{"id":35640,"date":"2012-11-01T07:37:00","date_gmt":"2012-11-01T12:37:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/?p=35640"},"modified":"2021-06-10T07:39:45","modified_gmt":"2021-06-10T12:39:45","slug":"government-argues-businesses-are-secular","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/government-argues-businesses-are-secular\/","title":{"rendered":"Government Argues Businesses Are Secular"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\t<p><strong>Source:<\/strong> Steven Ertelt, &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.lifenews.com\/2012\/11\/01\/obama-admin-tells-court-hobby-lobby-must-obey-hhs-mandate\/\">Obama Admin Tells Court: Hobby Lobby Must Obey HHS Mandate<\/a>,&#8221; LifeNews.com 01 November 2012.<\/p>\n<p>The government continues to push for change by insisting that businesses pay for birth control pills and &#8220;morning after&#8221; pills as a part of their employee&#8217;s insurance plans, even if the owners of the company object to such funding on religious principles. What is particularly disturbing is the way this is being argued:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;Here&#8217;s what they are saying: once someone starts a &#8220;secular&#8221; business, he categorically loses any right to run that business in accordance with his conscience. The business owner simply leaves her First Amendment rights at home when she goes to work at the business she built. Kosher butchers around the country must be shocked to find that they now run &#8220;secular&#8221; businesses. On this view of the world, even a seller of Bibles is &#8220;secular.&#8221; Hobby Lobby&#8217;s affiliate, Mardel, sells Bibles and other Christian-themed material, but because it makes a profit the government has now declared it &#8220;secular.&#8221;&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Thus the owner of a business is declared to be separate from any business that he runs. With such a wedge in place, people will have to decide between creating a business to serve the public but then violating their beliefs to follow the government regulations, or seek another way to earn a living. My suspicion is that if this reasoning is upheld, businesses by religious people will purposely remain small to avoid the government&#8217;s immoral regulations.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;<em>When the righteous rejoice, there is great glory; but when the wicked arise, men hide themselves<\/em>&#8221; (Proverbs 28:12).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Source: Steven Ertelt, &#8220;Obama Admin Tells Court: Hobby Lobby Must Obey HHS Mandate,&#8221; LifeNews.com 01 November 2012. The government continues to push for change by insisting that businesses pay for birth control pills and &#8220;morning after&#8221; pills as a part of their employee&#8217;s insurance plans, even if the owners of the company object to such&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[42],"tags":[158,310],"class_list":["post-35640","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-issues","tag-business","tag-government"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":16250,"url":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/should-a-woman-head-the-government\/","url_meta":{"origin":35640,"position":0},"title":"Should a woman head the government?","author":"Jeffrey Hamilton","date":"September 5, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Question: I've perused your answered question section, and though this \"Does I Timothy 2:11-12 only apply to the assembly?\" answer touches on the subject somewhat, it doesn't specifically address a question I have. What do you think the Bible's teaching is on whether women can participate in government? With figures\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Answer&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Answer","link":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/category\/answer\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":47764,"url":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/is-the-stock-market-considered-gambling\/","url_meta":{"origin":35640,"position":1},"title":"Is the stock market considered gambling?","author":"Jeffrey Hamilton","date":"March 26, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"Question: Is the stock market considered gambling because they are no guarantees and it involves a risk of loss? When one buys stock they do it in hopes of that stock going up and that could be considered covetousness, greed and not being content; otherwise, they could just put their\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Answer&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Answer","link":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/category\/answer\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":87100,"url":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/is-using-a-vpn-wrong\/","url_meta":{"origin":35640,"position":2},"title":"Is using a VPN wrong?","author":"Jeffrey Hamilton","date":"May 9, 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"Question: Hello, I've seen that you answer practical questions from people. I've been struggling with a dilemma about using a VPN to evade geographical restrictions imposed by the commercial blockade on Cuba. I'm working on a website for affiliate marketing. I didn't consider the VPN, but that started to resonate\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Answer&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Answer","link":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/category\/answer\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":39457,"url":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/are-multi-level-marketing-businesses-good-investments\/","url_meta":{"origin":35640,"position":3},"title":"Are multi-level marketing businesses good investments?","author":"Jeffrey Hamilton","date":"June 26, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Question: First of all, I just want to say how I have really enjoyed reading some of the blog posts. My boyfriend is going through a tough decision, and I have a bad feeling about it, but I wanted to follow up with the Scripture to make sure that his\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Answer&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Answer","link":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/category\/answer\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":8580,"url":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/is-it-okay-to-listen-to-secular-music\/","url_meta":{"origin":35640,"position":4},"title":"Is it okay to listen to secular music?","author":"Jeffrey Hamilton","date":"February 13, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Question: Hi! I have e-mailed before concerning if we could have\u00a0facial hair. I have come to you again for some help concerning secular music. My question is: Is it ok to listen to it or is it against God's Word? I myself believe that it serves no purpose but to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Answer&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Answer","link":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/category\/answer\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":32749,"url":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/united-states-founding-fathers-on-god-and-religion\/","url_meta":{"origin":35640,"position":5},"title":"United States&#8217; Founding Fathers on God and Religion","author":"Jeffrey Hamilton","date":"February 28, 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"Source:\u00a0Original Intent\u00a0by David Barton \"Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.\" -- John Adams \"The great pillars of all government and of social life ... [are] virtue, morality, and religion. This is the armor, my friend,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Issues&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Issues","link":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/category\/issues\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35640","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35640"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35640\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35640"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35640"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35640"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}