This Ross Douthat piece made me ponder Reformed thinking on Sphere Sovereignty in the wake of the uproar over the court’s decision on Hobby Lobby.

My feelings on the Hobby Lobby ruling are mixed.

On one hand I’ve felt the uproar over the decision from the left is overblown. People aren’t blocked from services, they have to pay for them out of their own pocket. If you’re a MediCal recipient you get no dental or vision benefits while you can get abortion and your IUD paid for. These kinds of holes exist all over.

On the other it highlights that employers are the ones making insurance decisions over their employees which not the best system. I don’t want employers telling their employees what to do with their compensation. We wouldn’t want an atheist employer cutting peoples pay because they donate to a church. If medical insurance is part of compensation employees should have maximum liberty. I’d prefer a single payer system or a voucher system, but I think everyone sees that the current US system is a mess.

If the Hobby Lobby decision went the other way it might move conscientious employers to stop giving health insurance all together to avoid that quagmire. We don’t want this.  

The Reformed idea of sphere sovereignty imagines that Christians apart from the institutional church will live out their religious ideals in the market place. In that light the Supreme Court decision might be seen as protecting sphere sovereignty.  We don’t want everything running under church structures just to benefit from US regulatory laws.