The Mars Hill Church Mailing List Was Being Distributed By…John Doe?

Not really, but that was the name given to register Churchleaderslist.com. You’ll remember that churchleaderslist.com was the website used to offer Mars Hill Church’s The Resurgence mailing list to the public. Churchleaderslist.com was pulled from the web and from twitter after it was learned that the list still belonged to Mars Hill Church. Craig Gross who purchased and used the list told Christianity Today that former Mars Hill Church spokesperson Justin Dean had sold him the list and then refunded the money after it became public knowledge that the list was still the property of Mars Hill Church.
After being offline for about a week, Justin Dean resurfaced and issued a vague apology about the mailing list. In his apology, he did not take churchleaderslist.com or say that he was responsible for offering the list to the public. I asked Dean several times if he was behind churchleaderslist.com from the beginning without any answer.
The identity of the registrant of churchleaderslist.com was hidden via privacy shield supplied by a Whoisproxy.com Ltd. This is a common manner of shielding addresses and phone numbers from the public. However, such shielding is not supposed to be done for unethical or illegal purposes. Last week, I wrote the privacy company about the matter. I was informed that the privacy shield would be removed which it was earlier today. Here is the registration information now:

Domain Name: churchleaderslist.com
Registry Domain ID: 1906809784_DOMAIN_COM-VRSN
Registrar WHOIS Server: whois.rrpproxy.net
Registrar URL: https://domains.google.com/
Updated Date: 2015-03-24T03:11:45.0Z
Creation Date: 2015-03-03T17:54:03.0Z
Registrar Registration Expiration Date: 2016-03-03T17:54:03.0Z
Registrar: Google Inc.
Registrar IANA ID: 895
Registrar Abuse Contact Email: registrar-abuse[at]google.com
Registrar Abuse Contact Phone: +1.877-237-6466
Domain Status: clientTransferProhibited
Registry Registrant ID: 
Registrant Name: John Doe
Registrant Organization: Doe
Registrant Street: 1234 Doe
Registrant City: Beverly Hills
Registrant State/Province: CA
Registrant Postal Code: 90210
Registrant Country: US
Registrant Phone: +1.7145551212
Registrant Phone Ext: 
Registrant Fax: 
Registrant Fax Ext: 
Registrant Email: [email protected]

John Doe? By law, information provided in the registration of a domain is supposed to be factual. However, I doubt John Doe residing at 1234 Doe in Beverly Hills is the real owner. According to a contact at Google, there is no additional underlying information available. A search of the domain history turns up nothing more of interest. From the beginning of March, when the domain was registered, the owner was protecting the identity of John Doe.
As it turns out, [email protected] may actually be a working email. A search for this email on Google reveals the email attached to a domain owned by Justin Dean since 2013 — churchcomm.com. If you place this address in the address line of your browser, you will be redirected to the website of Ministry Communicators Association, a non-profit founded by Dean. Dean has apparently changed the registration information since March 28 because one needs to go to the Google cache to find the [email protected] address.

Whois Record:
Domain Name: CHURCHCOMM.COM
Registry Domain ID: 1824012583_DOMAIN_COM-VRSN
Registrar WHOIS Server: whois.enom.com
Registrar URL: www.enom.com
Updated Date: 2014-07-30T00:16:13.00Z
Creation Date: 2013-08-28T15:39:00.00Z
Registrar Registration Expiration Date: 2015-08-28T15:39:47.00Z
Registrar: ENOM, INC.
Registrar IANA ID: 48
Registrar Abuse Contact Email: [email protected]
Registrar Abuse Contact Phone: +1.4252982646
Reseller: NAMECHEAP.COM
Domain Status: ok
Registry Registrant ID:
Registrant Name: DOMAIN GUY
Registrant Organization: DOMAIN GUY
Registrant Street: 123 DOMAIN WAY
Registrant City: DOMAIN
Registrant State/Province: IA
Registrant Postal Code: 50126
Registrant Country: US
Registrant Phone: +1.1234567
Registrant Phone Ext:
Registrant Fax:
Registrant Fax Ext:
Registrant Email: [email protected]

Since Dean is also registrant for several Mars Hill Church websites (including marshill.com), this information does not prove that Dean operated on his own or that Mars Hill or former officer of Mars Hill wasn’t involved. According to the Church Leaders List website, several Christian leaders helped maintain the list. It is plausible to wonder about the possibility that others (either at the church or formerly with the church) were also involved in order to derive some benefit from the mailing list.
The practical significance of this is that Mars Hill continues to operate as a non-profit entity with even less transparency than before the church stopped having public services. Millions of dollars of assets are in play paid for by former members, some of whom were forced out because they asked too many questions. I asked the current president of Mars Hill Church, Kerry Dodd, for comment but have received no reply.

Should Discrimination Ever Be Permitted In the Name of Religious Freedom?

The saga of Indiana’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act has intensified the conversation about religious reasons for discrimination. Are there ever any defensible religiously based reasons for discriminating against a protected class?

One source I consulted on this was the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission guidance on religious discrimination. The following section seems relevant to the matter of competing discrimination claims (religious v. something else):

Thus, a religious organization is not permitted to engage in racially discriminatory hiring by asserting that a tenet of its religious beliefs is not associating with people of other races.  Similarly, a religious organization is not permitted to deny fringe benefits to married women but not to married men by asserting a religiously based view that only men can be the head of a household.

EXAMPLE 7
Sex Discrimination Not Excused

Justina works at Tots Day Care Center.  Tots is run by a religious organization that believes that, while women may work outside of the home if they are single or have their husband’s permission, men should be the heads of their households and the primary providers for their families.  Believing that men shoulder a greater financial responsibility than women, the organization pays female teachers less than male teachers.  The organization’s practice of unequal pay based on sex constitutes unlawful discrimination.[49]

The footnote for the case of Justina goes to the following court decision:

EEOC v. Fremont Christian Sch., 781 F.2d 1362 (9th Cir. 1986) (religious school violated Title VII and the Equal Pay Act when it provided “head of household” health insurance benefits only to single persons and married men).

Think about it. There may be bakers and florists and photographers who still believe miscegenation is wrong for religious reasons. Should a photographer’s religious objection to taking pictures at a wedding of two people of different races be protected? Should the act of refusing to take pictures be protected behavior? The EEOC suggest that the answer would be no.
To the example above. If owners of a daycare are forced to pay equal wages to men and women in violation of their religious beliefs, do the owners suffer religious discrimination? According to EEOC v. Fremont Christian, the Christian school engaged in unlawful discrimination by failing to treat married women the same as married men. Thus, sex discrimination trumps religious freedom.
The open question is does the government’s interest in non-discrimination override religious reasons for such discrimination. If so, what set of facts could lead a court to say certain religious objections trump the government’s interest in equal treatment?

Commentary on Indiana's Religious Freedom Restoration Act – Some Good, Some Not so Good

I have been reading a lot about the Religious Freedom Restoration Acts in Indiana and Arkansas. In addition, I have been reading background materials to the bills. The material is inherently interesting and I want to firm up my thinking on the matter.
In doing so, I have run across helpful and unhelpful op-eds and commentary. This post annotates some of those sources. I plan to post some additional information and commentary through the week.
First, I want to post the articles which appear to me to be accurate and are therefore helpful. I may not agree with every conclusion but as far as I can tell the information is right.
What Will the Indiana Religious Freedom Law Really Do? by Jonathan Adler – The accurate articles I present at this point (I may add more) mostly come from the Volokh Conspiracy, a legal blog published by the Washington Post. I think this is the best blog to follow on this issue. Adler’s article refers the reader to an earlier Volokh post about how the RFRA is supposed to work.

Therefore, the rule now is that there is a religious exemption regime as to federal statutes (under the federal RFRA), and as to state statutes in the about half the states that have state RFRAs or state constitutional exemption regimes. Religious objectors in those jurisdictions may demand exemptions from generally applicable laws that substantially burden the objectors’ practice, which the government must grant unless it can show that applying the laws is the least restrictive means of serving a compelling government interest.

In the Indiana case, bakers who don’t want to bake a gay wedding cake may demand an exemption from a jurisdiction law (some cities in Indiana added sexual orientation to their non-discrimination ordinances) which requires non-discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity. Unless the government in the jurisdiction can show a compelling government interest in enforcement of the non-discrimination ordinance as the least restrictive means of enforcing fair and equal treatment.
Those who say they want religious freedom but don’t want discrimination aren’t playing fair with the language. At times, religious freedom to some means discrimination against others.
Indiana to Exempt Civil Rights Protections in Religious Freedom Restoration Act by Dale Carpenter – Carpenter breaks down how Indiana’s amendments to the RFRA will work. Carpenter wrote:

Overall, if it passes and is signed, the amendment is a significant carve-out from the state RFRA, the first recognition by the state that sexual orientation and gender identity are matters of legitimate anti-discrimination concern, and an important first step toward a comprehensive anti-discrimination law in the state.

Common sense, a little respect about now might calm the religious waters by Barry Hankins – Hankins, an historian at Baylor University gives a good background on the RFRA controversy. In the end, the RFRA doesn’t guarantee discrimination against gays on religious grounds will prevail in court. According to Hankins:

It’s worth noting that New Mexico has an RFRA and a Human Rights Act that protects gay people. When a photographer there tried to use RFRA to refuse service at a gay commitment ceremony, she lost. The government showed successfully in court that there existed a compelling interest for the state’s anti-discrimination protections. That case has a lot to do with why Arizona, Arkansas and Indiana have now passed their own RFRAs.

Supporters in those states hope their RFRAs will be tougher than New Mexico’s. But be clear, RFRA laws do not give people the right to discriminate against gays. Rather, they say in part that if someone violates an anti-discrimination law on religious grounds, in a court proceeding the burden of proof will fall on the government to show a compelling interest for why the law should trump religious freedom.

The following articles seem less than helpful because they are either inaccurate or make conclusions which can’t be supported by the facts presented.

Intellectual Dishonesty is Winning Every Time by David Carlin – Dr. Carlin is depressed because things aren’t going his way. Carlin accuses the left of intellectual dishonesty when he engages in some of his own. Carlin said that the RFRA

…simply allowed religious believers not to be coerced by government into doing things forbidden by their conscience. Nothing more. Just the way we have always allowed Quakers and other conscientious objectors to refuse to participate in war. It wasn’t that we agreed with the pacifists; we did not. But we used to think that an honest conscience was such a precious thing that it should be respected even when erroneous.

Legal history is filled with decisions where an honest conscience has not been respected if the result is discrimination against a protected class. In some cases (the Quakers, the Amish), conscience has been respected, however in others (leaders of many Southern churches, business owners who want to pay women less than men) conscience has given way to a government interest in fair treatment of all citizens.
RFRA Not Like Jim Crow Laws at All by Jonah Goldberg – Goldberg may be correct that the RFRA is not like Jim Crow but he doesn’t help much by his simplified explanation of Jim Crow laws.  Goldberg argues that segregation laws were primarily economic constructions enforced by the government to forbid tolerant business owners from desegregating. He gives lip service to the pervasive segregation of the laws but then summarizes the situation:

Comparing RFRA laws to Jim Crow laws turns all of this on its head. Jim Crow laws forced tolerant businesses to be intolerant of blacks. No one, anywhere, is suggesting that people who want to do business with same-sex couples should be barred from doing so. The argument is whether the government should force a few ardent Christians (or Jews or Muslims) to participate in a ceremony that violates their faith.

While I think the RFRA law is not like a Jim Crow law, I don’t think Goldberg helps himself or his argument by misleading people about the pervasive nature of segregation in the post-Civil War South.