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In Religious Arbitration, Scripture Is the Rule of Law

49 points by kyleblarson 11y ago

sithadmin 11y ago
If arbitration proceedings grounded in superstition and other tomfoolery (i.e., Scientology) hold up, it seems like anything will. I think there needs to be an 'arbitration by combat' service.
- sp332 11y ago
  More than anything, the cases show the power of arbitration clauses. If you sign a contract with someone with one of these clauses, you have legally opted-in to the arbitration process. I'm against drive-by EULA's, but other than that I can't really see a reason not to uphold them.
  - scott_s 11y ago
    I also don't have a legal argument against it. But it deeply violates my sense of fairness that one cannot appeal to the actual courts, and must participate in religious-based courts, even if such courts will be obviously biased against you.
    - KevinEldon 11y ago
      I believe, at least in the US, the ideas it that arbitration is for civil dispustes, not criminal disputes. I believe your concern is that a person will be dealt with unfairly in a civil dispute... I would argue that if any arbitration clause for civil issues is to be upheld then it must be upheld for all of these agreements where there is no criminal issue; otherwise the party that feels they will do better outside of arbitration will always choose to not use arbitration regardless of their prior agreement... that seems unfair to me; to go back on the original agreement.
      - scott_s 11y ago
        This article is part of a larger series by the NYT on the rise of arbitration: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/01/business/dealbook/arbitration-everywhere-stacking-the-deck-of-justice.html http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/01/business/dealbook/arbitrat... The difficulty is when there is a power asymmetry in the original agreement, as there normally is when it's an individual signing a contract with a larger organization. Two large companies agreed to arbitration? Stick to the original agreement, as both sides paid lawyers to advise them on what to do, and there was almost certainly a negotiation. But individuals don't, usually, have the resources to hire lawyers or the ability to do the kinds of negotiations required to get favorable contracts. In such situations, I am troubled that we can end up signing away our ability to appeal to the courts to intervene on our behalf. If this issue gets enough press for a long enough time, I could see legislation that voids arbitration clauses in certain cases.
        KevinEldon 11y ago
        I have not read the entire series so I may be misnifored or speaking to other topics covered in the series, but I think many if not the majority of contracts are signed between parties with power asymmetry. One party write a standard contract in a way that mitigates their risk in order to provide a service and another party signs the contract to recieve the service with understanding that the benefits are worth the risk of dealing with an entity that has significantly more power then they do. I could argue the person was misniformed and mislead into signing an agreement with a relgious organization and should be free from the contract... but I could make the same argument for student loans, credit cards, mortgages, etc. I can see value, and certainly abuse, in people agreeing to allow their religious organizations to arbitrate civil disputes... it would seem that people should be allowed to make the choice and suffer the consequences if the agreement is within the established law.
  - spott 11y ago
    Legally, I think arbitration clauses probably will hold up. As you said, both parties have agreed to them. The problem is that, currently, I can't get wireless from Sprint, ATT or Verizon without signing away my right to sue. If this is the case, I feel like I have been forced into signing an arbitration clause (I don't really have a choice not to have a phone). Comcast allows me to opt out (though at the time I didn't realize this was an option). At what point am I no longer able to make a choice to live a life without entering into an arbitration agreement with someone, and if that point comes, have my rights been violated? Technically, I've entered into a contract for a service. However, if every contract for that service includes an arbitration clause, I no longer have a choice, and I haven't really "opted in" to the arbitration process, because I can't "opt out". I'm pretty sure this isn't a valid legal argument, but that doesn't make it right. At the very least, controls need to be put into place to make sure that arbitration is neutral: otherwise the clauses are similar to a clause that says "if you wish to sue us, we win by default: tough shit", which feels like it should be illegal (or unenforceable).
  - notdonspaulding 11y ago
    More than anything, the cases show the power of arbitration clauses. Perfect pull quote. The article buries the lead by putting this line so far down in the body. The article cherry-picks a few religious examples to support the headline, but there's nothing inherently religious about arbitration clauses. If they are infringing on the rule of law, this article hasn't demonstrated how.
- clock_tower 11y ago
  The Vikings tried that, but they found that in practice, most of the time the more competent swordsman won. There were professional duelists who made a career of going around the Nordic world, making fake claims on farmers' land and challenging them to trial by combat to determine who was the rightful owner... You might get more interesting results if both sides had to be represented by a duelist of equivalent skill. ("If you cannot afford a champion, one will be appointed for you by the court"?)
- Apocryphon 11y ago
  Arbitration by combat exists. It's called war.
dvt 11y ago
Scripture has been used as a book of law in certain contexts for Millenia. All your /r/atheism cynicism aside, it can be (and has been) quite an effective moral compass. Downvotes without any debate, I guess HN finally devolved into reddit territory.
- msbarnett 11y ago
  It can also get Galileo put to death, but I guess you win some you lose some. Cynicism aside, the western world has benefited enormously from the separation of religion and law.
  - Apocryphon 11y ago
    Galileo was never condemned to death, much less put to death. The sentence of the Inquisition was delivered on 22 June. It was in three essential parts: Galileo was found "vehemently suspect of heresy", namely of having held the opinions that the Sun lies motionless at the centre of the universe, that the Earth is not at its centre and moves, and that one may hold and defend an opinion as probable after it has been declared contrary to Holy Scripture. He was required to "abjure, curse and detest" those opinions. He was sentenced to formal imprisonment at the pleasure of the Inquisition. On the following day this was commuted to house arrest, which he remained under for the rest of his life. His offending Dialogue was banned; and in an action not announced at the trial, publication of any of his works was forbidden, including any he might write in the future.
- scott_s 11y ago
  I feel it is unfair to label one a cynic just because they don't want to be forced [1] to take part in a religious-based arbitration. [1] I recognize that the participants, or their families, signed a contract specifying such arbitration, but I am not convinced they do so with full understanding of the ramifications.
  - clock_tower 11y ago
    Very thoroughly agreed. It sounds like we need more rules about arbitration; there are rights that you shouldn't be at liberty to sign away.
dang 11y ago
All: when commenting on this piece, please stay substantive and engage with the specifics of the article. Avoid generic discussions about religion, which turn into flamewars, which are off-topic here.
- themetrician 11y ago
  Dang, I'm trying to get in touch with you via email and you are not replying. Please let my posts on thread 10485012 go through. Thanks.
WalterSear 11y ago
So, basically, Christian Sharia.
sageabilly 11y ago
“My faith is still strong,” she said. “But I am more careful in dealing with Christians than I used to be. They are just people with no more ability to be good than anyone else.” If you don't grow up in an area that has a very heavy Christian presence it can be hard to understand how very conservative/evangelical Christians think. Many of them believe, honestly and truly, that they are incapable of being wrong because they have been sanctified and saved and therefore even if they perform a transgression no one on Earth has the authority to call them out on it. But see, since they're saved, Jesus forgives them, so no one can call them out on their sin because no one is without sin, so best to just let it go. It's an extremely insidious mindset because there's no arguing with it. There's no way to get someone who believes that they are morally right to budge even an inch because they 100% do not believe in capitulating to anyone other than Jesus Christ- and since the only source of what He thinks is the Bible and it can be interpreted in about a thousand different ways... you see where this is going. Their personal definitions of what's "good" and "bad" are very, very different from people who did not grow up in the religious culture and there's no way to bring them around to another way of thinking. It happens within the culture too- my father in law and his lifelong best friend had a falling out about 10 years ago over a very small, nitpicky religious matter (they were both elders in their church and disagreed over the way some church finances were distributed) and my father in law straight up stopped talking to his best friend because his friend would not capitulate and come around to my father in law's way of thinking. My Father in Law believed, and still believes, that he was 100% in the right and that his best friend was deceived by the devil and that's why their friendship had to end. And this is over something like "Should we put the church's nest egg all in a savings account or should we take half of it and put it in a Money Market account instead?" I point this out to add some context to this type of arbitration since, if you didn't grow up in an area where this was just a normal fact of society, you're probably scratching your head wondering how in the world this is even a thing. Even growing up Southern Baptist below the Bible Belt I had no idea that Religious Arbitration was a thing until I read this article. I had heard of Orthodox Jews having their own set of laws and rules and that being a thing in some very small neighborhoods of NYC, but I didn't realize there was a Christian equivalent being played out across the US.
- coliveira 11y ago
biomcgary 11y ago
This article is purely anecdotal. In theory, promoting reconciliation when possible seems like a positive, but also likely to lead to sugar-coating reality. I'd be interested in a way to quantitatively evaluate outcomes from arbitration of various types, e.g., religious, commercial, voluntary associations, and lawsuits in courts, both state and federal. I'm surprised by the power of arbitration clauses in contracts. My understanding is that you cannot sell yourself into slavery in the US because the contract will not be considered valid. Perhaps if you put an arbitration clause into the contract, you could?
oldmanjay 11y ago
> “When you think Christian, you automatically think good[...]” That is everything you'll ever need to know about why religion will never leave humanity. Substitute literally any belief system for Christianity, and then realize that every single human who holds that belief system also holds that refactored sentence to be true. Possibly in a more grammatically correct manner.
vinceguidry 11y ago
One of the things I gathered when reading the excellent Fields of Blood by Karen Armstrong is that this 'rule of law' property of religion was a fundamental facet of early-modern history. The idea that all persons could be held answerable to one set of rules and principles is so alluring that you have people even today trying to hold secular American leadership accountable to them. Religion, initially, came in two flavors. One for the aristocracy, which was oriented around finding meaning in the many ethically and morally awful things they had to do to maintain their territories, human capital, and privileged lifestyles. The other was for commoners, who needed ways to cooperate and trust each other. If two people didn't know each other, then they could still trust each other if they spoke the same language, worshipped the same gods, paid tithes to the same temples. Religion was how they ordered their thoughts about what was right and wrong. It didn't matter for the people at the time what was scientifically or rigorously right, just that it was the same throughout a people. Until the age of Christianity, rulers had no interest in how the commoners believed. But as the world became more and more connected and the scale of warfare grew to where conscription became more and more necessary, rulers increasingly started to try to control how their populace worshipped. Fast-forward to the age of Gutenberg. Bibles getting printed in the vernacular, so that ordinary people could read them, was a game changer. All of a sudden, religious hypocrisy became a thing, people with power became accountable for how they used that power, rather than just making up interpretations amongst themselves as they went along.
- olavk 11y ago
  Sounds like bunk! Religion has pre-historic origin, it is older than agriculture and hence older than aristocracy as a class. Pre-christian rulers did have interest in how commoners worshiped - for example the Romans (though otherwise tolerant of various religious beliefs) insisted that all citizens took part in the emperor cult, which lead to problems for the first Christians. The rule of law is certainly older than Gutenberg - for example the pre-christian Icelanders held public recitals of the laws, so literacy was not required for laws to be public knowledge.
  - vinceguidry 11y ago
    The rule of law, as we call it, is a specific term meaning that leaders are to held accountable to laws just as subjects are. It is rule by laws, and not people. It was pretty much invented by the English. A variety of factors, primarily geographical, prevented it from being adopted in continental Europe for a long time after it was already pretty-well-settled in Britain. The rule of law was one of the most important building blocks of the British Empire. Laws themselves, of course, are as old as civilization. Religion is, as you say, older than civilization, but it is worth examining how religion worked pre-historically and after the rise of civilization, as they are very different. You can learn about prehistoric religion in the aforementioned Fields of Blood. Essentially humans have three brains, the basal ganglia, the limbic system, and the neocortex, all of which gives us various drives. Religion is the child of the neocortex and serves to make sense of the other two drive us to do.
Brendinooo 11y ago
I recently signed up for a new credit card and was really disappointed to find out that if I wanted to use the card, I'd have to submit to arbitration and forgo my rights to a proper American trial. I'm not against arbitration; speaking to this article specifically, the apostle Paul directs Christians to resolve their differences without going to non-Christian courts. There's nothing inherently wrong with the concept. But in either case, it'd be nice to have some sort of a provision that allows for escalation to a court if you can't get things resolved in arbitration. That's my concern with the credit card I just signed up for; I feel like the company is setting the rules in a way that stacks the deck against me, and if I get slighted I'd have no recourse. I would find it difficult to imagine Paul, the Roman citizen who appealed to Caesar himself, wanting to shut people out of certain aspects of the legal system entirely.
Animats 11y ago
The Christian version of this is new. Previously, using US law to make decisions of religious courts binding has mostly been a Jewish and, to a small extent, Islamic thing. There are Jewish courts (Beth Din) in many US states.[1] They do both commercial and family law arbitrations. The commercial side is generally well thought of, but the family law side is iffy, because Jewish family law explicitly favors the husband and keeping children in the Jewish community. There have been attempts to set up Sharia courts in the US, but there's much opposition.[2] Sharia family law also explicitly favors the husband. [1] http://www.nylslawreview.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/16/2012/11/NYLS_Law_Review_Volume-57-2.Broyde.pdf http://www.nylslawreview.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/16/201... [2] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/29/sharia-law-usa-states-ban_n_3660813.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/29/sharia-law-usa-stat...
- unit91 11y ago
  I think the Christian version is new (and uncommon) because it's unbiblical. "Can it be that there is no one among you wise enough to settle a dispute between the brothers, but brother goes to law against brother, and that before unbelievers? To have lawsuits at all with one another is already a defeat for you. Why not rather suffer wrong? Why not rather be defrauded?" (1 Cor 6:5-7) He appears to be saying Christians shouldn't sue Christians at all, especially not in a secular court, and grievances should be settled by a wise member of a local church.
- tovmeod 11y ago
  I don't know from where you have experience with Bet Din's, but in my experience and knowledge it actually favors the women. Maybe I'm biased because I know a couple of divorced religious jews, but as I see the only example of favoritism to the husband is on get refusal, if the husband refuses to give the divorce the wife can't remarry, all the court can do is put pressure, in Israel they have more powers, they may imprison the husband until he agrees to the divorce. What people don't tell is that the wife may refuse to accept the divorce, maybe is not that common or maybe people don't talk about it much, but in practice the husband can't remarry the same way until the wife agrees to accept the divorce. The difference is that the court don't apply pressure the same way they do to men. Also there's the ketuba, on divorce the husband must pay an amount for "breach of contract", and this goes only one way, meaning there's no way the wife will ever need to pay any money, she has only money to receive. Also children custody goes to the mother, while this is not a problem exclusive of Bet Din's, the court doesn't have powers to assure the father right's of seeing the children, meaning the ex-wife can create problems and difficulties and the court can't do much in practical terms
koenigdavidmj 11y ago
I am a Christian who is one of those weird people who believes that 1 Corinthians 6 actually tells Christians not to sue other Christians. (Link: http://www.esvbible.org/1%20Corinthians%206/ http://www.esvbible.org/1%20Corinthians%206/ ) I get very wary when I see that same argument used by those on the receiving end of accusations. It's one thing to maintain a personal conviction that you will resolve things in person or through non-court mediation. It's another to run around trying to prevent other people from using the courts, while simultaneously hiding from the church, the intended alternative. There's also a long tradition in biblical interpretation of distinguishing between imperatives (commands, like "thou shalt not sue other Christians", if it were hypothetically written) and indicatives (statements of fact, like "to have lawsuits at all with one another is a defeat for you"). Making the case to bind others' consciences is much harder when you have only indicatives.
- cbd1984 11y ago
  > I am a Christian who is one of those weird people who believes that 1 Corinthians 6 actually tells Christians not to sue other Christians. And every affinity fraudster in five miles suddenly became extremely interested.
  - cbd1984 11y ago
    Delete the parent to this comment.
- cbd1984 11y ago
  > I am a Christian who is one of those weird people who believes that 1 Corinthians 6 actually tells Christians not to sue other Christians. This makes you extremely vulnerable to affinity fraud.
brightball 11y ago
During my "Legal Environment of Business" class they spent a lot of time talking about arbitration in general. Religious or otherwise, anytime I see a contract that requires I defer to arbitration my instinct is going to be to assume that it's to protect the interests of whoever has created the contract. Happens with employment contracts all the time around sexual harassment and workplace disputes. It's not to say it's unreasonable though. Disputes are common and court is expensive while arbitration is usually cheaper and more efficient. Honestly, the bigger concern is contract signing practices more so than arbitration. I'm 100% for people or businesses being able to sign a contract with an agreement between them for just about anything, from buying a house to getting married. The problem is the way contracts are presented. "The fine print" is meant to be something huge and intimidating enough that you won't take the time to read it. Lawyers are expensive and in most situations you're not going to have one read every single contract that you're presented with. I went to lease a vehicle a couple of years ago. Talked to the sales person, sat at their desk, filled out a bunch of paperwork, sat and waited while he stepped out of the office to do something with it. After I'd been waiting for about an hour he comes back in with a huge stack of paperwork for me to sign. At this point a few things can happen: A) I spend 2-3 hours pouring over every one of the documents, asking him specific questions about wording, to which he'll call his manager to get an answer, etc potentially dragging on for hours before finally reaching an agreement. B) I ask to have my attorney look at the documents, taken them and leave. He will review them when he gets free and in a couple of days send me his concerns. I will then pass them back along to the sales person who will pass it on to a manager who will either approve or escalate it to their own attorney. At the end of this process, assuming everything can be worked out I will PROBABLY lease the vehicle assuming it's still on the lot. I will then get a bill from my attorney. C) I will rush through and sign the documents, trusting the business not to screw me, simply because I'm tired of waiting and want to get out of there. All of these are a problem and the result is usually C "just sign the damn contract" At some point, we need to establish some legal rules around SIZE of contracts and the strength of those agreements. Under scenario B where each party has an attorney involved and gets the details worked out to exactly the terms everyone is happy with a contract should be borderline ironclad. Under scenario A or C where an attorney wasn't involved and the signing process was engineered to produce a signature, significantly more leeway needs to be given to the terms of that contracts and/or the penalties for breaking it. That's one of the great things about working in Right to Work states because even the most ironclad of noncompete agreements are basically unenforceable in all but the most specific of circumstances.
FireBeyond 11y ago
I'd be surprised if the hardwood flooring example from the article held up in a court. If I go to your showroom, purchase 100 sq ft of hardwood floor for my home office, hand over my AmEx, not entering into a written contract, come home and find it faulty/unfit and the retailer protests, they can't then turn around when I sue them and say "actually, according to our web site, you can't sue us, you have to go to arbitration". It would be extremely difficult to make that binding, save a written contract with the presence of that clause.
- spott 11y ago
  I imagine, as part of your receipt, where you agree to the warranty and agree to pay for it, that you also agree to arbitration of disputes.
- zyxley 11y ago
  > I'd be surprised if the hardwood flooring example from the article held up in a court. It looks like the specific company mentioned only sells online and through dealers.
  - iofj 11y ago
    Generally speaking what you actually agree to is to attempt to use arbitration before going to the courts. Of course, please consult professional legal services before signing any agrrement.
gotchange 11y ago
Anyone have idea how the decisions reached by the arbitration panel are enforced? What holds any party from not abiding by the ruling and refusing to comply?
mjcohen 11y ago
In these cases, as in many others, religion is the arsenic of the people.

49 points by kyleblarson 11y ago

If arbitration proceedings grounded in superstition and other tomfoolery (i.e., Scientology) hold up, it seems like anything will. I think there needs to be an 'arbitration by combat' service.

sp332 11y ago
More than anything, the cases show the power of arbitration clauses. If you sign a contract with someone with one of these clauses, you have legally opted-in to the arbitration process. I'm against drive-by EULA's, but other than that I can't really see a reason not to uphold them.
- scott_s 11y ago
  I also don't have a legal argument against it. But it deeply violates my sense of fairness that one cannot appeal to the actual courts, and must participate in religious-based courts, even if such courts will be obviously biased against you.
  - KevinEldon 11y ago
    I believe, at least in the US, the ideas it that arbitration is for civil dispustes, not criminal disputes. I believe your concern is that a person will be dealt with unfairly in a civil dispute... I would argue that if any arbitration clause for civil issues is to be upheld then it must be upheld for all of these agreements where there is no criminal issue; otherwise the party that feels they will do better outside of arbitration will always choose to not use arbitration regardless of their prior agreement... that seems unfair to me; to go back on the original agreement.
    - scott_s 11y ago
      This article is part of a larger series by the NYT on the rise of arbitration: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/01/business/dealbook/arbitration-everywhere-stacking-the-deck-of-justice.html http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/01/business/dealbook/arbitrat... The difficulty is when there is a power asymmetry in the original agreement, as there normally is when it's an individual signing a contract with a larger organization. Two large companies agreed to arbitration? Stick to the original agreement, as both sides paid lawyers to advise them on what to do, and there was almost certainly a negotiation. But individuals don't, usually, have the resources to hire lawyers or the ability to do the kinds of negotiations required to get favorable contracts. In such situations, I am troubled that we can end up signing away our ability to appeal to the courts to intervene on our behalf. If this issue gets enough press for a long enough time, I could see legislation that voids arbitration clauses in certain cases.
      - KevinEldon 11y ago
        I have not read the entire series so I may be misnifored or speaking to other topics covered in the series, but I think many if not the majority of contracts are signed between parties with power asymmetry. One party write a standard contract in a way that mitigates their risk in order to provide a service and another party signs the contract to recieve the service with understanding that the benefits are worth the risk of dealing with an entity that has significantly more power then they do. I could argue the person was misniformed and mislead into signing an agreement with a relgious organization and should be free from the contract... but I could make the same argument for student loans, credit cards, mortgages, etc. I can see value, and certainly abuse, in people agreeing to allow their religious organizations to arbitrate civil disputes... it would seem that people should be allowed to make the choice and suffer the consequences if the agreement is within the established law.
- spott 11y ago
  Legally, I think arbitration clauses probably will hold up. As you said, both parties have agreed to them. The problem is that, currently, I can't get wireless from Sprint, ATT or Verizon without signing away my right to sue. If this is the case, I feel like I have been forced into signing an arbitration clause (I don't really have a choice not to have a phone). Comcast allows me to opt out (though at the time I didn't realize this was an option). At what point am I no longer able to make a choice to live a life without entering into an arbitration agreement with someone, and if that point comes, have my rights been violated? Technically, I've entered into a contract for a service. However, if every contract for that service includes an arbitration clause, I no longer have a choice, and I haven't really "opted in" to the arbitration process, because I can't "opt out". I'm pretty sure this isn't a valid legal argument, but that doesn't make it right. At the very least, controls need to be put into place to make sure that arbitration is neutral: otherwise the clauses are similar to a clause that says "if you wish to sue us, we win by default: tough shit", which feels like it should be illegal (or unenforceable).
- notdonspaulding 11y ago
  More than anything, the cases show the power of arbitration clauses. Perfect pull quote. The article buries the lead by putting this line so far down in the body. The article cherry-picks a few religious examples to support the headline, but there's nothing inherently religious about arbitration clauses. If they are infringing on the rule of law, this article hasn't demonstrated how.
clock_tower 11y ago
The Vikings tried that, but they found that in practice, most of the time the more competent swordsman won. There were professional duelists who made a career of going around the Nordic world, making fake claims on farmers' land and challenging them to trial by combat to determine who was the rightful owner... You might get more interesting results if both sides had to be represented by a duelist of equivalent skill. ("If you cannot afford a champion, one will be appointed for you by the court"?)
Apocryphon 11y ago
Arbitration by combat exists. It's called war.

dvt 11y ago

Scripture has been used as a book of law in certain contexts for Millenia. All your /r/atheism cynicism aside, it can be (and has been) quite an effective moral compass. Downvotes without any debate, I guess HN finally devolved into reddit territory.

msbarnett 11y ago
It can also get Galileo put to death, but I guess you win some you lose some. Cynicism aside, the western world has benefited enormously from the separation of religion and law.
- Apocryphon 11y ago
  Galileo was never condemned to death, much less put to death. The sentence of the Inquisition was delivered on 22 June. It was in three essential parts: Galileo was found "vehemently suspect of heresy", namely of having held the opinions that the Sun lies motionless at the centre of the universe, that the Earth is not at its centre and moves, and that one may hold and defend an opinion as probable after it has been declared contrary to Holy Scripture. He was required to "abjure, curse and detest" those opinions. He was sentenced to formal imprisonment at the pleasure of the Inquisition. On the following day this was commuted to house arrest, which he remained under for the rest of his life. His offending Dialogue was banned; and in an action not announced at the trial, publication of any of his works was forbidden, including any he might write in the future.
scott_s 11y ago
I feel it is unfair to label one a cynic just because they don't want to be forced [1] to take part in a religious-based arbitration. [1] I recognize that the participants, or their families, signed a contract specifying such arbitration, but I am not convinced they do so with full understanding of the ramifications.
- clock_tower 11y ago
  Very thoroughly agreed. It sounds like we need more rules about arbitration; there are rights that you shouldn't be at liberty to sign away.

dang 11y ago

All: when commenting on this piece, please stay substantive and engage with the specifics of the article. Avoid generic discussions about religion, which turn into flamewars, which are off-topic here.

themetrician 11y ago
Dang, I'm trying to get in touch with you via email and you are not replying. Please let my posts on thread 10485012 go through. Thanks.

WalterSear 11y ago

So, basically, Christian Sharia.

sageabilly 11y ago

“My faith is still strong,” she said. “But I am more careful in dealing with Christians than I used to be. They are just people with no more ability to be good than anyone else.” If you don't grow up in an area that has a very heavy Christian presence it can be hard to understand how very conservative/evangelical Christians think. Many of them believe, honestly and truly, that they are incapable of being wrong because they have been sanctified and saved and therefore even if they perform a transgression no one on Earth has the authority to call them out on it. But see, since they're saved, Jesus forgives them, so no one can call them out on their sin because no one is without sin, so best to just let it go. It's an extremely insidious mindset because there's no arguing with it. There's no way to get someone who believes that they are morally right to budge even an inch because they 100% do not believe in capitulating to anyone other than Jesus Christ- and since the only source of what He thinks is the Bible and it can be interpreted in about a thousand different ways... you see where this is going. Their personal definitions of what's "good" and "bad" are very, very different from people who did not grow up in the religious culture and there's no way to bring them around to another way of thinking. It happens within the culture too- my father in law and his lifelong best friend had a falling out about 10 years ago over a very small, nitpicky religious matter (they were both elders in their church and disagreed over the way some church finances were distributed) and my father in law straight up stopped talking to his best friend because his friend would not capitulate and come around to my father in law's way of thinking. My Father in Law believed, and still believes, that he was 100% in the right and that his best friend was deceived by the devil and that's why their friendship had to end. And this is over something like "Should we put the church's nest egg all in a savings account or should we take half of it and put it in a Money Market account instead?" I point this out to add some context to this type of arbitration since, if you didn't grow up in an area where this was just a normal fact of society, you're probably scratching your head wondering how in the world this is even a thing. Even growing up Southern Baptist below the Bible Belt I had no idea that Religious Arbitration was a thing until I read this article. I had heard of Orthodox Jews having their own set of laws and rules and that being a thing in some very small neighborhoods of NYC, but I didn't realize there was a Christian equivalent being played out across the US.

coliveira 11y ago

biomcgary 11y ago

This article is purely anecdotal. In theory, promoting reconciliation when possible seems like a positive, but also likely to lead to sugar-coating reality. I'd be interested in a way to quantitatively evaluate outcomes from arbitration of various types, e.g., religious, commercial, voluntary associations, and lawsuits in courts, both state and federal. I'm surprised by the power of arbitration clauses in contracts. My understanding is that you cannot sell yourself into slavery in the US because the contract will not be considered valid. Perhaps if you put an arbitration clause into the contract, you could?

oldmanjay 11y ago

> “When you think Christian, you automatically think good[...]” That is everything you'll ever need to know about why religion will never leave humanity. Substitute literally any belief system for Christianity, and then realize that every single human who holds that belief system also holds that refactored sentence to be true. Possibly in a more grammatically correct manner.

vinceguidry 11y ago

One of the things I gathered when reading the excellent Fields of Blood by Karen Armstrong is that this 'rule of law' property of religion was a fundamental facet of early-modern history. The idea that all persons could be held answerable to one set of rules and principles is so alluring that you have people even today trying to hold secular American leadership accountable to them. Religion, initially, came in two flavors. One for the aristocracy, which was oriented around finding meaning in the many ethically and morally awful things they had to do to maintain their territories, human capital, and privileged lifestyles. The other was for commoners, who needed ways to cooperate and trust each other. If two people didn't know each other, then they could still trust each other if they spoke the same language, worshipped the same gods, paid tithes to the same temples. Religion was how they ordered their thoughts about what was right and wrong. It didn't matter for the people at the time what was scientifically or rigorously right, just that it was the same throughout a people. Until the age of Christianity, rulers had no interest in how the commoners believed. But as the world became more and more connected and the scale of warfare grew to where conscription became more and more necessary, rulers increasingly started to try to control how their populace worshipped. Fast-forward to the age of Gutenberg. Bibles getting printed in the vernacular, so that ordinary people could read them, was a game changer. All of a sudden, religious hypocrisy became a thing, people with power became accountable for how they used that power, rather than just making up interpretations amongst themselves as they went along.

olavk 11y ago
Sounds like bunk! Religion has pre-historic origin, it is older than agriculture and hence older than aristocracy as a class. Pre-christian rulers did have interest in how commoners worshiped - for example the Romans (though otherwise tolerant of various religious beliefs) insisted that all citizens took part in the emperor cult, which lead to problems for the first Christians. The rule of law is certainly older than Gutenberg - for example the pre-christian Icelanders held public recitals of the laws, so literacy was not required for laws to be public knowledge.
- vinceguidry 11y ago
  The rule of law, as we call it, is a specific term meaning that leaders are to held accountable to laws just as subjects are. It is rule by laws, and not people. It was pretty much invented by the English. A variety of factors, primarily geographical, prevented it from being adopted in continental Europe for a long time after it was already pretty-well-settled in Britain. The rule of law was one of the most important building blocks of the British Empire. Laws themselves, of course, are as old as civilization. Religion is, as you say, older than civilization, but it is worth examining how religion worked pre-historically and after the rise of civilization, as they are very different. You can learn about prehistoric religion in the aforementioned Fields of Blood. Essentially humans have three brains, the basal ganglia, the limbic system, and the neocortex, all of which gives us various drives. Religion is the child of the neocortex and serves to make sense of the other two drive us to do.

Brendinooo 11y ago

I recently signed up for a new credit card and was really disappointed to find out that if I wanted to use the card, I'd have to submit to arbitration and forgo my rights to a proper American trial. I'm not against arbitration; speaking to this article specifically, the apostle Paul directs Christians to resolve their differences without going to non-Christian courts. There's nothing inherently wrong with the concept. But in either case, it'd be nice to have some sort of a provision that allows for escalation to a court if you can't get things resolved in arbitration. That's my concern with the credit card I just signed up for; I feel like the company is setting the rules in a way that stacks the deck against me, and if I get slighted I'd have no recourse. I would find it difficult to imagine Paul, the Roman citizen who appealed to Caesar himself, wanting to shut people out of certain aspects of the legal system entirely.

Animats 11y ago

The Christian version of this is new. Previously, using US law to make decisions of religious courts binding has mostly been a Jewish and, to a small extent, Islamic thing. There are Jewish courts (Beth Din) in many US states.[1] They do both commercial and family law arbitrations. The commercial side is generally well thought of, but the family law side is iffy, because Jewish family law explicitly favors the husband and keeping children in the Jewish community. There have been attempts to set up Sharia courts in the US, but there's much opposition.[2] Sharia family law also explicitly favors the husband. [1] http://www.nylslawreview.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/16/2012/11/NYLS_Law_Review_Volume-57-2.Broyde.pdf http://www.nylslawreview.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/16/201... [2] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/29/sharia-law-usa-states-ban_n_3660813.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/29/sharia-law-usa-stat...

unit91 11y ago
I think the Christian version is new (and uncommon) because it's unbiblical. "Can it be that there is no one among you wise enough to settle a dispute between the brothers, but brother goes to law against brother, and that before unbelievers? To have lawsuits at all with one another is already a defeat for you. Why not rather suffer wrong? Why not rather be defrauded?" (1 Cor 6:5-7) He appears to be saying Christians shouldn't sue Christians at all, especially not in a secular court, and grievances should be settled by a wise member of a local church.
tovmeod 11y ago
I don't know from where you have experience with Bet Din's, but in my experience and knowledge it actually favors the women. Maybe I'm biased because I know a couple of divorced religious jews, but as I see the only example of favoritism to the husband is on get refusal, if the husband refuses to give the divorce the wife can't remarry, all the court can do is put pressure, in Israel they have more powers, they may imprison the husband until he agrees to the divorce. What people don't tell is that the wife may refuse to accept the divorce, maybe is not that common or maybe people don't talk about it much, but in practice the husband can't remarry the same way until the wife agrees to accept the divorce. The difference is that the court don't apply pressure the same way they do to men. Also there's the ketuba, on divorce the husband must pay an amount for "breach of contract", and this goes only one way, meaning there's no way the wife will ever need to pay any money, she has only money to receive. Also children custody goes to the mother, while this is not a problem exclusive of Bet Din's, the court doesn't have powers to assure the father right's of seeing the children, meaning the ex-wife can create problems and difficulties and the court can't do much in practical terms

koenigdavidmj 11y ago

I am a Christian who is one of those weird people who believes that 1 Corinthians 6 actually tells Christians not to sue other Christians. (Link: http://www.esvbible.org/1%20Corinthians%206/ http://www.esvbible.org/1%20Corinthians%206/ ) I get very wary when I see that same argument used by those on the receiving end of accusations. It's one thing to maintain a personal conviction that you will resolve things in person or through non-court mediation. It's another to run around trying to prevent other people from using the courts, while simultaneously hiding from the church, the intended alternative. There's also a long tradition in biblical interpretation of distinguishing between imperatives (commands, like "thou shalt not sue other Christians", if it were hypothetically written) and indicatives (statements of fact, like "to have lawsuits at all with one another is a defeat for you"). Making the case to bind others' consciences is much harder when you have only indicatives.

cbd1984 11y ago
> I am a Christian who is one of those weird people who believes that 1 Corinthians 6 actually tells Christians not to sue other Christians. And every affinity fraudster in five miles suddenly became extremely interested.
- cbd1984 11y ago
  Delete the parent to this comment.
cbd1984 11y ago
> I am a Christian who is one of those weird people who believes that 1 Corinthians 6 actually tells Christians not to sue other Christians. This makes you extremely vulnerable to affinity fraud.

brightball 11y ago

During my "Legal Environment of Business" class they spent a lot of time talking about arbitration in general. Religious or otherwise, anytime I see a contract that requires I defer to arbitration my instinct is going to be to assume that it's to protect the interests of whoever has created the contract. Happens with employment contracts all the time around sexual harassment and workplace disputes. It's not to say it's unreasonable though. Disputes are common and court is expensive while arbitration is usually cheaper and more efficient. Honestly, the bigger concern is contract signing practices more so than arbitration. I'm 100% for people or businesses being able to sign a contract with an agreement between them for just about anything, from buying a house to getting married. The problem is the way contracts are presented. "The fine print" is meant to be something huge and intimidating enough that you won't take the time to read it. Lawyers are expensive and in most situations you're not going to have one read every single contract that you're presented with. I went to lease a vehicle a couple of years ago. Talked to the sales person, sat at their desk, filled out a bunch of paperwork, sat and waited while he stepped out of the office to do something with it. After I'd been waiting for about an hour he comes back in with a huge stack of paperwork for me to sign. At this point a few things can happen: A) I spend 2-3 hours pouring over every one of the documents, asking him specific questions about wording, to which he'll call his manager to get an answer, etc potentially dragging on for hours before finally reaching an agreement. B) I ask to have my attorney look at the documents, taken them and leave. He will review them when he gets free and in a couple of days send me his concerns. I will then pass them back along to the sales person who will pass it on to a manager who will either approve or escalate it to their own attorney. At the end of this process, assuming everything can be worked out I will PROBABLY lease the vehicle assuming it's still on the lot. I will then get a bill from my attorney. C) I will rush through and sign the documents, trusting the business not to screw me, simply because I'm tired of waiting and want to get out of there. All of these are a problem and the result is usually C "just sign the damn contract" At some point, we need to establish some legal rules around SIZE of contracts and the strength of those agreements. Under scenario B where each party has an attorney involved and gets the details worked out to exactly the terms everyone is happy with a contract should be borderline ironclad. Under scenario A or C where an attorney wasn't involved and the signing process was engineered to produce a signature, significantly more leeway needs to be given to the terms of that contracts and/or the penalties for breaking it. That's one of the great things about working in Right to Work states because even the most ironclad of noncompete agreements are basically unenforceable in all but the most specific of circumstances.

FireBeyond 11y ago

I'd be surprised if the hardwood flooring example from the article held up in a court. If I go to your showroom, purchase 100 sq ft of hardwood floor for my home office, hand over my AmEx, not entering into a written contract, come home and find it faulty/unfit and the retailer protests, they can't then turn around when I sue them and say "actually, according to our web site, you can't sue us, you have to go to arbitration". It would be extremely difficult to make that binding, save a written contract with the presence of that clause.

spott 11y ago
I imagine, as part of your receipt, where you agree to the warranty and agree to pay for it, that you also agree to arbitration of disputes.
zyxley 11y ago
> I'd be surprised if the hardwood flooring example from the article held up in a court. It looks like the specific company mentioned only sells online and through dealers.
- iofj 11y ago
  Generally speaking what you actually agree to is to attempt to use arbitration before going to the courts. Of course, please consult professional legal services before signing any agrrement.

gotchange 11y ago

Anyone have idea how the decisions reached by the arbitration panel are enforced? What holds any party from not abiding by the ruling and refusing to comply?

mjcohen 11y ago

In these cases, as in many others, religion is the arsenic of the people.