The Weekly is a highlight of the work the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission is doing to strengthen you and our churches for God’s glory.

Four recent government actions regarding pro-life issues

Over the past two weeks there have been several pro-life related government actions in Arizona, Indiana, Missouri, and Vermont. Here is a round-up of the latest news:

Vermont hospital accused of forcing nurse to participate in abortion

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Department (HHS) sent a notice to the University of Vermont Medical Center claiming the hospital violated the civil rights law by requiring a nurse to assist with an abortion against her wishes. According to Roger Severino, the director of the HHS’s civil rights office, the nurse feared losing her job and felt coerced to participate in an elective abortion.

HHS says the hospital violated the 1970s federal law known as the Church amendments, which includes a requirement that employees of health-care facilities that accept federal money not be compelled to participate in abortions if the procedure conflicts with their beliefs. The notice gives the medical center 30 days to begin bringing its personnel rules into compliance with federal requirements about employees’ participation in procedures to which they have conscience or religious objections, says the Washington Post.

This Week at the ERLC

• The Tennessean addressed the Southern Baptist Convention’s efforts to make our churches safe from abuse and safe for survivors, as well as profiled Russell Moore’s sermon this past Sunday. 

• Dan Darling writes at Made to Flourish about how work and church life shape us and at Lifeway Voices about how to read the news.

What You Need to Know

• Parenting comes with many different seasons that can stir up a variety of emotions. We can often be eager for seasons to pass, and once they do, are filled with regret about what didn’t meet our expectations. Bobby Reed writes about this and how we can learn to cherish the circumstances the Lord has us in today. Read his article here.

I hate to waste time and money. The kids had a joke around the house: When dad is home and mom is away, efficiency is up; happiness is down. And when mom is home and dad is away, efficiency is down, but happiness is up, way up. I love efficiency and just don’t like to waste my time. It is a very limited commodity. There are two lessons that I have learned and observed about wasting time, especially over the past 28 years.

• What does “separation of Church and State” actually mean? Neal Hardin explains this oft-misunderstood phrase in his latest article. Check it out here. 

The key difference we see between the function of the church and the state comes through the use of the power of the sword. God has given government the power of the sword to punish the wrongdoer in civil matters (Rom. 13:4). The church does not have such authority (Matt. 26:51-56). On the other hand, the church can exercise church discipline in judging matters of doctrine and heresy but not the state (1 Cor. 5:1-13).

• Why is contentment so hard to come by? Jill Waggoner explores this struggle of our flesh and points us to the refuge we find in God’s Word. Read her encouragement here. 

Our lives can be dictated by our emotions, riding the rollercoaster to the heights in a time when things are going well and crashing into discouragement and frustration when we face difficulties, failures, and obstacles. It’s often a rollercoaster we don’t enjoy, yet getting off can seem impossible. How do we take away the power from those uncontrollable things around us? How do we develop a contentment that overrides the experience of both the highs and the lows?

News From Capitol Hill

This week the ERLC policy team received welcome news from officials at the Department of Health and Human Services on two issues. 

• First, on Wednesday, the HHS Office of Civil Rights issued notice of violation to the University of Vermont Medical Center in response to the hospital’s unlawful coercion of a nurse to assist in an abortion. According to HHS, the nurse had expressed an objection to assisting with abortion procedures for many years. On the day of the incident in May 2018, the nurse was led to believe they would be caring for a woman who miscarried. Then when entering the room, the doctor turned and said, “Don’t hate me.” Read more about this story here.
  
  Russell Moore commented on this horrific situation:
  
  "Everything about this situation is beyond troubling. What we see here is deception, disregard for the law, and trampling over consciences. More still, even those who claim to be pro-choice ought also to respect the right of a nurse to choose not to participate in something so shocking to the conscience. I am thankful HHS officials are pursuing enforcement of the laws that protect the conscience rights of this nurse."
   
• Second, on Thursday, HHS Secretary Alex Azar and Surgeon General Jerome Adams held a press conference which ERLC attended to announce the Surgeon General‘s Advisory on marijuana abuse and the particular risk of harm to adolescents and pregnant women. This is the first such advisory on marijuana since 1982. The top line from the advisory is that no amount of marijuana use during adolescence or pregnancy is safe as it severely impacts brain development.
  
  The Surgeon General report notes that the THC concentration in the common marijuana plant has increased three-fold between 1995 and 2014 from 4% to 12%. And the marijuana available in some dispensaries has average concentrations of THC around 20%. The advisory makes its strongest case of marijuana’s harm to these two particular age groups when it shows that “the risks of physical dependence, addiction, and other negative consequences increase with exposure to high concentrations of THC7 and the younger the age of initiation.”

Featured Podcasts

From The Public Square

'Billy Graham rule' & religious liberty
Diana Chandler, Baptist Press

A Southern Baptist deacon and law enforcement officer is suing his former employer for religious discrimination, claiming he was fired because he refused to spend long hours alone with a female deputy he had been assigned to train.

Baby Food, Bassinets and Talk of Salvation: Inside an Evangelical Pregnancy Center
Elizabeth Dias, New York Times

Here, the front line of the anti-abortion movement is a woman working out of a church basement.

Pleas that Trump deport Iraqi Christians to safer country go unmet
Nahal Toosi, Politico

The issue has gained attention after Michigan resident Jimmy Aldaoud died following his deportation to Iraq.

Celebrate Sexual Ethics. Don’t Apologize for Them.
Andrea Palpant Dilley, Christianity Today

We can take pride and joy in the historic, biblical view of human sexuality.