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Knock, Knock.  Supreme Court.  Right outside the door

Church State law, especially cases that make it to the US Supreme Court, can seem distant and esoteric. But this month the US Supreme Court is waiting for you right outside your office door in its unanimous decision affirming “ministerial exception” in a broad way.

Who can the church  hire and fire according to ministerial exception?:
Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School v. EEOC, et al.
In this case the Supreme Court, for the first time, recognized an explicit “ministerial exception” to anti-discrimination laws at any level.  It did so, with considerable enthusiasm.  The Court returned a unanimous decision that churches have tremendous latitude over employment decisions if the person involved is in almost any way considered ministerially responsible.

“The interest of society in the enforcement of employment discrimination statutes is undoubtedly important,” wrote Chief Justice John Roberts for the court. “But so too is the interest of religious groups in choosing who will preach their beliefs, teach their faith, and carry out their mission.

The case was asking the government to punish a church school for a firing decision related to a religion teacher. The Court said that “requiring a church to accept or retain an unwanted minister, or punishing a church for failing to do so, intrudes upon more than a mere employment decision.  Such action interferes with the internal governance of the church, depriving the church of control over the selection of those who will personify its beliefs.”  Such interference, it concluded, violates both the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment, and that Amendment’s Establishment Clause. The fact that the Court asserts violation of both tenets of the First Amendment is significant and outlines a strong line of demarcation.

The Supreme Court has long recognized a First Amendment right for religious organizations to control their own internal affairs, including the selection of their religious leaders — a history in which the Court has had a role since 1872 and in which the Founding generation was involved at least as early as 1806. But this case provides protection of the religious organization to make authoritative employment decisions even when the ministerial employee is someone who may not be serving in what would be considered a traditional role of clergy, like a pastor, but can extend to employees who are religiously trained and called to service, in this case a functioning teacher in an elementary classroom.

This decision has been lauded for its clear support of church autonomy.  This sounds affirming and great. But with great freedom comes great responsibility.

The decision is for near unfettered freedom for employment decisions, but the case is framed within charges of discrimination. The church is given the freedom to discriminate. Without the external requirements of standard discrimination protection to guide the church in hiring and firing decisions, what standards will churches, religious schools and religious institutions use?  All too often churches and religious organizations have been lax in clarifying employment processes and have been shoddy when it comes to establishing grievance procedures or clarifying pathways of resolution for difficult employment situations.

It’s “take stock” time for churches. Without the threat of government employment law, the church should be more fair, more judicious, more compassionate, more thorough than the secular world. Too many congregations and religious organizations are lax or, even worse, dismissive when it comes to processes for discerning call, hiring staff, managing employees and mapping the course for personnel transitions.

The call to servanthood is the high calling of Christ’s ministers, paid or unpaid, vocational or volunteer.  In Matthew and parallel passages in Mark and Luke, Jesus said we should not “lord it over” one another and that the greatest of God’s people must be servants rather than tyrants (Matt. 20:20-28). Christian leaders lead by serving.  Power in the conventional sense is, in effect, turned on its head, so that the greatness of leadership is not determined by how many lives we control, but by how faithfully we serve each life with whom God has entrusted us.

A Covenant Approach

Ministerial Ethics, a Covenant of Trust is a resource for you and your church to guide dialogue between ministers and congregational leaders. It provides guidelines to build a framework for basic ethical obligations for ministry, it helps to de?ne the ministerial profession as it is expressed in each congregation, and it serves as a support to protect the individual minister.  There are topical pages designed to promote reflection on the shared responsibility from both the congregation and the minister to consider how a congregation will interpret: the Call to Ministry, the Minister’s Relationship, Stewardship of Time, the Minister’s Health, Economic Responsibilities, Sexual Conduct, the Minister and the Community. This is not an employment document, but it is the beginning of a prompt for dialogue about the covenant of trust between a congregation  and it’s minster(s). A covenant that is too often unspoken and unaddressed until an employment crisis emerges.

Here are some of the basic considerations for churches and the minister:

For the church:

• We will honor and respect the call of God in the lives of our ministers and count their service among us as a gift from God.
• We will commit ourselves to forming relationships, time structures, and ministry activities so that our ministers can build wholesome family relationships.
• We will respect our ministers’ families and honor them as vital parts of our ministry team.
• We will commit to develop and nurture strong relationships within the congregation and show we are Christians by our love.
• We will recognize our ministers’ need for rest and time to be away from work.  We will protect their time to have a day off and their family time.
• We will recognize our own and our ministers’ needs for spiritual formation and physical well being.
• We understand that workers are “worthy of their hire” and will compensate ministers with fairness and generosity.
• We will commit ourselves to exhibiting faithful and wholesome sexual relationships among ourselves, within our families, and beyond the church family.
• We shall endeavor to know and be known in the communities that we serve as witnesses to the love of Christ, who meets physical, emotional, and spiritual needs and to the world.

For the minister:

• I will re?ect the integrity of the Gospel of Jesus Christ in my ministry by leading the congregation to follow Jesus, so becoming the salt of the earth and the light of the world, loving our enemies, becoming agents of reconciliation, doing justice for “the least of these,” speaking the truth in love, loving God as we love one another, and serving God as we serve one another.
• I will respond to the call of Christ with faithful obedience and count it a joyful privilege to be asked to serve in ministry.
• I will be intentional in nurturing relationships with family, friends, colleagues, and members of the congregation.  I recognize the importance of building healthy relationships which are both open and honest and free from coercion, deception, manipulation, and the abuse of the power of my position.
• I will be committed to the faithful stewardship of time.  I will be disciplined in my use of time, which includes not wasting time or working at all times.  I will take time for spiritual formation, study, prayer, family, and rest.
• I will develop a healthy lifestyle which includes my spiritual, physical, and emotional health.
• I will be ?nancially responsible, which responsibility includes paying my bills, avoiding ?nancial favors, living within my salary, contributing to the ?nancial support of my church and other ministries, and adopting a lifestyle consistent with biblical teachings concerning possessions and money.
• I will clearly demonstrate a life of sexual  ?delity and integrity in all of my relationships and a commitment to the biblical standard of faithfulness in marriage and celibacy in singleness.
• I will participate in the larger community as the context of my ministry.  I will be committed to the issues of justice, compassion, reconciliation, and to the marginalized as I value all of God’s children.
• I will be directed in all that I do by Jesus’ vision in the model prayer: “Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”  I will be dedicated to God’s sovereign role and reign in every area of my life and be faithful in announcing that God’s Kingdom has come in Jesus Christ.

The occasion of this Supreme Court decision gives the church a prime opportunity to tune and fine tune the processes within our congregations to maintain ethical and productive relationships.

Includes information from: Lyle Denniston, Opinion recap: A solid “ministerial exception”, SCOTUSblog (Jan. 11, 2012, 11:33 AM), http://www.scotusblog.com/2012/01/opinion-recap-a-solid-ministerial-exception/

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