Thursday's News & Ideas - 7/9/2020

Justices rule teachers at religious schools aren’t protected by fair employment laws
NPR: The U.S. Supreme Court has carved out a major exception to the nation's fair employment laws. In a 7-2 vote, the court ruled on Wednesday that the country's civil rights laws barring discrimination on the job do not apply to most lay teachers at religious elementary schools.

In win for Trump, Supreme Court allows plan for religious limits to Obamacare contraceptive coverage
NBC News: The ruling greatly expands the kinds of employers that can cite religious or moral objections in declining to include birth control in their health care plans.

The Catholic Church has a visible white-power faction*
Sojourners: Once persecuted by the Ku Klux Klan, some Catholics now embrace the most extreme forms of racial hatred.

Washington’s ‘Church of Presidents’ etched in history again
Associated Press: The Rev. John C. Harper had been rector at the historic St. John’s Episcopal Church for less than a year when the 1963 March on Washington began taking shape. A lay leader in the congregation urged him to steer clear of it — but instead he embraced it.

It’s the Catholic bishops, not those who toppled Junipero Serra statues, who have failed the test of history
Religion Dispatches: The California Catholic Conference of Bishops (CCCB) accused the protesters of failing the test of history because protesters did not “discern carefully the entire contribution that the historical figure in question [Serra] made to American life.”

The Spark

Ahmaud Arbery will not be erased
But will his death finally force America to see the truth? David Dennis Jr. asks at Atlanta Magazine. (trigger warning: racial trauma and violence)

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