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The Governments Attempt to Limit Religious Expression in America

5/5/2015

 
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In another great article by John Zmirak, he exposes the subtle (and not so subtle) intentional governmental erosion of our right to religious expression. He writes in his article published on The Stream,
Words matter, both in God’s law and in man’s. The framers of our Constitution drafted the First Amendment to read:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

Those are among the loveliest words ever penned in the English language. Now let’s edit out one of them: “no.” Go read it again, with “no” crossed out. Suddenly, you live in a completely different country, some place more like Iran, or Venezuela.

An infamous printer’s error in 1631 resulted in thousands of copies produced and sold (before someone noticed) of the “Wicked Bible,” in which Exodus 20:14 reads, “Thou shalt commit adultery.”

Well, the Obama administration has just issued the “Wicked Constitution.” As The Daily Signal reports:

A Republican senator from Oklahoma pressed Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson at a hearing Wednesday about why the U.S. is “misrepresenting” Americans’ First Amendment right to freedom of religion to immigrants who are applying to become U.S. citizens.

“We in the United States actually have freedom of religion, not freedom of worship,” Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., told Johnson yesterday during a Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs hearing.
Here is a video of Sen. Lankford, presenting this subject to DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson. Cue up to about 2:42 to hear the senator's comments on this.
This attempt to introduce a change to the religious freedom clause of the First Amendment is, to my thinking, designed to desensitize the American people to religious liberty. If the citizenry become used to the idea that freedom of religion is actually freedom of worship, then they will become more agreeable to the idea that religious beliefs and expressions are never to be part of the public conversation. “Leave your God at church and at home” is the ideological premise being foisted on the American people by the government, and by the left.

New York Times columnist Frank Bruni wrote an Op Ed piece he titled, “Your God and My Dignity – Religious Liberty, Bigotry and Gays,” in which he states, “I support the right of people to believe what they do and say what they wish — in their pews, homes and hearts.” Bruni goes on to say that when Christians use the freedom of religion as guaranteed by the United States Constitution, then they must contend with him. Lest you think this is simply an isolated incident blown out of proportion by a paranoid Christian (as we are constantly being portrayed by Hollywood and the left), one has only to look at the governmental enforcement of this new religion limiting ideology. For example:

Shawano Community High School in Shawano, Wisconsin, has punished a student who expressed his Christian beliefs.

The State of Colorado has officially approved discrimination against Christians.

The city of Atlanta, Georgia fired its Fire Chief because he dared to quote the Bible and express his Christian beliefs in a self-published book.

The Sacramento Country Public Law Library has displayed anti-Christian propaganda, calling it “art.”

The State of New Hampshire and a District Court Judge have taken custody of a child simply because the mother is a Christian and was teaching her daughter Biblical values and morals.

The United States Navy is punishing at least one Chaplain (and likely more) for expressing their Christian beliefs.

The State of Virginia denied religious freedom to several Christian Chaplains, and fired them because they prayed in Jesus' name.  The Virginia State Senate then killed a bill that would allow Christian Chaplains to pray in Jesus' name when in public.

The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that prayers during city council meetings that ended in Jesus' name will be banned.

and,

The State of Colorado has actually made the possession or display of the Bible illegal in certain areas.

There are dozens more examples of state sponsored limitation and even denial of the Constitutionally guaranteed right of religious expression, and these types of incidents will not stop, as long as governmental entities are allowed to engage in them without regard for the law. As Sen. Lankford explained in the video above, freedom of worship is only part of our Constitutionally guaranteed right to freed of religious expression. Accepting only that portion of religious expression serves to limit our religious beliefs to home, heart and church, and no where else. We are all under the threat of punishment at the hands of our own government if we attempt to engage in religious expression outside of the government approved areas. Accepting this illegal limitation is akin to cutting off an arm and throwing away the rest of body, and then claiming the arm is a human being, rather than only part of a human being.

This is not just a question of semantics, as Zmirak points out, it is an intentional whittling away of our Constitutional rights. I'll close this off with Zmirak's 2011 warning:
It is only by the thinnest of threads that the Church still has the right to teach the biblical doctrine on sexuality and practice it in its institutions. In Britain, Catholic adoption agencies had to close because the Church’s teaching doesn’t measure up to Leviathan’s standards. If it weren’t for the political muscle of Evangelical Protestants, we’d face the same situation in America. We may soon, anyway; higher courts have upheld the San Francisco Board of Supervisors’ official denunciation of Catholic teaching on homosexual adoption. How many Democratic appointments to the U.S. Supreme Court will it take before the First Amendment ceases to shelter us? As former senator Rick Santorum warned in his talk last month at the Harvard Club, influential voices like Hillary Clinton’s are already switching the language in which they describe the First Amendment. Instead of “free exercise of religion,” Clinton has started speaking of “freedom of worship.”
Here is another video with Sen. Lankford addressing witnesses at a State and Foreign Operations Appropriations Subcommittee hearing on protecting religious freedom abroad.
Read all of John Zmirak's excellent article, Obama’s “Freedom of Worship” Leaves Christians as Second-Class Citizens, by clicking here.

A Frontal Assault on Christianity

4/22/2015

 
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(Photo courtesy of MEMRI JTTM)
From Gary Randall's Faith and Freedom Blog:

New York Times On Bigotry And The Bible
by Gary Randall, Thursday, April 16, 2015

The "truths," the New York Times' article explains, is "homosexuality and Christianity don't have to be in conflict in any church anywhere."

Many leaders in the mainline Christian denominations are cheering.

Hopefully leaders in the evangelical community are not exhaling, believing their silence has gotten them off the hook.

The oracle of progressive "truths" continues: "That many Christians understand them as incompatible is understandable, an example of not so much of hatred's pull, as of tradition's sway. Beliefs ossified over centuries aren't easily shaken," The New York Times publishes.

The Time's article explains that continuing to hold these "ossified" beliefs and teachings is "a choice" some Christians and their churches make because they are choosing to "prioritize scattered passages of ancient texts over all that has been learned since---as if time had stood still, as if advances of science and knowledge meant nothing."

We've evolved.

The Bible and those who believe it "disregard the degree to which all writings reflect the biases and blind spots of their author, culture and eras" we are told.

The Bible, they say, is neither "inspired" or "infallible." It's merely notions from the past.

Welcome to the Brave New World, relative and evolving "truth," and the shifting definition of religious freedom.

Frank Brurni, witting in the New York Times says holding to old biblical teachings "ignores the extent to which interpretation is subjective, debatable."

"Therefore," he concludes "our debate about religious freedom should include a conversation about freeing religions and religious people from prejudices that they needn't cling to and can indeed jettison..." while "rightly bowing down to the enlightenments of modernity."

In the mind of the secularist, this is about freeing the Bible believing Christian from the bondage of biblical teaching.

He quotes David Gushee, a so-called evangelical Christian who teaches Christian ethics at Mercer University, who says, "Human understanding of what is sinful has changed over time."

Gushee teaches his Christian ethics students that "many Christians thought slavery wasn't sinful, until we finally concluded it was. People thought contraception was sinful when it began to be developed."

Dr. Gushee says, "Conservative Christian religion is the last bulwark against full acceptance of LGBT people."

Bruni also quotes Matthew Vines, another “evangelical” author, who wrote the best selling book "God and the Gay Christian" and who explains that Paul's rejection of same-sex relations in Romans I "is akin to his rejection of drunkenness or his rejection of gluttony."

"Vines," Bruni says, explains "that the New Testament, like the Old Testament, outlines bad and good behaviors that almost everyone deems archaic and irrelevant today. Why deem the descriptions of homosexual behavior any differently?"

Bruni shares a conversation he recently had with Mitchell Gold, a prominent and wealthy furniture maker and homosexual activist.

Bruni says, "Gold told me that church leaders must be made 'to take homosexuality off the sin list'."

The shifting definition of religious freedom, in the minds of the activists and their allies, now includes a list of acceptable and non acceptable beliefs we are free to believe.



To continue reading the entire article by Gary Randall, and I would encourage you to do so, please click here: http://blog.faithandfreedom.us/2015/04/new-york-times-on-bigotry-and-bible.html#.VTVY0PB709k

Nauman Masih, 14 Year-Old Pakistani Christian, Has Died

4/16/2015

 
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Nauman Masih, 14 year-old Pakistani Christian Attacked Because of His Faith, Has Died
Nauman Masih, a young 14 year old boy in Pakistan, was stopped by a two Muslims on their way to Mosque for Friday prayers. They asked Nauman about his religious affiliation. When Nauman told them that he was a Christian, the two men began to beat him mercilessly. When he asked them to stop, they set him on fire. Doctors predicted that Nauman would make a full recovery because no internal organs had been damaged, and yet, two days after that prediction was made, Nauman died. I think what is most important to note here is that Nauman had done nothing wrong. He had not spoken out against the men who did this to him, he had not been disrespectful to them. He was simply a Christian, and for that he was attacked and died. I'll see you in heaven Nauman. Rest peacefully in the arms of Jesus.

Sources:
ASIA/PAKISTAN – The lawyers: "Justice after the death of Nauman Masih, killed because a Christian"
http://foreignaffairs.co.nz/2015/04/17/asiapakistan-the-lawyers-justice-after-the-death-of-nauman-masih-killed-because-a-christian/

Pakistani Christian boy dies five days after being set on fire
http://www.ucanews.com/news/pakistani-christian-boy-dies-five-days-after-being-set-on-fire/73385

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