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Supreme Court Asked “What is a Minister?”

When is a minister really a minister? That’s the question the Supreme Court will grapple with in the coming months. A conflict between a commissioned minister and Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church has made it all the way to the supreme judicial body of the land. There are several issues at stake:

(1) whether a church body has the right to handle disputes according to its own tenets of faith,
(2) when is someone not a “minister” but simply an employee, and
(3) how to apply the 1st amendment in the case of Christian schools.

The Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod, of which Hosanna-Tabor is a part, has struggled greatly over the years with the question of when her ministers and members may appeal to “secular authority” to resolve disputes.

Read complete article at - http://blog.chron.com/lutherant/2011/11/supreme-court-asked-what-is-a-minister/

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