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Calif. Supreme Court: Religious organizations can regulate religious speech
There was a very important decision at the California Supreme Court yesterday, but it doesn't fit into easy categories of religious freedom. It's good news for religious organizations, but it came because an evangelical was fired from a secularized Catholic medical center.

Terence Silo was a file clerk at the Catholic Healthcare West Medical Foundation when, in his words, "I gave my life to Christ. My heart was filled with the Holy Spirit, and my life was changed." Excited about his new relationship with God, he started telling coworkers and patients.

His employer wasn't pleased. The clinic, it turns out, is only nominally Catholic, though it is operated by the Roman Catholic Church. It eschews religious symbols, doesn't have any services or Bible studies, and doesn't even have a chaplain or chapel. And Silo's religious talk was forbidden. "He was counseled … that he should not use the word 'God … unless it's off the clock,'" court documents say.

Eventually Silo was fired. The clinic said it was over poor performance, not religion, but a Superior Court jury disagreed, awarding him damages and attorney fees. A California Court of Appeal upheld the judgment, noting that the state constitution forbids religious discrimination.

The California Supreme Court, however, unanimously overturned the verdict yesterday. "We can discern no fundamental public policy that places limits on a religious employer's right to control such speech," wrote Justice Carlos R. Moreno (PDF | DOC | HTML). "The public policy against religious discrimination in employment must be qualified by the public policy of permitting religious employers considerable discretion to choose employees who will not interfere with their religious mission or message."

"The impact of this is great for religious institutions," Jeffrey Berman told the Los Angeles Times (he filed amicus curiae briefs in the case for religious organizations). "It indicates that the California Supreme Court is sensitive to the issue of religious autonomy and to both the state and federal constitutional rights of religions to regulate themselves."

Let's hope that the next time a Christian organization invokes such rights, it does so to further, not hinder, the kingdom of God.

Do Christian colleges' faith statements violate academic freedom?
A Christian college is allowed to fire professors for disagreeing with its statement of faith (see previous item), but, reports The Chronicle of Higher Education, they don't do so without criticism.

"The ordeals of … professors at the more than 100 evangelical Protestant institutions in the United States that require such faith statements—orally or in writing—have spurred charges that they violate academic freedom," writes Beth McMurtrie. "Do they, in fact, defy the academic ideal of open intellectual inquiry? Are the statements—some of them generic—subject to such broad interpretation that they can be used to punish whatever teaching or lifestyle choices administrators may dislike?"

The occasion for the article is Patrick Henry College's denial of accreditation because it requires all teachers to believe and teach seven-day creationism. But McMurtrie's article touches on just about every major conflict over Christian college faith statements in the last five years. There's Wheaton College's dismissal of anthropology professor Alex Bolyanatz, Seattle Pacific University's rescinding an offer to English professor Scott Cairns, Earl Ross Genzel's forced resignation from Messiah College, and successful battles by Greg Boyd at Bethel College and Howard J. Van Till at Calvin. This is an article that goes beyond generalizations and actually names names.

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May (Web-only) 2002, Vol. 46