I thought this article on the separation of church and state was very interesting, and reflected the same struggle that our founding fathers had. This particular case, which made it’s way to the Supreme Court, dealt with a Lutheran church’s decision to fire a disabled teacher, Cheryl Perich, who had been on leave for several months. The dispute took a turn for the worse when the teacher threatened to take legal action under the American with Disabilities Act, which resulted in the church firing her for “insubordination and disruptive behavior” and arguing that she had permanently damaged her relationship with the church. However, because of the separation of church and state, the “ministerial exception” keeps the government from regulating a religion’s clergy. The problem is that before given the title of “commissioned minister,” Perich performed the same duties as a “lay teacher.” Because Perich wasn’t asking to be reinstated, courts were allowed to make a ruling without interfering with the church’s clergy composition.
The author wrote this article very simply and described terms that the common reader would not know. It began by describing what the issue of the topic would be, and why it was significant and how it related to the audience. It also viewed the topic from all points, and argued and supported them. The author seems pretty credible, and uses direct quotes from the Constitution and other sources from the case for support.
I found it very interesting to see that Americans are still facing the same issues, even after all these years. This country was founded upon the strive for independence, especially from ties of the government to religion. As open as our founding fathers were to this idea, they still maintained Christian religious ideals and embedded some of these into our Constitution and Declaration of Independence. However, because of this separation of church and state, the lines of what the church can and cannot do are blurred. In any other case, firing Perich would have been unlawful and immediate legal action would have ruled in her favor. However, because of the religious sanctions regarding the clergy, this was unattainable. I also thought it was interesting that the church was angered in her threat of taking legal action, and that in the end it was said that the case could be resolved “in a standard secular way without breaching the constitutional wall.
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