Home
/
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
/
‘Religion Takes us into the Marketplace’
‘Religion Takes us into the Marketplace’
Jan 1, 2026 4:20 PM

On The Foundry, Sarah Torre writes about the many faith based challenges that remain to the Obamacare law. There are many organizations that are religious in nature, but are not themselves churches. ply with the new health laws, they will pelled to provide conscience violating services. Towards the end of the post, Torres quotes the president of Geneva College, Dr. Ken Smith:

The issue that we have with the entire law is that the Obama Administration has tried to define religion as being that which what churches do. We believe that religion takes us into the marketplace. There is both an munity of faith responsibility of religion, but there is also an external service munity. That is religion.

A lot has been written about how this issue will impact hospitals. Donald P. Condit noted in an Acton Commentary piece that one in six patients in the United States will receive care in a Catholic Hospital. Yet, the Obama administration’s threat to religious liberty is not limited to just the case of religious groups directly providing services. The HHS mandates (more from Acton here) threaten the conscience of all people engaged in business. And if the threat extends to health care, where will it end?

As pointed out in The Foundry, religion takes us into the marketplace. Christianity is a motivating force for people throughout the market. Yet, the Obama administration seems to think that our religious life should separated from our everyday life. How can we expect people to somehow check their faith at the door when they do business? Rev. Robert Sirico outlines in “The Entrepreneurial Vocation” how our faith relates to entrepreneurship. The idea that our religious life is or should be separate from mercial life is absurd, yet this is precisely pliance with anti-conscience provisions of the Obamacare law would force us to do. Donald P. Condit got it right: this is an unconscionable threat to conscience.

H/T to Kathryn Jean Lopez at NRO’s The Corner.

Comments
Welcome to mreligion comments! Please keep conversations courteous and on-topic. To fosterproductive and respectful conversations, you may see comments from our Community Managers.
Sign up to post
Sort by
Show More Comments
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
Families with stay-at-home moms pay 5-times more taxes in this nation
U.S. taxpayers are familiar with marriage penalty, but it is not merely a problem facing American families. In the Netherlands, afamily with a stay-at-home mother could pay more than 560 percent more in taxes than an identical family making the exact same e. Ironically, the Dutch tax code treats families with es in vastly disparate ways in the name of equality, explains Arnold Huijgen, Ph.D., in a new essay for Religion & Liberty Transatlantic. This bizarre state of affairs e...
Why Seattle’s minimum wage law is now destroying wages
“The city of Seattle has the highest minimum wage in the United States,” notes Dylan Pahman in this week’s Acton Commentary. “While economists and policy-makers continue to debate the issue, a recent working paper from researchers at the University of Washington (UW) raises serious questions about the effectiveness of minimum wage hikes.” In short, the study concludes that the “increase to $13 reduced hours worked in low-wage jobs by around 9 percent, while hourly wages in such jobs increased by...
Reining in the EPA’s regulatory overreach
President Donald Trump turned heads and drew criticisms for his efforts to curb the regulatory reach of the Environmental Protection Agency. With the appointment of Scott Pruitt to lead the agency, Trump has vowed to create a leaner bureaucracy by requiring agencies to repeal two regulations for each new regulation enacted. This, however, is no small task considering the sheer number of regulations left behind by previous administrations. The Obama administration—which broke the record for the most rules and regulations...
How Genesis ties Christianity to economics and business
Many Christians have a distant, even negative, view of economics and business. Pastors discuss the need for moral activity within the business world, but often ignore whether business in itself is morally justifiable. Some even assume that business activity is a sort of necessary evil; that economics is an academic discipline with little connection to their faith, and often church leaders support economic proposals without understanding plexity of the issues involved. This harms the witness of the Church. In his...
Understanding the President’s Cabinet: OMB Director
Note: This is the post #22 in a weekly series of explanatory posts on the officials and agencies included in the President’s Cabinet. See the series introductionhere. Cabinet position:Director of the Office of Management and Budget Department: Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Current Director:Mick Mulvaney Department Mission:“The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) serves the President of the United States in overseeing the implementation of his vision across the Executive Branch. Specifically, OMB’s mission is to assist the President...
Are slums a sign of human creativity and potential?
As humans, we are made in the image of God. We are co-creators, fashioned to produce and create, contribute and collaborate, give and receive, trade and exchange. Yet far too often, in our approaches to fighting poverty, we subscribe to a fundamental distortion of this reality, treating humans as mere consumers and“drains” on wealth and resources. In the context of poverty, this quickly leads to treating people as the problem, not the solution. “When we put the person at the...
We now have proof higher minimum wages hurt the poor
In 2014 the city of Seattle announced it would be raising the minimum wage to $15 per hour. The minimum wage would increase from the state’s $9.47 minimum to as high as $11 on April 1, 2015. The second phase-in period started on January 1, 2016, when the minimum wage reached $13 for large employers. Under the law, by 2021 all businesses must raise the minimum wage for theirworkers to $15. At the time I noted that while this policy...
Neamtu: Choose the ‘Soros infantry’ or Tocqueville’s vision
George Soros is synonymous with a well-funded, highly partisan brand of “philanthropy,” which begs the question: Why are U.S. taxpayers underwriting it? During the Obamaadministration, USAID granted Soros’ Foundation Open Society-Macedonia (FOSM) and its counterparts$4.8 million,earmarking an additional$9.5 millionthrough2021. Macedonia’s center-Right president, Gjorge Ivanov,has charged Soros’organizations with rallying to destabilize his government and askedwhyAmerican foreign aid is attemptingto foist unpopular, EU-centric policies on his nation. One Macedonian official called these groups “the Soros infantry.” In a fascinatingnew essayfor Religion &...
How God makes a smartphone
“Everybody has a cell phone,” Steve Jobs told John Lasseter, chief creative officer at Pixar, “but I don’t know one person who likes their cell phone.” The frustrated CEO of Apple decided to do something about the problem, which lead to one of the greatest products of the modern age. Ten years ago today he released the first version of the famed iPhone. Jobs didn’t invent the smartphone. And while he was the guiding force behind the iPhone, he really...
Joe Carter: Justice Gorsuch a ‘champion of religious freedom’
On Monday, June 26, the Washington Examinerpublished an article by Ryan Lovelace titled “Conservatives cheer Gorsuch amid flurry of decisions on final day of Supreme Court term.” After concurring with Chief Justice John Roberts on Trinity Lutheran v. Comer, a 7-2 decisionin favor of a church preschool in Missouri,Justice Neil Gorsuch leaves his firsttwo months inthe high court with the approval of many conservatives. In the article, Joe Carter, a senior editor at the Acton Institute, applauds Gorsuch: In his...
Related Classification
Copyright 2023-2026 - www.mreligion.com All Rights Reserved