I read an interesting article today from the best religious liberty magazine in the world. The article is about the tension between religious organizations that want to hire only people who adhere to their religious beliefs and government entities that want to prohibit discrimination.
Let’s make up a religion as an example of some of the issues mentioned in the article. This religion will be called Skin ’n’ Bones. Skin ’n’ Bones believes that gluttony is the most terrible sin and so this religion’s primary mission is to condemn and combat gluttony.
This church will say they should not be required to hire gluttons to work as officials at their church or to accept gluttons as members of their church. They may or may not allow gluttons to attend their church services depending on whether a particular congregation is orthodox Skin ’n’ Bones or liberal Skin ’n’ Bones.
In terms of hiring, I think this church is within its rights. They have a private religious organization and they can make whatever rules they want, unless they are deliberately harming people, like having human sacrifices or something…. Even a religion can’t have human sacrifices!
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What if the church wants to hire people to do some work on the property, carpenters maybe, or groundskeepers? Can they refuse to hire gluttons, or would that be unacceptable discrimination?
This is a little more complicated, but I think I would still let the church hire who they want without accusing them of illegal discrimination.
The article doesn’t go into the more complicated issue of private businesses owned by Skin ’n’ Bones members.
Suppose a Skin ’n’ Bones member starts a restaurant and refuses to serve gluttons or hire gluttons. Obviously, this would be really bad for business, but this member thinks it is wrong for him to participate in the sin of gluttony by serving gluttons at his restaurant or even hiring gluttons who will just use their pay to indulge in more gluttony.
NOW I think the government is right to step in and call this illegal discrimination.
To have a free country, that does not become a dictatorial theocracy, we have to distinguish between the religious sphere and the public sphere. In the religious sphere, organizations can treat people unequally and discriminate against people they don’t approve of. In the public sphere, organizations CANNOT treat people unequally and discriminate against people they disapprove of.
Churches are in the religious sphere and restaurants are in the public sphere and there need to be different rules for those two spheres. The religious sphere is always going to try to creep into the public sphere and the public sphere is always going to try to creep into the religious sphere, but we really need to keep them separate if we want to have a free society…. Which I do!
Within a church (in the religious sphere) people are allowed to prevent women from holding certain jobs, for example, because they believe women are supposed to be subordinate to men. But in a business (in the public sphere) you are not allowed to keep women subordinate to men, and prevent them from holding certain jobs just because they are women, because in our free society we believe that all people are created equal and need to be treated equally.
That’s what I believe anyway!
Here is a link to the article I mentioned above: https://www.libertymagazine.org/article/tightening-the-screws-on-religious-hiring
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