1. Two religious freedom decisions at the Supreme Court this week:
a. Scotus struck down a Louisiana abortion law, 5-4, requiring abortionists to have hospital admitting privileges. Roberts joined the four liberals in the majority but wrote a concurring opinion.
WaPo: “The legal doctrine of stare decisis requires us, absent special circumstances, to treat like cases alike,” Roberts wrote in concurring with the decision. “The Louisiana law imposes a burden on access to abortion just as severe as that imposed by the Texas law, for the same reasons. Therefore Louisiana’s law cannot stand under our precedents.”
Axios: "Legal experts from both sides of the ideological divide still expect the court to ultimately chip away at access to abortion and narrow the scope of the precedents that make it legal."
Reaction from Denny Burk: "Single-issue voting based on Supreme Court appointments just took another massive hit. Gorsuch rendered major gay-rights victory just weeks ago, and now Roberts just rendered an abortion-rights victory."
b. Scotus struck down a Montana "Blaine amendment," a relic of 1800s anti-Catholic bigotry, that banned religious schools from a government funding program for private schools.
WaPo: "Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., writing for a conservative majority in the 5-to-4 ruling, said the Montana Supreme Court was wrong to strike down the program because of a provision in the state constitution that forbids public funds from going to religious institutions. The U.S. Constitution’s protection of religious freedom prevails, he said.
“A state need not subsidize private education,” Roberts wrote. “But once a state decides to do so, it cannot disqualify some private schools solely because they are religious.”"
2. VP Pence spoke at First Baptist Dallas, led by enthusiastic Trump supporter Robert Jeffress, for its annual "Freedom Sunday" worship service.
Pence tweeted about it with some photos here.
John Fea has a play-by-play and video link here.
Reactions from Shane Claiborne and Greg Thornbury.
3. "The Street Corner Where George Floyd Was Killed Has Become a Christian Revivalist Site: And it’s attracting a bunch of enterprising evangelists who have traveled there from outside the state."
For some Christian pastors and evangelists, the site is also becoming literal sacred ground: the heart of what they describe as a spiritual movement sprawling far beyond Minnesota. “I would describe this as revival and awakening,” said Joshua Giles, a local pastor who has been coming to the site to pray and preach for several weeks. Giles, who is Black, said he has taken part in conversions and spontaneous baptisms there, and that at least one woman had been miraculously healed of persistent pain in her arm. Other evangelists have shared similar accounts online. “The spiritual climate has completely shifted,” local evangelist Joshua Lindquist, who is white, said in a video posted to Facebook. “We believe that this location is going to turn into an epicenter of revival.”
...
Some politically conservative Christian celebrities have been attracted to the area, too. Alveda King, a conservative activist and niece of Martin Luther King Jr., called in and shared a message and a song over the loudspeaker at one point. Sean Feucht, a popular California worship-music leader who ran a failed campaign for Congress as a Republican this spring, performed with a band at the scene on June 13.
