ANALYSIS: The “Breaking Bad” finale was great. But was it good?

WARNING: More spoilers below than the Book of Revelation.

Skyler White (Anna Gunn) in a scene from the final episode of “Breaking Bad,” which aired Sunday (Sept. 29). Photo courtesy Ursula Coyote/AMC This image available for Web and print publication. For questions, contact Sally Morrow.

(RNS) Nearly a week after the “Breaking Bad” finale aired, the ending of the megahit cable series continues to gratify, infuriate, and above all fascinate the moralists — professional and amateur — who constitute the audience’s fanboy core and who always framed the most vigorous debates about the show.

That’s understandable: The series at its dark heart is a study of good and evil, and more specifically about how good people can do bad things, how they become bad, or whether we all have a seed of evil within us that can germinate and run amok under the right conditions.

Further proof that the series’ drama is a profoundly religious one is the fact that theologically minded people are still fiercely disputing exactly what the ending meant, and what the series — and its anti-hero, Walter White — stood for in moral and metaphysical terms.

Is the chemistry-teacher-turned-meth-cooker an irredeemable monster? Or maybe he is just one of us — a struggling, middle-class worker bee who gets a diagnosis of lung cancer and, hearing how profitable the drug trade can be, uses his talents to concoct premium-grade drugs to make a quick score that will support his wife and children long after he’s dead.

Certainly the ending was inevitable and unsurprising: White dies, as he had to. The show’s creator, Vince Gilligan, made it clear – yes, some held out hope over the course of five seasons — that “this story was finite all along. It’s a story that starts at A and ends at Z.”

But how Walt died, who he would take down with him — or spare — and whether he ended in a state of grace were burning questions for devotees of the series, as they are for all believers.

Walter White (Bryan Cranston) in a scene from “Breaking Bad” – Season 5, Episode 16. Photo courtesy Ursula Coyote/AMC This image available for Web and print publication. For questions, contact Sally Morrow.

Eschatology, the study of our ultimate fate, is what all religious exploring points to. So do TV dramas.

“I want to believe there is some sort of cosmic balancing of the scales at the end of it all,” Gilligan said last year. “I’d just like to believe there’s some point to it all. I’d like to believe that there is. Everything is just too random and chaotic absent that.”

Not surprisingly, many who watched the finale saw a light at the end of the series for Walt. One genius of the show (there were so many) is that it co-opted viewers into rooting for Mr. White — as Walt’s co-conspirator Jesse Pinkman always called his onetime high school teacher — no matter how low he sank.

So despite the trail of carnage and ruined lives that Walt left behind, the hope that he would find grace at the end, that his death would somehow sanctify, was overpowering.

Critics as varied as Emily Bazelon in Slate and Allen St. John in Forbes declared that “Breaking Bad” was ultimately a “love story” because White managed to do what he set out to do in the first season: He found a way to provide for his family, and at the end he finally confessed his original sin in becoming the drug kingpin dubbed Heisenberg.

“I did it for me,” as he tells his devastated wife, Skyler. “I liked it. I was good at it. And I was really … alive.”

Writer Sonny Bunch even saw Gilligan slyly turning White into Jesus Christ — the wounds in Walt’s hand and side, his reference to the view of the Sangre de Cristo (Blood of Christ) mountains, his “sacrificing himself to save the people he loved,” his cruciform death pose. White also “made peace with those who had wronged him and those he had wronged (one way or another) so as to prepare himself for the afterlife.”

Well, “making peace” may be pushing it. White actually used his intellectual gifts one last time to build a Rube Goldberg killing machine and orchestrate a bloody — if improbable, without divine aid — denouement that destroyed all his enemies.

“His moment of clarity at the end doesn’t make up for all the hubris of Heisenberg,” Bazelon wrote. “But it did mean I could wholeheartedly root for his scheme of revenge.”

And that’s the theological problem. White used evil to the very end to accomplish something good. But Walter Wink would not approve. Wink, a theologian who died last year, called this rationale the “myth of redemptive violence” — the very antithesis of the Christian message but the “dominant religion” of the modern world.

“The belief that violence ‘saves’ is so successful because it doesn’t seem to be mythic in the least. Violence simply appears to be the nature of things. It’s what works. It seems inevitable, the last and, often, the first resort in conflicts,” Wink wrote. “The gods favor those who conquer. Conversely, whoever conquers must have the favor of the gods.”

Moreover, Walt’s “confession” at the end was hardly repentance. He did not give himself up to the authorities or allow himself to be publicly humiliated. He died the way he wanted, caressing the cold steel of the meth lab cookers the way Gollum — the creepy, corrupted Hobbit of “The Lord of the Rings” series — fondled the magical golden ring.

“He’s patting his Precious, in Lord of the Rings terms,” Gilligan said after the finale. “He’s with the thing he seems to love the most in the world, which is his work and his meth lab and he just doesn’t care about being caught because he knows he’s on the way out. So it could be argued that he pays for his sins at the end or it could just as easily be argued that he gets away with it.”

Even if White does get away with it by cheating earthly justice, his ending can be seen as instructive — as long as it is viewed as a cautionary tale rather than a model for living, and dying.

And you have to appreciate the fact that Gilligan ended the show so clearly and cleanly.

Other television anti-heroes have faded to an ambiguous black, like Tony Soprano, or suffered a premature demise at the hands of network executives before we could learn their true destiny — think Tom Kane in “Boss,” or Al Swearengen in “Deadwood.” And we still await the fate of compromised characters like Nucky Thompson in “Boardwalk Empire,” Don Draper in “Mad Men,” and Frank Underwood in “House of Cards.” Not to mention most of the cast of “Game of Thrones.”

We all find ourselves rooting for them. But rooting for them to do what, exactly? The moral logic that White used to engineer the ending of “Breaking Bad” is the same rationale he used to start his meth business. And we saw where that led.

View the original article here

Winners and losers in the Pew Research poll on American Jews

(RNS) As the proverbial dust settles on the new Pew Research Center poll of 3,475 Jewish Americans released Tuesday (Oct. 1), experts are starting to sort out the study’s “winners” and “losers.”

Orthodox Union logo courtesy Orthodox Union This image available for Web publication. For questions, contact Sally Morrow.

 – Orthodox Jews

Yitzchok Adlerstein, an Orthodox rabbi, summed it up in the online Orthodox journal Cross-Currents:

The survey, he wrote, offers a “depressing outlook for the future of any continuation of Jewish affiliation outside of Orthodoxy.”

Among the study’s findings: Orthodox Jews are among the most religiously committed groups in the country. They are younger on average and tend to have much larger families than the overall Jewish population.

Consider: The average number of children born to Orthodox Jews (4.1) is about twice the overall Jewish average (1.9), suggesting that Orthodoxy’s share of the Jewish population will grow, despite not-so-good retention rates.

If anything, Adlerstein’s article pointed to what he saw as a “serious under-reporting of Orthodox strength.” For example, he said, many Jews — perhaps tens of thousands — identify with the Chabad-Lubavitch movement whose members don’t always consider themselves Orthodox, though they meet the study’s definitions.

It should not be surprising that the Orthodox movement, much like strict forms of Islam, and Christianity, is strong, said David Wolpe, Conservative rabbi of the Los Angeles-based Sinai Temple.

“Why should Jews be different?” he said.

But Wolpe cautioned against reading too much into trends. “Fifty years ago, they were saying goodbye to Orthodoxy,” he said. “Extrapolation is necessary but also notoriously tricky.”

– Israel

Emotional attachment to Israel has not waned among American Jews in the past decade.

Overall, 70 percent of Jews said they feel either very attached or somewhat attached to Israel, essentially unchanged since 2000-2001. In addition, 43 percent of Jews have been to Israel, and of those, 23 percent have visited more than once.

And although many American Jews express reservations about Israel’s approach to the peace process, 40 percent of Jews say they believe God gave the land of Israel to the Jewish people.

Tellingly, more than 40 percent of those surveyed said caring about Israel is a big part of what it means to be Jewish.

– Reform Jews

The survey shows that Reform Judaism continues to be the largest Jewish denominational movement in the United States. Thirty-five percent of all U.S. Jews identify as Reform.

Joshua Stanton, a Reform rabbi in New Jersey, said he took pride in the study’s findings.

“I think the Reform movement can adapt most quickly and continue its process of growth,” he said. “It connects the wisdom of the past to changes taking place in the present and has since its founding.”

But while the Reform movement may seem young and future-oriented, its members have the highest rates of intermarriage of the denominationally affiliated Jews. Fully half of all Reform Jews are in interfaith marriages. The study suggests children of interfaith marriages are far more likely to marry outside the faith.

In addition, Reform Jews report low rates of religious vitality. Only 16 percent of Reform Jews say religion is very important in their lives (compared to 83 percent of Orthodox Jews).

The United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism logo courtesy The United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism This image available for Web publication. For questions, contact Sally Morrow.

– Conservative Jews

Only 18 percent of Jews identify with the Conservative movement. More worrying, 30 percent of those raised Conservative have become Reform Jews (while 28 percent of those raised Reform have left the ranks of Jews by religion entirely.)

In addition, the median age of Conservative Jews (55) was highest of all the Jewish denominations.

The aging of Conservative Jews should be a cause for concern, said Jason Miller, a Detroit-based Conservative rabbi.

“I grew up at a time when Conservative Judaism’s vibrancy was felt in the teen youth groups and Ramah summer camping movement,” said Miller. “I don’t think that vibrancy will be felt among our children. To sustain a movement, there must be a committed, young demographic.”

 Caveat:

Finally, some rabbis said they were uncomfortable with judging “winners” or “losers.”

“The big issue, in my opinion, is how the denominations use this information in light of the narratives they’ve created, which define and sustain themselves,” said Josh Yuter, rabbi of the Stanton Street Shul (Orthodox) in New York City.

Rabbi Rick Jacobs, president of the Union for Reform Judaism, agreed that there was a danger in trying to award winners and losers to one denomination or the other.

“The Pew study reveals challenges and opportunities everywhere across the spectrum of Jewish life. What’s important is that the Jewish people win, which will happen as we continue to find ever more inspiring ways to broaden and deepen Jewish life.”

View the original article here

Quote of the Day: Media consultant Phil Cooke

“Get a life. After all, why did you give in the first place? To build something significant for God and for humanity or to get your name engraved on a sidewalk brick?”

_ Media consultant Phil Cooke’s advice to disgruntled donors upset that their memorial bricks at California’s Crystal Cathedral are being pulled up at the now-Catholic campus for new landscaping. His commentary was published by Charisma magazine.

View the original article here

Francis in Assisi * Hobby Hanukkah * Communion burger: Friday’s Religion News Roundup

Hobby Lobby CEO Steve Green has apologized to Jews after an employee reportedly told a Jewish customer that “we don’t cater to you people,” but didn’t exactly say his stores would start carrying Hanukkah or Passover goods.

Megachurch pioneer Chuck Smith has died at 86; he founded the Calvary Chapel movement that helped give birth to the modern megachurch, praise-and-worship music and seeker-friendlyism.

Two-thirds of American Catholics agree with the pope that the church has become “obsessed” with sexual morality, and Francis has an approval rating of something like 96 percent.

Speaking of, the Catholic Herald has a pictorial tour of the pope’s pilgrimage today to the hometown of his namesake, St. Francis of Assisi.

ABC chronicles the opening prayers of the House and Senate chaplains during the ongoing shutdown. Lord knows this town could use a divine assist right about now.

So this sounds like a good idea: a Chicago restaurant is serving up a “Ghost Burger” that features the “Blood of Christ” (a red wine reduction) and, of course, a Communion wafer.

(As an aside, there’s something called the Catholic Foodie blog. Who knew?)

The Supremes kick off their 2013 term on Monday, and look for them to take a rightward tack on a number of social issues.

There’s a new Catholic-run dorm at a public university in Alabama, and a few church-state watchdogs think it’s not such a good idea.

Some students at Azusa Pacific are rallying behind a theology professor who came out as transgender and was subsequently asked to leave the Christian school.

You may have seen the viral video featuring the disgruntled videographer who danced her way out the door. Those crazy kids over at the Jewish Telegraphic Agency have responded, offering her a job.

Media consultant Phil Cooke has a message for disgruntled donors to the Crystal Cathedral who are upset that memorial bricks are being torn up at the now-Catholic campus: “Get a life.”

Is your church hitting the financial rocks? There’s a growing industry of church consultants who can help.

Our own Brian Pellot chronicles 12 “blasphemous” pieces of art that have been censored for inflaming religious tensions.

Speaking of inflaming religious tensions, four Saudi men were sentenced to thousands of lashes after being convicted of dancing naked on a car.

It’s only getting worse off the coast of Sicily, where officials fear that 300 African migrants died when their rickety boat caught fire and sank as they traveled to Europe seeking a new life. Worth remembering that Pope Francis’ first trip was to the nearby island of Lampedusa, where many of the migrants arrive.

Dissident Catholic theologian Hans Kung is considering one last act of defiance: assisted suicide to relieve him of Parkinson’s Disease.

How to unite Egypt’s Muslim majority and Christian minority? Behind the country’s red-black-and-white flag, writes our own Monique El-Faizy.

How to unite our far-flung readers? Behind the RNS daily Religion News Roundup. Sign up below — it’s free! — if you haven’t already:

Just click the "Subscribe" button below and fill out the form. We'll send the Roundup to your inbox for free.

View the original article here

Poll: Catholics agree with Pope Francis that church is ‘obsessed’ with moral issues

(RNS) Pope Francis rocked the Catholic world last month when he gave a wide-ranging interview in which he declared that the church had become “obsessed” with a few moral issues and needed to find a “new balance.”

Parishioners listen to the homily during Catholic Mass at St. Therese Little Flower parish in Kansas City, Mo., on Sunday, May 20, 2012. RNS photo by Sally Morrow This image available for Web and print publication. For questions, contact Sally Morrow.

Now a new poll indicates that American Catholics think he’s right, and by a wide margin.

The survey, released Friday (Oct. 4), by Quinnipiac University, shows that two in three (68 percent) adult Catholics questioned said they agreed with the pontiff’s observation that the church has become too focused on issues such as homosexuality, abortion and contraception.

Just 23 percent disagreed, and the breakdown was virtually the same across age groups and among both weekly Mass-goers and those who attend church less frequently.

The national poll — conducted the last week of September — also showed that American Catholics have a favorable (53 percent) or very favorable (36 percent) opinion of Francis, and just 4 percent view him negatively.

“American Catholics liked what they heard when Pope Francis said the church should stop talking so much about issues like gay marriage, abortion and contraception,” said Maurice Carroll, director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute.

The survey also found that Catholic support for same-sex marriage continues to be strong, as other surveys have found, with six-in-10 Catholics approving of gay marriage and 31 percent opposed. That’s slightly above the national 56 percent approval rating.

But the latest research also indicates that support for same-sex marriage only drops slightly among weekly churchgoers, to 53 percent, with 40 percent opposed. That finding could cause consternation among social conservatives who argue that the most devout Catholics tend to support the hierarchy’s position against gay marriage.

Another finding likely to provoke concern among tradition-minded church leaders: Catholics support the idea of ordaining women priests by a 60-30 margin; it only drops to 52-38 percent among those who attend service about once a week. There is almost no gender gap in that support.

The number of Catholics surveyed was not large — 392 adult Catholics out of an overall selection of 1,776 respondents, and the margin of error is plus or minus 5 percentage points. But the trend lines seem to be in keeping with other research.

KRE/AMB END GIBSON

View the original article here

Video: It’s complicated – Jews on Pew

“The new study of American Jews by the Pew Research Center shows how complicated Jewish identity is right now. To try to work some of this out, we went to the streets of New York to ask Jews what they personally think it means to be Jewish.” – The Jewish Daily Forward

Video courtesy The Jewish Daily Forward

View the original article here

Church bells ring in a corner of Turkey once the site of Armenian genocide

DIYARBAKIR, Turkey (RNS) For almost a century, the bells of St. Giragos — a magnificent 14th-century church built of sturdy black basalt bricks — were silent.

Severely damaged during the 1915 massacre and deportation of local Christians, it stood roofless and abandoned for decades, a poignant reminder of the void left by the killing of its congregants.

Arahim Demirciyen stands outside the reconsecrated St. Giorgos church in Diyarbakir, Turkey. Photo by Gil Shefler This image available for Web and print publication. For questions, contact Sally Morrow.

Yet for several months now the tolling of bells can once again be heard emanating from the belfry and echoing through the city’s narrow alleyways and busy markets.

St. Giragos recently underwent an extensive $3 million dollar restoration that included a new roof, the reconstruction of all seven of its original altars — a unique feature for a church, which usually has just one — and the return of an iron bell to its belfry.

“Right now the bells are just symbolic,” said Arahim Demirciyen, an ethnic Armenian who rings the bells twice a day. “A priest is currently in training in the Armenian quarter in Jerusalem. When he finishes and arrives here we can also start holding regular weekly services.”

The reopening of what church officials say is the largest Armenian place of worship in southeastern Turkey is part of a re-evaluation by Kurdish Muslims of the active role their ancestors played in the killings of minorities including Armenians, Assyrians, Greeks and Jews in the twilight years of the Ottoman Empire.

Last April, the Peace and Democracy Party, which seeks more freedom for Kurds in the southeastern part of the country, acknowledged the atrocities carried out in the area 98 years ago and called on the Turkish government to recognize the killings of Armenians as an act of genocide.

Its declaration flew in the face of Turkey’s longtime insistence that the mass killings during and immediately after World War I were not premeditated but part of a civil war that pitted the region’s peoples against each other in a desperate struggle for power.

Abdullah Demirbas, the Kurdish mayor of Diyarbakir, has presided over several initiatives aimed at commemorating his city’s once numerous Christians. Under his leadership, the municipality paid for 15 percent of the renovation of St. Giragos, unveiled a monument in memory of the 1915 victims at a local park and plans to open an Armenian museum.

Such acknowledgment comes as a breath of fresh air for the few dozen Armenians in Diyarbakir — a city where they were once a majority.

Over a glass of mint tea taken in the shade of St. Giragos’ courtyard, Demirciyen, the bell ringer, draws a line across his throat when describing the ordeal of his Armenian father.

In 1915 at the age of five, Demirciyen’s father was taken in by Muslims after his own family perished in the violence. Demirciyen identifies as an Armenian Muslim. And he feels an obligation to share his father’s survival story with the daily trickle of mostly Western tourists who come to see St. Giragos.

Ergun Ayik, who heads the foundation that funded most of the renovation of St. Giragos, estimates there are thousands of people of Armenian descent like Demirciyen in and around Diyarbakir.

While the opening of the church in Diyarbakir is good news for preservationists and supporters of minority rights, it does not indicate a nationwide phenomenon. In other parts of Turkey, the country’s Christian legacy is still under attack. In Trabzon, a city on the coast of the Black Sea, a Byzantine church has recently been converted into a mosque.

Even in Kurdish majority parts of Turkey like Diyarbakir, where official attitudes have changed drastically, resentment of Christians lingers.

When Switzerland banned building minarets in 2009 an irate group of Kurdish Muslims showed up at Diyarbakir’s Virgin Mary Assyrian church — perhaps the oldest in the city — and demanded its bells be removed.

“They said if Muslims couldn’t built minarets in Switzerland then we could not ring our bells here — like we were to blame,” recalled Yousef, the son of the church’s priest, Yusuf Akbulut, standing in the center of the church’s rotunda.

Police intervened and the bells continued to ring, yet it did little to make the last three Assyrian families in the city feel welcome. The last baptism took place two years ago.

“If we leave,” said Yousef, who asked that his full name not be used, “our churches will fall into disrepair and some might even be converted to mosques.”

View the original article here

Pope Francis walks in the shadow of namesake saint in Assisi

Pope Francis carries his crosier after celebrating Mass in the piazza outside the Basilica of St. Francis in Assisi, Italy, Oct. 4. The pontiff was making his first pilgrimage as pope to the birthplace of his papal namesake. Photo by Paul Haring/Catholic News Service This image available for Web and print publication. For questions, contact Sally Morrow.

ROME (RNS) Pope Francis on Friday (Oct. 4) traveled to Assisi, the central Italian hill town made famous by the pope’s namesake, St. Francis, where he renewed his call for Christians to forsake the pursuit of worldly possessions.

The medieval saint lived in poverty in order to dedicate his life to Christ, and the pope said Christians — not just Catholics — should seek to emulate the venerated patron saint of the poor, calling the pursuit of wealth a “cancer of society and the enemy of Christ.”

The pope warned that seeking worldly possessions leads to “vanity, arrogance, and pride.”

When he was elected pope last March, then-Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio surprised Vatican watchers by becoming the first pope in 2,000 years to pick the name Francis, and he has since looked to emulate the saint’s footsteps by keeping much of the luxuries of the papacy at arm’s length.

The pope also seems intent on reforming the church, following the work of St. Francis, who received a vision from God telling him to “rebuild my church.”

It was Francis’ second trip outside Rome in less than two weeks, following a Sept. 22 day trip to the Italian island of Sardinia, where he addressed the issue of worldly wealth and criticized what he called the “idolatry of money.”

Francis arrived in Assisi, about 120 miles north of Rome, at dawn at the Serafico Institute, a charitable organization that offers treatment to disabled children. While there, he greeted each of the more than 100 children gathered in the institute’s chapel, stopping to kiss several of them on the head or whisper into their ears.

Later in the day, Francis addressed a group of poor people in the same room where St. Francis is believed to have stripped off his clothes and given away his worldly possessions. The pope expressed anger at a “savage world” that “doesn’t help, doesn’t care if there are children in the world who die of hunger.”

His message of Christian charity comes at a poignant time in Italy, where the Italian government declared a day of mourning after more than 100 African migrants died in a shipwreck trying to reach the southern Italian island of Lampedusa, the site of the pope’s first trip outside Rome.

The pope said in Assisi that the victims and others affected by the tragedy were in his prayers. “Today is a day of tears,” Francis said. “These things go against the spirit of the world.”

View the original article here

UPDATE: Hobby Lobby apologizes, says it will carry Jewish holiday items

(RNS) The owner of the Hobby Lobby craft store chain, under fire because his stores did not carry Hanukkah merchandise and because of a reported employee’s remark that offended many Jews, has apologized and announced that some stores will begin to carry Jewish holiday items.

Steve Green, President of Hobby Lobby, speaks at the Religion News Writers Association Conference in Austin, Texas on Thursday (Sept. 26). RNS photo by Sally Morrow This image available for Web and print publication. For questions, contact Sally Morrow.

In back-to-back statements Thursday and Friday (Oct. 3 and 4), company president Steve Green said Hobby Lobby is sorry for comments “that may have offended anyone, especially our Jewish customers and friends,” and that it will carry Jewish-themed items in New York and New Jersey by early November “to test the market.”

That’s in time for Hanukkah, which begins this year on Nov. 27.

The company credited “overwhelming demand in the Northeast” for its decision and added: “We appreciate the feedback we’ve received from our customers, and we hope these products will meet their needs.”

Some have long taken issue with Hobby Lobby’s wide choice of Christmas items but lack of any Hanukkah merchandise, even in areas with a significant number of Jews. The apology and the merchandising decision are likely to gratify some within the Jewish community and elsewhere who wondered whether Green’s conservative Christianity translated into a disregard for Jewish customers.

Suspicions heightened this week after a report that a Hobby Lobby employee in the company’s Marlboro, N.J., store responded “we don’t cater to you people,” when asked if the store carried bar mitzvah cards.

Several publications, including Religion News Service, wrote about the controversy, stirring a heated online debate in which reactions ranged from cries of anti-Semitism to cries that Green is being demonized for his strong Christian faith.

On Friday, the Anti-Defamation League, a national group that counters anti-Semitism, accepted Hobby Lobby’s apology, and strongly defended the company.

“ADL firmly believes that the religious views of a business owner cannot be a basis to infringe upon the legal rights of others, but a store choosing not to carry Hanukkah items does not violate anyone’s rights,” read the statement, which was released before the announcement about the merchandising decision.

“Moreover, we have no reason to believe that Hobby Lobby has refused to stock Hanukkah items because of hostility to Jews or anti-Semitism,” the ADL statement continued.

In Hobby Lobby’s apology, Green outlined his connections to the Jewish community in the U.S. and Israel.

“Our family has a deep respect for the Jewish faith and those who hold its traditions dear,” read the statement.

“We’re proud contributors to Yad Vashem, (Israel’s official Holocaust museum) as well as to other museums and synagogues in Israel and the United States.”

The statement also noted that the company has “previously carried merchandise in our stores related to Jewish holidays.”

Marlboro blogger Ken Berwitz — who ignited the recent controversy with his account of Hobby Lobby’s responses to questions about the lack of Jewish items — said he was “gratified” by Green’s most recent announcement.

“I hope that this was simply a realization about what should be stocked in stores as opposed to being embarrassed into doing it,” he told Religion News Service.

“I think it’s the former,” he added.

Berwitz wrote on his “Hopelessly Partisan” blog that after calling the Marlboro Hobby Lobby recently, he was told Green’s Christian faith precluded the chain from carrying Jewish items.

When he then called Hobby Lobby headquarters in Oklahoma City, Berwitz said he was told the company was not stocking items for Hanukkah or Passover, but was not given a reason.

Green, a conservative billionaire, owns more than 550 Hobby Lobby stores nationwide, all of which are closed on Sunday, the Christian Sabbath. He is also known for his lawsuit against President Obama’s health care law, which he said forces him to provide employees with free insurance coverage for some contraceptive services that he objects to on religious grounds.

Here is Hobby Lobby’s apology in its entirety:

Statement from Hobby Lobby president Steve Green

OKLAHOMA CITY – Hobby Lobby President Steve Green has issued the following statement on behalf of the company:

“We sincerely apologize for any employee comments that may have offended anyone, especially our Jewish customers and friends. Comments like these do not reflect the feelings of our family or Hobby Lobby.

Our family has a deep respect for the Jewish faith and those who hold its traditions dear. We’re proud contributors to Yad Vashem, as well as to other museums and synagogues in Israel and the United States.

We are investigating this matter and absolutely do not tolerate discrimination at our company or our stores. We do not have any policies that discriminate; in fact, we have policies that specifically prohibit discrimination.

We have previously carried merchandise in our stores related to Jewish holidays. We select the items we sell in our stores based on customer demand. We are working with our buyers to re-evaluate our holiday items and what we will carry in the future.”

Here is Hobby Lobby’s statement about its decision to carry Jewish items:

    Hobby Lobby to carry Jewish holiday items

 OKLAHOMA CITY – Hobby Lobby President Steve Green issued the following statement on Oct. 4, 2013:

“Due to overwhelming demand in the Northeast, we are pleased to announce that we will begin offering Jewish holiday items in a number of stores to test the market in New York and New Jersey.

We will continue to evaluate the demand for products. We appreciate the feedback we’ve received from our customers, and we hope these products will meet their needs.

Customers can expect to see those items in stores in early November.”

KRE/YS END MARKOE

View the original article here

Supreme Court poised to turn right in 2013 term

WASHINGTON (RNS) After two blockbuster terms in which it saved President Obama’s health care law and advanced the cause of same-sex marriage, the Supreme Court appears poised to tack to the right in its upcoming term on a range of social issues, from abortion and contraception to race and prayer.

Members of the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments on Oct. 5 in a case that pits government anti-discrimination law against the autonomy of religious groups to hire and fire employees on the basis of religion. Photo courtesy U.S. Supreme Court This image available for Web publication. For questions, contact Sally Morrow.

The justices, whose term begins Monday (Oct. 9), could rule against racial minorities in two cases and abortion rights in one or two others. They also could uphold prayers at government meetings, ease restrictions on wealthy political donors, strike down federal environmental regulations and take a first bite out of Obamacare.

The court, whose work won’t be halted by the government shutdown, also may be ready to restrict the power of the federal government and stand up for states and municipalities in several cases, furthering their defense of federalism.

“They don’t defer to the other branches. They don’t seem to care about precedents,” said Stephen Wermiel, a constitutional law professor at American University Washington College of Law. The justices, he says, are “more than willing to step up to the plate.”

That was evident in June, when the court on successive days struck down the most important sections of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, over the objections of President Obama and congressional Democrats, and the Defense of Marriage Act of 1996, over the objection of Republicans.

“You could not have less deference to a legislative institution,” said David Salmons, an appellate lawyer who has argued 14 cases before the high court. “This is a court that’s very comfortable in exercising their power.”

Conservative interest groups, perhaps seeing their best chance in years to advance their causes, have argued aggressively in their briefs to the court not only for favorable rulings but for overturning some of the court’s time-honored precedents: a 37-year-old campaign finance decision, a 31-year-old ruling on racial integration, even a 93-year-old opinion allowing the federal government to supersede state laws when implementing international treaties.

“They think they have the wind at their back,” says Pamela Harris, a former Justice Department lawyer now teaching at Georgetown University Law Center.

Most of the high-profile cases on the docket fall into one of two categories: Lower courts sided either with liberal activists or federal agencies. They include:

A challenge to the Federal Election Commission’s limit on how much donors can contribute over two years to candidates, parties and political action committees. It comes from a Republican businessman, Shaun McCutcheon, who wants to exceed the current $123,200 cap.A defense by Michigan’s Republican attorney general of the state’s 2006 constitutional amendment banning affirmative-action policies at state universities. If the justices reverse the lower court’s decision, it could bolster such bans in other states, including California.The Greece, N.Y., town board’s defense of its policy allowing local clergy to deliver prayers at town board meetings. The lower court sided with two women who argued the predominance of Christian clergy and prayers is coercive.A challenge by abortion opponents to a Massachusetts law setting up 35-foot buffer zones around reproductive health clinics that perform abortions. The lower court dismissed what it labeled arguments “old and new, some of which are couched in a creative recalibration of First Amendment principles.”A defense by Oklahoma Republican officials of a state law that has the effect of blocking most medical abortions. The law bans off-label uses of drugs that end pregnancies, including RU-486, even though doctors routinely prescribe the drugs that way.

The court also is likely to choose from among dozens of challenges to the Obama health law’s requirement that employers include contraceptive services in preventive health insurance plans. In that case, lower courts have ruled both ways, and the government is among those seeking the high court’s review — but conservatives have the most to gain.

“The court will get another shot at the Affordable Care Act,” says Paul Clement, a former solicitor general under George W. Bush and the nation’s premier Supreme Court litigant. Clement represented states challenging the law in the historic 2012 case.

The medical abortion case probably won’t be the last effort to push the justices into further limits on abortion rights. More cases are in the pipeline, including state laws banning abortions after 20 weeks, mandating ultrasound tests and imposing new restrictions on abortion clinics.

Even the landmark cases most recently decided on same-sex marriage, voting rights and affirmative action could get encores at the high court in the near future. The lawyers who defeated California’s Proposition 8 ban on gay marriage joined a Virginia case that seeks to legalize the practice there.

Such cases, says Tom Goldstein, publisher of Scotusblog.com and a frequent Supreme Court litigant, are “making their way to the Supreme Court like a rocket ship, or a series of rocket ships.”

(Richard Wolf writes for USA Today)

View the original article here