2011 | 11:10 am

The Hitler Letter is here in LA

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Frankly, I’m not sure why the Simon Wiesenthal Center would want the Adolf Hitler’s anti-Semitic Gemlich letter. I’m even less sure why they would want to spend $150,000 on it. But the letter, typed in 1919 when Hitler was a soldier, is now on display at the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles. The Jewish Journal’s Tom Tugend reports:

Ten months after the end of World War I, a 30-year old German army veteran wrote a two-page letter in which he explained the Jewish question on what he called a “rational” and “scientific” basis.

“An anti-Semitism based on reason must lead to a systematic combatting and elimination of the privileges of the Jews,” he wrote. “The ultimate objective must be the irrevocable removal of Jews in general.”

The letter was signed “Respectfully, Adolf Hitler,” and got high marks for the author from his superiors in a military propaganda unit bitterly opposed to the newly established Weimar Republic as the perceived handiwork of Bolsheviks, Socialists and Jews.

The letter is believed to be Hitler’s first written attack on Jews. Much more, including a photo of the letter, here.

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October 5, 2011 | 12:40 am

Supreme Court to hear arguments in ministerial exception case

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

I mentioned in August the ministerial exception and the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to hear arguments in a case involving exactly which ministers and religious organization employees the exception applies to.

Background for the ministerial exception can be found in the petition for cert in Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church v. EEOC, excerpted here by Eugene Volokh:

This Court has long recognized the right of religious organizations to control their internal affairs. Watson v. Jones, 80 U.S. 679, 728–29 (1871). This right includes the freedom of religious organizations “to decide for themselves, free from state interference, matters of church government as well as those of faith and doctrine.” Kedroff v. St. Nicholas Cathedral, 344 U.S. 94, 116 (1952). Most importantly, it includes the right of religious organizations to select their own religious leaders. Ibid.; Serbian E. Orthodox Diocese v. Milivojevich, 426 U.S. 696, 724–25 (1976); Gonzalez v. Roman Catholic Archbishop, 280 U.S. 1, 16 (1929).

Based on this right, twelve federal circuits have recognized the “ministerial exception.” (The Federal Circuit has no jurisdiction over cases that could present the issue.) The ministerial exception bars lawsuits that interfere in the relationship between a religious organization and employees who perform religious functions — most obviously, lawsuits seeking to compel a religious organization to reinstate such an employee or seeking to impose monetary liability for the selection of such employees. As the first court adopting the ministerial exception explained: “The relationship between an organized church and its ministers is its lifeblood”; allowing the state to interfere in that relationship — effectively allowing judges and juries to pick ministers — would produce “the very opposite of that separation of church and State contemplated by the First Amendment.” McClure v. Salvation Army, 460 F.2d 553, 558, 560 (5th Cir. 1972).

Based on this principle, every circuit has agreed that the ministerial exception bars most lawsuits between a religious organization and its leaders. Every circuit has also agreed that the ministerial exception extends beyond formally designated “ministers” to include other employees who play an important religious role in the organization.

The new Supreme Court term began yesterday, and it turns out that the Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical case will be one of the first heard by the court, with oral arguments scheduled for tomorrow.

Michael McConnell, director of the Constitutional Law Center at Stanford University, argues in The Wall Street Journal that the stakes are high and that the government should stay out of employment disputes between religious organizations and their employees:

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October 3, 2011 | 11:07 pm

More evidence supports similar genetics of Jews and Southwest Spanish Americans

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

A new study in the Journal of Human Genetics reports scientific evidence of a link between Jews and those of Spanish descent in the American Southwest. JTA reports:

A group of researchers in the United States and Ecuador analyzed DNA from two communities who trace back to Spanish colonial times: one in the San Luis Valley of southern Colorado and northern New Mexico, which includes Conejos County, and one in the Loja Province of southern Ecuador.

The study found “observable Sephardic ancestry” in both communities and calculated Jewish ancestry among the Lojanos at about 5 to 10 percent and among the Spanish Americans, also called Hispanos, at about 1 to 5 percent.

“This study provides firmer evidence for what people have been conjecturing for up to 20 years now,” said the study’s director, Dr. Harry Ostrer, director of genetics and genomic testing at Montefiore Hospital of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York.

Over the past several decades, scholars have been pursuing stories like Valdez’s and claim to have found remnants of Crypto-Jewish practices in communities in the U.S. Southwest and Latin America. Some Hispanos and Latin Americans also have come forward to claim a Crypto-Jewish past, with a small number embracing a Jewish identity outright.

“The ancestry is really dispersed throughout the communities,” Ostrer said of his findings, which also concluded that along the maternal line, Native American ancestry is as high as 30 to 40 percent.

Read the rest here.

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October 2, 2011 | 8:43 pm

Supporters gather for ‘Irvine 11’; call them ‘heroes’

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

After members of the “Irvine 11” were convicted of two misdemeanors for disrupting a speech by Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren and were sentenced to probation and 53 hours community service, supporters of the Muslim college students gathered at the Islamic Institute of Orange County for a town hall meeting.

The Los Angeles Times reports that supporters saw the students as “heroes” and that some claimed the convictions were the result of Islamophobia. Regardless of whether you agree with the verdict or you fear that it will have a chilling effect on free speech, that latter claim seems pretty dubious. Above is a video recording of the two-and-a-half-hour town hall meeting.

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October 2, 2011 | 2:35 pm

Politicizing the pulpit: pastors again challenge tax laws

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Speak Up Movement Promo from Josh Garlow on Vimeo.

Today is Pulpit Freedom Sunday. Over the past few years, the Alliance Defense Fund has encouraged pastors to directly challenge tax laws on this day by getting political at the pulpit. The IRS be damned.

A sampling of things that might be said on Pulpit Freedom Sunday (circa 2008): Voting for Barack Obama would demonstrate “severe moral schizophrenia.”

I’m not sure what pastors were saying today. In this advance story, The New York Times reported that hundreds of pastors were expected to participate in politicizing the pulpit:

“There should be no government intrusion in the pulpit,” said the Rev. James Garlow, senior pastor at Skyline Church in La Mesa, Calif., who led preachers in the battle to pass California’s Proposition 8, which banned same-sex marriage. “The freedom of speech and the freedom of religion promised under the First Amendment means pastors have full authority to say what they want to say.”

Mr. Garlow said he planned to inveigh against same-sex marriage, abortion and other touchstone issues that social conservatives oppose, and some ministers may be ready to encourage parishioners to vote only for those candidates who adhere to the same views or values.

“I tell them that as followers of Christ, you wouldn’t vote for someone who was against what God said in his word,” Mr. Garlow said. “I will,  in effect, oppose several candidates and — de facto — endorse others.”

Others would argue that tax laws do not represent government intrusion into the pulpit. They are content-neutral regulations that say: If you want this government subsidy (tax-exempt status), then you can’t say these things.

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October 2, 2011 | 12:58 am

Problems at Machine Gun Preacher’s orphanage?

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Turns out there is more to the Machine Gun Preacher story than everything that appears in the new movie. According to Christianity Today, the orphanage that Sam Childers founded in South Sudan is being accused of neglecting the 150 children who live there:

Witnesses have said that the children at Shekinah Fellowship Children’s Village are malnourished, unhealthy, and unhappy. Several locals—including pastors, government officials, and a high-ranking member of the military—tell Christianity Today that Childers has exaggerated or outright lied about his work in the African nation.

Community leaders want his orphanage in Nimule—near the border with Uganda—to be shut down immediately, and for local ministries to take over. In a September 2 letter to Childers, 14 local leaders—including the man who says he gave 40 acres of land to Childers to build the orphanage—wrote that Chiders has “dishonored our agreement” to take care of orphans, and that they demand “immediate closure of the compound.” Childers told CT he never received that letter.

“As a community, we want Sam to leave and let other people take over,” said Festo Fuli Akim, the man who says he gave Childers the land in 1999. “Let Sam go away so that someone with a good heart, someone who is humane, can come in and take over.”

When a CT reporter visited the orphanage this week, Childers’s staff, including two American men, were still on the premises, saying that the only problems at the facility were minor and had been taken care of. CT observed no significant problems; the children seemed happy and healthy, and living conditions seemed generally good.

There is a lot more here in a lengthy article. To some extent, it makes me wonder whether there real are problems at Childers’ orphanage or whether the local community is tired of the attention and thinks they could serve the children better without Childers around.

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October 1, 2011 | 11:53 pm

The Creador

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

And you thought my title as the creator of The God Blog was a bit presumptuous.

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