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What should we make of today’s Supreme Court decision on religious liberty in New York?

John Fea   |  November 26, 2020

Today the Supreme Court ruled in a 5-4 decision that the state of New York cannot limit attendance in houses of worship.

Here is NPR:

Gorsuch filed an unusually acerbic concurring opinion, blasting not only Governor Cuomo but also Chief Justice Roberts for his earlier opinion in the California and Nevada cases.

Referring to the more lax rules for New York retailers, Gorsuch opined that “at least according to Governor Cuomo, it may be unsafe to go to church, but it is always fine to pick up another bottle of wine, shop for a new bike, or spend the afternoon exploring your distal points and meridians,” a reference to acupuncture being unregulated.

And when it came to Roberts, Gorsuch spent several pages accusing him of “rewriting history” in his dissenting opinion on Wednesday and his earlier opinions in the California and Nevada cases.

“In the end,” said Gorsuch, while Roberts and the other dissenters may wish to “stay out of the way” and let state officials and experts deal with the crisis of a pandemic, “we may not shelter in place where the Constitution is under attack.” There is, he wrote, “no world in which the Constitution tolerates color-coded executive edicts that reopen liquor stores and bike shops but shutter churches, synagogues, and mosques.”

Roberts replied with a slap-down of his own. Quoting from Gorsuch’s acid dismissal of the dissenters’ views, the Chief Justice said he did not regard his dissenting colleagues with such venom: “They simply view the matter differently after careful study and reflecting their best efforts to fulfill their responsibility under the Constitution.”

As to Gorsuch’s concurrence, which, as Roberts put it, “takes aim at my [earlier] concurring opinion,” Gorsuch had engaged in such overkill that he spent “three pages” criticizing one sentence.

And “what did that sentence say?” asked Roberts. “Only that our Constitution principally entrusts the safety and health of the people to the politically accountable officials of the states to guard and protect.”

Those words, said Roberts, “should be uncontroversial, and the [Gorsuch] concurrence must reach beyond the words themselves to find the target it is looking for.”

Read the entire piece here.

Several conservative evangelicals see this as a major victory for religious liberty and the church. For example, here is the Trump-voting president of the Evangelical Theological Society:

“Who knew that public health would so perfectly align with secular convenience?” Don’t miss this — Amazing 5-4 victory for religious liberty at Supreme Court #SCOTUS See this prophetic word from Justice Neil Gorsuch in concurring opinion: pic.twitter.com/USahnTH8Ko

— Albert Mohler (@albertmohler) November 26, 2020

Not surprising. Mohler, at heart, is a culture warrior. (Although it is interesting to see him defending Catholicism. I guess even false religions have a right to religious liberty).

I am coming late to this today because I am eating turkey and hanging out with the family. So I will just post some tweets from people who seem to understand what this is really about.

A church is not a bike shop or a wine story. Sorry Neil Gorsuch:

And rightly so! Religious services should be under no more constraints than "comparable secular commercial activities" such as everday events like 200 people crowded into a bicycle repair shop singing, shouting, speaking in tongues, crying and hugging … https://t.co/Bl8BXE65cs

— John–"A remarkable Hoosier"–Haas (@haas1235) November 26, 2020

Scott Coley nails it:

Christians all over the US are celebrating the fact that a judge has explicitly affirmed the right of churches to behave like liquor stores.

— Scott Coley (@scott_m_coley) November 26, 2020

This is what Christian thinking looks like on this matter. (As opposed to First Amendment thinking):

Pls don’t forget: there are thousands of congregations that don’t need to be *ordered* not to gather, for whom this SCOTUS decision means nothing. They know loving the most vulnerable means not gathering for a time—an asceticism of communal, collective love.

— James K.A. Smith (@james_ka_smith) November 26, 2020

Sotomayor’s decision seems Christian to me:

Her dogma lives loudly within her. And I thank God for it. https://t.co/ry67Tes5X2

— David Dark: AMERICA’S NUMBER ONE FAITH LEADER (@DavidDark) November 26, 2020

David Dark is right. But at least Trump delivered on the Supreme Court for Al Mohler.

All convenience is secular in its way, but I don’t think we’ve seen it, the secular, deployed as a term for shaming people who are trying to love their neighbors until now. Terror that markets itself as religious is still terror. https://t.co/yFopeozGDE

— David Dark: AMERICA’S NUMBER ONE FAITH LEADER (@DavidDark) November 26, 2020

UPDATE (November 27, 2020 at 12:06PM): John Inazu, a Washington University law professor and author of Confident Pluralism, has weighed-in on the case at Ed Stetezer’s blog at Christianity Today.

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Filed Under: Way of Improvement Tagged With: Al Mohler, Albert Mohler, coronavirus, David Dark, James K. A. Smith, John Haas, John Roberts

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