WASHINGTON—The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday (Nov. 26) agreed to take up Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc., a landmark case addressing the constitutional rights of businesses to operate without violating their religious convictions. 

The high court accepted the federal government’s appeal of a June decision by the U.S. 10th Circuit Court of Appeals that a federal mandate to provide potentially life-terminating drugs and devices in employee insurance plans places a substantial burden on the religious freedoms of Hobby Lobby, which is solely owned by founder David Green and his family.

“This is a major step for the Greens and their family businesses in an important fight for Americans’ religious liberty,” said Kyle Duncan, general counsel of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty and lead lawyer for Hobby Lobby. “We are hopeful that the Supreme Court will clarify once and for all that religious freedom in our country should be protected for family business owners like the Greens.”

In July, a lower federal court granted the Oklahoma City-based retail arts and crafts chain a preliminary injunction preventing the government from enforcing the HHS mandate requiring the family businesses to provide in the employee health insurance plan two drugs and two devices that are potentially life terminating.

The Greens and their family businesses, which also include a Christian bookstore chain, have no moral objection to providing 16 of the 20 FDA-approved contraceptives required under the HHS mandate and do so at no additional cost to employees under their self-insured health plan. But they took the unusual step in October of joining the government in asking the Supreme Court to review the case, despite the family’s victory in the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals.

Russell D. Moore, president of the Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, commented, “The Supreme Court’s consideration of the Hobby Lobby case is the most important religious liberty question in recent years. What’s at stake in this case is whether or not the Constitution guarantees the free exercise of religion.

“We cannot accept the theology lesson that the government has sought to teach us, that religion is merely a matter of what happens during the scheduled times of our services, and is left there in the foyer during the rest of the week. Our religious convictions aren’t reduced to mere opinions we hide in our heart and in our hymns. Our religious convictions inform the way we live.

“I pray the Supreme Court recognizes what the founders of this country saw, that religious liberty isn’t a gift handed to us by Uncle Caesar. Religious liberty is given to us by God and is inalienable. Let’s pray for the justices as they think through this monumentally important case.”

The ERLC filed a friend-of-the-court brief Oct. 21 calling for the Supreme Court to rule in favor of Hobby Lobby and other family-owned businesses that have conscientious objections to a regulation that requires employers to provide abortion-causing drugs for their employees. For-profit companies are not currently exempt from the HHS Mandate.

Meanwhile, Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott said in a statement, “Obamacare not only forces Americans to buy insurance they don’t want or need, it also forces businesses to subsidize or offer services contrary to their religious beliefs. Texas supports business owners’ freedom of religion by joining in the Amicus Brief for states in this case. The Obama Administration’s disregard for religious liberty violates the Constitution and should be rejected by the Supreme Court.”

Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. will be argued and decided before the end of the Supreme Court’s term in June 2014.

There are 84 lawsuits challenging the unconstitutional HHS mandate. In addition to Hobby Lobby, The Becket Fund represents Little Sisters of the Poor, Guidestone, Wheaton College, East Texas Baptist University, Houston Baptist University, Colorado Christian University, the Eternal Word Television Network,Ave Maria University, and Belmont Abbey College.

—Compiled from news releases from The Becket Fund, ERLC and the Texas attorney general’s office.

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CEBU, Philippines—Social media and news programs around the world are filled with images of relief teams making their entrances into Filipino communities devastated by Typhoon Haiyan, but hundreds more villages in extremely isolated areas have yet to see any relief vehicles at all.  

These villages are tucked away in northern Cebu’s rolling hills, down winding, bumping roads barely wide enough for vehicles to traverse. They are the kinds of villages sought out by Southern Baptist relief efforts.

Eleven days after the storm, the recovery task in the cities and towns is monumental and millions of dollars in relief aid is flowing into those efforts. Many smaller communities, however, must fend for themselves. 

People in out of the way areas often are neglected for one to two weeks in the aftermath of a major disaster, said Larry Shine, a member of the four-man BGR rapid assistance team sent to Cebu Island. The team’s goal is to go into areas not highlighted in the media and partner with local pastors to bring effective aid to neglected communities.

Shine, pastor of Pine Forest Baptist Church in Onalaska, Texas, and Scottie Stice, pastor of Southwest Texas Cowboy Church in Uvalde, Texas, traveled Nov. 16 to the ministry area of Filipino pastor Nabanglo Driz.

First visitors

They were the first people to visit three mountain villages after the typhoon. On a rural road, their van passed a sign tacked to a post that read “Help Us.”

The houses in this area are perched on hilltops, meaning they were more exposed to Typhoon Haiyan’s ferocious winds. People in these villages are still living in their collapsed homes. One family with a 1-month-old baby is trying to shelter in a badly damaged hut not even tall enough for someone to kneel in. 

To get relief supplies, the villagers must hike out to the main road and hand-carry the goods back down windy, bumpy paths. 

In one village the team visited, the five concrete houses of Leonilo Liquigan and his extended family look as if a wrecking ball came through. Liquigan said people in the village came to his home because it was concrete and stronger, but even his concrete home couldn’t withstand the storm.

He said he knew they needed to leave the area, but they had nowhere to go.

Since his village has been without electricity, Liquigan said he’s cooked coconuts and taken the oil and inserted a wick to make candles. Shine holds Liquigan’s hand and prays a blessing over him, asking God to “bring order where there is chaos.” 

Survivor with a scar

In the village of Kapilya, 5-year-old John Carl Ulila plays with a plastic lid, a metal bolt and a rock. He does not have any toys. He is a survivor, but one who will forever bear a scar.

During the typhoon, a flying piece of corrugated tin hit Ulila and cut his nose and cheek – coming dangerously close to his eye. His mother took him to a medical clinic but was referred to a more expensive clinic his family could not afford.

They came home without any medicine. 

Stice noticed Ulila’s eye when he arrived at his home. He gave Ulila’s mother antibiotic cream to treat the wound. 

Driz identified Kapilya as one of the neediest villages out of the nine he serves. There are 30 families in Kapilya, where a house church meets each week for worship. The gazebo they meet in was destroyed by the storm.

The closest water reservoir to Kapilya is 11 miles away. The village’s water system operates off of a pump and because the electricity is out, the water is too. Right now, Ulila’s mom says they are collecting rainwater to drink. Stice and Shine discussed having a pump station to help bring water closer.

Later that day, Shine, Stice and Driz discussed how to handle aid relief and sharing the gospel with women in the area who aren’t as open. “The best ministry is to come build the house, share with her and tell her why you came and built the house,” Shine told Driz.

Driz believes this distribution project will open doors to the community. Many people close their hearts when they see him approach with a Bible, Driz said. Showing Christ’s love by helping the hurting is a bridge to sharing the gospel. 

“With this project, I believe there will be more fruit,” Driz said.

Cowboys and pastors

Over a dinner of rice and vegetables, Shine showed Driz photos of his guns and the elk and deer he has shot in the backyard of his East Texas home. Stice showed pictures of his horses on his West Texas ranch. Driz talked about one of his favorite TV shows – Rambo – and how he enjoys detective movies because of the suspense. The men talked about what fish the U.S. and the Philippines have in common.

For the evening, they were just men – talking about hunting and movies.

Later that evening, Driz, Stice and Shine sat down and continued their discussion about the areas they visited. Shine asked questions to help Driz to think through the rebuilding process and what resources they would need. 

He encouraged Driz to use Filipino church members to deliver the relief supplies.

“By using an existing network, it is more effective,” Shine said. “The church is the best network in the world.”

Filipino churches know the people and the culture — and will be there after all the international aid workers and media have left, Shine said.

“What Western churches can do is provide the financial aid resources he [Driz] doesn’t have,” Shine said. 

Shine encouraged Driz and his church to train others and then encourage them to pass the knowledge on – an approach to humanitarian aid that facilitates church planting. 

The discussion then moved to what to include in relief kits — items every Filipino family must have in their kitchen to survive — and how best to transport the goods. Shine asked Driz to make himself available to minister to the families while others of his team are distributing supplies. 

Driz, Stice and Shine formulated a plan for aid relief and packets to be delivered the following week. BGR will purchase supplies for the relief packages with funds donated by supporters in the United States and elsewhere.

“We have full confidence in your ability to do this,” Shine told Driz.

To donate to Disaster Relief, click here. 

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WAKE FOREST, N.C.—The tone and tenor of a recent debate between proponents of old- and young-earth creationism was diplomatic, but the underlying subtext of the presentations made at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary intimated that the other side was wrong in their assumptions and nothing less than the communication of the gospel was at stake.

Representatives on both sides of the issue said it was essential that Christians have a gracious yet vigorous debate regarding the age of the earth during the conference held on Oct. 25.

Appropriately titled “Noah’s Flood and the Age of the Earth: A Dialogue Between Old Earth and Young Earth Creationists,” the conference included old-earth scientists who said the young-earth model generates ridicule from peers and a crisis of faith for young adults.

Young-earth proponents said acceptance of an old-earth paradigm essentially rejects the first 11 chapters of the Bible and calls into question fundamental doctrines about the nature of God, man and sin.

“Some of you will be pastors where you will be ministering to … scientists, and they know what the earth is like,” Ken Wolgemuth told the audience of seminary students and faculty. “If it is misrepresented it leaves a black eye on Christianity.”

Wolgemuth, a geochemist and founder of Solid Rock Lectures and old-earth proponent, was one of four scientists lecturing at the conference. He was joined by Gregg Davidson, University of Mississippi professor of geology and geological engineering.

Presenting evidence for a young earth were Ronald Marks, North Greenville University professor of chemistry, and Eugene Chaffin, professor of physics at North Greenville.

Ken Keathley, director of the L. Russ Bush Center for Faith and Culture, moderated.

During their lectures each scientist testified to his Christian faith, belief in the inerrancy and authority of Scripture, and that God created the universe and all that is in it.

Wolgemuth and Davidson added the caveat that their old-earth presuppositions did not conflict with the Bible. Christian proponents of old-earth creationism contend the earth is approximately 4.5 billion years old and generally discount the global scope of the Genesis flood. Instead, they argue for a regional flood.

But, said Davidson, a partner of Solid Rock Lectures, science will never “trump” Scripture. Rightly understood the two do not conflict, he argued.

“The reason why we’re here is a love for the Bride of Christ and a concern over some hindrances that we feel exist to the mission of the church,” Davidson said.

What the church typically communicates is a dogmatic adherence to a literal interpretation of the Genesis account of creation as a tenet of Christian faith, pitting those with differing views as apostates, he insisted.

Davidson then suggested Christians who espouse a young-earth theory are less than truthful in their evidentiary presentations.

“Scientific evidence that supports a young earth is invariably based on incomplete information,” Davidson wrote in response to several questions following the dialogue.

Wolgemuth, who asserts that “95 to 98 percent” of all Christian geologists believe in an ancient earth, was more direct in his refutation of the young-earth view. “It is claimed by those with a flood geology viewpoint that Noah’s Flood formed most of the Earth’s sedimentary layers, including the mile of exposed layers of the Grand Canyon, in one year about 5,000 years ago. This hypothesis is not in the Bible, and does not stand up to scientific scrutiny,” he wrote.

Davidson asked, “When the church teaches and promotes misrepresentations of history and of scientific evidence, what impact does that have on our ministry to the body and the lost?”

But an old-earth interpretation not only discounts a straightforward interpretation of Genesis, it indicates a worldly bias brought to the study of the evidence, Marks and Chaffin countered. And the notion that all “acceptable” science must be couched in old-earth presuppositions blindly discounts any evidence to the contrary, they said.

What the old-earth view calls “scientific evidence” requires an a priori commitment to millions of years of uniformly deposited geologic data. Any other possibilities—including a catastrophic global flood—are ruled out of bounds, the young earth proponents contend.

“If the evidence is the same and we’re drawing different conclusions, than either we’re being dishonest and untrustworthy or we simply have different worldviews,” said Marks, a former theistic evolutionist.

To view the lectures go to: sebts.edu/faithandculture/events/past_events_cfc/Noahs_Flood_conf_oct13.aspx.

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