Canada's churches are still burning down — and the Left doesn't want to ask why.  Canada has long had a reputation as a safe, welcoming and peaceful country, but in recent years that perception has been shattered.  My country has struggled with the rise of aggressive and violent far-Left social movements, as well as a significant uptick in racist and anti-Semitic behavior after Hamas's attack against Israel on October 7 2023.  Now, Canada's churches are burning.  Over a hundred of them have been vandalised, burned down or desecrated in the last few years, according to one analysis, with more than 20 confirmed to be arsons.  And while many on the Right have spoken out against this horrific wave of violence, there's been a disturbing code of silence on the Left. [...] It is also becoming disturbingly clear that, for some on the Left, hatred of Christianity is growing stronger.  They reject traditional religious beliefs and institutions associated with Christianity.

Searching for America's Identity.  After 171 years without a doctrine of separation of church and state, the Supreme Court of the USA in 1947 by a mere 5-4 vote declared that this separation is necessary and sacrosanct.  And by 1962 and 1963, both Bible reading and prayer were declared by the Court forbidden in our public schools.  By 1973, a woman's right to an abortion on demand was declared a constitutional right, and legitimate thereby in every state in the Union.  Only recently did the Supreme Court reverse itself, after 60 million-plus abortions, to allow each individual state to make its own abortion laws as its voters see fit.  Abortions are not inherently a national, constitutional right.

SCOTUS Asked To Review State Court's Decision To Remove Jurors With 'Conservative Christian' Beliefs.  Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey asked the Supreme Court Thursday to review a state court's decision to remove Christian jurors from an employment discrimination lawsuit where the plaintiff identified as lesbian.  While the court found the jurors would be impartial, rejecting the argument of the plaintiff's attorney that they would treat gay individuals as "less than everybody else," it still removed the jurors "to err on the side of caution," according to the petition.  Now, Bailey is asking the Supreme Court to consider whether the Fourteenth Amendment prevents courts from removing jurors based on their religion.  "Jurors can be excluded, of course, if their religious views in fact make them biased — just like jurors can be excluded if their race or sex in fact makes them biased," the petition notes. "But this Court's precedents make clear that courts cannot assume, based on stereotypes about race or sex, that a person will be biased.  The same should be true of religion."

Blue States are Prohibiting Christians From Adopting Because of Their Christian Views.  In the United States, approximately 391,000 children are in foster care.  Of those, over 113,000 children are waiting to be adopted.  With such a great need, you would think that all 50 states would be eager to place children with loving and qualified parents.  But this isn't so.  The problem?  Some state officials are imposing an ideological litmus test to determine who is "qualified" to parent a child.  In some states, if you don't agree to adopt the government's views on gender and sexuality, your application to adopt a child will be denied.  This is exactly what happened to Jessica Bates.

Just another Christian arrested for sharing biblical messages in public.  In a video clip that has gone viral on social media, a young Christian man is seen being arrested by police as he and a few other young men preached at a recent Pride in the Park celebration in Watertown, Wisconsin.  [Tweet with video clip]  The footage shows a young man reading from the bible, speaking into a microphone, before he is surrounded by multiple police officers.  One of the officers then grabs the microphone and pulls it away from the Christian while those around him question what the officers are doing.  The person who recorded the video claims the group was told that they could speak outside on the sidewalk.  However, another officer allegedly told them that they could not use the speaker and microphone to do this.  In any case, several of the officers then proceed to grab the young man who was preaching and ask him not to resist as they arrested him and hauled him away.

Liberalism Is a False Gospel and a Counterfeit Religion.  Liberalism is a false and counterfeit religion that is incompatible with the Judeo-Christian worldview that built the United States and much of the western world.  The year 2023 is the 100-year anniversary of J. Gresham Machen's prophetic book Christianity and Liberalism.  This book is just as accurate today as it was prophetic when he wrote it.  His central thesis 100 years ago was that liberalism is its own religion, distinct and incompatible with Christianity.  It acts as a parasite on Christianity, and can only be accurately understood as a separate and false religion.  Machen was right, of course, and the past 100 years of decline in American life bear him witness.  Search the past century across the globe and you will find scores of previously Christian nations that adopted liberalism, declined every meaningful way, and lost their faith.  Most of these Judeo-Christian nations have attempted to accommodate it rather than defeat it.

Seven Truths to Unmask the Regressive Left.  Godless countries such as North Korea, China, and even some Western democracies like the United States, fail to acknowledge the Creator in the form of an ethical code.  This growing phenomenon of blaming religion, then supplanting God's majesty in favor of man's laws and morals, threatens us through the government's ever-growing reach to control us.  "Progressives" worldwide and religious theocracies like Iran and other Muslim countries seem fine with those who want the Judeo-Christian ethic driven out of the rest of us.

There Are No God-Given Rights without God.  When did morality become relative?  When did good and evil stop being black and white — and become shades of gray?  When did thieves and murderers stop being predators and become the oppressed victims of a corrupt system?  Those are the fruits of moral relativism.  It holds that there is no absolute right or wrong — what one culture considers "wrong," another will consider "right."  It is the philosophy that good and evil are constructs of human beings — not laws of God. [...] We believe that humans have God-given rights.  However, belief in an authority greater than the state goes against the philosophy of communism and must not be allowed by its adherents.

Arizona Democrat State Rep. Caught on Camera Hiding Bibles from Colleagues.  Arizona State Rep. Stephanie Stahl Hamilton (D-Tucson) was caught on camera hiding Bibles from her colleagues in the House members-only lounge at the Arizona State Capitol.  When Bibles started disappearing from the lounge, security officers set up a hidden camera to see who was behind the theft.  Not too long after that, they discovered Stahl Hamilton was the culprit, according to a report by AZFamily.  AZFamily journalist David Caltabiano posted video footage of the state representative taking a Bible from a console table in the lounge and appearing to hide it.  [Tweet with video clip.]

Christians: The Victims That Must Never Be Named.  Despite the predominance of identity politics — where the skin and/or non-Western religious identity of any victim is constantly highlighted — the identity of that one group most persecuted around the world — Christians — is always dissembled over whenever they are slaughtered (which is daily, globally speaking).  Consider the establishment's reaction following the March 27, 2023 killings in Nashville, where a woman claiming to be a man (aka "transgender") stormed her former Christian school and murdered three nine-year-old children and three staffers.  Although she left a manifesto spelling out her motive, American authorities — including the FBI, ATF, National Police, and U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland — concluded that the murderer's motive is "unknown."  At the same time, and bowing to pressure from the lgbt-etc lobby, they have refused to release her manifesto to the public.  Of course, for those whose common sense is still intact, the motive is as clear as day; no manifesto required.

Franklin Graham Slams Oregon Law 'Disqualifying Christians' from Adopting Children.  Prominent evangelist Franklin Graham has blasted an Oregon law excluding Christians from adopting children on the basis of woke gender theory.  "Can you imagine a state disqualifying Christians from adopting children because of their belief in the Word of God?" Rev. Graham wrote Thursday to his ten million Facebook followers.  "To me, that would be wiping out the best pool of potential parents — just ludicrous."  "Well, this is what the state of Oregon has done," he added.  In its enumeration of "Personal Qualifications of Applicants and Certified Resource Families," the Oregon Department of Human Services has ruled that prospective adopting parents must "respect, accept and support the race, spiritual beliefs, sexual orientation, gender identity and gender expression, disabilities, national origin, cultural identities, immigration status and socioeconomic status of a child or young adult in the care or custody of the Department."

Single Mother Files Lawsuit After State Allegedly Denies Adoption Due To Her Christian Beliefs.  A single mother of five filed a lawsuit against the Oregon Department of Human Services Monday for allegedly denying her adoption application due to her religious beliefs, according to a press release from Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF).  Jessica Bates, a single mother of five, who also lost her husband in a car crash six years prior, attempted to apply with the department to adopt children in 2022, according to the press release.  Bates' application was allegedly denied because her Christian beliefs would not allow her to "respect, accept, and support ... the sexual orientation, gender identity, [and] gender expression" of the children in her care as the department's adoption regulations require, according to the lawsuit.

Tucker Carlson Says Nashville Transgender School Shooter Murdered Victims Because They Were Christian.  On Monday, Audrey Hale, a 28-year-old biological woman who claimed she was a "he," shot three staff members and three nine-year-olds at the Christian school in Tennessee where she was formerly a student.  And the number of leftists who tried to frame Hale as a victim of Christian hatred has shocked many Americans.  Carlson referred to U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland's comments on Tuesday.  Garland that the FBI, the Nashville police, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) are all investigating the shooting — and yet he wouldn't hazard a guess on motive.  "Motive hasn't been identified, Garland told us," Carlson said.  "Really?  You wonder how that could possibly be."  He explained that the shooter herself said she'd left evidence behind to elucidate her horrific actions.

Christianity Is Still Fair Game for Secular Leftist Loons.  American leftists are always going on about being anti-hate and anti-bigotry, portraying themselves as pillars of tolerance.  They are tolerant of anyone who adheres to their brand of godless secularism.  People of faith, however, don't get much of a fair shake from them.  OK, they have a soft spot for Islam, but that's only because so many Islamists hate the United States.  Christians, on the other hand, aren't very popular with progressives.  They treat Christianity like it some sort of communicable disease, and the mere mention of Jesus will cause mass conversions within a 100-mile radius.  If only it were that easy.

CVS fires nurse for refusing to violate her religious beliefs.  Despite accommodating nurse practitioner Robyn Strader's religious beliefs for more than six years, CVS fired her on October 31, 2021 after suddenly deciding that the Christian religion was no longer valid and no employees could cite it when it came time to prescribe drugs.  ["]Robyn worked at a CVS MinuteClinic in Keller, Texas since 2015. Robyn sought a religious accommodation because prescribing any medications that could intentionally end the development or life of an unborn child would force her to violate her beliefs.  For six-and-a-half years, the company accommodated her without a problem. [...] ["] Strader is now suing, with the non-profit legal firm First Liberty representing her.  The complaint demands Strader's full restitution, including back pay and punitive damages, noting that such a policy not only violates federal civil rights law, it also violates several Texas laws, including one that protects employees from religious discrimination and a second that exempts medical personnel from participating in abortion or abortion-related procedures if his or her religion forbids it.

How the Deep State Destroyers Threaten Your Way of Life.  The Destroyers know they have limited time to do their mischief before they're found out.  Once light shines on them, like cockroaches, they'll scurry to the darkest recesses they can find.  These people know that the clock is ticking, and it is getting harder and harder to hide the damage they are doing to us all. [...] Remember the expression, "Dance with the one who brought you"?  One of the distinctive differences for us is our core belief in family and God.  Yet the government has been trying desperately to inculcate our children into a system absent God and traditional family values.  The government redefined marriage and removed us from the foundational "one nation under God."  Our belief in family and God is why we've created the world's largest and ever-growing economy and the largest middle class.  Without those principles, we have begun to sink and become just another country with unsolvable problems.  It is inevitable that without God and family at our core, we will not survive as a recognizable whole.  And that's the Destroyers' intent.

Klaus Schwab: 'God Is Dead' and the WEF is 'Acquiring Divine Powers'.  According to the WEF, a new one world religion has arrived and it unites all of humanity in worshipping at the altar of climate science, techno-communism and eugenics.  If you find it hard to believe Klaus Schwab's WEF would go this far, you clearly haven't been paying attention to developments in recent times.  Klaus Schwab's right hand man Yuval Noah Harari has announced that the WEF has been so successful in its plans that it is "acquiring divine powers" of "creation and destruction."  The blasphemy doesn't stop there.  Harari also promises the WEF will turn humans into gods.

School Board Votes To Not Recite Pledge Of Allegiance Due To Capitalization Of the Word 'God' And Diversity Concerns.  The Fargo Public School Board in North Dakota voted on Tuesday to stop reciting the Pledge of Allegiance at school board meetings, citing diversity concerns and the Pledge's use of the phrase "one nation under God."  The action overturns an earlier decision by the school board to begin reciting the Pledge at meetings.  The motion to include the Pledge was approved in March on a 6-2 vote, with Vice President and current board member Seth Holden as well as current board member Jim Johnson voting against the measure.  "I move that the Fargo board of education rescind the action it took on March 22nd, 2022 in which it voted to begin each regular meeting with a Pledge of Allegiance immediately following the call to order," Holden said in the Aug. 9 meeting of the Fargo School Board.

Finnish Prosecutor Will Keep Prosecuting Christian Politician For Quoting The Bible.  Finland's top prosecutor announced Friday she will appeal a unanimous court decision rejecting her allegations of "hate speech" against a Christian politician for quoting the Bible on Twitter.  This means Member of Parliament Paivi Rasanen, who has already spent three years being investigated, interrogated, and prosecuted by her government, must now keep fighting in court so that Christianity stays legal in Finland, and possibly all of Europe.  "The prosecutor's decision to appeal the acquittal verdict may lead to the case going all the way to the Supreme Court, giving the possibility of securing precedent protecting freedom of speech and religion for all Finnish people.  Also I am happy that this decision will lead to the discussion of the teaching in Bible continuing in Finnish society.  I am ready to defend freedom of speech and religion in all necessary courts, and as far as the European Court of Human rights," Rasanen wrote in a Friday statement in English, a second language.

Liverpool Mayor Tries to Cancel Rev Franklin Graham's 'Hateful' Christian Bus Ads.  The mayor for the city region of Liverpool, England has claimed advertisements on buses promoting an appearance by American evangelist Reverend Franklin Graham constitute "hate speech" and should be removed.  Steve Rotherham, Labour's left-wing Metro Mayor of the Liverpool City Region, has called on two British bus companies, Stagecoach and Arriva, to remove advertisements promoting an upcoming event involving Franklin Graham in the city in May.  The advertisements for Graham's 'God Loves You Too' tour merely read:  "Looking for something more?" with information about the upcoming event in Liverpool.  Despite the innocuous tone of the message, it still drew the ire of the local politician.

Supreme Court [will] hear [the] First Amendment case of [a] high school football coach fired for praying at [the] 50-yard line after [the] woke mob complained.  A Washington high school assistant football coach who lost his job after praying at the 50-yard line while surrounded by students will take his case to the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday, claiming the school district violated his First Amendment rights.  Joseph Kennedy, a Marine, said the Bremerton School District infringed on his religious freedom by refusing to let him continue praying at the midfield after games following an incident where students joined him in the prayer in September 2015.  Lawyers for the district said Kennedy was allowed to pray by himself, but following three more instances of the coach praying with students on the field and in locker rooms, he was placed on administrative leave and his contract was dropped in 2016, the New York Times reported.

Ten Steps to Totalitarianism.  Does anybody still think totalitarianism can't happen here?  Ask yourself how many of these steps we've already galloped past.  [#1] Destruction of Religion:  Any belief in a higher power is threatening to the State.  If there is a "higher law" that takes precedence over government orders, then personal morality is a justifiable reason for disobeying the State.  America's founding was a product of the Enlightenment's understanding that natural rights and liberties exist apart from and superior to the State's edicts.  These God-given rights, some of which are recorded in the first ten amendments to the U.S. Constitution as the Bill of Rights, cannot be abridged or usurped by the State.  For individual sovereignty and personal liberty to be extinguished, then, spiritual belief in a higher power is antithetical to the goals of an overbearing government.

How A Trial In Finland Could Have Worldwide Effects On Government Persecution Of Religion.  he trial of two Finnish Christians for publicly stating mainstream religious teachings that reserve sex only for heterosexual marriage is heading towards a judgment scheduled for March 30.  The case could end up hitting Finland's Supreme Court and even the European Court of Human Rights, which means its outcome could affect the rights of religious believers and political dissidents across the world.  Member of Parliament Paivi Rasanen and Lutheran Bishop Juhana Pohjola have been prosecuted now for nearly three years after Rasanen tweeted a picture of Bible verses in June 2019.  Complaints about this tweet led to her prosecution under Finland's "hate crimes" laws.

Finnish Christian On Trial For Quoting The Bible.  Today [2/14/2022] in Finland, lawyers for Member of Parliament Paivi Rasanen and Bishop Juhana Pohjola will make their final arguments defending the two against "hate crimes" charges for publicly expressing their Christian beliefs.  While intended to suppress Christianity and criminalize the Bible, with ramifications for the entire West, the prosecution has also created opportunities to proclaim Christian theology all over the world, Rasanen told The Federalist in an exclusive interview last week.  "I was happy to have the possibility to also tell the gospel — the solution to the problem of sin — in front of the court and in front of the media," she said.  Speaking about the first day of her trial, which occurred in January, Rasanen said, "When so many people were praying for the day, God also answered the prayers.  It was quite a hard day, but I thought it was a privilege to stand for the freedom of speech and the freedom of religion and stand for the truth of the Bible."

Defeating American Marxism.  For Marxists, the destruction of America's heritage and society is absolutely necessary. The Communist Manifesto states, "Communism... acts in contradiction to all past historical experience… can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions."  Therefore, the chaos in society, the chaos at the southern border, the chaos in schools, the chaos in the family, the chaos in the economy, and the chaos in workers fired over vaccine mandates are all intentional.  These are manifestations of the "forcible overthrow."  Karl Marx was not an atheist — he hated God in whom he believed.  Marx wrote, "I wish to avenge myself against the One who rules above... We make war against all prevailing ideas of religion."  Marxism is anti-God.  The terms socialism, communism, and Marxism all lead to the same collective ownership of property, resulting in the same false utopia of poverty, starvation, misery, and death.  Socialism has been discredited for decades as both an economic system and a political system.  Yet, it persists, as a religion.  Communism is a transcendent, anti-God philosophy, and as such, is a form of religion — an anti-God religion.

Maskedness is a new religion.  During the recent holidays, I accepted an invitation to attend a special Christmas service in the next county over in Southern California.  I knew ahead of time that the church putting on this service was broadly within the Evangelical tradition, and, as expected, the Christmas hymns were all familiar to me, as were the prayers and other expressions of Christian worship and praise.  What shocked me, however, is what I saw upon entering the church. [...] hat I was not prepared for in this church visit was the 100% mask use by the congregants.  It was the first thing that hit me as I entered, and it seemed surreal.  The only face that was seen, twice, was that of the pastor who welcomed everyone and explained the mask rule.  I was the only one needing the explanation; all the rest were obediently covered, noses down.  He did give his message unmasked, which I guess was wise because communication was probably high on his priorities list.

The Editor says...
Any church that requires face masks, elbow bumps, and six-foot spacing, is a church that doesn't believe in miraculous healing or divine protection, as depicted in the Bible;  In particular, Isaish 53:5.  At the very least, such a church has more faith in the government than in God.

I&I/TIPP Poll:  Is Religion Under Attack?  A Majority Say Yes.  Both sides of the political debate agree that there's a schism of sorts in America, a cultural battle that transcends ordinary politicking and goes to the heart of how we see ourselves and our fellow Americans.  And one of the elements of that cultural battle, the latest I&I/TIPP Poll suggests, is religion.  The monthly I&I/TIPP sounding of public opinion asked:  "Do you agree or disagree with the statement "religion is under attack in the U.S.?"  Among those responding, 52% said they agree, while 40% said they disagree.  About 9% said they weren't sure (numbers don't add to 100% due to rounding).

Christian-owned company told they must remove Bible verses from Army products, including dog tags.  The Department of Defense is now facing a religious freedom lawsuit after they managed to create a problem for a Christian-owned company where one did not exist for over 23 years.  Shields of Strength has been told they can no longer offer their military branded dog tags with bible verses — something they have been doing without issue since 1997.  The biblical inspired products are so popular that President George W. Bush even requested one in 2003 to honor the first soldier from Operation Iraqi Freedom who was buried in Arlington National Cemetery, CPT Russell Rippetoe, according to their counsel's website.

Democrats' Massive Entitlement Plans Include Banning Christians From Government Childcare.  Democrats' current proposed $3.5 trillion welfare expansion would effectively ban faithful Christians from profiting from federal subsidies for separating infants and toddlers from their families.  The current text of Democrats' massive "Build Back Better" entitlement bill contains provisions that would require religious child-care providers to disavow longstanding theology about sex in order to receive federal child-care funds under a massive new early childhood program.  "The Democrats went out of their way to make sure and prohibit religious care providers from receiving any of these funds, and unanimously rejected an amendment to allow all child-care providers to be eligible for grants, including religious providers," said Rep. Jackie Walorski, R-Indiana, the ranking member on the House's subcommittee on Worker and Family Support.

Former police chief:  America is devolving into a third world, feudal society — and we can thank the left for it.  Most right-thinking Americans, when they watch gangs of hoodlums go into stores and steal property unabated are horrified by the images.  Others — primarily those on the left — see no problem with it.  What recent events have proven is that there are indeed two Americas; one which still believes in the rule of law, the other which does not.  It also shows what happens to a country when secularism or atheism takes over.  No longer does the commandment "Thou shalt not steal" mean anything.  In fact for leftists, a good number of the ten commandments no longer apply.  For those of us who are Christians, we could see this coming.  For when you remove God from everything, when you don't think twice about the taking of a human life through the process of abortion and when you justify killing or stealing to achieve some kind of means, you have truly lost your way.

Evangelical ministry asks Supreme Court to hear defamation case against Southern Poverty Law Center.  An evangelical Christian ministry is asking the Supreme Court to take up its four-year-old defamation lawsuit against the Southern Poverty Law Center, arguing that the "actual-malice" standard established in the court's landmark New York Times v. Sullivan case should be tossed.  D. James Kennedy Ministries (DJKM), the namesake of the late pastor of Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, sued the SPLC in 2017 after the Birmingham, Alabama-based organization designated the media ministry as a "hate group."  The ministry says it is far from a hate group and preaches biblical messages, including the tenet that marriage was created to be between a man and a woman.  Lower courts have rejected the ministry's claims, citing the 1964 "actual-malice" standard set in Sullivan.  That decision states that public figures must prove such malice for a defamation case to proceed.  But DJKM says it's time for that standard to be changed, pointing out that several current justices have questioned the ruling.

Christianity: The #1 Recipient of Hate Crimes.  Hate crimes against Christianity and its followers in Europe — formerly and for centuries the guardian and disseminator of Christ's teachings — are at an all-time high.  According to a recent report, at least a quarter of all hate crimes registered in Europe in 2020 were anti-Christian in nature — representing a 70-percent increase in comparison to 2019.  Christianity is, furthermore, the religion most targeted in hate crimes, with Judaism at a close second.  Worse, the true number of hate crimes against Christians is likely even higher. [...][ Indeed, whereas 980 hate crimes were anti-Christian in nature, 850 were anti-Semitic and only 254 anti-Islamic.  But as the report explained, the true numbers are probably significantly higher — for whereas the majority of racial, anti-Islamic, or anti-homosexual attacks are reported as such, a great number of anti-Christian attacks are not.  Even so and despite this discrepancy, attacks on Christians are still greater than against any other religious group.

Hilarity Abounds:  New National Parks Woke 'Equity Language Guide'.  If the National Recreation and Parks Association (NRPA) has its way, America's national parks will soon abound with "wokeness."  America's leading parks nonprofit has released a guide on how to speak in woke terms — a veritable "Wokeness for Dummies" — including tips like no longer using the term "Americans" to describe Americans and making sure the term "white" is lowercase while "Black" is capitalized. [...] According to the guide, it can be "an important factor to someone's identity and culture" and encourages parks professionals to "recognize religious and cultural traditions other than those that typically dominate the U.S. media landscape (usually Christian holidays)."  Why I'm shocked.  It's okay to recognize religious and cultural traditions (you know, like Christmas and Easter and stuff).  Oh — wait — other than Christian religious and cultural traditions.

Franklin Graham:  Marsha Blackburn Is 'Absolutely Right,' War Is Between 'Judeo-Christian Values and Marxism'.  Rev. Franklin Graham on Thursday [7/22/2021] praised Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) for remarks she made during an exclusive interview with Breitbart News, where she framed the culture war in the United States as a fight between Judeo-Christian values and Marxism.  That, Graham said, is "absolutely right."  Graham shared Breitbart News's exclusive interview long-form video exclusive — part of the On The Hill series — on his Facebook page Thursday morning.  "US Senator Marsha Blackburn said that this isn't just a culture war — it's a war between Judeo-Christian values and Marxism, which the Democratic party is pushing," he began.  "She is absolutely right."  "I applaud her for calling it what it is and for working to preserve, as she put it, 'our American values of faith, family, freedom.'  May God bless her!" he exclaimed.

To Exert Complete Control, Communist Dictatorships Always Crush Religious Freedom.  Over the last couple of weeks, widespread protests have broken out across the island, with citizens rallying in opposition to the communist regime that's held power for over six decades.  While some explained the demonstrations were primarily due to rising COVID cases and lack of vaccines, it seems there's something deeper driving Cubans to the streets — evident by the fact that many of them are clearly heard shouting "Libertad!" (liberty) and waving the American flag to symbolize their search for freedom.  For Americans, there's an important lesson we must learn from the situation unfolding just ninety miles south of our shores.  That is, a sobering reminder that communist regimes such as the one in Cuba all begin in a similar way:  By crushing and stripping away the religious liberty of its citizens.  Because once a dictatorial, ruling elite succeed at destroying religious freedom and subjugating houses of worship to their power, it's only a matter of time until other fundamental freedoms — economic, political and social — are ripped away as well.  Make no mistake, the unrest we see in Cuba today is the result of religious suppression and a denial of fundamental human freedoms.  It's the outcome of what happens when our freedoms are decided by the government, as opposed to the eternal truth that our rights come from God.

Explaining the Full Armor of God to an Ignorant Media.  When Ron DeSantis, Florida's conservative Republican governor and likely presidential candidate, said recently we need to put on the "full armor of God," the media looked at him like he was crazy — or from another planet.  But his supporters gave him a standing ovation.  As secular liberals, most of the press have no familiarity with the phrase, its origins, theology, or importance.  They are bigots against religion and unschooled in what used to be the norms of American life, churches, and culture.  The press and nearly our entire elite ruling class, in academia, sports, politics, media, business, and culture are biblically illiterate and have no idea what the Jar of Nar (John 12:3) refers to; where the road to Emmaus (Luke 24:13-35) led or who travelled on it; or even what happened in the garden of Gethsemane (Matthew 26:36-46).

IRS Violated First Amendment in Tax Exemption Denial That Linked Bible Teachings to GOP: Legal Group.  A Texas-based legal group said the IRS violated the First Amendment when it denied tax-exempt status to a religious group by tying Christianity to politics, claiming that biblical "teachings are typically affiliated with" the Republican Party.  Texas-based First Liberty Institute, a conservative legal organization that litigates First Amendment cases on religion, said in an appeal to the IRS that the agency had mischaracterized Christians Engaged, the organization it represents, and violated the Constitution's religious freedom protections when it denied the group the ability to operate as a nonprofit with 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status.  Kelly Shackelford, president and CEO of First Liberty, told EpochTV's "Crossroads" program that he believes that, with its determination, the IRS broke the First Amendment.

Are You Living by Lies?  [Rod] Dreher was inspired to write his book by heroic dissidents who refused to bend the knee to communist tyrants and saw a similar tyranny becoming ensconced in the United States.  These moral giants are astonished that the primary beacon of freedom during their years of oppression has become a society where speech and actions disapproved by secular elites are regularly squelched and punished.  Religious freedom, for example, is being reduced to the freedom to gather in congregations where (at least for now) marriage is affirmed by a priest, rabbi, or minister, a freedom that doesn't extend beyond meeting walls to how a baker runs his business. [...] Under this soft totalitarianism, Americans are now compelled "to engage in doublethink every day.  Men have periods.  The woman standing in front of you is to be called 'he.'  Diversity and inclusion means excluding those who object to ideological uniformity.  Equity means treating persons unequally, regardless of their skills and achievements, to achieve an ideologically correct result."  I might add to that short summary the lie that America is a racist country, that law enforcement and our judicial system are institutionally racist, and that America was founded in 1619 upon the bedrock principle of white racism.

Is Joe Biden Catholic?  As the withdrawal of Christian values from the formation of public policy has accelerated, the religion of progressive secularism has rushed in to fill the gap.  It is to this religion Biden and the Democratic Party have pledged their devotion.  It is on the bases of the religion of progressivism they form public policy, domestic and foreign.  Biden certainly demonstrates the symbolic and real embodiment of the progressive idea of the radical separation of church and state.  According to radical progressives, Christianity, including Catholicism, is to play no part in public policy.  Catholicism; indeed, Christianity in general, is to be confined to private domains, expressed entirely in private rituals and ceremonies conducted behind church doors or within one's own domicile.

It's Outright War on Conservatives.  In May, the IRS denied 501(c)(3) status to Christians Engaged, a Texas-based prayer group that encourages members to pray for the country and its elected officials, motivates citizens to vote for cultural impact, and campaigns for preserving our constitutional republic.  The group endeavors to integrate civic involvement as part of religious practice but does not promote any party or candidate.  However, in his official letter denying tax-exemption, Stephen A. Martin, the IRS's director of exempt organizations, clearly implies that biblical values are exclusively Republican.  He wrote:  "While you educate voters on what the Bible says about issues, your educational activities are not neutral.  The topics typically are affiliated with distinct candidates and specific political party [Republican] platforms."  The First Liberty Institute, a Christian legal organization, is appealing the IRS decision as discriminatory.  It argues that there is no requirement that organizations must be neutral on public policy issues, and that just because there is some overlap between the views of Christians Engaged and the Republican party, the IRS cannot conclude that the organization serves private interests.  The IRS decision amounts to a violation of the free speech, free exercise, and free establishment clauses of the First Amendment.  Declaring biblical teachings as exclusively Republican is the slippery slope that could lead to future discrimination against Christian organizations and even churches.

IRS Denies Christian Non-Profit Tax-Exempt Status: '[The] Bible's Teachings [are] Affiliated with [the] Republican Party'.  A Christian non-profit is challenging the Internal Revenue Service after the agency denied them tax-exempt status saying "the Bible's teachings are typically affiliated with the Republican Party and candidates."  Christians Engaged describes itself as educational, Christian, and non-partisan, and operates out of Garland, Texas. [...] The non-profit works to show Christians how to "civically engage as part of their religious practice" but does not promote specific parties or candidates or earn money for political causes, according to the organization's appeal letter to the IRS.  The non-profit first applied to become a 501(c)(3) in late 2019.  They received a rejection letter on May 18, 2021, from Exempt Organizations Director Stephen A. Martin saying the group "engage[s] in prohibited political campaign intervention" and "operate[s] for a substantial non-exempt private purpose and for the private interests of the [Republican] party."  Martin alleged in his letter that the group does not meet requirements for tax exemption because biblical causes tend to favor the Republican Party.

IRS Denies Tax Exemption to Christian Group, Associates Bible With GOP.  A top Internal Revenue Service official told a Christian group that "Bible teachings are typically affiliated" with the Republican Party as a rationale for denying its application for tax-exempt status.  The Texas-based Christians Engaged filed an appeal on Wednesday [6/16/2021] to the IRS' denial, objecting to the tax agency's assertion that it is partisan.  In a May 18 denial letter, IRS Exempt Organizations Director Stephen A. Martin said Christians Engaged is involved in "prohibited political campaign intervention" and "operate[s] for a substantial non-exempt private purpose and for the private interests of the [Republican Party]."  A "legend" at the top of the letter shows nine letters of the alphabet being used as shorthand to represent something.  In this letter's example, oddly, "D" represented "Republican."

Tebow, Trump, and DeSantis.  Five years ago, no one would mention Tim Tebow, Donald Trump, and Ron DeSantis in the same paragraph.  What did a former NFL, wannabe baseball player, a celebrity billionaire, and a former JAG officer have in common?  But today, when Tebow, Trump, and DeSantis are mentioned in the same sentence everyone immediately gets what's going on.  Leftists hate these men because they represent America's constitutionalist conservatives.  And, in part, Patriots love them because of their enemies.  One of the strangest things in the last decade is how much sport's writers and on-air personalities [loathe] Tebow.  They mock Tebow whenever they can.  When he recently signed with the Jacksonville Jaguars, the pitchforks came out again.  Why?  Well, he's a devout evangelical Christian... full stop.  That's enough right there.

Dems Endorse Anti-Christian SPLC Report: 'It's Time We Extinguish All Bigoted Beliefs'.  House and Senate Democrats endorsed the Southern Poverty Law Center's (SPLC) "Year in Hate" report that brands mainstream conservative and Christian nonprofits "hate groups" and plots them on a map with the Ku Klux Klan.  The Democrats did not respond to longstanding criticisms of the SPLC regarding its racial discrimination and sexual harassment scandal or the fact that former SPLC employees have described the "hate" accusations as a "highly profitable scam."

California Police Reform Bill May Ban Christians From Law Enforcement.  California Assembly Bill 655 would require police departments to investigate whether not potential cops had "engaged in membership in a hate group, participation in hate group activities, or public expressions of hate."  It would make such activities "grounds for termination."  When Americans think of a "hate group," many minds would conjure up a domestic terrorist group motivated by racial animus like the Ku Klux Klan.  Yet some transgender activists and organizations like the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) use the term "hate group" as an epithet to demonize their political and ideological opposition.  The SPLC has become notorious for branding mainstream conservative and Christian groups as "hate groups" because they advocate against same-sex marriage or transgender activism.

Chuck Schumer Mocks Christians, Says "No More Prayers" As Dems Take Axe To Gun Rights.  The Christian community often prays for victims of gun violence, and now Chuck Schumer is openly mocking them.  Right before the Democrats took an axe to our constitutional rights to bear arms, the far-left Senator proudly stated "No more thoughts and prayers".  "No more hopes and prayers, thoughts and prayers — a vote is what we need.  NOT thoughts and prayers."  Schumer said with pride.

Nadler on Equality Act: 'God's Will Is No Concern of This Congress'.  Last Thursday [2/25/2021], as the House of Representatives debated H.R. 5, the Orwellian "Equality Act," a seemingly exasperated Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) arguably revealed the true nature of his party's radical legislation.  In response to Rep. Greg Steube's (R-Fla.) speech quoting the Bible, Nadler declared that "what any religious tradition describes as God's will is no concern of this Congress."  The Equality Act would enshrine the concept of "gender identity" into federal civil rights law, mandating that Americans kowtow to biologically false transgender identities.  Steube quoted the Bible to express the fact that millions of Americans object to transgender identity on religious grounds and to warn that the Equality Act constitutes rebellion against God.

Deceptively Titled 'Equality Act' Would Be Giant Step to Destroying Religious Freedom.  [Scroll down]  There are two keys to understanding why this proposal is such a threat to the First Amendment's guarantee of religious assembly and practice without interference from Congress.  First, as with so much else that appears under the rubric of "social justice," this proposal absolutizes the concept of equality into a battering ram against the rights of unfavored groups.  That's precisely the outcome the Founders hoped to prevent.  Here's how that works:  If the secular progressive understanding of equality as equal outcomes — rather than equal opportunities — is combined with moral relativity — the idea that "truth" is whatever any individual decides it is for them — then every other societal value must be totally subordinated, including freedom of political expression and religious freedom, the two bulwarks of American liberty.  That is why the "social justice" movement is the source of the Cancel Culture that is steadily suffocating creativity, individuality, privacy, and everything and everybody else refusing to conform.

Bill Maher Claims Christianity Is To Blame For Capitol Riot.  During Friday's episode of "Real Time With Bill Maher," host Bill Maher blamed Christianity for the Capitol riots last month.  Maher, 65, claimed that a belief in Christianity is comparable to a belief in conspiracies like QAnon, and he said this led in part to supporters of former President Donald Trump storming the Capitol last month.  "As long as we're going to go to the trouble of another impeachment trial, we might as well be honest about what it's really about:  The events of Jan. 6 were a faith-based initiative," he said.

Scarborough Slams Evangelicals For 'Bizarre, Bizarre, Bizarre' Concern About Abortion.  On today's [2/5/2021] Morning Joe, Joe Scarborough slammed evangelicals for their focus on abortion.  No fewer than four times, Scarborough called evangelicals' concern about abortion "bizarre."  All this arose in the context of the show opening by contrasting President Biden's National Prayer Breakfast remarks yesterday with those by President Trump a year ago.  It's true that Biden's remarks were more conventionally appropriate.  But which "brilliant" aide thought it was a good idea to have an unusually frail and subdued Biden say, "we need to lean on each other, lift one another up?

Cult: Government Is Now The New Religion?  A new magazine cover of the Jacobin is striking a nerve after it appears that the magazine is saying the government is now god and our religion, to be worshipped.  It sure begs the age-old question:  who do you serve?  If we are ever to be free, we have to remove our consent.  That goes for those who worshipped Trump as the messiah as well (and there were plenty.)  We should have never allowed ourselves to see each other as slaves to the ruling class, submitting to democracy (which is mob rule) and letting others have power over anyone else for any reason.  Our inability to take the moral high ground has led to us this point in history.

When America's Religion Goes Wrong:  Wokeness as Secularized Puritanism.  America seems to have gone mad.  It still is the world's richest and most powerful country, with the oldest continuous government on earth.  Yet it is in deep crisis, and divided between hostile camps that reject each other's legitimacy.  Paradoxically, what made America strong also makes it inherently fragile.  Joshua Mitchell, a professor of government at Georgetown University, presents a cogent diagnosis of America's dark night of the soul in a remarkable new book.  A Chinese acquaintance quips:  "Now you are having your own Cultural Revolution."  In fact, the criticism and self-criticism sessions imposed on corporate employees and school personnel to root out hidden racism recall Mao's Red Guards.  But America is not China, and this is not a Cultural Revolution; it is an eruption of Christian religious feeling channeled into secular obsessions.  Mitchell's thesis will elicit skepticism among overseas readers who are unaccustomed to viewing politics through the prism of religion, but America can be understood in no other way.

Twenty-First Century Rules for Revolutionaries.  #6: Conventional ideas about religion and family are anathema to a revolutionary movement.  Absolute loyalty to the revolution must come first; this extends to one's family.  Children are encouraged to inform on their parents if they hear anything that can be interpreted as "counter-revolutionary.  Organized religion must also go.  The revolution cannot have loyalty to God supersede loyalty to the state.

CNN's Cuomo mocks Rubio's faith, calling senator 'Bible Boy' during anti-Trump rant.  Chris Cuomo says President Trump's departure from the White House will not offer political relief for the country as long as "Bible boy" Sen. Marco Rubio is around.  The "CNN Tonight" host mocked the Florida Republican's outspoken faith Monday evening while opining on post-Trump America with colleague Don Lemon. [...] "You know Mr. Bible Boy," Mr. Cuomo said.  "He's got a Bible quote for every moment.  He just never speaks truth to power or acts on any of it in the interest of his own state or of this country.  They remain, and they all know what they're doing is bogus.  They know what they're doing on the 6th is bogus."  Mr. Lemon blasted senators who want an emergency audit of the 2020 election and said they engineered their own support with lies.

House Democrat's opening prayer ends with 'amen and a-woman'.  The 117th Congress kicked off with a fresh controversy Sunday [1/3/2021] when the Democrat delivering the opening prayer concluded by saying "amen," and then added "a-woman."  Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, Missouri Democrat, ended his prayer "in the name of the monotheistic god," then added what sounded like "Brahma," before finishing with "and god known by many names by many different faiths.  Amen and a-woman."  Critics, led by Republican lawmakers, were quick to point out that "amen" means "so be it," and does not refer to the male gender, while "a-woman" doesn't mean anything.

Trump Invokes Saint Thomas Becket In Defense Of Religious Liberty.  Expect The Opposite From Biden-Harris.  Yesterday was the 850th anniversary of the martyrdom of Saint Thomas Becket, archbishop of Canterbury, who was killed by followers of King Henry II of England in Canterbury Cathedral for opposing the king and asserting the rights and privileges of the church.  Specifically, Becket was murdered because he refused to go along with the king's efforts to reduce clerical independence and render the church in England subservient to the crown.  He was canonized soon after his death by Pope Alexander III and is still honored today by both Catholics and Anglicans as a great saint and martyr.  In America the feast days of saints and martyrs — even those as notable as Becket — usually pass without much notice.  But this year, the White House issued a proclamation on the occasion, noting that "Becket's death serves as a powerful and timeless reminder to every American that our freedom from religious persecution is not a mere luxury or accident of history, but rather an essential element of our liberty. [...]"

Anti-Catholic Senators.  The millions of Catholic men who belong to the Knights of Columbus would probably be stunned to learn that at least two U.S. senators seem to consider membership in this laudable service organization as somehow disqualifying from serving as a federal judge.  Sens. Mazie Hirono and Kamala Harris, in written questions to District Court judge nominee Brian Buescher, challenged his suitability for the bench because he belongs to this charitable Catholic group.  Hirono claimed that the Knights have taken "extreme positions" such as affirming Catholic belief in traditional marriage and even asked Buescher, "If confirmed, do you intend to end your membership with this organization to avoid any appearance of bias?"  In today's Democratic Party, the new McCarthyism asks, "Are you now, or have you ever been, a member of the Knights of Columbus?"  Harris wrote that "the Knights of Columbus, an all-male society comprised of primarily Catholic men ... opposes a woman's right to choose."  Anyone who ever pledged a college fraternity or sorority, take note — Harris does not seem to approve of your membership in a single-sex organization.  Anyone who further dares to personally embrace longstanding Christian doctrine on the sanctity of life, including the unborn, should also seek employment outside of the federal bench.  Such anti-Catholic bias represents not just a discriminatory affront, but also an unconstitutional religious litmus test for appointees.  In addition, the actual scandal would be if the Knights did not fully accept church teaching on matters as fundamental as the definition of marriage and the beginning of life.  After all, Pope Francis, whom many progressives love to selectively cite, recently compared abortion to hiring a "hitman."  Would Hirono and Harris ask similar questions of an observant Muslim nominee, since that faith also believes in traditional marriage?

Tyranny Reversed:  California Judge Slaps Down Newsom Over Religious-Worship Shutdowns.  Just how huge a precedent will the recent Supreme Court decision in Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn turn out to be?  We can take one measure from a California court late yesterday [12/10/2020] in Father Trevor Burfitt v Gavin Newsom.  In a stinging rebuke to Gov. Newsom, Judge Gregory Pulskamp imposed an injunction against enforcement of California's planned COVID-19 restrictions.  Using Brooklyn as a guide, Pulskamp ripped California's arbitrary decision to shut down houses of worship while allowing commercial businesses to remain open.  Any such limitation on an explicit and textual constitutional right requires a strict scrutiny standard, Pulskamp ruled and cited Brooklyn for support.  But Pulskamp wonders whether the restrictions even pass a smell test.

What Leftists Don't Get about Evil and the Law.  [Scroll down]  Churches have been meeting together for prayer and fellowship since before Pentecost.  During the early days, when the Roman Empire declared Christianity an outlaw religion, Christians were forced to meet secretly in caves and basements to avoid arrest, imprisonment, and death by torture, crucifixion, or lions.  Today, we're seeing a return to that same mentality among the secular left.  Governors and mayors around the country have used the excuse of the Wuhan virus to crack down on religious services, particularly of the Jewish and Christian variety (I dare say they're being somewhat more circumspect in their dealings with Muslim gatherings.)  Churches met regularly for services during the Black Plague in Europe (1346-1353) and every other pandemic or disease outbreak before and since.  Individuals were understood to have the capacity to make their own rational decisions about what was best for them and their families without being forced to obey a one-size-fits-none government mandate.

Humanist group sues school district for allowing 'missionaries' to teach about Christianity.  According to the lawsuit, a class simply called "missionaries" had been held once a month at Maryetta Public School with the knowledge of the Maryetta Public School District.  The class was placed on the school calendar and in email announcements.  During the session, three men sang songs and played games with the children, while teaching the students about the Bible.  The plaintiff parents state that their daughter was subjected to the classes without their foreknowledge and without the ability to opt out.  The parents identify as humanists and are raising their daughter accordingly.

King Newsom bans indoor gatherings for Thanksgiving and Christmas.  California won't allow indoor family gatherings for the holidays, Christmas and Thanksgiving, and outdoor gatherings are limited to three families for a maximum of two hours.  This is arbitrary and tyrannical.  "Gatherings that include more than 3 households are prohibited.  This includes everyone present, including hosts and guests.  Remember, the smaller the number of people, the safer," reads the "Guidance for Private Gatherings," issued by the California Department of Public Health on October 9.

California Just Declared War On Thanksgiving With Kafka-Level Regulations.  Gov. Gavin Newsom just gave Californians more regulations for an early Christmas present — and anyone hoping to celebrate the holidays with family better hope there's a gift receipt.  Just in time for the Thanksgiving and Christmas festivities, when most families gather with loved ones, California's Democrat governor has issued a new set of regulations that bans gatherings of more than three households.  Additionally, no indoor gatherings are permitted, so don't plan on eating around the dining room table unless you lug it out into your backyard.  Newsom's ban on gatherings of more than three households means that a family with more than two grown children can only have two visit at the same time.  According to the Pew Research Center, almost two-thirds of mothers in their young forties in 1976 had three or more children.  If those mothers are grandmothers now and their children are grown, that means up to two-thirds of families would be banned from bringing all their children under one roof for the holidays.

Democrats' Anti-God Religion.  Even though Amy Coney Barrett seems to have avoided a much-anticipated religious inquisition from the Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee, the hearings have reminded us that Democrats over the years have pretty much established themselves as the anti-God party.  They booed him at their 2012 national convention, after all.  They had omitted reference to God from their platform in 2008, and when, in 2012, they tried to add it back, witnesses say about one-third of convention-goers booed.  Their social platform pushes against historic Christian morality at nearly every turn — on abortion, on same-sex marriage, on gender identity, on end-of-life issues.  And who is it that sues nuns and hassles religious schools and tries to pull down crosses on every little public patch of land they can find?

Why Communism is Compelled to Destroy Christianity.  Most people today see the division in our country as a political one.  But, in my mind, that particular divide is a puny pixel in a vast screen.  For it is not a mere ideological clash between parties, but a mythic battle between Spiritual Titans.  Why?  Because it is not so much a difference of policy as it is an existential face-off.  Because what America was built on, the bones of our civilization — God, grace, charity, liberty, individualism and self-governance, opportunity over guarantee, free will — are the counterpoints to everything communist.  Because in order for the left to win the heart of America, it must defeat Christianity and Judaism.  Completely.  How are they doing this?  By lying.  By cultivating vines with no fruit.  By promising what they can never deliver.  By offering wet sand to the thirsty.  And by counting on our sloth in the face of outright deception.

The Cult of Covidism Has Invaded the Church.  What should have been a purely scientific response aimed at control and cure of a disease quickly evolved into the political-religious cult of Covidism.  Objective scientific analysis of and responses to what is the contagious pathogen COVID-19 were almost immediately suffocated by a plethora of arbitrary pseudo-religious rituals.  The capitulation of the churches to rituals radically modifying and even antagonistic to Christian rites may be because the Church, continually rent by internal crises and scandals, did not recognize the rival religion when it appeared. [...] Without much resistance or thought, most institutions, including the American Church, voluntarily capitulated to the cult's ritualistic regulatory minutiae.  The result is that in America, the land of the free, the land whose constitution guarantees freedom of religion and speech, the hollowness of much of the American Church has been revealed.

Biden Threatens Religious Freedom, Suggests Christians With Certain Traditional Views Are 'Dregs of Society'.  Biden's rhetoric and policies single out those who adhere to traditional religious beliefs and moral convictions, aiming to limit their ability to live by their consciences and ostracizing them from polite society.  The Democrat may outwardly campaign on a platform of unity and diversity, but his candidacy truly represents a threat to traditional religious believers.  The most recent evidence of this insidious threat came last week, when a Biden staffer suggested that traditional religious beliefs that homosexual acts are sinful and that marriage is between one man and one woman should be so "taboo" as to disqualify someone from serving on the Supreme Court.

Thoughts on Belief and Religion.  The most important of the atheist gods is Power.  This means the institutional control of people:  through government, tech business, communication, education, etc.  Socialism in its various forms — Communism, Fascism, Nazism, Maoism, Progressivism, etc. — is only a means to gain power, not an end in itself.  In their lust for power, many atheists try to impose their religion on everyone else.  That is the heart of much of America's current conflict.  For decades, now, we have suffered from an unrecognized religious war by atheist religionists against traditionally religious people.  This religious war is being fought out, and atheists are often winning, in the courts and in the halls of Congress.  They win by pretending to be secular and the victims of oppression, not themselves the oppressors.  There is a way to stop, and even reverse, the militant atheist suppression of traditional religions.  That way is to establish, in the law, that atheism is, itself, a competing religion.

People Are Arrested For Not Wearing A Mask During OUTDOOR Prayer Service In Moscow Idaho.  Three people have been arrested after an Idaho church held a psalm-singing event without masks in a city hall parking lot in violation of a town's mask order.  Christ Church pastor and event organizer Ben Zornes told the Moscow-Pullman Daily News that Wednesday's event in the community of Moscow was aimed at criticizing what he called a "largely groundless" mask order.  It was issued by the city council in an effort to slow the spread of the new coronavirus.  [Video clip]

When the Dogma Lives Loudly.  When Sen. Dianne Feinstein grilled federal circuit court nominee — and now Supreme Court nominee — Amy Coney Barrett three years ago, she fretted that "the dogma lives loudly within you.  And that's of concern."  Given the senator's obvious prejudices, she should indeed be concerned.  Ms. Barrett's life story suggests that she actually believes and seeks to live what her Catholic faith teaches.  Worse, she has a superb intellect, a deep grasp of the law, and an excellent record as a jurist.  In other words, she's a nightmare for a certain kind of political tribe.  Let's put aside for a moment Sen. Feinstein's Know Nothing-style vulgarity.  After all, she's hardly alone in her bigotry.  Disdain for vigorous religious convictions, especially the Catholic kind, is a virus that's going around.  It seems to infect a number of Democratic senators, including Sen. Kamala Harris, Feinstein's California colleague and vice presidential nominee, who saw looming peril in that dangerous national conspiracy otherwise known as the Knights of Columbus.

Amy Coney Barrett and the Zealots.  [Scroll down]  There is only the true and the untrue — anything obscuring this reality is dark unreality.  And the truth about Amy Coney Barrett is, quite possibly, not that the Democrats are afraid she'll impose Catholicism.  They're perhaps afraid that because she honors God, she'll also honor her oath and impose constitutionalism.

Brace for Democrats to knock Catholics, again.  How much do Democrats hate Roman Catholics?  We're about to find out, once President Trump nominates, most likely, Judge Amy Coney Barrett for the U.S. Supreme Court.  No surprises here — the Democrats have a long, sordid history of anti-Catholicism.  And Judge Barrett understands the Democrats' rabid bigotry first-hand, from her first Senate confirmation hearing in 2017, when she was confronted by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the now 87-year-old Democrat doyenne.  "When you read your speeches," Feinstein told her, "the conclusion one draws is that the Dogma lives loudly within you.  And that's a concern."  Imagine Feinstein saying that to a Muslim.  You can't.

Newsweek [is] Forced To Issue Major Retraction After It Smears Amy Coney Barrett, Claims.  Newsweek magazine has issued a major correction to an article smearing potential Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett, accusing the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals judge of belonging to a Catholic sect that "inspired" the novel "The Handmaid's Tale."  Initially, Newsweek claimed that "People of Praise," a charismatic Catholic group to which Barrett reportedly belongs, "served as inspiration for Margaret Atwood's dystopian novel, The Handmaid's Tale," adding that female members are forced to report to spiritual superiors known as "handmaids," and that the group stresses that "men have authority over their wives."

Amy Coney Barrett Is Living The Handmaid's Tale?  [Scroll down]  One former member described the group as an:  ["]abusive cult in which women are completely obedient to men and independent thinkers are humiliated, interrogated, shamed and shunned.["]  Indeed.  After all, Barrett's knuckle-dragging misogynistic religious fanatic husband has only let the poor woman out of the house twice.  Once, to serve a 15-year stint as a law professor at a highly prestigious university.  And again to slave away as a judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals.

John MacArthur banned from holding church services AGAIN.  Pastor John MacArthur and Grace Community Church have experienced yet another setback in their court case against the County of Los Angeles.  As most of you know, there's been a lot of back and forth between the government and GCC since JMac FINALLY decided to hold in-person church services after spending months calling on churches to submit to virtually any governmental official's stated declarations, per Romans 13.  Thankfully, Pastor MacArthur came around to take a stand and is now embroiled in a legal battle with the County of Los Angeles, which is attempting to strip churches of their Constitutional Right to worship God as they see fit without governmental interference.  On one hand, it's a positive sign to see a pietist like MacArthur now talking about defending our rights and liberty.  One the other hand, I wish that he would simply come out and explain how he came to this change in his theological understanding of Romans 13.

Christians and BLM.  The rioters plaguing our land from sea to shining sea supposedly target racism, police brutality, white privilege, capitalism and any number of other real or imagined ills, but a curious seeker after the motivational impulse behind such rage and wanton destruction will quickly find the answer in their literature: their guiding philosophy is Marxist, and Marx was first a Christ-hater before he was anything else.  It should come as no surprise to anyone that BLM leaders see their organization as first and foremost a spiritual movement opposed to the Judeo-Christian tradition.  Belief in traditional Western cultural values, American Exceptionalism, God, and moral truth is seen as stupid and evil, in need of being destroyed.  This moment has been a long time coming.

Seattle accused of discrimination for closing park to Christian rally amid left-wing protests.  Seattle plans to shut down a park to prevent a Christian rally from being held there on Labor Day even as left-wing protesters descended on the city for a holiday weekend of mass anti-Trump and anti-police demonstrations.  Sean Feucht Ministries had scheduled a worship rally Monday [9/7/2020] at Gas Works Park, but Seattle Parks and Recreation said in a Friday statement that the park would be closed that day "due to anticipated crowding that could impact the public health of residents," citing the risk of novel coronavirus transmission.  "Out of concerns for the safety of all those who visit Gas Works Park we have opted to close the entire park for the day," said the department.

Californiastan Continues Its War on Christians.  [Scroll down]  But even if a genuine pandemic rather than COVID-Con raged, pastors should never close churches.  Both liberty and the Lord demand that we defy such dictatorship.

Losing Our Religion.  Faith is on the decline nowadays, and it is no wonder.  Most people in these postmodern times are convinced that it's impossible to know anything with settled certainty — so they can't really believe anything, either.  When you aren't even sure whether objective truth exists, the suggestion that there is something to believe in simply doesn't make any sense.  Begin with the assumption that nothing can be known for sure, and religious convictions are automatically out of the question.  In case you hadn't realized it, that kind of thinking now dominates our society.  The concept of settled, knowable truth is widely considered intellectually inept and politically incorrect.  There's "my truth" and "your truth," meaning everything is ultimately just a matter of perspective.  In other words, truth claims are really nothing more than just personal opinions, and they deserve to be treated that way.  Every point of view, no matter how bizarre, demands equal respect.  Because, after all, no one can say for sure what is ultimately true.

Judge once again refuses to shut down in-person worship at Los Angeles County church.  Earlier this week, we looked at the story of Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, California and Pastor John MacArthur's battle with the county and the state over holding in-person, indoor services at his church.  Judge Mitchell L. Beckloff had ruled in favor of the church based on the fact that there were "no previous court rulings" forbidding the church from holding such services.  But at the same time, the judge left open the question of whether or not the county could impose fines of up to $20,000 on the church for violating executive orders issued by the county government regarding large assemblies during the pandemic.  Now the second round of appeals has been heard and Judge Beckloff appears content to allow things to continue as they have been thus far.  The county had moved to request a restraining order on the pastor, preventing him from continuing to hold indoor services.  The judge shot them down yet again, but he still failed to rule on the larger question of whether or not the county's rules violated the church's First Amendment rights.  Instead, he went with yet another technical argument.

The Democrats' Latest Religious Test.  No sooner did President Trump air at the Republican convention Secretary of State Pompeo's endorsement video recorded in Jerusalem than the Biden camp is unleashing a new objection — that the secretary is too religious to represent all of the American people.  We kid you not.  This has got to be the most desperate, offensive, and unconstitutional claim against a state secretary that the Democrats have ever aired.  It comes from one of Mr. Biden's closest consiglieres, Susan Rice.  She was President Obama's National Security Adviser and, before that, envoy at the United Nations.  Vice President Biden had her on his short list for his running mate.  She just gave an interview to MSNBC's Rachel Maddow in which she asserted that "Mike Pompeo has been an overtly religious secretary or state, which in and of itself is problematic."

Chris Cuomo Inadvertently Reveals the Real Reason Our Churches Were Shut Down.  Did you happen to catch Charlie Kirk's speech at the GOP convention?  CNN anchor Chris Cuomo did.  And this part really got under his skin:  ["]Trump was elected to defend our families from the vengeful mob that seeks to destroy our way of life, our neighborhoods, schools, churches, and values.["]  You probably picked up right away that Kirk was referring to the mobs who've been wreaking havoc in Portland and other American cities for these past few months.  Any moderately intelligent person would. [...] Cuomo defended the inconsistent way COVID-19 has been used as a justification for shutting down our Churches.  Though, somehow, protesting and even riots have gone unhindered by any such concern for public health:  ["]I feel badly for him that he believes that that's the world he lives in, that he's being kept from going to church.  Why?  Because of a pandemic. [...] ["]  Cuomo, of course, doesn't "feel badly" for Kirk at all.  He despises him.  And even if Cuomo weren't the vindictive knucklehead he's repeatedly shown himself to be, responding that you feel badly for someone you despise is the surest sign that whatever they said really got under your skin.

Americans Must Oppose the Tyranny That Is Rapidly Spreading Across US.  As Adolf Hitler rose to power, he took control of churches, shut down businesses, encouraged neighbors to report each other, and created a public surveillance operation system.  If these actions sound familiar, they should.  Public officials and bureaucrats are now putting their own tyranny on full display, using the COVID-19 crisis to impose similar draconian tactics in the United States.  While Maryland officials keep the state in lockdown, they are encouraging citizens not only to snitch on one another for breaking "prevention guidelines," but they are allowed to do so anonymously!  The Maryland Emergency Management Agency, State Police, and Department of Health announced a "COVID Prevention Line" available 24 hours a day as well as an email address where citizens can "report situations of concern where prevention guidelines are being ignored and the potential for the spread of COVID-19 is high."  Reports will be followed up with a visit from the health department or law enforcement.  Since July 2, nearly 40 Anne Arundel County businesses and restaurants have received citations, including my church.  After an anonymous reporting on August 11, a female employee from the Anne Arundel County Department of Health showed up at our Sunday morning service.  The health official presented our associate pastor with a citation and an "Order for Immediate Compliance."

Town paints over Noah's Ark display after atheist group complains.  A small town in Massachusetts painted over a Noah's Ark display after an atheist group complained, according to The Christian Post.  Officials in Ashburnham, Massachusetts agreed to cover a turning game featuring the Noah's ark story on the library's playground with white paint.  The Freedom from Religion Foundation (FFRF), an atheist group whose mission is to free people from religion, sent a letter to the town after a concerned citizen contacted them.  "It is settled that permanent displays on public land are government speech," said FFRF Staff Attorney Madeline Ziegler in her letter.  "It makes no difference whether this part of the playground was donated to the city.  As a permanent fixture, observers understand that the display is sanctioned and approved by the city."

Donald Trump:  Democrats at DNC Removed 'God' from Pledge of Allegiance 'on Purpose'.  President Donald Trump criticized Democrats on Twitter Saturday for removing the words "Under God" from the Pledge of Allegiance during the Democratic National Convention (DNC).  "At first I thought they made a mistake, but it wasn't.  It was done on purpose," Trump wrote.  The president was referring to stories that the moderator leading the Muslim Delegates Assembly meeting during day two of the DNC skipped "under God" as he began a virtual conference by reciting the Pledge of Allegiance.

USPS Threw Away Millions in Custom Stamp Program Out of Protest of Religious Stamps.  The United States Postal Service allegedly shut down its recent "custom stamp" initiative over the fact that multiple customers attempted to create stamps featuring Jesus Christ and other religious imagery, as reported by the Washington Free Beacon.  The agency, which has been struggling with funding for years, turned to the custom stamp program in an effort to generate revenue.  The initiative allowed for Americans to create their own stamps for a price, which ultimately created millions of dollars for the notoriously inefficient bureaucracy.  However, the program was scrapped in June after too many stamp designs were requested that featured religious symbolism.

DNC Muslim Delegates Assembly Moderator Skips 'Under God' While Reciting the Pledge.  The moderator kicking off the Muslim Delegates Assembly meeting during day two of the Democratic National Convention skipped "under God" while leading the virtual audience in reciting the Pledge of Allegiance.  [Video clip]  Like the national anthem, the Pledge of Allegiance has remained a target of the far-left, which contends that it is both racist and exclusionary.

'Joe Biden Has Said Nothing': CatholicVote Demands Biden Condemn Anti-Catholic Attacks.  The advocacy organization CatholicVote called on 2020 presidential candidate Joe Biden Thursday [8/6/2020] to condemn an onslaught of recent anti-Catholic attacks.  CatholicVote said the former vice president should publicly speak out against the attacks, saying that since Biden is both a self-professed and baptized Catholic, he has a responsibility to condemn acts of vandalism and violence against Catholic churches.  "Catholic churches across America are literally burning, and Joe Biden has said nothing," CatholicVote President Brian Burch said in a statement provided to the Daily Caller News Foundation.  "Leading members of the Democratic Party have fueled a climate of hate against Catholics, and these attacks have now led to acts of vandalism and violence."

Court Rules Against Soldier Who Says He Was Forced to Retire Due to Religious Beliefs.  A former master sergeant in the Army Band who claims service officials forced him into retirement because of expressions of his Christian faith and conservative opinions says he plans to appeal after an adverse ruling in his case.  The U.S. Court of Federal Claims published a ruling Tuesday in favor of a government motion to dismiss the case brought by Nathan Sommers, saying that, because he'd chosen retirement over separation from the military, the move was not involuntary.

Trump urges churches to reopen, despite Dems who 'want to put churches out of business'.  President Trump urged governors to reopen churches and schools, saying they're "essential" services and should not remain shut down indefinitely.  "I think they should open the churches.  It's up to the governors.  But I'm recommending it, you open the churches," Trump told the Catholic Telegraph.  The President said churches can safely reopen as long as attendees wear masks and social-distance.  Trump said it's unfair to Christians that they're banned from going to church, but Black Lives Matter protesters and left-wing rioters can gather by the tens of thousands — and Democrats say nothing about the public-health dangers they pose.

America is engaged in a religious war.  We should have realized a long time ago that the battle raging across America, in its streets and its cultural institutions, is a Holy War.  In some ways, the first shot fired was the universal ridicule from the left when Tim Tebow kneeled before God at football games.  Just a short time later, that same leftist establishment was exultant when Colin Kaepernick "took a knee" during the "Star-Spangled Banner," not as a sign of respect but as a form of insult.  Marxism, after all, is a doctrine of faith just as surely as the traditional Judeo-Christian religion is.  What Kaepernick did was the American equivalent of tearing the crucifixes off the walls in Catholic Churches during the 17th-Century wars of Reformation in Europe.

As They Turn To Burning Bibles, Portland Rioters Show Their True Colors.  While rioters previously attacked federal buildings, businesses, and even officers, this weekend, they found a new target:  Bibles.  A video posted to Twitter on Saturday shows rioters holding Black Lives Matter signs tossing Bibles into a fire.  Bystanders stood and watched as the flames licked away at the pages of the books.  "Left-wing activists bring a stack of Bibles to burn in front of the federal courthouse in Portland," wrote the Twitter user, Ian Cheong, who posted the video.

If you still aren't sure what the riots are about, here's video of rioters burning bibles.  Videos are still pouring out of Portland and Seattle where the riots continue with no major effort by the mayors or the governor to stop them.  There has been a slight increase in the ability of cops to do their job, after President Trump set a timetable for the National Guard to come in and take care of business, but it isn't even close to enough.  And what are the riots about?  Why are they doing it?  There are a lot of answers, but sometimes you just need to let them tell you what they're about by their own actions.  So watch this video of them burning a stack of Bibles.  [Video clip]

Portland Rioters Burn Bibles.  While they didn't really attack the police, they did attack religion.  [Video clip]

Time for Civil Disobedience is NOW!  In a 5-4 Decision the United States Supreme Court has determined that California restricting church gatherings is not unconstitutional, and does not violate the "free exercise clause of the First Amendment."  The Ninth Circuit Judges, regarding restrictions against churches regarding the free exercise of their religion, and more specifically, worship services, said, "constitutional standards that would normally govern our review of a Free Exercise claim should not be applied."  The last time I checked, the First Amendment does not say, "Freedom of Religion, unless there's a virus."  The court's decision is unconstitutional.  They are wrong.  Liberty must prevail.  And it is time the American People send that message.

Conservatives Will Lose The Country Without God.  Throughout this time of leftist violence, churches around the country have been vandalized and statues of Christ and the Virgin Mary desecrated.  In several instances — a church in New Haven, Connecticut, and a resort in Montana among them — the culprits left graffiti supporting anarchy and the Marxist group Black Lives Matter.  Black Lives Matter leader Sean King has tweeted, "I think the statues of the white European they claim is Jesus should also come down.  They are a form of white supremacy.  Always have been."  Of course, leftism has always stood in opposition to religion.  Karl Marx believed that religion — by which he largely meant the Christian religion — was part of the false consciousness that kept people in ignorance of the true economic nature of their oppression.  This is what he meant by calling religion, "The opiate of the masses."

Mutual of Omaha insurance firm removing longtime Indian logo.  Mutual of Omaha plans to replace its longtime corporate logo, which for 70 years has featured a depiction of a Native American chief, the insurance company announced Friday [7/17/2020].  The move comes as corporations and sports teams around the country face increasing pressure to dump nicknames and depictions that reference American Indians amid a nationwide movement calling for racial justice.

The Editor says...
Not every depiction of an Indian is an affront to Indians in general.

Chicago threatens to bulldoze churches, lawyer says.  The lawyer representing two churches in Chicago fighting the city's coronavirus guidelines said he never thought he'd see the day when city leaders would threaten to bulldoze a church for allowing its congregation to worship.  That day has arrived.  Matt Staver, the founder and chairman of Liberty Counsel, said Wednesday that churches that he represents have received letters from the city's Board of Health that declared them "public nuisances."

'This Is No House of God!' Black Lives Matter Activists Yell as They Harass Church in Upstate NY.  Amid nationwide riots following protests over the horrific police killing of George Floyd, Black Lives Matter activists harassed a Baptist church in Troy, N.Y., a suburb of Albany.  Videos of the harassment went viral on Twitter, and the church confirmed to PJ Media that the harassment did, in fact, occur.  "On Sunday, June 28, the Marxist thugs screamed, chanted, harassed, blocked our steps from allowing people to enter the church, and then physically assaulted our church members," John Koletas, pastor of Grace Baptist Church, told PJ Media on Thursday.  The harassment did not end on Sunday, however.

This is not something one would expect with Trump in the White House:
Navy bans troops from indoor religious services but permits protests and house parties, law firm says.  The Navy is banning service members from attending indoor religious services due to the coronavirus and troops could be court-martialed as punishment, a religious freedom law firm tells Fox News.  Major Daniel Schultz, USAF, currently assigned to a Navy command, is requesting a religious accommodation to attend the church where he leads worship after the Navy issued an order on June 24 stating "service members are prohibited from visiting, patronizing, or engaging in ... indoor religious services."  Mike Berry, the First Liberty Institute general counsel who sent a letter on behalf of Shultz on Monday morning, called the order "unlawful and immoral" and is calling on President Trump to immediately demand its removal.

Language warning!
Man Gets Kicked Out of CHAZ / CHOP For Being a White Christian With Privilege.  Imagine that, getting deported from America's largest mental institution.  [Video clip]

The Editor says...
Whether it's at CHAZ or Mardi Gras, it takes a special kind of person to wade into the sewer to seek and save the lost, and it's painful to watch a street preacher getting cussed out.  Aside from the politics, it is disturbing to see that young people today are unable to express themselves without the use of profanity and without shouting.  The idea of rational debate is completely unknown to them.

Christianity becomes next battleground in cancel wars.  Christian figures and symbols have increasingly become the subject of debate as protesters across the country demand a reckoning on racial justice, pulling down statues and criticizing controversial figures along the way.  Christianity, like nearly every long-standing institution in the United States, has a complicated history with racism, prompting several leaders of the Black Lives Matter movement to call for its symbols to be adjusted or removed.  In some cities, protesters have taken matters into their own hands, pulling down statues or taking over churches.  Protesters on Monday [6/22/2020] occupied the exterior of St. John's Episcopal Church near the White House, refashioning it as the "Black House Autonomous Zone," a reference to the police-free zone in Seattle, Washington.  The church's exterior was vandalized, the second time the building has been defaced since protesters burned its basement in early June.

Shaun King says Jesus images 'a form of white supremacy' that must go: 'They should all come down'.  Shaun King said Monday [6/22/2020] it's time for anything resembling "white Jesus" to be expunged from the public square.  The staunch Black Lives Matter activist made the comments as online activists continued to debate which statues and monuments were culturally unacceptable in 2020.  The May 25 death of George Floyd, a 46-year-old black man, under the weight of Minneapolis police served as the impetus for activists to tear down statues of historical figures like Christopher Columbus and George Washington.

Shaun King says Jesus images 'a form of white supremacy' that must go: 'They should all come down'.  Shaun King said Monday [6/22/2020] it's time for anything resembling "white Jesus" to be expunged from the public square.  The staunch Black Lives Matter activist made the comments as online activists continued to debate which statues and monuments were culturally unacceptable in 2020.  The May 25 death of George Floyd, a 46-year-old black man, under the weight of Minneapolis police served as the impetus for activists to tear down statues of historical figures like Christopher Columbus and George Washington.

Black Lives Matter Con Artist, Shaun King, Demands All Images of White Jesus Destroyed.  Shaun King is a well known Black Lives Matter con artist who has grifted on racial grievance for a decade even lying about his own family and race.  Shaun King is white, provably white, and he found his professional & financial niche by conning black people, including Oprah Winfrey, into believing he is black.  After spending several years drumming up racial division King attached himself to the very first well publicized BLM effort in Ferguson Missouri.  There was a lot of money to be made selling the completely false Mike Brown story; so Shaun King hooked up with DeRay McKesson to create the new financial conduit known as Black Lives Matter.  His scams and cons are very well known to long-term CTH readers.  Together McKesson and King sell a toxic stew of Marxism, racism, and hatred; and as a consequence their business model intersects with Islamic extremism.

Why Do So Many Christians Vote Democrat?  Christians have the power to swing the 2020 election — and a responsibility to exercise this power in a way that upholds Biblical values and religious freedom.  Churches have been barred from holding normal public worship for nearly three months.  Restraints on churches have been most severe in Democrat-ruled areas.  Democrats claim they "clean up the messes made by Republicans," yet Christian oppression is strongest in cities like Chicago, Louisville, Madison and Holly Springs and in states like New York and California that are long-time Democrat strongholds.  Christians have a moral obligation to consider the horrific harassment of fellow Christians when voting in November.  Here are six recent examples of Christian persecution in areas ruled by Democrats that occurred in March, April, and early May: [...]

Supreme Court rejects church's challenge on mandatory limited attendance.  The Supreme Court ruled against a California church that was seeking to overturn the state's limits on attendance.  The court ruled 5-4 against the South Bay United Pentecostal Church in Chula Vista, California, with Chief Justice John Roberts joining the four liberal Justices.  The church, which says it has crowds of 200 to 300 people, argued that the limitation placed on how many people can attend its services violates its constitutional rights protecting religious freedom.  It specifically made an emergency appeal so that it would have a ruling before services were scheduled to be held on Sunday.

Supreme Court rejects challenge to limits on church services; Roberts sides with liberals.  A divided Supreme Court on Friday [5/29/2020] rejected an emergency appeal by a California church that challenged state limits on attendance at worship services that have been imposed to contain the spread of the coronavirus.  Over the dissent of the four more conservative justices, Chief Justice John Roberts joined the court's four liberals in turning away a request from the South Bay United Pentecostal Church in Chula Vista, California, in the San Diego area.  The church argued that limits on how many people can attend their services violate constitutional guarantees of religious freedom and had been seeking an order in time for services on Sunday.  The church said it has crowds of 200 to 300 people for its services.

Evangelicals and Their Belief in an Afterlife Are KILLING Us, Says Harvard Professor.  First it was the New York Times claiming that Christians and their "science denialism" were sending us to "coronavirus hell."  Now, perhaps missing the irony that atheistic China visited COVID-19 upon the world, a Harvard professor has blamed Christians for exacerbating the pandemic, calling belief in an afterlife "a malignant delusion" that "devalues actual lives and discourages action that would make them longer, safer, and happier."  None of this is surprising coming from Harvard University cognitive scientist Steven Pinker, who, according to American Thinker, cites the Bible as an example of "pre-modern cruelty."

Harvard Prof. Blames Christianity's 'Malignant' Belief in Afterlife for Lockdown Protests.  Harvard psychology professor Steven Pinker said Thursday that the push for reopening society from lockdowns comes from Christianity's "malignant delusion" of belief in an afterlife.  Atheists who believe in this life alone are more concerned with health and safety, Professor Pinker suggested in a Tweet, while Christians tend to devalue "actual lives" and live a riskier existence.

Gavin Newsom responds to Justice Department warning over church closures.  After receiving a formal warning from the United States Justice Department over church closures, California Gov. Gavin Newsom said his state is "weeks away" from allowing in-person religious services to resume.  A group of federal attorneys wrote a letter to Newsom warning him that prolonged church closures likely violate the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment due to the fact that similar non-religious businesses are receiving the green light to reopen in Stage 2.

TYRANNY: Kansas City is Now Requiring Churches to Keep Lists of People Entering Churches.  New reopening guidelines in Kansas City that require churches to keeps "lists" of attendees have worried advocates of religious freedoms in the area, according to a report from Metro Voice.  Mayor Quinton Lucas enacted the policy where houses of worship receive the same treatment as "non-essential" businesses when it comes to keeping information of those who attend a service or anyone who enters the building.  "Never in our wildest dreams could we have imagined Nazi-like measures designed to surveil, track and spy upon what was once a free American people," declared Liberty Council, founder and Chairman Matt Staver.  "That is exactly what Kansas City's misguided government officials are now demanding."

The Editor says...
Will the Kansas City mosques get the same treatment?

Good Samaritans.  The secularist prejudices of the left remain on open display during the coronavirus crisis.  They continue to produce bizarre policies:  closed churches, banned funerals and weddings, even as abortion mills keep grinding and jails spring prisoners.  Protecting the First Amendment, we're told, is above the "pay grade" of governors — the same line, by the way, Barack Obama once used after he was asked about the humanity of unborn children.  One might have thought New York City mayor Bill de Blasio would be too busy to indulge these secularist prejudices.  But he is not.  With special relish, he has sternly warned Jews and Christians against assembling.  He has threatened to close permanently their churches and synagogues if they don't comply.  (His message to the Islamic community hasn't been as pointed.)  Not even Christian charities have escaped the withering gaze of the secularists.  Witness the mistreatment of Samaritan's Purse, a medical charity led by Franklin Graham that has set up a field hospital in Central Park.  De Blasio has been "monitoring" the group.  Why?  Because it is Christian.  To de Blasio, that means it is "discriminatory."

Trump Exposes the 'Great Disparity': Islam Good, Judaism and Christianity Bad.  Ramadan is upon us, and many Americans — not least the millions who were denied church access during Easter — are wondering: will mosques experience the same ban or will the usual double standard prevail?  Among those wondering is America's president, Donald Trump.

Amid COVID-19, Deep State Moves in for the Kill Against Churches.  With churches across much of America being shutdown by government decree as "non-essential," they are facing enormous and potentially existential threats.  On one hand, churches are being terrorized by state and local governments, with pastors and congregations literally being fined or even arrested for simply attending a service.  Then, when the churches try to stream online, Deep State-run Big Tech firms are censoring them or even shutting them down.  At the same time, many churches across America are lining up to receive government bailout money — cash that comes with dangerous strings attached, including LGBT mandates.  This represents a profound threat to religious liberty and the continued independence of the church in America.  It could be a perfect storm.

Easter wouldn't do it but...
Will Ramadan force an end to the lockdown?  As the Muslim celebration of Ramadan arrives (April 23 to May 23), many of the faithful will expect to attend worship services at their local mosques.  Will local and state governments treat Muslim worshipers at Ramadan the same as they treated Christian worshipers at Easter?  Will officials arrest imams for holding services as they did to a Christian pastor in Tampa?  How likely is it that Kentucky officials will sprinkle nails in mosque parking lots and take license plate numbers of worshipers?  Will NYC mayor Bill de Blasio threaten to permanently shut down mosques as he did Christian churches and Jewish synagogues if they dare to hold services?  And then there is the case of "the worst governor in America," Gretchen Whitmer. [...] How will she deal with the huge Muslim enclaves in Dearborn and Ann Arbor as Ramadan arrives?

'They go after churches but they don't tend to go after mosques': Trump accuses Democrats of anti-Christian bias.  President Trump on Saturday claimed that states have been unfairly targeting Christians by not allowing religious gatherings due to the coronavirus pandemic while suggesting that they won't enforce the same rules with Muslims during Ramadan. 'You know I just spoke with leaders and people that love mosques,' the president said on Saturday [4/18/2020].  'They love mosques!  And I'm all in favor of that.  'But I would say that there could be a difference.  And we'll have to see what will happen.

Mayor Bill de Blasio's despicable baiting of Samaritan's Purse.  Never look a gift horse in the mouth, they say, though when Mayor Bill de Blasio is on hand, the other end of the animal is usually involved.  Gotham's chief executive this week might have accepted with some grace an offer of assistance from a crisis-tested, and devoutly Christian, emergency-relief organization — but he gave it the fisheye instead.  It seems that in Blasville, evangelical Christians armed with tons of the sophisticated medical equipment so sorely lacking in the city right now, plus the expertise to use it, are presumptively suspect.  And are perhaps to be expelled.  Thus it was with Samaritan's Purse, the unapologetically fundamentalist rolling rescue squad perhaps best known for the Ebola clinics it established in West and Central Africa over the past decade.  And, of course, for its traditionalist views on homosexuality and same-sex marriage — neither of which the group has much patience for.  And that's to put it mildly.

Corona Conniption:  Left Attacks Pence's Faith after Task Force Appointment.  Last week, Vice President Mike Pence was given the most thankless job in the federal government when he appointed the leader of the Coronavirus task force.  Everyone who has seen any of these global diseases before knows that they will get worse before they get better, because it takes time to develop vaccines or to properly inform and test the public.  While it was to be expected that the left was going to take political advantage of the situation, the addition of Mike Pence on the team exposed the left's hatred for another group besides Republicans: the religious.  Mike Pence, more so than any other member of the administration, is frequently subjected to these attacks.  He was widely criticized for his policy on not dining alone with a woman who wasn't his wife and not attending parties with alcohol without his wife present.  Even in the #MeToo era, his stance was criticized.  His wife, Karen Pence, was subjected to disgusting rhetoric when she went to teach in a religious school that upheld traditional definitions of marriage.  Pence is considered a homophobic bigot simply because he is a religious person.  He is considered "anti-science" because he is a religious person.

So much for 'Coexist': Bernie Sanders and other leftists catcall Mike Pence for prayer to halt coronavirus.  With their famous reputation for "tolerance" all out there, leftists, including the presumably vote-seeking Bernie Sanders, are mocking Vice President Mike Pence for beginning his coronavirus task force, a serious group of working government leaders tasked with keeping the infectious disease from spreading through the U.S., with a prayer.

Freedom from Freedom from Religion:  The Intent of Our Founding Fathers.  Have you heard of the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF)?  They're a herd of control freaks who dedicate their free time to harassing and bullying devout Christians out of public view and back into the closets whence they came.  The modus operandi of these self-described "free thinkers" is as follows:  A small town has a religious monument on public land.  It's been there since the Battle of Brandywine.  Of the town's 3,000 residents, 2,999 have no problem whatsoever with it.  But a single perpetually offended milksop will whimper to the FFRF that its presence is somehow obliterating his constitutional rights.  The FFRF sends a letter to the town's city hall threatening expensive legal action if they don't immediately remove the monument.  City hall buckles at the threat and removes it.  The FFRF moves on to the next town and repeats.

Barr: The Real People Trying To 'Impose Their Values' On Others Are 'Militant Secularists'.  U.S. Attorney General William Barr clapped back at leftwing hysteria over his support of the First Amendment Tuesday in an interview with Cardinal Timothy Dolan on Sirius XM.  "I feel today religion is being driven out of the marketplace of ideas and there's a organized militant secular effort to drive religion out of our lives," Barr told Dolan.  "To me the problem today is not that religious people are trying to impose their views on nonreligious people, it's the opposite — it's that militant secularists are trying to impose their values on religious people and they're not accommodating the freedom of religion of people of faith."

The Mob and Social Justice.  The British writer Douglas Murray is one of those rare public intellectuals who writes cogently, with wit and erudition, but also with a sharp dose of common sense and humanity.  His latest book, The Madness of Crowds, is an extended meditation on identity politics and specifically how sexuality and race have intersected with technology to create today's toxic culture. [...] Murray argues that the decline of religion in the 19th century and the decline of secular ideologies in the last quarter of a century have led to a vacuum that was filled by postmodernism.  That worldview, which began at the universities, functions as a religion-substitute.  Its holy trinity is "social justice," "identity group politics," and "intersectionalism."

A Liberal Order That Seeks To Shut Down Christian Charities Doesn't Deserve To Survive.  Even without full control over the government, the left has been aggressive in its use of government power against Christians who believe traditional teachings on human sexuality.  The left seems to target particularly those engaged in charitable work, rather than protecting them on account of their good works.  The left's legal wing is trying to compel Christian hospitals to perform abortions and sex-change surgeries, Christian schools to affirm same-sex relationships, and Christian charities such as women's shelters to pretend men can be women.  A purportedly serious Democratic presidential candidate wanted to tax dissenting Christian organizations, including churches, into oblivion.  The left won't even spare elderly nuns.  When the Trump administration ended Barack Obama's legal campaign against the Little Sisters of the Poor, various Democratic attorneys general made a point of continuing that unholy effort.

The Strange Alliance:  Secular Humanism and Neo-Paganism.  The debates and contradictions we see in modern American culture today are exactly the same.  Those who want to eliminate the influence of religion not only in our government but our society in general and those that promote a "New Age" of nature worship.  They seem to be natural enemies but in reality they work in a symbiotic alliance to undermine what has been our Judeo-Christian tradition.  They are strange bedfellows and useful enemies.  What they do have in common is the main objective of ending what has been the dominate influence of the Judeo-Christian morality in American history.  If we seek a second commonality it is in their values systems.  Both reduce truth and goodness to human sized standards.

Christian Faith Is the Missing Ingredient in A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood.  In Polar Express (2004), Tom Hanks kept urging "Believe!" without specifying what to believe in.  Some of that same damnable over-secularization threatens to ruin Hanks's new film, A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood. [...] In short, the movie seems wary of faith (it briefly mentions that Rogers was an ordained minister) and settles for secular sentimentality to account for his sensibility and behavior.  This not only weakens the film, but it also hobbles Hanks's characterization.

Decline in Faith a Danger to American Liberty.  A new survey by the Pew Research Center presents an ominous warning sign for the durability of the American experiment in Liberty and self-government.  The unsurprising results, based on 2018-2019 telephone surveys, show that America is becoming a less religious nation.  Today, just 65% of Americans describe themselves as Christians, compared to 77% in 2009.  The dramatic drop cuts across every demographic and nearly every denomination, with an 8% drop among Protestants (51% to 43%) and Catholics (23% to 20%).  In May, the nation's largest Protestant group, the Southern Baptist Convention, reported a decline in membership for the 12th consecutive year — it now stands at 14.8 million members, down 192,000 from 2017.  The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormon) held steady at 2% of the population, and non-Christian faiths (Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, etc.) saw a slight increase from 2009 (5%) to today (7%).  By contrast, self-described atheists doubled from 2% to 4%, agnostics increased from 3% to 5%, and 17% of Americans now say their religion is "nothing in particular," up from 12% a decade ago.

William Barr Is Right:  Secularists Are Imposing Their Own Religion.  Attorney General William Barr gave a powerful speech last week on religious liberty in America at Notre Dame Law School.  If you missed it, it's well worth reading.  Barr traced the central role of religious liberty in our nation's history and the importance of a morally disciplined and virtuous citizenry for maintaining a free government such as ours.  He also took note of the current threat of secularism and moral relativism. [...] If we stop caring about religious freedom here at home, will we continue to care about confronting the atrocities committed by religious radicals and oppressive regimes abroad?  Something tells me we won't care as much.

AG Barr: 'New Secular Religion' Inverts Christian Morality, Employs 'Inquisitions and Excommunication'.  Secularism has become a religion based on freedom from personal responsibility, salvation attained by political activism and severe punishment of disobedience, U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr warned Friday [10/11/2019] in a speech at Notre Dame's law school.  While the new secular religion has inverted basic Christian morality, it has adopted practices such as inquisitions and excommunication to enforce its doctrine, Barr said:  "One of the ironies, as some have observed, is that the secular project has, itself, become a religion, pursued with religious fervor.  It has taken on all the trappings of religion — including inquisitions and excommunication. [..."

Catholic League Decries Democrats' Growing Hostility Toward Religion.  One message resounding loudly and clearly from the latest televised Democrat debate is how hostile the party has become toward people of faith, Catholic League President Bill Donohue said on Friday [10/11/2019].  According to Dr. Donohue, the Democrat candidates "fail the religion test" for falling over themselves trying to prove who is the most severe in dealing with religious freedom issues.

Biblical Genesis 'Incompatible With Human Dignity,' British Court Says.  A British court recently ruled against Dr. David Mackereth, a disability assessor who was fired from the United Kingdom's Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) last year for refusing to use transgender pronouns. [...] Dr. Mackereth then hired the Christian Legal Centre (CLC) to represent him in a lawsuit filed against the DWP for religious discrimination.  An employment tribunal ruled that the DWP was within its rights to terminate Mackereth.  The ruling declared:  "Belief in Genesis 1:27, lack of belief in transgenderism and conscientious objection to transgenderism in our judgement are incompatible with human dignity and conflict with the fundamental rights of others, specifically here, transgender individuals."  The panel also categorized the bible as "mere opinion."  Belief in the Bible is "incompatible with human dignity?"  Belief in Genesis is "incompatible with human dignity?"  Really?  Where does the DWP and the employment tribunal think human dignity comes from?  From whence does it originate?  In Whose image are we created?

Lessons Learned from the Drew Brees-Focus on the Family Ordeal.  New Orleans Saints Quarterback Drew Brees recently recorded a promotional video for Bring Your Bible to School Day, a project of Focus on the Family.  It was posted to YouTube on August 28th.  [Video clip]  Predictably, the media pilloried him.  Left-wing activists quickly wrote blog articles accusing the future Hall of Famer of being complicit in the spreading of hatred.

LGBT Activists:  Drew Brees Promoting The Bible Is Homophobic.  Is being an openly Christian person so deeply stigmatized as to be viewed as deathblow to your career and social standing in America today?  From the media response to NFL star Drew Brees' message to his young fans on being proud of and sharing their faith, this may not be a far-fetched question.  Brees released a short video encouraging young people to share their faith by bringing their Bibles to school on October 3, 2019.  The event is an annual celebration designed to encourage personal freedom, religious freedom, and religious pride, and is sponsored by Focus on the Family, a conservative Christian advocacy organization.

LGBT Activists Seek to Destroy Christianity.  Quarterback Drew Brees came under brutal attack last week for having the audacity to appear in a video encouraging Christian students to bring Bibles to school.  The pretext for the attack was that he supported a project by Focus on the Family, a Christian organization that believes in the Bible, to include the biblical concept of marriage and sexuality.  Note that Brees did not say or do anything that could be even remotely construed as being anti-LGBT.  In fact, he has previously appeared in anti-bullying ads supporting that community.  But his guilt was twofold:  it is the guilt of association liberals love to use to attack what they hate and the even greater guilt of asking children to read the Bible, a book that many in this community despise.  In his critics' view, arguing against bullying LGBT members is good, but so is actually bullying Christians.

Calif. Democrat:  "Preposterous" to Say "So Help Me God" in Congressional Oaths.  A Democratic congressman on Sunday called it "preposterous" that witnesses are still being required to say the phrase "so help me God" as part of their oaths when testifying before Congress, following his committee's aborted attempt to remove references to God from its oaths earlier this year.  Representative Jared Huffman (D-Calif.) made the remark on "Freethought Matters," a program by the Freedom from Religion Foundation.  The show's website bills it as "an antidote to religion on the airwaves and Sunday morning sermonizing."

The Humanitarian Hoax of the New World Order.  Traditionally, American culture derives its stability and moral authority from its Judeo-Christian tradition, Constitutional law, and parental authority in the family unit.  God, government, and family are the triptych of American culture and the foundations for America's extraordinary ordered liberty.  America's triptych is the artwork of American greatness and portrays the triad that supports our unparalleled freedom and prosperity.  Today's radical leftist Democrat party is challenging the foundational American triptych and is attempting to repaint its panels with socialism.  Here is the problem.  In politics it is essential that policies be analyzed and evaluated with rational objectivity; when they are not, the consequence is belief in the unbelievable.

The Boomer Revolution and Its Consequences.  [A recent] poll, conducted with NBC News, found that Americans care less about patriotism, family, and faith than they did 20 years ago.  The percentage of Americans who regard family as very important dropped 16 points, to a mere 43 percent.  The importance of religion dropped 12 points, to 48 percent; and patriotism fell 9 points, to 61 percent. [...] Taken together, the statistics tell a neat story of moral decline.  So young people really are a bunch of godless egoists who think brunch and having pets instead of children is the summum bonum!

Atheists slapped, as common sense [and] courage come to court.  The 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals just ruled that a group of atheists demanding the right to deliver the invocation at the opening of legislative sessions in the Pennsylvania House are S.O.L. — simply out of luck — and they'll have to take their secularist so-called prayers elsewhere.  Finally.  A court with courage to uphold the common sense aspect of the Constitution.  Law and order can't last in a land with people who aren't lawful and orderly in their thinking, you see.  "The Supreme Court has long taken as [a] given that prayer presumes invoking a higher power," wrote Judge Thomas Ambro, in the 2-1 majority decision against the petition brought by the Freedom From Religion Foundation.  That's because it is a "given."

Beto O'Rourke Supporters Boo [a] Man for Urging America to Return to God.  Supporters of Beto O'Rourke heckled a man at a campaign event who urged the former congressman to lead America back to more Christian values to reduce violence.  The man stood up and addressed O'Rourke at a town hall event at Seminar Brewing Company in Florence, South Carolina.

New HBO Series 'Righteous Gemstones' Hits Rock Bottom with Mockery of Christians.  HBO's latest fiasco in entertainment, The Righteous Gemstones, premiered on Sunday night [8/18/2019].  Nudity?  Check.  Unnecessary profanity?  Check.  Extremely mind-numbing content?  Check.  So what sets this show apart from the rest of the junk HBO puts out?  Not much.  The storyline, which is centered around a rich celebrity pastor, Eli Gemstone (John Goodman), and his family — a greedy and very corrupt bunch of people — comes across as a mockery of Christians, despite the showrunner's attempts to claim it's not.  The Gemstone Family is not only extremely insincere as they parade around in their private jets, going on mission trips that seem more like photo ops than evangelical outreach, but they are also extremely hypocritical.  The family is constantly seen fighting and using foul language.  In fact, the f-word is used 41 times and the Lord's name is taken in vein [sic] 28 times in the show's first hour.

Rep. Rashida Tlaib spews boiling contempt for prayers - three times.  In the wake of the El Paso and Dayton mass shootings, far-left Rep. Rashida Tlaib spewed out at least three times on Twitter her loathing for the power of prayer from those who expressed shock and sadness at the events and said they were praying.

Sen. Thune:  Dems Using 'Religious Test' to Stop People of Faith from Serving in Office.  In remarks given to the Senate on Thursday about the confirmation of candidates for federal judgeships, Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) said some Democrats are using a "religious test" to try to prevent people, especially faithful Catholics, from serving in public office.  "Mr. President, as I said earlier, we confirmed two excellent judicial nominees this week, unfortunately, one ran into some Democrat opposition during the confirmation process because he was Catholic," said Thune on Thursday.  "That's right.  Apparently the fact that he takes his faith seriously enough."  The judge Senator Thune was referring to is Brian C. Buescher, a Catholic.  Buescher was recently confirmed by the Senate, on a party-line vote, to be a District Judge on the U.S. District Court for the District of Nebraska.

2020 Democrats need to answer for their party's open religious bigotry.  The Senate confirmed Omaha attorney Brian Buescher last week to be U.S. District Court judge for Nebraska.  Not a single Democrat voted for him, despite his obvious qualifications.  And we know why.  Democratic Sens. Mazie Hirono of Hawaii and Kamala Harris of California sought to undermine his confirmation by arguing Buescher's Roman Catholic faith made him unfit for the job.  Their chief point of contention: that Buescher is a member of a shadowy, extremist group known as — the Knights of Columbus.  Sadly, Hirono's and Harris' bigoted insinuations are not outliers.  Their opposition to Buescher's nomination continues a trend of Senate Democrats suggesting Catholics ought to be excluded from holding public office.

ABC's 'The Bachelorette' Faces Accusations of Anti-Christian Bigotry.  When Luke Parker told producers of "The Bachelorette" that he was a born-again Christian who was saving sex for marriage, ABC knew they had the season's villain.  Luke's family tells me they are outraged over ABC's campaign to portray the 24-year-old as an evil, pathological liar, misogynist and psychopath — simply because he follows the Bible's teachings regarding sex and marriage.

Church Historian:  There's an Intense Spiritual Battle to Sever America's Christian Roots.  Church historian Dr. Eddie Hyatt says secularists are working hard to sever America from its Christian roots.  "To destroy a people, you must first sever their roots," he tells Dr. Steve Greene on the "Greenelines" podcast.  "There has been an all-out attempt in academia to sever America from her Christian roots, which is a great spiritual awakening in faith and prayer.  [Their purpose is] to destroy that America and create another America in their own image."  But these secular revisionists overlook one of the major stimuli behind America's independence:  the Great Awakening.

Religious, constitutional illiteracy [is] persistent in [the] U.S..  If you, lay reader of this column, only get half the questions right, which is the average score, should you feel bad?  Pew, which prides itself on facts not thoughts, would never say so.  The survey was merely "designed to measure the public's knowledge about a wide range of religious subjects."  But my old friend Steve Prothero, who helped design the survey, thinks otherwise.  A decade ago, the Boston University religion prof wrote Religious Literacy to highlight the dangers of not knowing enough about his field and to urge that it be taught in public schools.  "Today religious illiteracy is at least as pervasive as cultural illiteracy, and certainly more dangerous," he wrote.

How Washington Has Helped Destroy American Civil Society and Family Life.  Church attendance in the United States is at an all-time low, according to a Gallup poll released in April 2019.  This decline has not been a steady one.  Indeed, over the last 20 years, church attendance has fallen by 20 percent.  This might not sound like cause for concern off the bat.  And if you're not a person of faith, you might rightly wonder why you would care about such a thing.  Church attendance is simply a measure of something deeper:  social cohesion. [...] It is our position that civil society — those elements of society which exist independently of big government and big business — are essential to a functioning and free society.

Pastor formerly imprisoned in Turkey [is] 'astounded' by mounting hostility to [the] Christian faith in [the] U.S..  Andrew Brunson, the U.S. pastor who spent two years in a Turkish prison, said Friday [7/12/2019] he was "astounded" by the escalating hostility toward Christians in the United States, saying they have become the "target" of activists.  "I'm really astounded at the speed at which the U.S. is imploding," said Mr. Brunson at the Western Conservative Summit, held annually by the Centennial Institute at Colorado Christian University.  Mr. Brunson, who was released from Turkish custody in October 2018 in response to pressure from the Trump administration, said it was "no longer enough" for Christians to get along with others with whom they disagree.

U.S. Women's Soccer Team Accused Of Snubbing Star Player For Christian Views.  The absence of one of the best women's soccer players in the nation from the national squad that just won the World Cup has prompted questions as to whether she didn't make the team because of her openly professed Christian faith.

Will Amazon ban the Bible next?  In a very disturbing move, Amazon has removed the books of Dr. Joseph Nicolosi, the psychologist whom critics have dubbed "the father of conversion therapy."  In other words, for claiming that sexual orientation is not innate and immutable, and for claiming that change is possible, Dr. Nicolosi's books must be banned.  This leads to the logical question:  Will Amazon ban the Bible next?

Designers refuse to be at conference if Christian is there.  The Dallas-Fort Worth chapter of the American Institute of Graphic Arts makes a big deal about inclusion, with a pages-long statement concerning its "passionate conversations" about ethnicity, gender, race, ability, disability and age.  But its policy of inclusion apparently goes only so far.  That became clear after AIGA declared it would not participate in a design conference unless a Christian speaker was excluded.  Fox News reported the Dallas-Fort Worth chapter of AIGA refused to partner with the Circles Conference, a three-day event for graphics and user experience designers, if David Roark was on the speakers roster.  Roark is the communications director for The Village Church, a Texas megachurch.

Assault on Western Civilization.  Western civilization was founded on a set of philosophies that focuses strongly on the sanctity of individuals and their power of logic and reason.  This belief led to a desire to trust things that could be proven to be true or legitimate, from government to science.  Judeo-Christian morality has formed the basis of most Western notions of ethics and behavioral standards.  Thus, the attack on Western civilization must begin with the attack on the church and Christian values, and, just as important, the family unit.  The reason why the church, Christian values, and family are targets of the left is they want people's loyalty and allegiance to be to the state.  The church, Christianity, and the family stand in the way.

Buttigieg's knee-jerk compulsion to scold Christians pops up again at second debate.  If you ask me to pick a winner at the Democratic debate on night two in Miami, I would have said Pete Buttigieg.  He came off as reasonable, clear-thinking, pithy, and pleasant.  He respected time limits.  I didn't agree with him on anything, but he gave a sense of coming from rational grounding.  Maybe his leftie ideas could be tempered with real-world realities.  Maybe he could be persuaded...  But then, [...] Buttigieg whipped out for about the umpteenth time his unsolicited opinion about just how un-Christian all those inadequate, wicked, dare-I-say sinful Christians out there really are, hooking his argument up to the border surge issue.  Gotcha.  Bad Christians.  Not like good-Christian me, that paragon of all virtue-signals.

'Islamophobia' Expert:  Christianity 'An Oppressive Political System Bent on Discrimination'.  He could have become something worthwhile like a clerk at 7-Eleven or a sanitation worker, but instead, Todd Green is "associate professor of religion at Luther College and a former advisor on Islamophobia at the U.S. State Department."  And now, in a new article for the Muslim online publication AltMuslimah, he is helpfully sounding the alarm about the dangers of a violent, aggressive, authoritarian religious faith:  Christianity.  Imagine wasting your life being an expert on "Islamophobia," a propaganda term coined to intimidate people into thinking it wrong to oppose jihad terror.

Making LGBT a Protected Class Will Kill Religious Liberty.  The current campaign to amend federal and state civil rights laws to extend protections to sexual orientation and gender identity isn't meant to eliminate discrimination — it's meant to eliminate religious freedom.  What else are we to believe when proponents of such amendments tell us as much?  Earlier this month, Michigan State Senator Jeremy Moss introduced legislation to amend the state's civil rights law to add sexual orientation and sexual identity as protected classes.  One of the main objections to changing the law before now has been the harm it must do to conscience protections and the free exercise of religion.  Like their federal cousin, the Equality Act, these laws can't ensure equality because, as gay writer Brad Polumbo explains, they work by "elevating [LGBT] rights over those of religious Americans."  Senator Moss isn't even pretending this isn't the case.

Report: Christian Persecution 2019 a Scourge of 'Mammoth Proportions'.  June 2019 is an "especially menacing time" for Christians both on the domestic and international fronts, writes Christian persecution expert John L. Allen in a report Sunday [6/23/2019].  The U.S. Catholic Church is facing "one of the most serious potential violations of religious freedom in its history in the form of SB 360 in California," writes Allen, author of the 2013 bestseller The Global War on Christians:  Dispatches from the Front Lines of Anti-Christian Persecution, since the bill would compel priests to reveal information learned while hearing confessions as evidence against possible sex offenders.

National Guard Bans Christian Scouts Because of Religious Beliefs.  The Fort Indiantown Gap National Guard facility regularly hosts tours for Boy Scout troops and other organizations, but Trail Life boys were told they could not participate because they belonged to a Christian scouting organization.  The National Guard tells me they had concerns about whether the Christian group was supportive of the LGBT community.  "After researching the organization online, it was quickly discovered that the organization restricted membership to certain persons," the National Guard told me.  "Army values and policy prevent discrimination against gender or sexual orientation within our ranks, which in turn led to the first-level reviewer denying the request."

UC Santa Cruz Will Remove 'Offensive' Bells from Campus.  UC Santa Cruz has announced that it will remove historic bells from the "Spanish Missions" after members of the community called them offensive.  According to a report by Campus Reform, the University of California, Santa Cruz, will remove a major historical artifact from campus.  The reason?  Many in the UC Santa Cruz community argued that the artifact is offensive.  The "Spanish Mission" bells were used between 1769 and 1833 to highlight the path of the 21 California Missions, which were constructed to evangelize Native Americans.

America Under Democrats:  Forcing Americans To Pay For Abortion And Banning Chick-Fil-A.  Companies guided by Christian values or even companies whose owners hold traditional Christian views separate from business policies, like Chick-fil-A owner Dan Cathy, have not received the same protections.  Small bakeries and pizza shops have been fined or put out of business for their company values, and Chick-fil-A has been discriminated against in cities across America.  San Antonio and Buffalo are currently being sued for violating the First Amendment for banning Chick-fil-A from their city's airports.  Just three years ago, Hillary Clinton said religious "beliefs have to be changed" if they don't fit political goals, and this cycle's crop of Democratic presidential hopefuls are doubling down on efforts to remove the barriers that faith poses to political ends.  If this doesn't send chills through the spines of Americans, it should.

Christianity is under siege in America.  Anti-Christian bigotry is the only form of acceptable intolerance remaining in this country — to be encouraged and incited by our "tolerant" liberal friends in academia, the media, and entertainment.  Christian principles were foundational to the American Republic.  Yet what matters to the Left is silencing the Christian influence of this nation.  The battle to destroy Christianity is really the battle to destroy America.  The intolerant Left is replacing the structure of an orderly and benevolent norm with falsehoods, distortions, intimidation, and violence.  Unfortunately, traditional American Christians have been on the losing end of the culture war for a long time.

James O'Keefe:  Pinterest Listed 'Bible Verses' on 'Sensitive Terms' List.  James O'Keefe, founder and head of Project Veritas, joined Tuesday's edition of SiriusXM's Breitbart News Tonight with hosts Rebecca Mansour and Joel Pollak to discuss how Pinterest secretly used censorship against news media outlets such as Gateway Pundit, PJ Media, and Zero Hedge.  He also explained how the social media company placed the term "bible verses" on its own "sensitive terms" list.

Yes, Democrats Have Removed 'So Help Me God' From House Committee Oaths.  The Democrats have continued their mission to root God out of the public square in the name of secularism by removing "so help me God" from the U.S. House of Representatives oath witnesses must take when testifying before several of the congressional committees, all of which are currently under Democratic control.

Sen. Sasse Asks Judicial Nominee If He Knows the 'Point' of His Being Interrogated About His Faith.  For some reason, Democrats love to ask President Trump's judicial nominees about their religious backgrounds.  Sen. Ben Sasse (R-NE) was worried that U.S. district judge Peter Phipps, nominated to serve on the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, would be no exception.  So, he launched a preemptive strike at Wednesday's [6/5/2019] Senate Judiciary Committee hearing and asked Phipps about his membership in the Knights of Columbus (KoC), a Catholic fraternal organization, and whether it has anything to do with his nomination.  After all, Democrats have obsessed over the group in recent years.  Sen. Ben Sasse (R-NE) admitted to being puzzled such line of questioning.

House Passes Bigoted, Anti-Christian 'Equality Act' with 8 GOP Votes.  [Scroll down]  Biological sex is a fact that determines bodily development, while feminists like Dansky argue that gender is a social construct that does more harm than good.  Yet the Equality Act would enshrine gender over and above biological sex, allowing males who identify as women to enter women's restrooms and changing rooms, compete in women's sports, and take special grants intended for women.  For these reasons, lesbian feminist Julia Beck has slammed the bill as a "human rights violation."  Yet conservatives also noted that the Equality Act would erase key protections for families and faith.  "This is an all-out assault on parental rights, on the family, and on the millions of people of faith in this country," Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council (FRC), said in a statement.  "The legislation goes far beyond just quarantining faith behind the four walls of a house of worship.  This act quarantines faith within your mind and says that's where it must stay."

Can Conservatives Afford to Be Nice Anymore?  We already know there's more than a bit of truth to the idea that the Left won't let Christian beliefs on sex and morality stand in the public square.  Just see how Vice President Pence is talked about the in media for his orthodox beliefs on sexual relations or, alternatively, how conservative judicial nominees are treated by congressional Democrats.  Christian proscriptions on sexual debauchery make the belief system inimical to a Left that views autonomy and non-judgment as the pinnacle of human flourishing.  And as long as such a perverse liberalism is engrafted in the upper strata of American culture — Hollywood, academia, the theater, the media — then traditionalists will continue to be marginalized, eventually to the point of public extinction, where the Bible becomes a samizdat.

NBC Edits Out Alex Trebek Crediting Prayers With Helping His Cancer Battle.  In an interview with People magazine out Wednesday [5/29/2019], Jeopardy! host Alex Trebek credited the prayers of millions of his fans for helping him in his fight against stage-four pancreatic cancer, now in "near remission."  Yet, while ABC's World News Tonight touted Trebek's praise, the CBS Evening News ignored that part of Trebek's comments and NBC Nightly News edited it out of the quotes read and video clips they aired.  Before we can examine what was missing, let's look at what should have been reported.

Retired pastor, wife who claim they were barred from hosting Bible study in senior complex file suit.  An elderly Virginia couple has sued the owners of a senior living apartment complex, claiming they were kicked out for hosting weekly Bible study classes.  The federal lawsuit, filed in Richmond, Va., alleges housing discrimination against Community Realty, which manages the Evergreens at Smith Run complex in Fredericksburg.  Kenneth Hauge, a retired Lutheran minister, and his wife, Liv, said they hosted their classes in the complex's community room and were threatened with eviction if they did not stop.

Our Collective Dive off the Cliff.  The burning of the Cathedral of Notre Dame — in the heart of Paris, in the heart of France, in the heart of Europe, in the heart of Christendom and Western civilization — was an absolute cultural catastrophe. [...] When Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minneapolistan) referred to Notre Dame as just "art and architecture," she meant it as a deliberate jab, wrapped in blatantly dishonest compassion.  But does her categorization really differ from how most of the Western world views Notre Dame?  How many among the 95% of France's non-Catholic population regard it as a house of God, worthy of spiritual veneration and deference, and not just a profitable tourist magnet?

The Persecutors and the Persecuted.  At a graduation ceremony at Liberty University over the weekend, Vice President Mike Pence warned students that it has become "acceptable and even fashionable to ridicule and discriminate against people of faith," and that they should "be prepared for persecution." [...] This war got into high gear in the 1960s with the banning first of prayer and then of any reference to the Christian foundations of American democracy in the public schools.  Once atheism became the only constitutionally protected religion, the war on Christianity became a central source of the political divisions that followed.  Mike Pence is perhaps the most decent man in politics, but he and his wife Karen have been the target of relentless attacks by LGBTQ radicals who have conducted vigilante campaigns against Chick Fil-A, the Colorado Baker, and religious institutions across the country for the crime of being Christians.

'So Help Me God' No More:  Democrats Give House Traditions a Makeover.  The witness rose from her seat, raised her right hand and swore to tell the truth before Congress.  But four words were missing:  "So help me God."  In the House of Representatives, to the winner go the spoils, and Democrats, the new decision makers, control everything, including what legislation gets a vote and the minutiae of procedural choices, such as whether witnesses must utter the traditional plea for divine aid.  Democratic chairmen and chairwomen of several key committees have deemed no such entreaty is necessary.  "I think God belongs in religious institutions:  in temple, in church, in cathedral, in mosque — but not in Congress," said Representative Steve Cohen of Tennessee, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties.  What Republicans are doing, he continued, "is using God."  "And God doesn't want to be used," he said.

The Editor says...
I think God wants to be honored in public places.  I also think Mr. Cohen has no real concept of what God wants.

Disney's Tolkien Biopic Whitewashes 'Lord of the Rings' Creator's Christian Faith.  According to reports, Disney has done it again and removed the heart and soul from a story because that heart and soul happens to be the Christian faith.  This time it is no less than the life story of Lord of the Rings creator J.R.R. Tolkien.  Last May it was Disney's disastrous adaptation of A Wrinkle in Time, a monumental flop that lost the studio upwards of $100 million.  Rather than stick to the Christian themes that make up the foundation of the beloved children's story, woke director Ana DuVernay's critical and box office catastrophe — starring no less than Oprah Winfrey, Reese Witherspoon, and Chris Pine — chose instead to embrace identity-politics and all that narcissistic New Age nonsense.

How Disney bypassed God to preach the gospel of dreams coming true.  Disney may have colonised the imagination of the world's children for the best part of 80 years, but — remarkably in one of the world's most ostentatiously Christian countries — the entertainment company has done so without the aid of God, a new book points out.  The Gospel According to Disney:  Faith, Trust and Pixie Dust, by Mark Pinsky, an American journalist and best-selling author of a similar book about The Simpsons, shows that the film industry's most family-orientated entertainer has rarely mentioned God, and that such religious figures as there are in its animated films are almost entirely bad.  Pinsky, the religion reporter at the Orlando Sentinel, argues:  "In the more than 35 animated features Disney has released since 1937, there is scarcely a mention of God as conceived in the Christian and Jewish faiths shared by most people in the western world and many beyond."

The use and non-use of "Christian" in today's political English.  The massacre of Christians in Sri Lanka on Easter Sunday was thus an opportunity to publicly emote for politicians who ordinarily [don't care] for anyone they cannot see in their own mirrors.  Their response was not to mourn dead and wounded "Christians," but instead "Easter worshipers."  I do not care what convoluted newspeak a group of apostates, atheists, agnostics, and Obamaists use to describe Christianity, so long as they don't follow up that description with weaponry, and neither should you. [...] Standing alone, "Easter worshipers" is jarring, weird, and a one-off.  As part of a larger data set, it suggests that the people who govern and imagine they govern us increasingly believe they rule us.

Doug Ducey Fires Back After Group Demands He Deletes Easter Post.  Republican Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey responded after a secular organization demanded he delete an Easter message he posted on Facebook, citing a breach in the separation of church and state.  "We won't be removing this post.  Ever," Ducey tweeted Thursday [4/15/2019].  "Nor will we be removing our posts for Christmas, Hanukkah, Rosh Hashanah, Palm Sunday, Passover or any other religious holiday."  "We support the First Amendment, and are happy to provide copies of the Constitution to anyone who hasn't read it," he added.

The Attacks on Christians and America's First Freedom.  The Christians who created America made religious liberty and freedom of conscience the foundation of all Americans' other freedoms.  In doing so Christians gave a great gift, not only to Americans but to people all over the world whose freedoms Americans have defended.  This America is now under attack.

NASA Chief Criticized for Mentioning Christianity in Speech.  It doesn't take a rocket scientist to understand the First Amendment.  Or maybe, after the spat over a speech by NASA's Jim Bridenstine, it does.  Thanks to the double standards of secularism, public officials can't even talk about faith without making headlines.  It's no wonder, then, that when the head of America's space program gave remarks at a Christian ministry, even he had trouble finding signs of intelligence in the criticism that followed.  Capitol Ministries, the organization that Bridenstine has supported for years, is hardly controversial.  Nine of the president's 15 Cabinet officials are sponsors of the ministry — whose aim is simple:  influencing government with biblical teachings.

Obama, Hillary Ripped For Refusing To Say 'Christians' After Sri Lankan Slaughter, Both Use Same Bizarre Term.  Former President Barack Obama and twice-failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton were ripped for their failure to use the word "Christian" in their responses to the devastating attacks in Sri Lankan on Sunday [4/21/2019], instead referring to those slaughtered as "Easter worshippers."

NY Times Columnist Kristof:  Happy Easter!  Is the Virgin Birth a 'Bizarre Claim'?  New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof spent yet another Easter Sunday trying to see just how little one can believe of Christianity's anchoring ideas, and still consider oneself a Christian.

Yankees ban Kate Smith's 'God Bless America' over 'history of potential racism'.  The New York Yankees' anti-racism efforts have extended to pulling from their seventh-inning stretch a famous recording of the legendary Kate Smith singing "God Bless America."  Not because anyone has complained that the song is racist, but because Smith recorded other racially insensitive standards from and during the Jim Crow era.  The Yankees pulled Smith's "God Bless America" from the rotation at the start of the season, but the New York Daily News reported the reason Thursday — "the Yankees were made aware of Smith's history of potential racism."

The Editor says...
What is potential racism?

Clarence Thomas addresses Senate Democrats' litmus tests for Catholic judicial candidates.  Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas is unimpressed with Senate Democrats' attempts to apply religious tests to Roman Catholic judicial nominees.  That Thomas is saying anything at all on the subject is notable given his reputation for being tight-lipped.  "I thought we got away from religious tests," Thomas remarked this year during Pepperdine University School of Law's annual banquet.  He was referring to Article VI of the Constitution, which states that "no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States."

After Schools, Leftists Try To Remove God, Atheism Becomes Largest Religion in US.  In a development that can't be heartening to the millions of America's faithful, new survey data shows the percentage of Americans who profess no religious belief is actually higher those who are part of the country's largest faith traditions.  The trends might not be looking good right now, but there's a reason to hope.  According to the General Social Survey, which has been tracking American social trends since 1972, Americans who claim no religion — or "nones" — now outnumber Roman Catholics and evangelicals.

CBS Cameras Cut Away the Moment Texas Tech Starts Praying.  CBS cameras cut away from the Texas Tech locker room the moment their head coach entered the room and began leading the team in prayer.  The network seemed to have no problem letting their cameras linger, while the announcers filled time and waited for the coach to arrive.  However, moments after the coach Chris Beard arrived, the team began to pray and the cameras cut away to a shot of the announcers.

Atheism Becomes Largest Religion In U.S..  For the first time in history, atheists constitute the largest religious group in America.  According to the General Social Survey, the number of Americans who have no religion has increased 266% over the past three decades and now account for 23.1% of the population, just barely edging out Catholics and Evangelicals as the nation's dominant faith.  Mainline Protestant churches have suffered the greatest collapse, declining 62.5% since 1982 and now comprising just 10.8% of the U.S. population.

Why Are Young Americans So Miserable?  Survey after survey shows young Americans are increasingly unhappy, depressed, and even suicidal.  They are America's future, and their outlook makes that future look grim.  What's the matter with kids today?  Recent years have seen a rise in Americans 12 to 25 saying they are unhappy.  Since 2012, the proportion of 8th and 10th graders who tell the Monitoring the Future survey that they felt unhappy has crept up from 13 percent to 18 percent.  In roughly the same time, the proportion of 18- to 25-year-olds who say they are unhappy has risen from 11 to 17 percent, according to the General Social Survey.

Communism in Our Schools and in Our Politics.  The Democratic Party has been sliding more and more to the Left for decades.  Now there is no doubt in my mind that they have embraced communism.  The Communist Party of the USA (CPUSA) supported Barack Obama in 2012 and its leadership said it would vote for Hillary Clinton but did not officially endorse her in 2016.  "God" was booed at the 2012 Democratic Party convention.  The communist drift that has gone on in that party for decades seems fulfilled in the candidacy of Bernie Sanders and the ascendancy and election of a list of presidential candidates who have embraced the so-called Green New Deal, which is nothing less than a full-fledged plan for the government takeover of the entire economy, suggests the growing ascendancy of communism within our beloved USA. [...] Opposition to the Democrats must then be couched in a biblical, pro-Christ agenda to be valid.  Republican conservatism without justification in Christ is just another man-made, fallible doctrine destined to collapse, or to lead to sin and hopelessness.  Political aspirations will fail the country if not built on the foundation of Jesus Christ.

Pennsylvania Muslim Lawmaker:  Prayer in Name of Jesus is "Islamaphobic".  Ibrahim Hooper, call your office: there was an outbreak of "Islamophobia" Monday at the Pennsylvania State Assembly.  Luckily, Muslim state Rep. Movita Johnson-Harrell was there to blow the whistle on this bigotry and hatred.  The "Islamophobia," according to journalist Todd Starnes, was committed by another state Representative, Stephanie Borowicz, who prayed this to open a legislative session:  "Jesus, you are our only hope.  At the name of Jesus, every knee will bow and every tongue will confess Jesus, that you are Lord."  Johnson-Harrell was livid.  The prayer, she declared was "highly offensive to me, my guests, and other members of the House."  In a statement, she added that the prayer "blatantly represented the Islamophobia that exists among some leaders — leaders that are supposed to represent the people.  I came to the Capitol to help build bipartisanship and collaborations regardless of race or religion to enhance the quality of life for everyone in the Commonwealth."

The Editor says...
Apparently, Muslims are entitled to representation in the Pennsylvania Assembly, but Christians are not.

Nashville Residents Accuse Area Churches of Violating Their Privacy by Praying for Them.  Led by Ethos Church, a group of Nashville churches spent 30 days praying for their city.  That's not unusual, because many churches around the world pray for their cities.  What sets the group in Nashville apart is that they took it a step further and decided to pray for every single resident of the city.  In fact, the participants of Awaken Nashville were encouraged to send postcards letting people know they prayed for them.  Some Nashvillians, however, took umbrage at the prayer and postcards, deeming the whole enterprise intrusive and a violation of their privacy.

7 Reasons Conservatives Are Losing the Culture Wars.  [#1] Churches and marriage:  It's not a secret that marriage and the Christian church are in decline in America.  Part of that is just a changing world.  People are less likely to join any real-world group because they're getting enough social interaction on the internet and the whole purpose of marriage has changed.  Most men no longer need marriage to get sex and most women no longer need marriage for financial support.  Throw in a sky-high divorce rate and draconian family courts that are heavily slanted against men and marriage today is orders of magnitude less attractive than it was a few generations ago.

Britain's War on Christianity:  Part I.  "Christian street preachers should be free to share the gospel, even where it means challenging the beliefs of others." — Christian Concern, in a petition to UK Home Secretary Sajid Javid.  In recent years, dozens of Christians — clergy and non-clergy — in Britain have been arrested or fired from their jobs due to their faith.  Much of the harassment is based on three sections of two British laws that are vague and open to subjective interpretations.  At an appeal hearing at Bristol Crown Court, attorney Michael Phillips emphasized the importance of freedom of speech, even in cases where the speaker does not necessarily hold the views being expressed.  Another attorney, Paul Diamond, argued that there is no right not to be exposed to contrary ideas.  He added that should passers-by not wish to hear the preaching, they are able to walk away.

Liberal Australian Greens want to wipe out religious programs, replace them with LGBT agenda.  The Australian Greens party has hardened its stance on the LGBT agenda in view of the 2019 federal elections to the Senate on May 18 and the House of Representatives on November 2.  The long list of "LGBTIQ+" policies the Greens want to implement includes a commitment to end an existing program funding the presence of religious chaplains in public schools and to use the money in favor of "secular" and "inclusive" support for "diverse" students.  Other anti-religious initiatives are included on the list, in particular "the removal of religious exemptions from anti-discrimination laws."  Religious and private schools are especially targeted.

Islamophilia: A Neurotic Reaction Against Truth.  The sympathy with Islamic jihadists is the necessary perverse outcome of a deep mental illness which I diagnose and call Islamophilia.  This is the exaggerated love of Islam and of followers of Islam based upon a desire to bring death and destruction to Christians, Jews, and even those secularists who remain loyal to Judeo-Christian morality. [...] In short, the leftist brigades of our culture are sublimating their vendetta of hate for natural rights and for Christian faith (deeply tied to Old Testament teachings and faith) through vicarious identification with the violent Islamic jihadist machinations against non-Islamic societies, cultural subgroups, and governments.  Islamophilia, not Islamophobia, is the greatest threat to the peace and tranquility of western civilization.

When the lying baby-killers get to Judgement Day, THEN they'll have a problem.
Liberal Analyst:  White Democrats Have a God Problem.  Unlike Bill Clinton, Al Gore, John Kerry, Barack Obama, and even Hillary Clinton — who all invoked God in their presidential announcement speeches — the new batch of Democrat presidential wannabes avoided any mention of the divinity except to warn Americans how religion can be used to divide people.

David Horowitz Exposes the Left's Dark Agenda.  The Supreme Court has been the giant secular lever employed by leftists to fundamentally transform "Christian America" into a state hostile even to a school-girl who joined hands with classmates to give thanks for her food.  These politically-motivated "lawyers," as Horowitz contemptuously labels the high court, began their anti-Christian, anti-Constitutional mission with the expulsion of prayer from public schools in 1962 (Engel v. Vitale).  That assault on the free exercise of religion now extends beyond commencement ceremonies and football fields to a bakery that was embroiled in legal battles for years for refusing to provide a celebratory cake for a gay ceremony billed as a wedding — a "crime" made possible by Court rulings against the Defense of Marriage Act and in favor of redefining marriage.

First They Came for the Catholics, Then for the Christians, and Then for the High School Kids.  The War on Catholic Judicial Appointments began in 2017 when Dianne Feinstein used her seat on the Senate Judiciary Committee to go after Judge Amy Coney Barrett, President Trump's nominee for a seat on the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit — who hopefully soon will be a selection for the United States Supreme Court.  In Feinstein's shockingly bigoted words barked at Judge Barrett:  "The dogma lives loudly within you."  That was not enough for Sen. Feinstein, whose own lineage traces to maternal grandparents who abandoned Judaism for Russian Orthodox Christianity long before she ever was born.  (Interesting, isn't it, how many "Jews" are not Jews?)  Thus, Feinstein graduated from San Francisco's Convent of the Sacred Heart High School.  In berating Judge Barrett's devout faith, Feinstein rhetorically asked:  "Why is it that so many of us on this side have this very uncomfortable feeling?"

Kavanaugh slams 'pure discrimination' against churches as court declines to hear religious liberty case.  The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear a case about whether churches or other religious institutions in New Jersey are entitled to public funds for historic preservation.  The ruling involved a four-year-long battle in Morris County over whether county money should be used to repair historic churches.  The New Jersey State Supreme Court ruled last year that the county could not continue to give historic preservation grants to 12 churches.  For years, Morris County had been giving churches money to make aesthetic and structural repairs to historic churches under a historic preservation program.  In 2015, a county freeholder objected, arguing that taxpayer funds should not be used to repair places of worship.

Why Leftists Love Stickin' It to Christianity.  A woman called the Rush Limbaugh radio show to ask why New York legislators shockingly gave legislation authorizing killing babies a standing ovation.  Rush said the main reason is leftists hate Christians and traditional Americans.  Rush said, "They love stickin' it to us."  The Democratic Party has become extremely leftist.  They hate America's Christian founding and all things wholesome and good.  Their hatred comes from a spirit which is anti-Jesus Christ.

Democrats Take Down Another Judicial Nominee Simply Because He's A Christian.  Dissenting in Obergefell v.  Hodges, the 2015 Supreme Court case that legalized same-sex marriage, Justice Samuel Alito gravely predicted that "those who cling to old beliefs will be able to whisper their thoughts in the recesses of their homes, but if they repeat those views in public, they will risk being labeled as bigots and treated as such by governments, employers, and schools."  He was right.  In Wisconsin, this campaign of religious intolerance has claimed a new casualty in Gordon Giampietro, President Trump's former nominee to a vacant seat on the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin.

4 Ways Democrats Want to Ruin Your Life.  The attacks against the Christian faith are regular fare for the Left.  Sarah Jones, in the liberal Intelligencer, after blasting Karen Pence for taking a job at Immanuel Christian School in Springfield, Va., a school that holds to traditional values with respect to marriage, writes, "Karen Pence's new job affirms the administration's hostility to the right of LGBT students at large.  Criticism hardly seems absurd."

Woe Onto Them.  One of the more memorable statements made by the person who was erroneously given the title of POTUS, has now been declared true, when he once boldly admonished us saying, "We are no longer a Christian nation."  Only in a non-Christian nation can the Catholic Church, or any Christian church for that matter, stand by and berate young teenaged boys for wearing a MAGA hat at a right-to-life rally, and nearly in the same breath, not consider the excommunication of a governor or the legislators who rejoice in their newly found right of 'elimination' of a newborn baby.  The prophet Isaiah warned us, "Woe unto them who call evil good and good evil..."  There is little need to sugarcoat these truths for we, as a society, are about to experience the woe that comes with distress and sorrow which is assured onto a nation that has so willingly embraced evil.

Beware the Morality of the Democrats.  It defies logic to entertain the accusation of immorality from those who know that the unborn are human children, but gleefully promote their murder anyway.  They lie with an ease that is both fascinating and horrifying.  Their corruption is limitless, and their capacity for dishonesty is monumental.  They are the embodiment of soulless cynicism, masquerading as care and concern for what is moral, knowing all the time that their words and deeds are false and poisonous.  One is left to wonder how such people can even pretend to morality while practicing such evil.  The answer is simple.  They, unlike moral people, do not believe in a God from whom true morality and accountability derives.  Removal of God from the Democrat platform was no accident.  They are perfect heirs to their atheistic Socialist and Communist forefathers.

Moore, Kavanaugh, Northam:  The Left's Assault on Repentance.  A generation ago, Americans not only forgave the sins of public figures; they sometimes forgave too easily.  But throughout American history, Americans understood that sinners can turn their lives around.  They understood that what someone did 30 or 40 years ago does not forever disqualify the individual from being deemed a decent person if he or she led a decent life after that.  Americans understood that people can morally change, and that we should embrace such change.  It was called repentance. [...] Having abandoned the Bible and religion, the sources of wisdom in America and the West, our society has become both dumber and meaner.

Dems to strike 'so help you God' from oath taken in front of key House committee, draft shows.  A key committee in the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives is moving to eliminate the God reference from the oath administered to witnesses testifying before the panel, as part of a new rules package expected to be approved this week, according to a draft obtained exclusively by Fox News. [...] The rules proposal places the words "so help you God" in red brackets, indicating they are slated to be cut.  The words "under penalty of law" are in red text, indicating that Democrats propose to add that phrasing to the oath.  The draft rules also remove the phrase "his or her" throughout the document, changing those two pronouns to "their."  The rules additionally modify all references to the committee's "Chairman" to instead refer only to the committee's "Chair."

House Democrats to Strike 'So Help Me God' from Oath.  A draft of a new committee rules package expected to be approved this week would strike the phrase, "So help me God," from the oath witnesses take when they testify before the House Committee on Natural Resources.  Fox News says it received an exclusive copy of the committee's draft that places the phrase in red brackets, a sign the words are slated to be eliminated.

The Shaming of Karen Pence.  In scarcely a week, the vice president's wife has become a public face of hate.  CNN's John King suggests that what Mrs. Pence has done is so grievous maybe taxpayers shouldn't fund her Secret Service security protection.  The American Civil Liberties Union says she's sending "a terrible message to students."  The Guardian sees in Mrs. Pence a reminder of "the vice-president's dangerous bigotry."  During a Saturday night performance in Las Vegas, Lady Gaga told her fans that what Mrs. Pence has done confirms she and her husband are "the worst representation of what it means to be Christian."  A former Washington Post editor and senior writer for Politico tweets:  "How can this happen in America?"  So what is this terrible thing Mrs. Pence has done?  She plans to teach art part-time at Immanuel Christian School in Northern Virginia.  This is a small private K-8 academy where Mrs. Pence has taught before.  It adheres to a biblically rooted view of human sexuality.

It's Open War on Christianity.  We have been writing about the growing anti-Semitism of the Democratic Party, but don't kid yourself:  the Left hates Christianity more than it does Judaism.  The Left's bigotry has manifested itself over the last few days in connection with Karen Pence, the vice-president's wife.

The Real Reason Why Fewer Americans Think Religion Matters.  Religions make moral proclamations that transcend individual belief and cultural consensus.  They also make moral claims that require our submission.  Unsurprisingly, as America shifts toward moral autonomy, fewer Americans rely on religious systems that make transcendent, unchanging, ethical claims and demands.

Atlanta forced to pay $1.2 million to fired Christian fire chief.  In a big victory for freedom of religion and speech, the Atlanta city council agreed to pay former fire chief Kelvin Cochran $1.2 million in damages and attorneys' fees for firing him after he wrote a book expressing biblical views on sex and marriage.

School faces attack over post-game prayer for coach's daughter.  It's a mighty sad day in America when professional football players can take a knee to protest the national anthem, but high school football players can't take a knee to pray for a sick little girl.  Football fans, coaches and players in Lake City, Michigan, formed what they called a "family circle" on the field August 30 to pray for the young daughter of one of the coaches.  The little girl is hospitalized fighting a serious illness. [...] A video of the poignant moment was shared on a school Facebook page and soon after it triggered a severe microaggression among a gang of atheists, agnostics and freethinkers based in Wisconsin.

New Yorker Profile Of Sarah Sanders Appears To Mock Her Christian Faith.  The New Yorker profiled White House press secretary Sarah Sanders on Monday, and people are not happy with how the publication handled Sanders' Christian faith.  The profile, which referred to Sanders as Trump's "battering ram," went into depth about Sanders' evangelical beliefs and the pastoral role of her father, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee.  In a tweet sent out Tuesday morning [9/18/2018], The New Yorker pulled out a specific quote about the church Sanders attends.  "Sarah Huckabee Sanders attends a D.C. church that is an affiliate of Hillsong, the global megachurch that teaches creationism and intelligent design.  Sanders, when asked if she shared these views, said, 'I believe in the Bible,'" the magazine wrote.

Ten Inconvenient Facts.  [#9] Religious people lead better lives.  It's been a long time since Hollywood presented faith in God and regular churchgoing as the basis of happiness.  But in measures of well-being, believers keep coming up stronger than non-believers.  They are also more charitable.  The findings run against the left's determination to chase staunch believers out of the public square because, supposedly, they are nasty and biased.

The opinions of a madman are immaterial, except as an illustration:
First Transgender Nominee For Governor Thinks 'Radicalized Christians' Are A Problem.  Christine Hallquist, the country's first major party transgender candidate as the newly minted Democratic nominee for the governorship of Vermont, once tweeted an insinuation that "radicalized Christians" are a problem that Americans currently "tolerate."  "And we worry about sharia law!!" Hallquist tweeted in June 2017 along with a link to an article from "LGBTQ Nation" about a girl disqualified from a soccer team because she looked like a boy.  "Radicalized Christians are a part of the American landscape, and we tolerate it."

College offer courses on 'queering' children, the Bible.  This school year, colleges and universities across the country will be offering courses on "queering" children, the Bible, and theology in general.  Pomona College, for instance, will offer a course arguing that "the figure of the Child" is used to "justify continued cultural investment in reproductive heteronormativity and productive ablebodiedness."  Courses on "queer theologies," meanwhile, will be taught at Harvard Divinity School, Swarthmore College, the University of San Francisco, Eugene Lang College, and the University of Pennsylvania.

The Editor asks...
Which university offers a course about "queering the Koran?"

This war on the Bible must stop.  America's colonists were predominantly English — which meant their religion was predominantly Catholic or Protestant — which meant their book of worship, no matter how you slice it, was the Bible.  Not the Muslim Koran, not the Hindu set of Vedas, not the Wiccan prayer book, not a merely generic spiritual guide.  The Bible.  The one where Jesus teaches.  So it's not just disconcerting and offensive on the Christian front to see the war being waged in this country against public shows of the Bible — against public discourse of biblical principles.  It's actually historical revisionism.

Metro can ban religious ads, appeals court rules in case brought by Washington Archdiocese.  The Metro system can ban religious advertisements and other advocacy ads, a federal appeals court decided Tuesday [7/31/2018], siding against the Archdiocese of Washington who wanted to put up pro-Christmas signs on buses.  The ads, which urged people to remember the Christian origins of the holiday, ran afoul of the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority's 2015 policy banning politics, religion or advocacy ads from the system's bus shelters, bus sides and subway station billboards after complaints from riders.  The Archdiocese of Washington sued, claiming a First Amendment right to run the ads.

Beware the Prejudice Against the Faithful in Today's Society.  Although she was not ultimately chosen as the nominee, much ink was spilled over the possible selection of Judge Amy Coney Barrett, a Notre Dame law professor, a Catholic (most commentators in the secular press used the term "devout Catholic" when actually they mean "practicing"), and a mother of seven.  She is devout, practicing — and, to worldly elites, fanatical.  Memorably, in a revealing show of the prejudice that is the guiding principle in the hearts of those who currently hold power in the world of politics, media and academia, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), in her earlier questioning of Judge Barrett, was "concerned" (as all presumably "enlightened" people should be), that because of Judge Barrett's active Catholicism, the "dogma lives loudly within you."

Restoring religious liberty.  From lawsuits demanding war memorials be torn down because they contain religious symbolism to the IRS' ability to threaten religious groups for what they say from the pulpit to the Obama administration's attempts to force groups like the Little Sisters of the Poor to defy their deeply held religious beliefs, we've seen a systematic effort to remove any mention of God from the public space and to chip away at our sacred right to live out our faith free from government obstruction.  Thankfully, under President Trump's leadership, we are starting to turn the tide and restore the liberties our nation's Founders enshrined in our Constitution.

Town Orders Family to Stop Hosting Bible Studies on Farm.  The owners of a Pennsylvania farm have been ordered by the Sewickley Heights Borough to cease and desist holding Bible studies on their private property.  Borough leaders accused Scott and Terri Fetterolf of improperly using their 35-acre farm as a place of worship, a place of assembly and as a commercial venue.  They were served a cease-and-desist order in October 2017, the Post-Gazette reported.

The judicial war on God and the Declaration of Independence.  Poor North Carolina just can't get a break.  It appears that the state's original concerns about joining the federal union in 1788 have been proven correct.  Over the past year, the Fourth Circuit has nullified the state's voter integrity laws; federal, state, and even county-level political maps; and gender sanity laws.  Now the court has banished God from county government prayers.  On July 14, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Rowan County, North Carolina, commissioners can't begin their session with a public prayer delivered by an elected official.  And the vote wasn't even close.  This once conservative panel voted 10-5 to banish God from the public square.

Will YouTube Block the Bible?  I know the very question sounds outlandish, but in light of recent developments, it's only fair to ask:  Will YouTube block the Bible?  If you've followed the LGBT outcry surrounding our recent video on the Bible and homosexuality, you're aware that YouTube came under tremendous criticism for running ads for our video (along with one from the ADF) on some LGBT YouTube channels.  As a result of the outcry, which was totally disproportionate to YouTube's offense, the internet giant responded with a strong statement on June 7, directed to "our LGBTQ community."  YouTube noted that, "Over the past few days, we've heard many questions around monetization and how ads are served against videos by LGBTQ creators.  We know this has been both confusing and painful, and want you to know that we hear you."

Roseanne Barr and the new political correctness.  There will be many millions of pixels wasted in the name of debating whether ABC was right or wrong to terminate Roseanne Barr's eponymous sitcom after the comedian likened a former White House official of black ancestry to an ape.  If you feel obliged to have an opinion on that subject your view is likely shaped by your politics and is therefore something of a foregone conclusion.  The same goes for your estimation of her show in the first place.  So powerful is the draw of political tribalism that people are now increasingly able to turn their tastes on a dime in order to conform with what is politically correct.

Texas school shooting — What it means when we talk about 'thoughts and prayers'.  When a national tragedy strikes, "thoughts and prayers" are most certain to follow, with scores of shocked and saddened Americans taking to social media to appeal to the Almighty.  But just as calls for prayer are inevitable, so are claims from skeptics that peoples' invocations are flat-out worthless.  In the wake of Friday's tragic shooting at Santa Fe High School, my own calls on social media for prayer were returned with claims that invoking God is "pointless" and that gun control is the only solution to our woes.  In a culture that is becoming increasingly secular [...] these responses and their derivatives expose a painful reality:  far too many people lack a basic understanding of what prayer is and why people choose to engage in it.

The Editor says...
After a local tragedy occurs, there is often a neighborhood "vigil" at which the neighbors grieve.  The TV stations show up and record the statements of random participants.  There are candles and flowers and cards and teddy bears at the "makeshift memorial."  Maybe everyone will sing "Amazing Grace."  Sometimes balloons are released, and sometimes a random citizen will say a few words, so we can all have "closure."  Most of the time the speech has something to do with everyone's "thoughts and prayers" being offered to, or on behalf of, the departed.  More often than not, the speaker appears to know little or nothing about prayer.  But at least someone said something.  This is the way godless people deal with irrational evil and unexpected grief in a secular society.

NBC cancels 'extremely liberal' drama 'Rise' amid backlash for mocking Christianity with far-left talking points.  NBC has canceled "Rise" after critics accused the show of being anti-Christian and going out of its way to squeeze in liberal talking points.  The Media Research Center, which has tracked the "extremely liberal high school drama" for bias against Christians, posted an article celebrating its demise.  "Rise," which starred Rosie Perez and Josh Radnor, was about a drama teacher who polarizes the town with his passion for musicals — specifically the provocative "Spring Awakening."

California Demands That Christians 'Evolve'.  There's a new legislative proposal banning all conversion therapy as a fraudulent business practice — by not just mental health providers but anyone.  Since the "independent fact-checkers" are quick to swarm around conservative "misinformation," FactCheck.org, PolitiFact and Snopes have all cried "False" at the idea that this bill is a threat to the sale of the Bible.  They declared that a threat against Bible sales is nowhere in the text of California Assembly Bill 2943, offered by gay assembly member Evan Low.  That is correct ... on its face.  It doesn't mention the Bible.  However, the bill would amend the state Consumer Legal Remedies Act, adding the ability to sue for damages for "advertising, offering to engage in, or engaging in sexual orientation change efforts with an individual."  Any efforts to change someone's sexual orientation "in a transaction intended to result or that results in the sale or lease of goods or services to any consumer are unlawful."  That's more than therapy.  It's any kind of an argument.

Prominent Christian Legal Group Barred From Amazon Program While Openly Anti-Semitic Groups Remain.  Amazon has barred prominent Christian legal group Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) from participating in its Amazon Smile charitable program, which allows nonprofits to recoup a small fraction of the money their supporters spend through Amazon.  ADF, which specializes in First Amendment law and has won cases at the Supreme Court, is barred from Amazon Smile on account of the left-wing Southern Poverty Law Center, which labeled ADF a "hate group."

Christians' Munich Moment in California.  Scarcely any moment in American history is as important for America's Christians as the developing crises over religious freedom now happening in California.  The legislature of Sacramento not only is underhandedly banning books opposed to the doctrines of the transgender religion (including the Bible), but also has threatened Christians' rights to free assembly and freedom of speech.  According to its website, Summit Ministries, an organization devoted to advising Christian youths on how to live out a Christian worldview, has canceled its scheduled appearances at Biola University in Los Angeles "due to concerns that California will forbid some of what it teaches."  Summit's concern is real.

Imagine a World with No Religion.  Atheists, agnostics, and people who just don't give a darn about God keep telling us they are just as moral as, if not more moral than, people of faith.  Really?  All the following exist because countries reject religion and adhere to moral codes generated by men.
  •   The casual killing of those whose lives "aren't worth living."
  •   Murdering 56,000,000 unborn babies each year because they are inconvenient, or because they are women to be.
  •   The mass murder of 100,000,000 people in the last century.
  •   Sexual objectification of women.
  •   The use of violence to silence "offensive" speech.
  •   A hedonistic ruling class oppressing all who object to its "values."
The reality is that without God, men become monsters.  The only God-free cultures we know of, the various communist regimes of the this and the last century, have been the most oppressive, evil, and aggressive "civilizations" that the world has ever seen.  In less than 100 years, they killed around 30,000 times as many people as the Inquisition, which was mostly a governmental, not a Church activity, did in 500 years.  In religion-free Cambodia, roughly 25% of the population was exterminated for the "greater good."

They Keep Telling Us Who They Are.  The California legislature is processing a bill to ban and criminalize all speech, all writing, that goes against "LGBTQ priorities".  Assembly Bill 2943, which has already sailed through two committees, would criminalize "efforts to change behaviors or gender expressions."  It seems to be aimed at practicing psychologists, psychiatrists, or counselors whose clients ask them to help them get rid of unwanted sexual attractions; but the bill is so vaguely written that it could be used against virtually anybody — commentators who dissent from the agenda of Organized Sodomy, parents who teach their children that there are only two "genders," and Biblically orthodox churches where homosexual acting-out is presented as a sin.

Yes, California Is on the Verge of Banning Some Christian Books, Here's How.  Late last week, I wrote an article that caused a bit of a furious reaction in social-justice Twitter.  Activists claimed I was lying, arguing in bad faith, and/or exaggerating the effect of California's AB 2943, a bill that purports to declare "sexual orientation change efforts" to be an "unlawful business practice."  I claimed the bill was so broad that it could even ban books.  And I'm right.  It can and would.

California Bill Would Criminalize Speech, Books Opposing LGBT Agenda.  In a direct assault on the freedoms of speech and religion, the California Assembly on Thursday [4/19/2018] overwhelmingly approved a bill that would, in effect, prohibit the dissemination of traditional Christian teaching on homosexuality and transgenderism.  The Assembly voted 50-14 to criminalize "a transaction intended to result or that results in the sale or lease of goods or services to any consumer" that consists of "advertising, offering to engage in, or engaging in sexual orientation change efforts with an individual."  The bill defines "sexual orientation change efforts" as "any practices that seek to change an individual's sexual orientation.  This includes efforts to change behaviors or gender expressions, or to eliminate or reduce sexual or romantic attractions or feelings toward individuals of the same sex."

Have Christians Lost the Culture War?  [C]ulture is the sum of everything we as human beings create, write, say, do, and think — the marks we leave on our world.  In that sense, "engaging the culture" isn't really optional.  It's human.  It's as much a part of being alive as breathing is.  We don't decide whether we'll engage the culture.  Just how.  I say this because lately, a few people have suggested that Christian efforts in the culture have failed.  One gentleman recently wrote me saying that worldview-style training like the kind we do in our Colson Fellows Program or at Summit Ministries or other places like that just hasn't worked.  We're losing the next generation, he said, and mainstream culture is as dark as ever.

The U.S. Army Is Actually Punishing Military Chaplains For Their Religious Beliefs Now.  As a former active duty Marine Corps officer, I've had the privilege of serving alongside quite a few military chaplains.  For better or worse, popular culture has created a somewhat stereotypical portrayal of the military chaplain — many readers may recall the fictional character Father Francis Mulcahy from the television show M*A*S*H.  In my experience, chaplains are some of the most dedicated and professional service members in our armed forces.  As an attorney focused on the area of religious liberty, I can say without exception that taking adverse action against a chaplain because he cannot act contrary to his sincerely held religious beliefs not only violates federal law, it prevents a chaplain from completing his mission.

How long will I be allowed to remain a Christian?  To say that Christians and Christianity are under a withering and brutal attack in certain areas of the world would be an understatement.  In various parts of the Middle East, there is a genocidal cleansing of Christians being carried out.  Women, men, and their young children are being slaughtered because of their faith and world leaders and most of the media turn their backs in bored indifference.  Here in the United States, Christians and Christianity are mocked, belittled, smeared and attacked by some on a daily basis.  This is a bigoted practice that is not only increasing exponentially, but is being encouraged and sanctioned by a number on the left.  Too many of those who worship at the altar of political correctness have deemed that Christianity should no longer be respected.  Rather, they assail it on a regular basis in a coordinated campaign to weaken the faith and its base.

GQ Magazine Lists the Bible in the Top 21 Most Overrated Books of All Time.  Fellow Townhall contributor Micah Rate pointed out an interesting opinion from the GQ Magazine editorial board that slipped by many.  Apparently, the magazine believes that the Bible, yes the Christian Bible, is one of the most overrated books of all time.  In an article titled 21 Books You Don't Have to Read, the fashion magazine says that the Bible is the number 12 most overrated book of all time.

Twin Cities School Bus Driver Removed after Leading Prayer.  A Twin Cities-area school bus driver says his rights to free speech and to practice his religion were violated when he was taken off his route for leading students in prayer.  The Star Tribune reports that Quality Care Transportation removed George Nathaniel from his route last week.  He drove children to Nasha Shkola, a charter school focused on Russian language and culture.  Quality Care owner Muk Musa says school officials received complaints that Nathaniel was forcing minors to pray.

Kent State student group hosts panel asking 'Is Christianity the white man's religion?'.  "The problems of Christianity" and "white Jesus" were on the agenda during a controversial panel discussion at Ohio's Kent State University on Tuesday [4/17/2018] [.]  Over 100 students attended the "Is Christianity the White Man's Religion?" event.  KSU spokesman, Eric Mansfield, told Fox News the panel was sponsored by a student organization that chose the speakers on the panel and followed all university guidelines.

GQ Condemns the Holy Bible:  Repetitive, Self-Contradictory, Sententious, Foolish... Ill-Intentioned'.  In an article by "The Editors of GQ," the men's magazine blasts the Holy Bible, declares it a book you don't have to read, and suggests an alternative.  In its April 19 article, "21 Books You Don't Have to Read" (originally, "21 Books You Don't Have to Read Before You Die"), Gentlemen's Quarterly (GQ) trashes 20 books ("Huckleberry Finn" is counted twice, for some reason) it deems undeserving of their literary stature.

Baptist Army Chaplain Faces Punishment for Religious Beliefs.  A decorated Army chaplain is facing what his attorneys are calling a "career-ending punishment" after he explained to a soldier that he could not conduct a marriage retreat that included same sex couples. [...] When Squires realized he could not participate, he rescheduled the event to accommodate the lesbian couple with a chaplain who could oversee the retreat.  But apparently — that was not good enough.

New California Bill Would Mean Banning the Bible.  The bill in question is California Assembly Bill 2943.  It would treat as a criminal violation of the state's consumer fraud act "the sale or lease of goods or services to any consumer" that consists of "advertising, offering to engage in, or engaging in sexual orientation change efforts with an individual."  Don't be misled into thinking that this bill bans only professional counselors from trying to alter same-sex attractions.  It goes well beyond that.

California launches an attack against churches!?  A California State Assembly is gearing up to vote on new bill that could ban the sale of books and punish churches that encourage children to stick to traditional gender norms.  Yes, you read that right — they want to ban books that say things like, "Girls wear dresses" and shutter churches that encourage boys to wear slacks.  Assembly Bill 2943 would make it "unlawful business practice" to engage in "a transaction intended to result or that results in the sale or lease of good of services to any consumer" that engages in "sexual orientation change efforts with an individual."

Ex-NFL Cheerleader Says She Faced Discrimination for Christian Faith.  Kristan Ware spent three seasons on the sidelines cheering for the Miami Dolphins.  But she declined to try out for a fourth season, claiming she faced discrimination because of her Christian faith.  Ware said on the Todd Starnes Radio Show that she was targeted for ridicule and mockery after she posted a photograph of her baptism on social media — along with a Bible verse.  "Why can't I be a cheerleader and hold my faith and stand firm in that," she asked.  Soon after, the cheerleading staff learned she was a virgin and planned on waiting for marriage to have sex.  That prompted a meeting with cheerleading director Dorie Grogan.  "Let's talk about your virginity," Grogan said, according to the complaint.

Gallup: Drop in U.S. Catholic Church Attendance Under Pope Francis [is the] Sharpest in Decades.  Catholic church attendance in the United States fell by six percent between the pontificates of Pope Benedict XVI and Pope Francis, the sharpest drop in decades, a new Gallup poll has revealed.  An average of 39 percent of U.S. Catholics attended church weekly during the heart of the Francis papacy, from 2014 to 2017, Gallup found in a survey released April 9, which represents a significant drop from the 45 percent of Catholics who attended weekly Mass from 2005 to 2008, in the early years of the Benedict pontificate.

Fully 20% of Americans now have no religious identity.  And church attendance by Roman Catholics is on the decline again.  So, in fact, is the religious affiliation among Americans at large.  The drop continues a long trend of declining attendance at mass.  In the last three years, an average of only 39 percent of Catholics reported attending church in the past week.  That's down from an average of 45 percent just 10 years ago.  And severely off from the mid-1900's.  In 1955, for instance, 75 percent of Catholics reported attending mass during the previous week.

When the Lie Becomes a Pillar of the State.  The whole Soviet system was built on lies.  As Alexander Solzhenitsyn was later to write, "In our country the lie has become not just a moral category but a pillar of the State." An unceasing attempt to establish the Lie and to destroy the truth has been as characteristic of the Left here in America as it was in Soviet Russia.  The Lie has become systemic because a reductionist ideology based on lies has thoroughly invaded the academia, the media, and the body politic.  It has metastasized to the point that if it is not eradicated — not just modified — the body will die.  What is the chief characteristic of the great Lie that grips so many of America's institutions?  It is that human beings are on their own when it comes to the pursuit of Truth.  The issue has been the same since the creation of mankind.  It is the belief in the sovereignty of the individual as opposed to the sovereignty of God.

Air Force veteran sues after being pulled from ceremony mid-speech.  An Air Force veteran is suing the service after being pulled off the stage at a retirement ceremony for a friend in the middle of his speech.  Senior Master Sgt. Oscar Rodriguez was invited to speak at the retirement ceremony of a friend 2 years ago.  But Rodriguez ran afoul of the politically correct air force command when he invoked God while reading a traditional flag folding speech.  Video shows several NCO's pulling Rodriguez off the stage.

Americans Grapple With Evil Amid Decline in Religious Faith.  Blaise Pascal once described a "God-shaped vacuum in the heart of each man."  But in modern-day America, few statements can raise eyebrows more swiftly than expressing faith in the transcendent.  From Joy Behar mocking Vice President Mike Pence as mentally ill for believing that God guides him, to former President Barack Obama ridiculing "bitter" people who cling to guns or religion, the "enlightened" claim to have progressed past the simplistic explanations of those who still believe in the existence of good and evil.

Bible study, Christian music banned by Florida condo association.  The sign was not very hard to miss:  "ANY AND ALL CHRISTIAN MUSIC IS BANNED."  That message was posted on an organ located in a commons area of Cambridge House, a condo building in Port Charlotte, Florida.  Residents could belt out the theme song to "Frozen" or Kelly Clarkson's "Stronger," but they were not permitted to sing "Amazing Grace."  Residents were also allegedly told they could no longer host a weekly Bible study in the commons area, according to a Fair Housing complaint filed with the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

FL condo association bans Christian music, [B]ible study in meeting room.  Industry trade groups and developers' sales agents sell condominium associations as "communities" that share more than just housing.  They sell a lifestyle with that "cultivates a true sense of community."  But every week new reports of internal conflict, bullying and harassment, and blatant discrimination in association-governed communities appear in the news.  The latest incident is an outrageous display of anti-Christian management practices at Cambridge House Condominium Association in Port Charlotte, Florida.

Federal complaint filed after condo bans religious activity in common spaces.  A Port Charlotte woman says her condo HOA is banning her bible study group and any religious activity from the common spaces in the building.  A federal complaint has been filed with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.  Donna Dunbar lives at Cambridge House Condominiums and has held bible study groups in its common room every Monday morning for nearly a year.

College Library Calls "God Bless You," "Merry Christmas" Oppressive Language.  The library at Simmons College in Boston has issued guidelines for language that may be considered oppressive to others, and among the phrases that are considered "microaggressions" are such greetings as "God Bless You," "Happy Easter," and "Merry Christmas" — because they are based in Christianity.  The guide, appearing on the private school's website, "is intended to provide some general information about anti-oppression, diversity, and inclusion as well as information and resources for the social justice issues key to the Simmons College community," the webpage explains.  The site offers hyperlinks to scores of videos, articles, and other resources on the wide-open areas of "diversity" and "inclusion," and includes eight subsections:  anti-oppression, anti-racism, anti-transmisia, anti-ableism, anti-Islamomisia, anti-sanism, anti-queermisia, and social justice zines.

State-Enforced Paganism in America.  The fact is that Christianity in America has been under relentless attack for decades by the left, which has routinely embraced and promoted the power of the State when it involves encouraging unrestrained human will, particularly in sexual matters.  Radical leftists see in practicing Christians, whose mores are antithetical to the new barbarism, as an unwelcome restraint on an ideology that promotes the doctrines that choices of sexual expression and choices of gender are absolute rights.  The antagonism of the left toward Christians has reached such red-hot heat that because of the influence of the transgender movement, the State recently intervened to take a child away from her parents.  According to the Washington Times, a Hamilton County, Ohio, judge took the teen "away from her parents because they refused to allow the 17-year-old to undergo hormone treatments as part of a female-to-male transition.  The parents objected to the transition procedures because of their religious beliefs and refused to call their daughter by her chosen, male name, court records show."  How are Christians reacting?  Unfortunately, not with enough outrage.

Sooooo Sincere:  Christian-Basher Joy Behar Apologizes for Horrid Anti-Christian Remarks.  Joy Behar, the ladies of The View and Democrat leaders believe faith in Christ is a "mental illness."  On Tuesday [3/13/2018] Joy Behar apologized to Christians for her awful attacks.

Joy Behar apologizes for comment comparing religion to mental illness.  Joy Behar used Tuesday's [3/13/2018] episode of The View to apologize for a month-old comment conflating some Christians' belief that Jesus talks to them with mental illness.  The controversy began in mid-February, when the hosts reacted to a scene on CBS' Big Brother:  Celebrity Editionin which former White House staffer Omarosa Manigault Newman called Vice President Mike Pence "extreme" and said he "thinks Jesus tells him to say things."  At the time, Behar remarked, "It's one thing to talk to Jesus.  It's another thing when Jesus talks to you.  That's called mental illness."

Pressure grows for 'The View' star Joy Behar to apologize over anti-Christian comments, but ABC is silent.  ABC News has maintained a stony silence amid increased pressure for its star Joy Behar to apologize on-air to the "millions of Christians" who watch "The View," leaving Disney boss Bob Iger to fend for himself when an angry shareholder asked him about the brouhaha at a recent shareholder meeting.  On Feb. 13, Behar criticized Vice President Pence's faith by saying that hearing from Jesus is actually called "mental illness."  The resulting public outrage led scores of angry viewers to call or write ABC News demanding an apology.  It wasn't until late last week that Iger, CEO of ABC parent Disney, finally revealed when questioned by a concerned shareholder that Behar had privately called the vice president to apologize.

Should a 'secular humanist' serve as Navy chaplain?  Absolutely not.  Our military men and women are asked to make many sacrifices, but they have always had the right to worship freely.  In fact, our service members have been able to turn to military chaplains for spiritual counsel since our nation's fight for independence.  Nearly two-and-a-half centuries later, the role that our military chaplains fulfill could look drastically different than what Gen. George Washington envisioned when he created the Chaplain Corps.  It has come to my attention that the Navy could soon appoint an atheist chaplain, directly defying the religious foundation upon which the Chaplain Corps is built.

It's Up to Veterans to Reclaim Religious Liberty in Military Stolen by Obama.  Despite the election of the very pro-religious liberty President Trump in 2016, there are still many anti-religious liberty policies in place for those who serve in the military.  Many of those policies engineered by former President Obama and his civilian bureaucrats in the Pentagon erase freedom of expression of Christian faith and religious liberty from the U.S. Armed Forces.  Some Obama-VIDOLera rules even criminalize the open expression of religious faith by men and women in uniform.  With President Trump in the White House, we have a real opportunity to reverse one of the worst legacies of the Obama Administration — its aggressive attempt to erase Christianity, religious liberty and even Chaplains from the United States military.  But it will be up to veterans to lead the charge to undo the damage Obama has done to our military.

Apple removes Good Friday, Easter from calendar for iPhones.  Breitbart reports that the latest iPhone update has deliberately removed Good Friday and Easter Sunday from users' calendars. [...] Apple has been receiving complaints about this change.

Is Joy Behar sure that hearing God's voice means you're crazy?  Co-host [of The View and self-described "faithful ... Catholic" Sunny Hostin expressed negative feelings about Pence because, Hostin said, when the vice president was governor of Indiana, he was a "hated figure" who tended to put a "religious veneer" on things.  No one knows whether Mr. Pence ever claimed to speak in tongues, but that didn't stop Hostin from pontificating, "I don't know that I want my vice president, you know, speaking in tongues and having Jesus speak to him."  Although Hillary Clinton regularly "communed" with Eleanor Roosevelt, the female panel agreed that having a leader who thinks he hears Jesus's voice is a problem.  Apparently, that consensus didn't go far enough; Joy Behar had to take things a step farther when she offered up a psychiatric diagnosis based on Pence hearing Jesus's voice, which Behar said is synonymous with "mental illness."  The View co-host told the other ladies, "It's one thing to talk to Jesus.  It's another thing when Jesus talks to you.  That's called mental illness if I'm correct, hearing voices."

Madness, Christianity, and the Left.  [W]hat was once considered mad is now deemed sane, while people once considered sane are now the ones attacked as being mad as hatters and as vicious haters.  For some time, it has been in vogue among the left to consider Christianity itself an insane belief system.  Certainly, such seems to be the case for some of the talking heads on ABC's The View.  According to Joy Behar, one of the most dangerously insane people in the United States is the vice president of the United States, Mike Pence.  Let's be frank:  a well known spokeswoman has so thoroughly absorbed the left's definition of insanity that she believes she can trash without consequence a good man whose core beliefs are based on beliefs held by Judaism and Christianity for over four thousand years.  Of course, she would never dream of trashing the Muslim mayor of London in a similar manner.

For the Left, It's Always 'Open Season' on Attacking Christians.  It all started when "The View" played a clip from "Celebrity Big Brother," in which former White House staffer Omarosa Manigault Newman said the vice president "thinks Jesus tells him to say things."  Sunny Hostin expressed concern about Pence's religious fervor and said she doesn't want her vice president "speaking in tongues."  "It's one thing to talk to Jesus.  It's another thing when Jesus talks to you," Joy Behar said, adding that hearing voices is a "mental illness."  Jeffress wondered on "America's Newsroom" what would have happened to Behar if she had mocked a devout Muslim.

MRC Supporters Make 25,000 Phone Calls Demanding ABC Apologize for Attacking Pence, Christians.  As of Monday morning [2/19/2018], the Media Research Center and its grassroots members made over 25,000 calls to ABC lambasting the network, demanding a full apology for anti-Christian comments made by The View on February 13 that suggested Vice President Mike Pence's "dangerous" Christian faith was a "mental illness."

Bozell: 'Clorox, Gerber, HomeAdvisor and Oreo Just as Responsible' as 'The View' for Its Anti-Christian Bigotry.  Since ABC's "The View" won't apologize for, and its sponsors won't condemn, the show's anti-Christian bigotry, Americans need to take action, Media Research Center (MRC) President Brent Bozell said Thursday [2/22/2018].  In a video message to the nation, Bozell called on Americans to join MRC's national campaign by demanding ABC and its sponsors apologize for insulting millions of Christians in the U.S.

Apple's iCal calendar mysteriously deletes Easter.  Easter Sunday, which arrives on April 1 this year, is the culmination of Holy Week, commemorating the resurrection of Jesus Christ and the most important holiday in the Christian religion.  However, it's absent from some Apple users' iCal calendars.  There are other holidays on the U.S. calendar, such as Juneteenth (a holiday celebrating the abolition of slavery in Texas), Flag Day and Indigenous People's Day, that appear.

MSNBC Host:  Church, Military and National Anthem Are Part of a "Bygone" Era.  MSNBC host Joy Reid is known for her outlandish and ugly statements full of factual errors, but last night during the State of the Union she took things to another level.  During President Trump's speech, Reid said American institutions like church, police, the military and the National Anthem are all from a bygone era that should be forgotten.

Who Are the Real Fascists in American Politics?  [Scroll down]  For the National Socialists, the good of the state is supreme and all Christian creeds are subordinate to the highest values which Hitler's party claimed to uphold as being the values of the entire community of blood Germans.  Thus, the Democrats have no problem booing even the word "God" at their convention.  Christian beliefs in a God-given and God-driven morality is demoted to being a mere creed and thus subordinate to the all-knowing "moral sense" of the state.  The creed-bearers must be suppressed and/or silenced.  Prayer is to be abolished from the public square because it is a mere creed.  In the schools, it is thus okay for a teacher to tell Johnny not to hit Jack, but it is mere creedalism to say that Jesus Christ said "Love your neighbor as yourself."

In A Religiously And Politically Polarized Country, Is There Still Hope For Shared Ground?  Without a shared language of belief, every difference threatens to pull us further apart. [...] We are not "one nation," perhaps largely in part because we don't believe we're "under God" anymore.

Imposing 21st Century Sensibilities on 18th and 19th Century Actions.  Perhaps the most beloved hymn of the past two centuries is Amazing Grace [...] Yet if one-issue social pressure continues to mount, Amazing Grace may disappear from politically-sensitive YouTube, Facebook, Google, and more broadly from popular culture.  Why?  Because the man who wrote this hymn, English sailor John Newton, had been a slave trader before experiencing a Jonah-like miraculous salvation of his own. [...] The ultimate "logic" of Black Lives Matter will see the destruction of Monticello and the Jefferson Memorial, Mount Vernon and the Washington Monument, the defacing of Mount Rushmore and — perhaps — the renaming of Washington DC and the State of Washington.  One wonders.  With Washington and Jefferson now under fire, can Amazing Grace be far behind?

The judicial war on God and the Declaration of Independence.  On July 14, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Rowan County, North Carolina, commissioners can't begin their session with a public prayer delivered by an elected official.  And the vote wasn't even close.  This once conservative panel voted 10-5 to banish God from the public square.  The opinion was written by Judge Harvie Wilkinson, a Reagan appointee, demonstrating the imbalance in the judiciary once again — that even the most radical opinions are often penned by GOP appointees.  This case also demonstrates that the judiciary will always be a dead end and a one-way-street for conservatives.  While conservative lower court judges always feel bound to "precedent," liberal lower court judges have no problem violating precedent and established practice.

State Department Lawyers Removing References to ISIS 'Genocide' Against Christians, Other Religious Minorities.  The State Department's top lawyers are systematically removing the word "genocide" to describe the Islamic State's mass slaughter of Christians, Yazidis, and other ethnic minorities in Iraq and Syria from speeches before they are delivered and other official documents, according to human rights activists and attorneys familiar with the policies.  Additionally, Democratic senators are delaying confirmation of Mark Green, Trump's pick to head the U.S. Agency for International Development who has broad bipartisan support.

Post-Christian America:  Gullible, Intolerant, and Superstitious.  Although I've heard some variation on this argument countless times, as I grew older I noticed something odd.  Many of the best-educated and least-religious people I knew weren't all that reasonable.  They held to downright irrational views about reality.  I remember an elite-educated secular friend in Philadelphia who scoffed at my wife's Christian faith; this friend was also convinced that her child had an "indigo aura" that imbued him with special gifts.  I recall conversations with Harvard Law School classmates who laughed at the New Testament but thought reincarnation was "cool."  And how can I forget the strange sight of Harvard students walking in and out of the neighborhood witchcraft store?  Just today, I saw the news that much-beloved singer Lana Del Rey has admitted to asking her fans to join a "mass occult ritual against President Donald Trump."

Yes, LGBT Activists Want to Punish Christian Conservatives.  Call me paranoid if you like, but I'm simply quoting what Tim Gill, the foremost LGBT political donor says in his own words.  "We're going into the hardest states in the country," he declares.  "We're going to punish the wicked."  That means Christian conservatives.  In short, if you won't comply with LGBT activism, be it as a minister or as a businessperson, you will be punished.  That is Gill's goal, and to deny it is to be in denial.

Federal court:  NC commissioners' prayer practice violates U.S. Constitution.  A federal appeals court ruled Friday that a North Carolina county's practice of opening commissioners' meetings with Christian prayers — and inviting the audience to join in — is unconstitutional.  The 45-page opinion by the 4th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va. sets up a possible showdown on the issue at the U.S. Supreme Court in coming months.  The appeals court ruled 10-5 in favor of the American Civil Liberties Union of North Carolina, which filed the lawsuit on behalf of non-Christian residents who claimed they felt excluded by the prayer.

The Editor says...
The First Amendment makes no guarantees about your feelings.  But it does guarantee the free exercise of religion.

The left's war on Christianity and why it hates Trump.  In contemporary America, Democrats have become congruent with the left, and the belief that the government owns us is a pervasive sentiment.  Why is this?  Democrats, as a political party, have literally denounced religion, particularly Christianity.  At that same Convention in 2012, the delegates filled the arena with loud booing during the attempt to reinstate the word "God" into the Democratic Party platform.  Persecution of Christians was practically Obama administration policy, including lawsuits of Christians refusing to subordinate their beliefs to government mandates.

Report confirms government hostility to Christianity spiked under Obama.  A new report confirms what many of us suspect — that the 8 years of Obama in the White House were hostile to Christianity, which spurred and encouraged anti-Christian forces in America, as seen in a whopping 76% increase in religious freedom violations since 2014.

Hostility to Religion:  The Growing Threat to Religious Liberty in the United States.  When the first edition of this report was released in July 2014, religious freedom violations across the United States were already significantly high.  Since that date, the number of incidents has only increased.  The first edition — spanning over a decade — contained 90 incidents.  Yet 69 new incidents have been added in the short time since the last report.  That is a 76 percent increase in just under three years.  Moreover, Sections III and IV, documenting hostility to religious beliefs on natural marriage and human sexuality, contained 42 incidents in the report's first edition.  In the time since then, 48 new incidents have been added to these sections.  Thus, the number of these religious freedom violations more than doubled in a 114 percent surge.

It's okay to decorate a police car with rainbow flags, but not Bible verses.  It's permissible in the United States to decorate police cars with rainbow flags to celebrate gay pride, but it's not permissible to decorate police cars with Bible verses honoring law enforcement officers.  The Houston Police Dept. is debuting a "Pride Car" for the city's gay pride parade, the Houston Chronicle reports.  Police Chief Art Acevedo is downright giddy about the new rainbow cruiser and the parade.

Government hostility to religion spiked under Obama, new report finds.  It's hard to believe American teenagers could be arrested for delivering a prayer, but that's the kind of nation we live in — a nation that was fundamentally transformed by the previous presidential administration.  In 2011, the class president at Hampton High School in Tennessee wanted to deliver a pray at graduation.  The principal issued an edict that any child who attempted to pray would be stopped, escorted from the building by police and arrested.  That incident was one of dozens included in a stunning new Family Research Council report documenting a significant upsurge in government hostility to religion.

Is being Christian a crime in Michigan?  A group of Iraqi Christians facing deportation under President Trump's tough new border controls has been given a temporary reprieve, but could still be sent back to face what their attorney calls almost certain death.  A U.S. District Judge issued a stay this week on the deportation of 82 Chaldean and Assyrian Christians from the Detroit area, who have criminal records, but who have served their prison time and paid their debt to society.  Their lawyer, Clarence M. Dass, points out that some of those criminal convictions date back to the 1980s and 1990s and involve drugs and financial misdeeds, not violent crimes.  He wonders if his clients have been targeted for deportation by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency precisely because they are Christians.  ICE denies that allegation.

OMB Top Post Nominee Castigated by Sanders for Christian Faith.  President Donald Trump's pick for the Office of Management and Budget's deputy director post was grilled not for his budgetary principles, but for his Christian faith by former Democrat presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders.  [Video clip]

Bernie Demands Religious Litmus Test for Christians But Not Muslims.  Democrat Senator Bernie Sanders applies a religious litmus test to Christians in public service positions, but when it comes to applying the same standard to Muslims, the Vermont senator claimed that they should instead be judged by their "views [and] abilities" instead "of their religion."  In an exchange Wednesday [6/7/2017] between Sanders and the potential deputy White House budget director Russell Vought — an evangelical Christian — the former Democrat presidential candidate began attacking Vought for his belief in Christianity and went as far to say "this nominee is really not someone who this country is supposed to be about."

Leftists Literally Boo God and Concept of God-Given Rights at GOP Rep. Dave Brat's Town Hall.  Representative Dave Brat — the conservative favorite who ousted House Majority Leader Eric Cantor in the Republican primary back in 2014 to represent Virginia's 7th District — held a town hall on Tuesday night, and the media narrative coming out of the constituent meeting was essentially universal. [...] But if you read through all fourteen articles (which I did), you'll find that every single one misses or just willfully skips over the most newsworthy part of the entire town hall: leftist members of the audience actually loudly booing the very mention of God and God-given rights.

Darkness at the Heart of Liberal Progressivism.  The Constitution excluded mention of God, not because the Founders were irreligious, but quite to the contrary, they were all members of various and sundry religious establishments, and wished to keep it that way.  They reasonably feared that if the government were allowed to define God, then religious freedom would be lost.  This is why the Establishment clause of the First Amendment is balanced against the Free Exercise clause.  Both are necessary, not for the exclusion of religion, but for its protection.  The Founders rightly insisted upon both principles.  Each of them protects the other.  That history has been turned on its head.  Liberal Progressives now interpret the Establishment clause so expansively that, in their view, it crowds out Free Exercise so completely as to render it of no effect.

Ten reasons millennials are backing away from God and Christianity.  College-aged millennials today are far more likely than the general population to be religiously unaffiliated.  This is true when they are compared to previous generations as well.  In fact, the Pew Research Center documents that millennials are the least outwardly religious American generation, where "one in four are unaffiliated with any religion, far more than the share of older adults when they were ages 18 to 29."  Just over 60 percent of millennials say that Christianity is "judgmental," and 64 percent say that "anti-gay" best describes most churches today.

The Editor says...
Churches have been opposed to homosexuality for thousands of years.  This isn't a new development.  The acceptance and promotion of homosexuality has only become fashionable in the last few decades.

Christian pastor excluded from prayer breakfast.  It's "a dark day for free speech in America," tweeted Ann Coulter this week after her talk was canceled at the University of California, Berkeley, following threats of violent protests.  Indeed, when it comes to the survival of civil dialogue, ominous signs are on the horizon.  Our social media feeds are full of disturbing videos of young campus protesters screaming, breaking glass, starting fires and even engaging in physical attacks — all in the name of tolerance and fighting bigotry.  It's enough to make the hearts of even the most valiant free-speech advocates sink with dismay.

Wisconsin Students Say Muslims Can Opt Out of Business, But Not Christians.  Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) toured the University of Wisconsin-Madison and found that students think a business has the right to refuse service for certain reasons — but not if the owner is Christian, and not if it involves turning down a same-sex wedding.  Students told ADF that it was okay for a dress designer to turn down Melania Trump for political reasons.  "You should be able to control your business in that regard, yeah," one young man said.  "I mean, it's a free market, that's what most conservatives want anyway," another student chimed in.  When asked if the dress designer has the right to do that, a young woman replied, "Absolutely."

The Greatest Threat to America Isn't Islam — It's the Left.  For more than a century, the left has waged a relentless jihad on the West.  In the 19th century, Karl Marx saw Christianity as the cultural carrier and defender of capitalism and launched an intentional attack on religion in general, and Christianity in particular.  He believed that, if Christian values could be undermined, it would be much easier to replace capitalism with utopian socialism.  As an articulate intellectual, Karl Marx attracted many academics to his cause, and gradually left-wing radicals took over western universities.

An Atlanta Theater Faces Criticism for Gay Versions of Bible Stories.  The work is an alternate version and comedic sendup of stories from the Old Testament, presented through the eyes of a gay couple named Adam and Steve and a lesbian couple named Jane and Mabel.  It was written by Paul Rudnick and premiered Off Broadway in 1998. [...] The Out Front Theater decided it would do its own rendition of it about a year ago.  However, on March 27, emails, phone calls, letters and Facebook messages blasting the decision started pouring in.

Cadbury Dropping Word 'Easter' From Egg Hunts.  Cadbury, founded by Quaker John Cadbury in 1824, is dropping the word "Easter" from its Easter egg hunts this year.  Instead, this year's Easter campaign will be called the "Cadbury's Great British Egg Hunt."  Britain's National Trust will hot some 300 hunts, including those at the Black Country at Wightwick Manor and Moseley Old Hall in Wolverhampton.  But anger is growing over the chocolate company's decision to take Easter out of Easter.  And now, the prime minister has jumped into the middle of the row between Cadbury and the Church of England.  She says Cadbury's decision to drop Easter is "absolutely ridiculous."

A New, Ideological Litmus Test for Christian Judges.  On December 2014, a reporter at a local Wyoming paper, the Pinedale Roundup, called the town's municipal judge, Ruth Neely, to ask if she was "excited" to be able to perform same-sex marriages.  (Two months earlier, the state had decided not to defend its same-sex marriage ban after it was struck down by a federal judge.)  In the ensuing conversation and later ones, Judge Neely explained that she'd never been asked to perform a same-sex marriage and mentioned her religious belief that marriage is the union of a husband and wife.  She also made clear that her beliefs would not prevent any same-sex couple in the area from getting married.  (They have not, in fact, done so, either:  To this day, no one has asked her to perform a same-sex wedding.)  Ominously, the reporter later called Judge Neely and offered not to run the story if she would "state a willingness to perform same-sex marriages."  This odd reaction to the judge's response to a hypothetical question was a portent of further trouble.

The War on Dads.  When Nicki Minaj flailed around satanically onstage in front of a scared fake priest at the Grammys last week, the Catholic Church was understandably upset.  "Whether Minaj is possessed is surely an open question, but what is not in doubt is the irresponsibility of the Recording Academy," Catholic League president Bill Donohue wrote.  "Never would they allow an artist to insult Judaism or Islam."  Donohue is right.  Christians — but especially Catholics — are the last bastion of people you can comfortably offend.

Watch foul liberal protesters LOSE IT when Louisiana townhall opens with PRAYER!  Wow, you won't believe this video.  Apparently the far left liberal protesters hate Christianity so much they scream out in horror like demons stuck in a pig when Jesus' name is mentioned.  [Video clip]

Protesters Freak Out After GOP Town Hall Opens With A Prayer.  Liberal protesters became enraged when a Louisiana town hall with Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy opened with a prayer earlier this week, screaming at the chaplain as he tried to lead the crowd in prayer.  The protesters, who were there with a local chapter of anti-Trump group Indivisible, can be heard groaning and shouting as the chaplain says, "In God we trust."  One man can be heard saying, "Pray on your own time!" Others shouted incredulously, "Prayer?  Prayer?"  Video of the event, first reported by The Washington Free Beacon, reveals one woman shouting the name "Lucifer" while the chaplain invokes God's name.  Other, non-protesting attendees can be heard trying to shush the protesters.

Town hall agitators explode at the name of Jesus.  Louisiana State chaplain Michael Sprague and the unidentified Vietnam War veteran should be commended for maintaining their composure in the face of such verbal barbarism.  The Feb. 22 town hall meeting in Metairie, was quickly overrun by the angry mob — much like other town hall meetings hosted by Republican lawmakers across the country.  The mainstream media would have us believe the unruly demonstrations are part of an organic, grassroots effort.  But I sincerely doubt many in the mob were actually residents of Louisiana [...]

Christian Persecution in America.  [Kim] Burrell, in addition to being a gospel singer is a pastor, and, with the release of "Hidden Figures," a video emerged on the internet of her passionately preaching in her church against homosexuality.  Burrell was scheduled, as part of the film's promotion, to appear and perform, along with the film's soundtrack producer, Pharrell Williams, on "The Ellen DeGeneres Show."  But DeGeneres, an open lesbian, canceled Burrell's appearance as a result of the video.  Next, Burrell's radio show, which is produced at Texas Southern University, was canceled.  Then she was disinvited from the BMI Trailblazers of Gospel Music Awards, where she was a co-honoree.  Williams, appearing on DeGeneres's show, said Burrell is a "fantastic singer," but "there's no room for any kind of prejudice in 2017."  Wait a second.  It's prejudice when a pastor condemns, in her church, behavior that the Bible, as understood by hundreds of millions of Christians around the world, prohibits, yet it's not prejudice when others make every effort to purge that person from the public space because of her faith?

Media bias!  Mass persecution of Christians underreported.  A new report finds a Christian is killed every six minutes — and these aren't random victims of wars, and they're not simply people in the wrong place at the wrong time.  They're being slaughtered for their faith.

Christians [are] the most persecuted group in world for second year:  Study.  Christians continued to be the most persecuted group across the globe in 2016, according to a study.  The upcoming report from Italian-based Center for Studies on New Religions, determined that 90,000 Christians were killed for their beliefs worldwide last year and nearly a third were at the hands of Islamic extremists like ISIS.  Others were killed by state and non-state persecution, including in places like North Korea.

War on Christians:  Marine Bible Verse Case Heads to Supreme Court.  Lawyers representing Lance Corporal Monifa Sterling — the U.S. Marine court-martialed for displaying Bible verses on her desk — petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court on the Friday before Christmas to take her appeal, one of the biggest military religious liberty cases in American history.  Sterling was a substandard Marine, but the straw that broke the camel's back to get her court-martialed was posting, "No weapon formed against me shall prosper," a paraphrase of Isaiah 54:17.  Representing herself during the prosecution, she argued that she had a religious liberty right to post that verse.  She was convicted and dishonorably discharged from the military.

War on Christmas 2.0: 'Jesus Never Existed'.  A new article in Big Think claims that more and more, "historians and bloggers alike are questioning whether the actual man called Jesus existed."  Trendy atheists like Richard Dawkins and the late Christopher Hitchens also dabbled in the denial of the historical Jesus, with Dawkins asserting that it is possible "to mount a serious, though not widely supported, historical case that Jesus never lived at all, and Hitchens averring that Jesus' existence is "highly questionable."

Oklahoma University Accommodates Muslim Prayer, but not Christian prayer.  The University of Oklahoma has opened a new reflection room to host Muslim students wishing to pray during the day, giving them a sense of belonging and welcome.  "Prayer is very important to me.  It's my priority to pray on time every day," Maeen Alqohaif, a mechanical engineering junior, told The Oklahoma Daily on Monday, December 5.  "This room is very convenient because I come (to the library) to study, and at the same time I don't have to go all the way home and pray.  I can just pray here."  Alqohaif used to pray between the narrow bookshelves in a corner of the Bizzell Memorial Library.  He later discovered a room on the second floor of the library, which was implemented at the request of the Muslim Student Association.

Township issues death sentence for Christian school.  The situation didn't seem that alarming.  A Christian school needed to move to more economic, and yet bigger, facilities.  As such schools usually are, the Livingston Christian School in Genoa Township, Michigan, was on a tight budget, but it located a facility available at the nearby Brighton Church of the Nazarene, and made plans for the move.  The local planning commission approved the plan, the community supported it, and even experts summoned by the township endorsed the strategy.  Then the town council rejected the application, a decision that prompted a court case that now is pending before the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.  The brief there, submitted by First Liberty, warns that the rejection is a violation of federal law because it threatens the very existence of the religious outreach.  "The township threatened the survival of the school as a religious institution because, as the record demonstrates, the school has no viable alternative location," the briefing to the appeals judges explains.  A lower court judge had found that endangering the existence of the school was not a "substantial burden," the appeal notes.

City renames 2 holidays deemed culturally insensitive.  The city of Bloomington, Indiana, has renamed Good Friday and Columbus Day because the names imply a cultural insensitivity, according to the Bloomington Herald-Times.  The new, more politically-correct names will help make the holidays more inclusive, the mayor said. [...] The Herald-Times reports that "all city employees receive paid time off for Columbus Day, a federal holiday ... and Good Friday, the Friday before Easter Sunday.  In the future, the city will be calling these paid days off 'Fall Holiday' and 'Spring Holiday.'"

Bibles banned!  VA removes Good Book from clinic.  A Bible was removed from the waiting room of a Chillicothe Veteran Affairs Medical Center in Athens, Ohio after a veteran complained.  "Our government is secular, and must remain secular," the unidentified veteran wrote.  Mikey Weinstein, the founder of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, fired off a letter to the medical center on behalf of the veteran — alleging that the presence of the Bible inside a government facility is a violation of the U.S. Constitution.

Team Obama launches a shocking broadside against religious faith.  Martin Castro, the chairman of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, [...] an Obama appointee, released a report on September 7 on protections against discrimination.  His finding, in part, is that Americans need to be protected from Bible-thumpers, and anyone else whose beliefs run afoul of the administration's PC police. [...] [I]n the report Castro cited John Adams.  "The government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion."  But Adams did not write those words.  They were part of a treaty to end the Barbary War.  "Christian" ships and crew were fair game for Barbary pirates, Ambassador Abdrahaman of Tripoli told Thomas Jefferson; that all Christians are sinners in the context of the Koran and that it was a Muslim's "right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to enslave as many as they could take as prisoners."  U.S. negotiators tried to downplay the clash of religions.  The treaty therefore stressed that the U.S. was not an officially Christian nation, but a secular one, and therefore should never have been targeted.

West Point investigating prayer led by coaches after football game.  The U.S. Military Academy is launching an inquiry into a prayer led by coaches following Army's opening-day victory over Temple last week.  Video of the post-game invocation was pulled offline on Monday [9/5/2016] after West Point officials received a complaint from the Military Religious Freedom Foundation.  Mikey Weinstein, who heads the MRFF, said he received complaints from six members of the football team, two of whom he said identified as Christians, as well as dozens of Army graduates and staff who took exception to the religious expression.

'So Help Me God' Left Out of Naturalization Oath in D.C. Ceremony.  Chief Judge Beryl A. Howell, appointed by President Obama to the District Court for the District of Columbia, left out "so help me God" while administering the Oath of Allegiance at a naturalization ceremony Wednesday [9/14/2016].

Obama's U.S. Military Academy Investigating West Point Football Team for Postgame Prayer.  Officials at President Obama's federally-controlled U.S. Military Academy has launched an investigation after a video showing the West Point football team engaged in a postgame prayer caused separation-of-church-and-state complaints.  West Point officials removed the video showing the team prayer, reporting that several outside groups complained when a video showing the celebration in the locker room after a recent 28-13 upset over Temple University depicted the players kneeling and ending a prayer with an "Amen" in unison.

Christian Woman Files Discrimination Suit, Claims State Only Catering to Muslims.  The ACLU is representing an Alabama woman who claims that her state's DMV refused to take her driver's license photo while she wore a religious headscarf.  Yvonne Allen said in a blog post on the ACLU's website that the garment "is an integral part of my Christian beliefs."  "The DMV officials said only Muslims were allowed to keep their headscarves on for photos," she wrote, saying that her beliefs were not protected in the same way.  She recalled that the woman taking pictures asked her to remove the scarf, and she said she couldn't.  The woman asked if it was for religious reasons, and when Allen said yes, the DMV employee asked if she was Muslim.  Allen wrote that when she said no, the woman replied, "Only Muslim women have the right to cover their hair in their driver license photos."  Allen eventually removed the head covering and got her picture taken.

With Wyoming Judge's Case, Left Aims To Ban Religious People From Legal Field.  If your religious views block you from performing a job, don't do that job.  That's the Left's refrain about religion and expressing it.  If you're religious, that's fine, but it really needs to not impinge on others via your career.  Keep your relationship with a Higher Power meekly to yourself.  The case of Judge Ruth Neely in Wyoming shows, in stark clarity, that it doesn't actually matter whether religious people do their jobs well and keep their religion to themselves.  It's unacceptable to think and believe certain things, such as marriage being an institution between one man and one woman, and if you do that, forget about going into the legal profession.

Cop says Red Cross told him not to pray with flood victims.  A law enforcement officer said he was asked to leave a Red Cross shelter in Lafayette, Louisiana after he prayed with several flood victims.  Clay Higgins, a reserve city marshal and a local legend, dropped by after work to minister to evacuees at the Heymann Performing Arts Center on Aug. 19.  "I was not proselytizing," he told me.  "I was just there to thank volunteers and offer prayers and encouragement."  Higgins, who is also running for Congress, was dressed in uniform and was holding a Bible.

Air Force officer faces investigation over Bible on his desk.  The Military Religious Freedom Foundation is demanding an Air Force major be "aggressively punished" for having an open Bible on his desk at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado Springs, Colo.  "It [the Bible] is very obviously a statement of Christian preference, Christian primacy," MRFF founder Mikey Weinstein told me.  "Had that been the Book of Satan or the Koran there would be blood in the freaking streets."  He accused Maj. Steve Lewis, a supervisor at the Reserve National Security Space Institute, of "harboring and encouraging a truly abhorrent example of First Amendment civil rights violations."  Mr. Weinstein is a fussy little fellow, isn't he?

Salon: GOP Must Dump Jesus or Risk Irrelevance in 'Post-Christian America'.  Salon Magazine has accused the Republican Party of being out of touch with "post-Christian America," warning the GOP that if it doesn't renege on its alliance with Christianity, it will soon become irrelevant.  Ted Cruz's failure to get the GOP nomination, Matthew Sheffield proclaims in Salon, "is a perfect window into trends that will set the pace of American politics for decades to come:  Americans are moving away from Christianity, including people most likely to vote Republican."  To back up his claims, Sheffield cites the 2014 Pew Research study finding that 23 percent of Americans say they're "unaffiliated" with any religious tradition, up from 20 percent just three years earlier.

Christians in Hillary's Crosshairs.  Underpinning Hillary Clinton's political philosophy is a coercive secularism that eliminates conservative Christians from public life.  Should she win, she will not only force Christians to pay for contraceptives but also abortions.  She will treat their schools and churches as the equivalent of Bob Jones University.  She will court-martial chaplains and soldiers who don't submit to her LGBT agenda.  In effect, a governmental boycott will fall on all Christian institutions that do not conform to Hillary's secularist fiats.  Churches that don't marry homosexuals will suffer the kind of governmental ostracizing the Boy Scouts faced until they knuckled under to political correctness.  In Obama's "fundamentally transformed" America, traditional Judeo-Christian morality is defined as "un-American."  The counterculture has become the culture.  Flag-burners have become patriots.  Defenders of cop-killers "reform" police departments.  Heretics run churches.  And government becomes God.

Newspaper rejects ad over the word "Christian".  Lois McGinnis and her family own Cedar Springs Christian Store.  They recently decided to close a second location of the store so they decided to place an ad in the classified section of the newspaper, which is owned by Gannett. [...] Mrs. McGinnis placed the ad on July 26.  It was supposed to run on July 28.  But when she opened up the newspaper[,] the ad was nowhere to be found.  So Mrs. McGinnis phoned the newspaper and spoke with a classified ad employee.  "She said our ad did not run because it contained an offensive word," she told me.  "I asked what that offensive word was and she said the offensive word was 'Christian.'"

Black Bishop Calls For All Christians To Leave Democratic Party.  Bishop Earl Walker Jackson Sr. (E.W. Jackson) has issued a plea for all Christians to leave the Democratic Party. [...] In his plea for Christians to make an exodus from the Democratic Party, Jackson refers to the Party as cult-like and cites the following reasons for his statement and actions:
  •   Pro-abortion
  •   Rejection of biblical family model and values
  •   Open hostility to anyone who expresses their Christian values including Dan Cathy of Chick-fil-A and Olympic gold medal gymnast Gabby Douglas
  •   Actions taken against cities and towns for displaying crosses at memorials
  •   Actions taken against anyone who invokes the name of Jesus during prayers at official events

One Episcopal Church's Largest Congregation Is 300 Muslims.  An Episcopal church in Washington, D.C. has been welcoming Muslims into their sanctuary for Friday prayers for eight years, and the men who meet there now outnumber the church's congregation.  The Rev. Elizabeth Gardner of the Church of the Epiphany said the congregation felt called to open the church to the Muslim community because they were in need of a place to worship.

The Editor says...
In my opinion, the people who run this Episcopal church are not Christians.  They are just as lost as the Muslims.  One of these days, when the Muslims outnumber them by 10-to-1, the Episcopalians will be told they're no longer welcome -- and thanks for the really swell mosque you built for us.

Ontario court deals blow to Christian law school.  In April 2014 the Law Society of Upper Canada announced it would not accept graduates of TWU's proposed program, because it deemed discriminatory the school's community covenant that requires students to abstain from sexual activity outside marriage between a man and a woman.  After TWU appealed the decision, last year a three-judge panel ruled against the school, even though the judges agreed a religious freedom violation had occurred.

Justice Alito: 'Those Who Value Religious Freedom Have Cause for Great Concern'.  The Supreme Court's decision not to hear a case challenging a Washington state law that forces a family-owned pharmacy to dispense emergency contraceptives is an "ominous sign" for those who value religious freedom, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. said.  "If this is a sign of how religious liberty claims will be treated in the years ahead, those who value religious freedom have cause for great concern," Alito said Tuesday [6/28/2016] in a critical dissent.

Study: Christians are the most persecuted religious group in the world.  Christians are the most persecuted of any religious group around the world, facing harassment in 108 countries.  A study by Pew Research Center found that harassment of Christians in 2014 by both governments and society as a whole increased from 102 countries in 2013.  The study considered harassment to be both verbal and physical assaults as well as arrests, detentions and desecration of holy sites.  Discrimination on religious grounds was also found in employment, education and housing decisions.  There are 2.3 billion Christians worldwide, and it is estimated 8,000 are martyred each year.  This is equivalent to one person dying in the name of the faith each hour of every day.

Exclusive Video:  Veteran Forcibly Dragged from Air Force Ceremony for Mentioning God.  When a veteran started offering traditional remarks at a military flag-folding ceremony, several uniformed airmen assaulted him, dragging him out of the room because his remarks mentioned God.  Now First Liberty Institute lawyers representing retired Senior Master Sergeant Oscar Rodriguez are demanding that the U.S. Air Force apologize and punish those responsible or face a federal civil-rights lawsuit.

Air Force veteran threatens suit after being bounced from ceremony mid-speech.  A retired Air Force sergeant who in April was dragged from a military retirement ceremony as he recited a traditional passage honoring the flag is demanding an apology and threatening a lawsuit.  Senior Master Sgt.  Oscar Rodriguez was invited to speak at the April 3 ceremony by an outgoing fellow master sergeant from the 749th Aircraft Maintenance Squadron.  In a story first reported by FoxNews.com days later, video showed Rodriguez being forcibly removed by service members at Travis Air Force Base.  "This was one of the most humiliating experiences of my life," Rodriguez told FoxNews.com.  "All I wanted to do was honor Master Sgt. [Charles] Roberson, his guests, and the flag, with my speech."

'God is Being Eroded, Eclipsed, Liquidated' in the United States, Cardinal Says.  Recent events in the U.S. are destroying Americans' ability to connect to God, according to Cardinal Robert Sarah, a native of the West African nation of Guinea.  In a keynote address at the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast in Washington, D.C., Tuesday [5/178/2016], Cardinal Sarah said that in the United States, "God is being eroded, eclipsed, liquidated," Catholic News Agency reports.  Cardinal Sarah pointed out specific events "in the name of 'tolerance'" that have contributed to this erosion, including "the legalization of same sex marriage, the obligation to accept contraception within health care programs, and even 'bathroom bills' that allow men to use the women's restrooms and locker rooms."

Fired for preaching:  Georgia dumps doctor over church sermons.  Bi-vocational pastors be warned — what you say from the pulpit on Sunday could get you fired from your public sector job on Monday.  Dr.  Eric Walsh, a renowned public health expert who also serves as a lay minister, has filed a federal lawsuit against the Georgia Department of Public Health alleging he was terminated for delivering sermons on issues ranging from homosexuality to evolution.  "No one in this country should be fired from their job for something that was said in a church or from a pulpit during a sermon," said First Liberty attorney Jeremy Dys.

One of this year's most banned books, among world's scariest.  Every single year the Bible is the world's best-selling book.  In fact, it's the number one best-selling book in history.  But recently it made another, less-coveted list:  the American Library Association's "top 10 most-challenged books of 2015."  This means the Bible is among the most frequently requested to be removed from public libraries.  But what's so threatening about it?  Why could owning one in Stalin's Russia get you sent to the Gulag, and why is owning one today in North Korea punishable by death?

Demonizing Christianity as a Global Menace.  Can you believe anyone even organizes a "white privilege" conference these days — seven years into Barack Obama's presidency?  Well, you'd better believe it, and you should also know that at least one of the speakers at this conference is militantly Christophobic.  The 17th annual White Privilege Conference was held in Philadelphia from April 15 to 17.  Blake Neff of The Daily Caller attended the conference and reported that "activist and author Paul Kivel" actually claimed that "almost every dysfunction in society, from racism and sexism to global warming and a weak economy, is united by the ideology of 'Christian hegemony.'"

ACLU Survey/Fundraising Letter Confirms Its Anti-Christian Bias.  The letter begins with their concern that "we're seeing a relentless and wide-ranging assault on our fundamental freedoms.  Well, one would have to agree with them on that, when looking at the efforts of the Obama administration to go after our Second Amendment rights, and the push by leaders in both political parties to enter into multilateral trade agreements which threaten our national sovereignty.  But these issues are not what the ACLU is troubled about.  In fact, the group has historically favored stricter gun control.  The position of the ACLU is that the Second Amendment protects only a "collective right" rather than an individual right, despite the Supreme Court's contrary decision in Columbia v.  Heller.  This writer has never heard anything from the ACLU about threats to our national sovereignty.  And the organization has clearly opposed leaving most matters to the states.  In fact, the ACLU has been at the head of the march toward more federal control, in all sorts of matters.  So, just what "fundamental freedoms" does the ACLU see in jeopardy?

Gov. Bryant Stands up to Liberal Bullying and Enacts Mississippi Religious Freedom Bill.  Mississippi Gov.  Phil Bryant, a Republican, has signed the Protecting Freedom of Conscience from Government Discrimination Act, a law that guarantees religious freedom in the wake of last year's activist Supreme Court decision redefining marriage for the country.  The Left, big business and even Planned Parenthood weighed in against the legislation.  Mississippi policymakers, reflecting the overwhelming support of the state's citizens, stood up to the bullying and enacted common sense religious liberty protection.

Killing Christianity in America.  The radical fringe of the sexual revolution that began in the 1960s coincided and was parallel with the Civil Rights movement, gradually poisoning and then determining to kill outright the Christian religious conscience that was and still is the backbone of reform in America.  The radicals behind the sexual revolution substituted in the place of Christian conscience answerable to God a militant view of self-determination that held to no god but the inner god of human will and power.  In an astonishing perversion of the Quaker idea of the inner voice of conscience answerable to God, the inner voice of the individual human being was determined to be infallible in matters of sex and practice — "If it feels good; do it."  What any individual believed to be his or her inner voice granted unqualified authority to remold the world according to the latest revolutionary fatwa concerning sexual freedom.

Is a Christian in the White House a Negative?  Christianity played a huge role in the founding of our country.  Empowered solely by their incredible Christian faith, the Pilgrims (also known as saints and separatists) courageously sought a land where they could worship freely.  These incredibly brave people had no idea what to expect regarding their journey and life in the new world.  America was built on the unique idea that our freedom comes from God — individual liberty and freedom, rather than being ruled by a monarch.  Amazingly, over 200 years later, the left has been allowed to move our country closer to what we escaped — ruled by a tyrannical government mandating our every action.  Things have gotten so far out of whack that [some] view faith in God as a negative.

Tis the Season to be Offended.  This is the time of year when news of people being offended by Christian symbols reaches a high point.  Progressives view complaints about a "war on Christmas" as manufactured. [...] Most of these "manufactured" offenses take place in schools, the media, the military, and government bureaucracies.  When some of its more extreme examples are exposed to the public the first reaction is to deny they happened.  It appears that the government is attempting to eradicate all mention of Christianity without drawing excessive attention to their program.  Professor James Hitchcock has written, "Far from being neutral, the American government is now in the position of favoring unbelief over belief and irreligion over religion."  When there is media attention to their efforts and a strong reaction they tend to deny that they were establishing a new policy.

Human Rights Campaign Calls on Christian Colleges to Repent of Their Christianity.  On Friday [12/18/2015], the nation's largest gay-rights organization, the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), released a chilling report that investigates a "disturbing trend" of religious colleges' taking legal measures to exercise their religious liberty, using waivers available to them under Title IX.

Church slapped with criminal summons over worship service 'noise'.  "Silent Night" has new meaning for a Louisiana church after they were issued criminal sanctions because their worship services exceeded 60 decibels — which is about the same noise level of a dishwasher.  The executive pastor of Vintage Church was issued a criminal summons and the rest of the staff was threatened with "physical arrest" if they used any microphones or amplified sound in their worship services, according to a lawsuit filed by Liberty Institute.

Bench with engraved Bible verse removed from North Carolina park.  Officials removed a bench dedicated to a young car crash victim from a North Carolina park Monday [12/7/2015], and friends claim it was because the bench featured a Bible verse and two crosses.  "I just could not believe that they would take something away from my precious little baby like that," the child's mother, Heather Roten, told Fox 8.  Her 16-month old son, Mason, died after the crash in August.  Friends and Elkin High School alumni say they arranged to create the metal bench and place it in Elkin Municipal Park.

The Left's Assault on 'Thoughts and Prayers' Revealed Its Anti-Christian Bigotry and Rank Political Posturing.  As the San Bernardino, Calif., attack unfolded in real time, most Americans knew that dozens of their fellow citizens were suffering, with hundreds more terrified.  They knew police were tracking down at least two depraved killers who were armed and dangerous.  They also knew there was absolutely nothing they could physically do to stop the killers or heal the victims, so they did what people of faith have been doing since the dawn of human awareness — they prayed.  They prayed for protection and courage for the police, for healing and comfort for victims, and for the stamina and precision of the surgeons.  They prayed because they know God is sovereign and because that was the single most effective thing they could do — in that moment — for their fellow Americans in grave need.  Suddenly, however, a cascade of leftist politicians and elite journalists pounced.  Shut up about "thoughts and prayers," they said, and "slink away."

Whoopi Goldberg: Christians Are Just Dangerous As Muslims Because Hitler.  [Scroll down]  Some GOP presidential candidates, namely Ted Cruz, have said that if they were in charge, only Christian refugees would be allowed to resettle in the United States.  Co-host Joy Behar exclaimed that this stance wasn't very Christian, then implied that the Christian refugees are super dangerous.  "[Oklahoma City bomber] Timothy McVeigh was a Christian," Behar said.  "Just sayin'."  Behar provided no evidence to support her assertion, which is somewhat understandable since McVeigh wasn't a Christian.  McVeigh identified as an agnostic and said his violent actions weren't motivated by any religious associations, but by an extreme hatred for the federal government.  Whoopi Goldberg followed Behar's convoluted line of thinking by pointing out how Adolf Hitler was totally a Christian.  "There have been a lot of monster Christians," she said.  "Hitler was a Christian."  But Goldberg's claims don't add up, either.

Political Correctness Taken to the Extreme: "Hard Worker" Now Offensive.  With presidential candidates including Donald Trump leading a pushback against overreaching political correctness, here's a video that will surely add some fuel to the fire.  As you will see, MSNBC host Melissa Harris-Perry was apparently triggered by the phrase "hard worker" and went into a diatribe explaining why that term is offensive.  It sounds as if she's somehow trying to connect the term "hard worker" to slavery.  [Video clip]

Muslim Drivers Get Religious Freedom but Not Christian Bakers.  "Two Muslim truck drivers who refused to transport alcohol were recently awarded $240,000 by an Illinois judge, according to a press release by the EEOC.  "Truck drivers Mahad Abass Mohammed and Abdkiarim Hassan Bulshale were fired from Illinois-based Star Transport back in 2009 after they refused to transport alcohol because it violated their religious beliefs.  "The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission sued the carrier on behalf of the drivers, alleging religious discrimination and wrongful termination.

Oregon gunman singled out Christians during rampage.  A gunman singled out Christians, telling them they would see God in "one second," during a rampage at an Oregon college Thursday [10/1/2015] that left at least nine innocent people dead and several more wounded, survivors and authorities said.  "[He started] asking people one by one what their religion was.  'Are you a Christian?' he would ask them, and if you're a Christian, stand up.  And they would stand up and he said, 'Good, because you're a Christian, you are going to see God in just about one second.'  And then he shot and killed them," Stacy Boylen, whose daughter was wounded at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Ore., told CNN.

Office Depot Criticized for Refusing to Print Pro-Life Prayer Sheets Written by Priest.  A woman in an Chicago suburb went to her local Office Depot to have some fliers printed up for her pro-life event.  But the folks at Office Depot refused to print up the sheets because it was anti-Planned Parenthood.

Office Depot Refuses to Print Copies of Pro-Life Prayer.  Office Depot has refused to print copies of a pro-life prayer on the grounds that to do so violates company policy of printing material that "advocates the persecution of people who support abortion rights."  Maria Goldstein, 42, ordered 500 copies of "A Prayer for the Conversion of Planned Parenthood" at Office Depot in Schaumburg, Illinois, for distribution at her Roman Catholic parish's Masses Sunday [9/6/2015].

Office Depot Stands By Employee's Refusal to Make Copies of a Pro-Life Prayer.  An Office Depot in Illinois last month refused to print copies of a flyer that contained facts about Planned Parenthood (mostly taken from Planned Parenthood's own annual report) along with a pro-life prayer, and the company is standing by that decision in the face of legal threats.

Update:
Office Depot CEO Apologizes For Store Discriminating Against Pro-Life Customer.  [Scroll down]  I recognize the liability of Office Depot for printing incendiary stuff, but a prayer?  And stretching the point about "persecuting" anyone because of an effort to change someone's mind on abortion is ridiculous.  My guess is that the clerk at Office Depot who refused to photocopy the prayer is pro-choice and didn't like some of the references in the prayer.  They can't even claim that the prayer is discriminatory because it's non-denominational.  Needless to say, Office Depot should take a second look at that policy and train employees in enforcing it.

Court: Jesus statue can stay on Montana mountain.  A 6-foot tall statue of Jesus that has spent the last 60 years overlooking a northwestern Montana ski hill may stay there, a federal appeals court ruled Monday [8/31/2015].

Trump: 'Absolutely An Assault On Christianity'.  The Republican candidate for president says there's "an assault on Christianity" both in America and abroad, and he's blasting President Obama for doing nothing to help believers being decapitated by ISIS. [...] "If you're a Christian, it's almost impossible to come into the United States from Syria," the billionaire developer continued.  "And yet the Muslims, it's one of the easier places.  Now you explain that to me.  Absolutely there's an assault on Christianity, and we're gonna reverse that trend big-league."

Missouri Commission Removes Desert Storm Memorial with 'Jesus Fish'.  On Tuesday [8/11/2015], the three-member Boone County Commission in Columbia, Missouri voted unanimously to remove a memorial honoring Operation Desert Storm from the county courthouse to a private cemetery because it featured an ichthys, AKA "Jesus fish."  Two Boone County men who died in Operation Desert Storm, Patrick Connor and Steven Farnen, were listed on the memorial, but now the county has decided to replace the memorial with another one lacking any religious sy

Orlando airport unveils $250K Muslim prayer room.  The Orlando International Airport will soon be opening a Muslim prayer room.  The airport will spend $350,000 to build the "Reflection Room" where Muslims can pray, a local CBS affiliate reported.  The decision was made after Emirates Airlines announced it will soon be offering direct flights out of Orlando to Dubai.  A majority of the airline's travelers are Muslim.

The Editor says...
The airport is owned by the Greater Orlando Aviation Authority, which is a regional government entity.

Guilt as Power.  [Scroll down]  In our modern, post-religious age society needs to know what ethical taboos, if any, remain.  What won't we do?  Now that we have resolved to live without God and must perforce live under men that is all the more reason to know what those men believe.  Sigmund Freud believed that the secular motives of "educated people and brain-workers" would be a reliable substitute for what was formerly regarded as natural law.  Can these educated people spare a moment then to explain what their secular motives are?  Besides money that is.

A Secularizing America Turns Left Politically.  Our research shows the share of Americans who do not identify themselves with any religion is increasing.  Those not claiming religious preference have grown from 14% in 2010 to 22% today.  This growing "no religion" demographic provides high levels of support for liberal positions on issues such as climate change, same-sex marriage and health care.  For instance, 84% of respondents who do not identify with any religious group in our poll support gay marriage, while just over one-third of Protestants (34%) and 45% of all Christians share the same point of view.  Further, "nones" are likelier than any other religious group to view climate change as both a serious threat and primarily man-made.

Christians Must Brace Themselves for the Coming Persecution in Obama's LGBT America.  Rod Dreher, writing in an article in Time Magazine, has this to say about the recent US Supreme Court decision on same-sex marriage:  "LGBT activists and their fellow travelers will be coming after social conservatives.  The Supreme Court has now, in constitutional doctrine, said that homosexuality is equivalent to race.  The next goal of activists will be a long-term campaign to remove tax-exempt status from dissenting religious institutions.  The more immediate goal will be the shunning and persecution of dissenters within civil society."

War on The Truth: It's a Progressive Disease.  You'd better think twice before you tell the truth about the emperor's new clothes.  Progressives are using the power of government to force society to go along with the insanity.  This goes on wherever progressives hold power.  Politically correct speech codes have been enforced on American college campuses for decades, where conservative and Christian students and faculty are routinely discriminated against and decried as "haters."  Now that progressives have taken over broad swaths of federal and state government, they have greatly enhanced power to enforce their will.  Bakers and florists who refuse to participate in same-sex ceremonies are driven out of business, despite the First Amendment's guarantee of free exercise of religion.  Religious liberty is under assault in America.  People who espouse Judeo-Christian values are being denied entry into graduate schools and driven from their jobs.  Just ask Wes Modder, the chaplain who recently was kicked out of the Navy for telling counselees the truth about what the Bible teaches about sexuality, including homosexual behavior.

Time magazine says:
Now's the Time To End Tax Exemptions for Religious Institutions.  The Supreme Court's ruling on gay marriage makes it clearer than ever that the government shouldn't be subsidizing religion and non-profits.

SCOTUS to churches: Hey, no worries, you can still "advocate" for traditional marriage.  On this slender thread does the promise of religious liberty hang.  Justice Anthony Kennedy, in his majority opinion in Obergefell that declares same-sex marriage a constitutional right, barely mentions the means by which most Americans conduct their weddings — houses of worship.  Only on page 27 does Kennedy get around to addressing the connection between church and state, and the assurances in this paragraph are less than compelling, to say the least.

SCOTUS invents new right to same-sex "marriage," outlawing Christianity.  Let me tell you how this is going to play out.  See what the progressive fascists are doing with the Confederate flag?  See how they're erasing it from every nook and cranny of America?  See the defacement of Confederate monuments?  Hear the calls for censorship of classics like Gone With The Wind?  You ain't seen nothin' yet.  Because the rainbow-shirts are coming.  And they're coming for us.  I figure the first church burning is only hours away.  Within days it'll be impossible to say the words "homosexual" and "sin" in the same sentence anywhere in America.

Sundays will never be the same.  Sunday, the day of rest, will ultimately become the day of arrest. [...] Instead of taking home profound reminders of the Gospel, worshippers who still turn out for Sunday service will be given pamphlets teaching them how to save the Earth as the ongoing cycle of Gaia replacing Christianity comes full bore.  Over time, congregants will be instructed from the pulpit that homosexuals practice a kind of love that cannot be described as sodomy.  Christian believers with the temerity to argue that this isn't the truth will be left to the mercy of their pastors, pastors who are capable of having fellow congregants turn on them as hate-worthy 'homophobes'.  The progressives are imposing on society the unreal as the real.  How long will it be before self-made celebrities like Bruce Jenner and twerking Miley Cyrus will be brought up to the pulpit to lecture church goers that "love is love"?

The Supreme Court Ratifies a New Civic Religion That Is Incompatible with Christianity.  The most striking aspect of Justice Kennedy's majority opinion in Obergefell v. Hodges, which created a constitutional right to same-sex marriage, was its deep emotion.  This was no mere legal opinion.  Indeed, the law and Constitution had little to do with it. [...] Christians who've not suffered for their faith often romanticize persecution.  They imagine themselves willing to lose their jobs, their liberty, or even their lives for standing up for the Gospel.  Yet when the moment comes, at least here in the United States, they often find that they simply can't abide being called "hateful."

For Leftists, It's Open Season on Christians.  If you doubt that Christians are fair game for ridicule by the cultural left, take a look at the hit piece on Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia by Jeffrey Tayler for Salon.  I can't decide which is worse, the title or the subtitle.  The title:  "Antonin Scalia is unfit to serve:  A justice who rejects science and the law for religion is of unsound mind."  The subtitle:  "The justice claims to be an originalist, but his real loyalty is to religion and a phony man in the sky."

America Is Parting Ways with God.  Our federal papers acknowledge God, our money reads, "In God We Trust," our government buildings have the name of God inscribed on them, our congressional sessions are opened with prayer and the law of the land is founded on British Common Law and Judeo-Christian principles.  We send chaplains to war with our troops; prisoners denied most all other privileges are afforded the right to the practice of their religion; and even a condemned man can have a priest or religious representative with him as he walks the last mile.  For almost two hundred years, America thrived, won wars, took unprecedented steps in technology, medicine, industry and science.  All the while, God had a very visible presence in government, society and the everyday life of America.

Marine court-martialed for refusing to remove Bible verse.  A United States Marine was convicted at a court-martial for refusing to remove a Bible verse on her computer — a verse of Scripture the military determined "could easily be seen as contrary to good order and discipline."  The plight of Lance Corporal Monifa Sterling seems unbelievable — a member of the Armed Forces criminally prosecuted for displaying a slightly altered passage of Scripture from the Old Testament:  "No weapon formed against me shall prosper."  Sterling, who represented herself at trial, was convicted February 1, 2014 in a court-martial at Camp Lejune, North Carolina after she refused to obey orders from a staff sergeant to remove the Bible verses from her desk.

Pastor: 'I Never Thought' My Nation Would Persecute 'Bible-Believing' Christians.  The Rev. E.W. Jackson told attendees at the Family Research Council's Watchmen on the Wall event in Washington, D.C., last week that Americans who believe biblical teachings about marriage and the sanctity of life are being persecuted.  "It bothers me to think my own country is a strange land," Jackson said Friday [5/22/2015] at the pastors' retreat.  "I never thought there would be a day when my nation would persecute the Bible-believing Christian for standing for what the word of God says and reward those who come against it as if they are heroes; as if they are great Americans for standing up against God, but that's where we are.

The Decline of Christian America.  What are the causes of a de-Christianized America?  High among them is the Supreme Court, which, since the Earl Warren era began, purged Christianity from all public schools and the public square — and has been met with a puzzling lack of resistance from Middle America to the secularist revolution being imposed upon it.  Second, an anti-Christian elite captured the cultural heights — the arts, elite universities, popular culture, the media — and began, through movies, books and magazines, an assault on Christian beliefs and morality.  Third was the social revolution of the 1960s, which began with the arrival of the baby boomers on campus in 1964.

Jindal: Liberals, big business bullying states on religious freedom.  Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal defended his decision to issue a religious freedom executive order during a speech Friday [5/22/2015], bashing liberals and corporations for teaming up to "bully" conservative governors on similar proposals.  "The left teamed up with corporate America to bully leaders in Indiana and Arkansas when the debated the Religious Freedom Restoration Act," he said Friday during the Southern Republican Leadership Conference in Oklahoma City.  "My warning to those corporate leaders is:  If you think you are going to come to Louisiana and bully the governor of Louisiana, don't waste your breath."

The First Church Of Convenience And Politically Correct Feel Good Services.  I have been intrigued the last several years over new churches names.  The Bridge, The Rock, The Community, Rock Bridge, The Source, Encounter Church, Venture Church.  Whatever happened to the venerable First Baptist Church or {insert City Name} Methodist?  Not to be outdone, I have seen established churches change their name to one of these newfangled descriptor words.  I actually had a church member tell me that they didn't really want potential visitors to know the denomination of the church before they attended the service.

Air Force general who spoke of God in talk should be court-martialed, group says.  In a speech at a National Day of Prayer Task Force event on May 7, Maj. Gen. Craig Olson credits God for his accomplishments in the military, and refers to himself as a "redeemed believer in Christ."  The Air Force Times reports that the Military Religious Freedom Foundation has taken issue with Olson's remarks, is calling for the two-star general to be court-martialed and "aggressively and very visibly brought to justice for his unforgivable crimes and transgressions."

U.S. has become notably less Christian, major study finds.  The U.S. has become significantly less Christian in the past eight years as the share of American adults who espouse no systematic religious belief increased sharply, a major new study found.  For what is likely the first time in U.S. history — certainly the first since the early days of the country — the actual number of American Christians has declined.  Christianity, however, remains by far the nation's dominant religious tradition, according to the new report by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center.

Study: Americans becoming less Christian, more secular.  The number of Americans who don't affiliate with a particular religion has grown to 56 million in recent years, making the faith group researchers call "nones" the second-largest in total numbers behind evangelicals, according to a Pew Research Center study released Tuesday [5/11/2015].

US Immigration Exam Replaces 'Freedom of Religion' With 'Freedom of Worship'.  A Republican senator from Oklahoma pressed Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson at a hearing Wednesday [4/29/2015] 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 [4/29/2015] during a Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs hearing.

American Jacobins: Sexual Revolutionaries Prepare the Battlespace for a De-Christianized America.  In yesterday's oral arguments in Obergefell v. Hodges (better known as the "gay-marriage case"), the solicitor general of the United States committed a classic "Kinsley gaffe":  He accidentally told the truth.  Normally, in any argument about the next legal step of the sexual revolution, the accusation or even implication that there's a slippery slope is grounds for outrage.  Not only shouldn't we explore the legal implications of expanding the definition of marriage, the very attempt is homophobic.  Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.

ACLU Belittles Believers as Wife Beaters.  The resident seer, soothsayer, and sage of the ACLU of Louisiana warns of a coming wave of wife beatings in the bayou if Louisiana House Bill 707, the "Marriage and Conscience Act," becomes law.  HB 707 would prevent the State from taking "any adverse action against a person, wholly or partially, on the basis that such person acts in accordance with a religious belief or moral conviction about the institution of marriage."

Defense Department: The Bible, Constitution And Declaration Of Independence All Perpetuate Sexism.  According to a Defense Department-approved "sexism course," the Bible, the U.S. Constitution and the Declaration of Independence all contribute to modern sexism.  Those three cherished texts all count as "historical influences that allow sexism to continue," according to a presentation prepared by the Defense Equal Opportunity Management Institute, whose mission is to give a "world-class human relations education."

Indiana's Religious Freedom Restoration Act, Explained.  The first RFRA was a 1993 federal law that was signed into law by Democratic president Bill Clinton. It unanimously passed the House of Representatives, where it was sponsored by then-congressman Chuck Schumer, and sailed through the Senate on a 97-3 vote.  The law reestablished a balancing test for courts to apply in religious liberty cases (a standard had been used by the Supreme Court for decades).  RFRA allows a person's free exercise of religion to be "substantially burdened" by a law only if the law furthers a "compelling governmental interest" in the "least restrictive means of furthering that compelling governmental interest."  So the law doesn't say that a person making a religious claim will always win.

Why Did Facebook Block This Simple 'I Am A Christian' Ad?  Facebook has censored a fundraising appeal for a Christian movie because the social media company says that the ad degrades people.  Producers of the forthcoming independent film "I Am A Christian" are attempting to raise $500,000 in production costs online.  The film, set to star "Clueless" actor Stacey Dash and "Hercules" star Kevin Sorbo, will tell the story of Meriam Ibrahim, a woman arrested in the Sudan last year for converting to Christianity.

Air Force Reverses Ban on "Have a Blessed Day".  Military personnel at Robins Air Force Base in Georgia will no longer be able to greet people at security gates with the phrase, "have a blessed day," according to a base spokesman. [...] "Someone took offense at the statement," said spokesman Roland Leach.  "As a professional courtesy we had it changed to 'have a great day.'"  The Military Religious Freedom Foundation took credit for the ban.  The MRFF is a group of perpetually-offended trouble makers who love to target Christians.

Former SEALs chaplain could be kicked out of Navy for Christian beliefs.  A chaplain who once ministered to Navy SEALs could be thrown out of the military after he was accused of failing "to show tolerance and respect" in private counseling sessions in regards to issues pertaining to faith, marriage and sexuality, specifically homosexuality and pre-marital sex, according to documents obtained exclusively by Fox News.  Lt. Commander Wes Modder, who is endorsed by the Assemblies of God, has also been accused of being unable to "function in the diverse and pluralistic environment" of the Naval Nuclear Power Training Command in Goose Creek, S.C.

The forbidden Bible.  The Bible is a revolutionary book.  Christians open the pages of the Bible and read about loving one's enemies, standing up for the oppressed and worshipping God alone.  Totalitarian regimes and those who hope to bring a society into unquestioned obedience to a particular doctrine must see the Bible as a threat to their control.  In the pages of the Bible, we find the story of Daniel and his three brave friends who refused to worship Nebuchadnezzar, even under threat of death.  It is a story that surely must threaten those who seek god-like worship from their citizens.

Obama Opens 'Extremism' Summit With Muslim Prayer, No Other Faiths Allowed — Biden Says Christians Are Murderers.  We are learning more and more about Obama's supposed conference on "extremism" and one thing we've discovered is that Obama had the thing opened up with a Muslim prayer.  But no other religions were allowed to participate in the event.  Worse, Vice President Joe Biden was then heard saying that it is Christians who are the violent murderers.

The Truth About the Crusades.  When President Obama cited the Crusades as an example of Christian bad behavior toward Islam, he wasn't speaking with historical accuracy.  But you'd never know that if you only know the conventional wisdom about the Crusades.  Instead of condemning ISIS barbarism as barbarism directed at Christians, Obama has sought to divorce the barbarism from theology.  There are many reason[s] for this, reasons covered by many others here at PJ Media and elsewhere.  Among them is the fact that Obama and his movement see the world through such thick secular lenses that they are incapable of understanding the vast majority of the world (and the United States) that still sees the world through theological lenses.  Obama and his followers are a radical secular minority attempting to manage a theological world.

The Media's Difficulty in Perceiving Christians as Victims.  [Scroll down]  Finally, some newsroom denizens practice an open contempt for Christians and/or religion in general:  The Washington Post's Sally Quinn had no problem openly declaring, "When It Comes to Hateful Internet Speech, Christians Are the Worst."  Separately, the President of the United States just did an interview with Vox's Matt Yglesias who once declared, "I take an old-school Jacobin-style line that religion should be stamped out."  The coverage of Christians abroad is pretty skimpy — other than when Pope Francis says something that progressives like.

How believing in the Bible can get you canned in today's America.  If you want to get fired, sued or lose your business in today's America, stand with Biblical convictions.  In Oregon, our friends Aaron and Melissa Klein were found guilty of discrimination by the state just this week, and could face up to $150,000 in fines for not baking a cake for a same-sex wedding.  In Wisconsin, a 15-year-old boy was reprimanded and reportedly punished by his school for backing traditional family in adoption cases.  In New Jersey, a high school teacher was suspended for stating her Biblical beliefs about homosexuality on her personal Facebook page (while at home, off the clock).  In Illinois, a university professor was fired for saying that homosexual acts are "morally wrong."

Obama, Jon Stewart and Progressivism's Bodyguard of Lies.  The traditional courtroom oath used to require the witness to state "I swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help me God."  To emphasize God's role in this oath, the witness would place his hand on the Bible.  When a witness took that oath, even if he was only a moderately religious person, he could not escape the knowledge that he had put his soul on the line.  If he got creative in his testimony, he wasn't just lying to the court, he was lying to his Maker.  That's serious stuff.  For the past many years, though, the oath has been abbreviated in American courtrooms.  Now, witnesses about to testify keep their hands in their laps and state only "I swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth."  The end.

CNN Anchor: 'Our Rights Do Not Come From God'.  During a heated discussion over gay marriage, CNN morning Anchor Chris Cuomo opined that the unalienable rights endowed to all Americans do not come from God.  Cuomo was debating Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore on the constitutionality of same-sex marriage.  Near the end of the back-and-forth and after Moore argued that rights cannot be handed down by men, Cuomo blurted out:  "Our rights do not come from God, your honor, and you know that.  They come from man... That's your faith, that's my faith, but that's not our country.  Our laws come from collective agreement and compromise."  [Video clip]

The forbidden Bible.  The Bible is a revolutionary book.  Christians open the pages of the Bible and read about loving one's enemies, standing up for the oppressed and worshipping God alone.  Totalitarian regimes and those who hope to bring a society into unquestioned obedience to a particular doctrine must see the Bible as a threat to their control.  In the pages of the Bible, we find the story of Daniel and his three brave friends who refused to worship Nebuchadnezzar, even under threat of death.  It is a story that surely must threaten those who seek god-like worship from their citizens.

Army recruitment office told to remove 'God and Country' poster.  A poster with the message "On a mission for both God and Country" on display outside a recruiting station in Phoenix was removed Friday morning after it was brought to the attention of the the Army Recruiting Command.  The poster features a Special Forces patch and Ranger, Airborne, and Special Forces tabs with a "stock image" the command makes available for local recruiters to use, "but the text was changed by the local recruiting personnel," and not cleared by command headquarters, spokesman Brian Lepleytold the Army Times on Friday [1/16/2015].

NYT Suggests No Place for Christians in Positions of Authority.  Apparently, The New York Times is in favor of faith in the public square — if the purpose is to mock it.  Editors at the Times poured gasoline on the fire of Atlanta's latest controversy with an editorial that should shock even their most liberal readers.  Just when you thought the media couldn't sink any lower, the Times takes on the same First Amendment that gives it the freedom to print these vicious attacks on Christians.  In a stunning column yesterday [1/15/2015], the newspaper argues that men and women of faith have no place in public management of any kind.

Christianity Is Losing in America.  Since its inception, the United States has been a predominantly Christian nation, though open-minded and founded on religious tolerance.  Our sense of personal freedom and tolerance, backed by a thoroughly Judeo-Christian worldview, has contributed mightily to this nation's greatness.  That worldview, and the Christian faith behind it, is being whittled away by the media, our popular culture, and a newly emboldened "activist atheist" movement.  The pace of that whittling has accelerated over the last decade.

King settles flag lawsuit; Christian flag, statue to be removed.  The Veteran's Memorial at King Central Park is losing its Christian flag and statue of a soldier kneeling by a cross, ending four years of contentious debate.  The King City Council on Tuesday voted 3-2 to approve a settlement agreement in the lawsuit, Steven Hewett v. the City of King.  Under the agreement, the city will not fly the Christian flag, will end its flag lottery policy, and will remove the statue depicting a soldier kneeling before a cross-shaped marker.

Army Chaplain Refuses To Be Censored On Bible.  Despite receiving a warning letter from his superior, an Army chaplain who used the Bible during a suicide prevention training session says he isn't going to censor himself, Army Times reports.  The incident stems from a complaint that a soldier in the 5th Ranger Training Battalion filed after Chaplain Joseph Lawhorn provided a handout during a mandatory suicide prevention session at the University of North Georgia.  On one side of the handout, Lawhorn listed the Biblical approach to depression and also provided another handout listing non-religious sources for dealing with depression.  Although Lawhorn stated clearly during the session that he wasn't advocating for the Bible as the only approach, a single soldier declined to give Lawhorn the courtesy of a response, instead directly alerting the Military Association of Atheists and Freethinkers, which then passed on the information to the Huffington Post.

Religious People Much Happier Than Others, New Study Shows.  A strong correlation exists between religiosity and personal happiness, according to a new study by the Austin Institute for the Study of Family and Culture.  The study found that people who attend religious services on a weekly basis are nearly twice as likely to describe themselves as "very happy" (45%) than people who never attend (28%).  Conversely, those who never worship are twice as likely to say they are "very unhappy" (4%) as those who attend services weekly (2%).

Ronald Reagan: 'Thanksgiving Underscores Our Unshakeable Belief in God as the Foundation of Our Nation'.  President Ronald Reagan issued a Thanksgiving Day Proclamation on Oct. 13, 1986, stating that "the practice of offering thanksgiving underscores our unshakeable belief in God as the foundation of our nation."

In a stark contrast...
Obama Proclaims a Nearly 'Godless' Thanksgiving.  While no one expects the eloquence of Abraham Lincoln to issue from Barack Obama's lips, the President's Proclamation of Thanksgiving 2014 lacks not only Lincoln's style, but unfortunately even a basic understanding of what America's greatest feast is all about. [...] This is not a momentary lapse, but a constant in the President's Thanksgiving proclamations, as Breitbart has noted in other years.  Obama's 2009 statement made history by being the first Thanksgiving proclamation ever to omit any reference to God whatsoever.

Also posted under Barack H. Obama wants no association with Christianity.

Family claims 'under God' in Pledge of Allegiance is discriminatory.  A judge heard arguments Wednesday in a lawsuit filed against a New Jersey school district by a family who claims the Pledge of Allegiance discriminates against children with atheist beliefs.  The Monmouth County family, identified in court papers as John and Jane Doe and their child, sued the Matawan-Aberdeen Regional School District in February, alleging the phrase "under God" in the pledge is discriminatory.  State Superior Court Judge David Bauman heard arguments on the school district's motion to dismiss the lawsuit.  The case was filed by the American Humanist Association, which claims the recitation of the pledge violates Article 1 of the state's constitution.

'LGBT': The 'T' is for Tyranny.  Unlike Vegas, what happens in Houston will, most definitely, not stay in Houston — not if Democrats continue to have their way.  Houstonians elected themselves, as mayor, an extremist lesbian Democrat (but I repeat myself).  She quickly, and quite naturally, took to doing what extremist lesbian Democrats do.  Annise Parker is her name, and spreading political Ebola is her game.  That and trampling the U.S. Constitution.  As you've likely heard, Parker's office has illegally subpoenaed the sermons and privileged communications of a number of Christian pastors who vocally opposed the city's ironically branded "Equal Rights Ordinance" (aka, the Houston Bathroom Bill).

Texas Lesbian Democrat Reveals Her Party's Anti-Christian Agenda.  This has legal ramifications far beyond Houston, and is by no means limited to the issue of same-sex marriage.  What you see, if you look at this in a larger legal and cultural context, is that liberals have decided the "equal protection" clause of the Fourteenth Amendment trumps everything else in the Constitution or in Anglo-American common-law tradition, and that there is no protection whatsoever to those who oppose the "emerging awareness" doctrine proclaimed by the Supreme Court in the 2003 Lawrence v. Texas case.

Houston's 'sermon-gate' and the abuse of subpoenas.  Friday [10/17/2014], the City of Houston filed a revised subpoena removing the word "sermons" among the documents being demanded, but leaving the word "speeches."  Legally, this changes nothing.  It is a distinction without a difference.  City Attorney Feldman apparently didn't bother to check a dictionary (any dictionary will do) which describes "sermons" as "religious discourse or speech."  Pastors are therefore still required to turn over to the city their sermons.  Feldman is fooling no one.

Mayor Parker revises, narrows sermon subpoena request.  Mayor Annise Parker on Friday [10/17/2014] followed through on her pledge to narrow the scope of subpoenas sent to local pastors who led opposition to the city's equal rights ordinance earlier this year.  Though the subpoena's new wording removes any mention of "sermons" — a reference that created a firestorm among Christian conservative groups and politicians, including Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott and U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, who accused Parker of trying "to silence the church" — the mayor acknowledged the new subpoenas do not explicitly preclude sermons from being produced.

More Than 1,800 Pastors Advocate For Political Speech Rights in Church.  So far this year, more than 1,800 pastors across the United States have participated in Pulpit Freedom Sunday, an annual event hosted by Alliance Defending Freedom that advocates for pastors' right to speak on politics from the pulpit without fear of losing their churches' tax exempt status.  Pulpit Freedom Sunday, which started Oct. 5 and runs through Election Day on Nov. 4, first began in 2008 with only 33 participating pastors.

He sure doesn't say this on American TV.
Obama defines US as "Muslim Country".  A few days ago President Obama, in an interview he gave France's Canal+ TV Channel, said that the American people need to be better educated about Islam, since US could and should be regarded as a Muslim country.  He said that the number of Muslims residing in the US makes it "one of the biggest Muslim nations".  In reality the US has one of the smallest percentages of Muslims of any Western country.

The Houston Mayor Who Tried Harassing Pastors Says She's the Real Victim.  [I]t's tough being Houston mayor Annise Parker:  "One word in a very long legal document which I know nothing about and would never have read," Parker said on Thursday /10z16z2014=, "and I'm vilified coast-to-coast."  That's Parker's crack defense of the subpoenas, issued to five local pastors, that demand "all speeches, presentations, or sermons related to [Houston Equal Rights Ordinance], the Petition, Mayor Annise Parker, homosexuality, or gender identity prepared by, delivered by, revised by, or approved by you or in your possession."  Among other demands:  communications between the pastors and their congregants (including Facebook messages and text messages) and between the pastors and their attorneys.  First Amendment protections, attorney-client privilege — Parker's legal team has run roughshod over all sorts of rights.

Houston to pastors: Forget your sermons, now we want your speeches.  Five Christian pastors will no longer have to turn their sermons over to attorneys for the city of Houston.  Instead, they will be forced to turn over their speeches related to the Houston Equal Rights Ordinance (HERO).  I don't mean to point out the obvious here — but what do those attorneys think a sermon is?  It's a speech.

Christians Can't Accept Houston's Intimidation Tactics Without Protest.  Perhaps seeing the totalitarianism of extremist wings of the gay rights movement has soured some people on efforts to change marriage law — or at least given people pause about the tradeoffs involved with redefining marriage or enacting broad legislation around sexual or gender identity.  We've all seen the stories about lawsuits against small business owners.  The boycotts against companies for harboring employees who haven't jumped on the bandwagon and therefore believe marriage is essentially built around sexual complementarity.  The public outrage of enthused mobs believing themselves to be on the right side of history.

Bozell: Network Censorship of Houston Mayor's Subpoenas Part of Left's 'Relentless Assault on Free Speech'.  According to a new analysis by MRC Culture, over the past two days the broadcast networks (ABC, CBS, and NBC) have completely censored liberal Houston Mayor Annise Parker's attempt to subpoena sermons of five pastors critical of the mayor, homosexuality, gender identity, or the city's new "equal rights" ordinance.  MRC President Brent Bozell released a statement in response to the networks' refusal to cover Parker's brazen attack on religious freedom and free speech:  "When the government mandates what a pastor can or cannot say, and criminalizes preaching the Bible, we're no different than Red China. [...]"

Texas Attorney General tells Houston city hall: Stop bullying Christians.  Stop bullying people of faith.  That's the bottom line of a harshly-worded letter written by Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott to Houston City Attorney David Feldman.  Feldman's office sent subpoenas to five Houston pastors last month demanding that they turn over any sermons dealing with homosexuality and gender identity issues.  They also wanted sermons or correspondence that referenced Annise Parker, the city's first openly lesbian mayor.

Ted Cruz: City of Houston's Subpoenas of Pastors 'Shocking & Shameful'.  Texas Senator Ted Cruz has weighed in regarding the controversial subpoenas that the City of Houston sent to several Houston area pastors, demanding copies of their sermons and speeches, as well as communications with church members.  As reported by Breitbart Texas, the dispute stems from an anti-discrimination ordinance passed by Houston regarding discrimination based on gender and sexual orientation.  The pastors' churches were part of a coalition of hundreds of churches in the Houston area that opposed the ordinance.

Houston Mayor Backs Off From Subpoenas to Pastors.  Houston Mayor Annise Parker has backed down from the subpoenas the City of Houston issued to several area pastors, Breitbart Texas has learned.  Breitbart Texas reported earlier about the controversy, stemming from litigation challenging the city's anti-discrimination ordinance and subpoenas asking the pastors for the content of their sermons, speeches and communications with church members.  Texas Senator Ted Cruz weighed in, firmly supporting the pastors in their efforts to fight the subpoenas, while Mayor Parker initially remained adamant that the city had the right to request those records.  Despite posting comments on Twitter just hours before that seemed to indicate she would continue to fight this issue, she told a Houston radio station that she had changed her mind.

City officials try to distance themselves from sermon subpoenas.  Amid outrage from religious groups, Mayor Annise Parker and City Attorney David Feldman on Wednesday [10/15/2014] appeared to back off a subpoena request for the sermons of certain ministers opposed to the city's equal rights ordinance, with Parker calling the request "overly broad."  The subpoena, handed down to five pastors and religious leaders last month, came to light this week when attorneys for the group of pastors filed a motion to quash the request.  The pastors are closely tied to Christian conservative activists who sued the Parker administration this summer when the city announced the group had failed to gather enough valid signatures to force a repeal referendum.  The subpoenas were issued as part of the discovery phase in that case, which will be heard in district court in January.

Houston's Mayor Throws Out Citizens' Petition, Goes after Local Pastors.  'Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's."  Unless you're in Houston, Texas, in which case you had best render everything to Mayor Annise Parker — or else.  Earlier this year Parker, a Democrat, spearheaded the passage of an "Equal Rights Ordinance" (ERO) that added "sexual orientation" and "gender identity" to the city's non-discrimination provision, which includes, among other things, "public accommodations" — for example, restrooms.  Citizens, among them church leaders, balked.  They launched a referendum petition that, with the requisite 17,269 signatures, would require the city council to repeal the ERO, or to put the measure up for a vote.  They obtained 55,000 signatures.  The city secretary, who has sole responsibility for certifying such petitions, signed off.

Pastors to mayor: Don't mess with Texas pulpits.  Christians across the nation are mobilizing to defend a group of Houston pastors who were ordered by the city to turn over any sermons dealing with homosexuality, gender identity issues or Houston mayor.  Their message is simple — Don't Mess with Texas Preachers.  Dave Welch, the executive director of the Texas Pastor Council, is one of the five ministers who received a subpoena.  He said he will not be intimidated by Annise Parker, who is the city's first openly lesbian mayor, nor will he comply with the city's demands.  "My answer to that is — bring it on," he said.

Twitter Blocks Campaign To Protect Pastors From Having To Hand Over Their Sermons and Emails To The Government.  Twitter blocked a petition campaign Wednesday to protect Houston pastors from having to hand over to the city government all of their sermons and personal emails dealing with the issue of homosexuality.  The Christian organization Faith Driven Consumer's Twitter hashtag campaign #HoustonWeHaveAProblem was censored by Twitter minutes after launching so that users could not Tweet the petition and a warning was placed on Twitter-based links to the petition website.  The group's previous campaign #iStandWithPhil defending Duck Dynasty star Phil Robertson was also blocked by Twitter at one time.

Houston Demands Oversight Of Sermons.  Officials with the city of Houston, Texas, who are defending a controversial ordinance that would allow men to use women's restrooms now have demanded to see the sermons preached by several area pastors.  The recent move came in a subpoena from the city to pastors for copies of their sermons and other communications in the city's legal defense of a "non-discrimination" measure that allows "gender-confused" people to use public restrooms designated for the opposite sex.  A lawsuit challenging Houston's move alleges the city violated its own charter in its adoption of the Equal Rights Ordinance, which in May designated homosexuals and transgender persons as a protected class.

Even in Houston, Texas, You Will Be Made to Care.  Houston, TX is not thought of as a bastion of liberalism, but it has gone quite rapidly off the deep end.  Earlier this year, Houston's City Council voted on non-discrimination legislation that provides equal protection to the entire swath of the BLTGCZQDLMAO alphabet silliness.  In short, if a guy decides he's a girl and wants to go hang out in the girl's bathroom, it is a-okay in Houston, or it would be except the law will not be enforced pending a court challenge.

Big Brother in Texas: Houston Demands Pastors Turn Over Sermon Notes, Private Communications.  After decades of warnings on the right about liberal politicians threatening religious liberty, a Democratic mayor in Texas is now subpoenaing pastors to turn over their sermons.  Houston city officials are demanding that city pastors opposed to Houston's "Bathroom Bill" — "a law that allows members of the opposite sex into each other's restrooms" — turn over sermon notes and "communications with church members" to ascertain which pastors have (or haven't) "opposed or criticized the city."

City of Houston demands pastors turn over sermons.  The [C]ity of Houston has issued subpoenas demanding a group of pastors turn over any sermons dealing with homosexuality, gender identity or Annise Parker, the city's first openly lesbian mayor.  And those ministers who fail to comply could be held in contempt of court.  "The city's subpoena of sermons and other pastoral communications is both needless and unprecedented," Alliance Defending Freedom attorney Christina Holcomb said in a statement.  "The city council and its attorneys are engaging in an inquisition designed to stifle any critique of its actions."

Human Rights Commission Says the Freedom to Practice Religion Is not a Human Right.  The Human Rights Commission of Lexington KY justifies the gay fascist bullying campaign against Christian businesses who don't wish to participate in gay weddings and other events by saying Christians should only be allowed to practice religion within their homes and churches.

Toll Worker: Boss Told Me Not to Say 'God bless you'.  A former New Jersey toll booth worker said she was told by her supervisor to stop saying "God bless you," because it might offend motorists.  Cynthia Fernandez has filed a lawsuit against the Garden State Parkway claiming her former boss violated her First Amendment rights.  "I was so upset, I was crying" the mother of three told me.  "There's nothing wrong with saying 'God bless you.'"

Brave Female County Commissioner Runs a Write-In Campaign Against Corrupt Unions.  Robin Bartlett Frazier's story personifies the threats we face nationwide by the corrupting influence of public employee unions.  For the last four years Robin has been District 1 Commissioner in Carroll County, MD.  You may have seen her on the Megyn Kelly show when she was interviewed after saying in a public meeting that she would be arrested if necessary but would not stop praying before meetings and invoking the name of Jesus Christ.

Kentucky churches being turned into mosques.  The growing trend of former church buildings being turned into mosques and Islamic centers has reached Kentucky's largest city where even some once-thriving Southern Baptist facilities are now occupied by Muslims. [...] In Kentucky and throughout the Southern Baptist Convention, the number of Christian converts has been in steady decline in recent years, while other religions have been experiencing rapid growth.  Louisville, for example, now has more than 20 mosques.

Confronting PC: Some Will Financially and Politically Die.  I caught a bit of an interview with conservative actor Kevin Sorbo promoting his movie, God's Not Dead, on Sean Hannity's radio show.  Sorbo lamented that political correctness operatives continue to bully Americans with little pushback.  He cited a recent incident in which a little girl was kicked out of school for saying "God bless you" when a classmate sneezed, punished for religious talk in school.  My wife Mary told me about a U.S. soldier who was told by a school never to walk his child to school in uniform again.  I am sure all of you could share horror stories of political correctness operatives overruling common sense and bullying people into submission.

Air Force Members Can Now Omit 'So Help Me God' from Oath.  The U.S. Air Force announced a significant change to its policy for reciting oaths Wednesday [9/17/2014].  Starting now, members and officers can choose to omit the words "so help me God" when delivering enlistment and officer appointment oaths.

Georgia town to atheists: Stop bullying our kids.  The American Humanist Association (AHA) is about to learn a very important lesson — folks around Gainesville, Georgia don't take kindly to out-of-town atheists trying to bully their children.  More than 200 people turned out in defiance of the self-described atheist group early Wednesday morning [8/13/2014] for an impromptu prayer rally in the middle of the Chestatee High School football field.  The previous day, the atheists (acting on behalf of a single, unnamed citizen) sent a letter to school officials demanding that the football coaching staff stop participating in team prayers and that they remove all biblical references and religious messages from team documents.

Navy removes Bibles from guest rooms.  There is growing outrage among sailors and religious liberty advocates over a directive that calls for the removal of Bibles from lodges and hotels run on U.S. Navy bases.  The directive comes after an atheist group filed a formal complaint earlier this year over the placement of Bibles in the rooms.  "The current direction is to remove all religious material from Navy Lodge guest rooms," read an email to a Navy chaplain from The Navy Exchange Service Command (NEXCOM).

Update:
Navy reverses course, puts Bibles back in hotels during policy review.  Bibles began disappearing from Navy lodges over the summer after complaints were made by an atheist group, but that decision has now been reversed while a policy review takes place.  The Freedom from Religion Foundation complained about the religious books earlier in the year, which prompted the Navy Exchange to have managers put Gideons Bibles in lost-and-found locations.

Lawsuit: Soldier forced out of Army for serving Chick-fil-A, reading Hannity book.  A member of the U.S. Army Band said he was forced out of the U.S. Army for having anti-Obama bumper stickers on his personal car, serving Chick-fil-A sandwiches at a party and reading books written by conservative authors like Sean Hannity, a federal lawsuit alleges.  Master Sergeant Nathan Sommers, a 25-year veteran of the military and a decorated soloist in the U.S. Army Band Chorus, claims he was forcibly retired from the Army due to his religious and conservative political beliefs.

IRS Strikes Deal With Atheists To Monitor Churches.  Government's assault on religious liberty has hit a new low as the IRS settles with atheists by promising to monitor sermons for mentions of the right to life and traditional marriage.

IRS Strikes Deal with Militant Atheists to Monitor What Your Pastor Says In Your Church.  Democrats routinely campaign from the very pulpit of majority black churches.  It happens every single election cycle.  Pastors in those churches regularly push parishioners to support the Democratic Party, to support specific government social policy, and even specific candidates for office.  The Freedom From Religion Foundation has not sued to get the IRS to investigate any of that.  Its targets are churches that align with the more conservative Pulpit Freedom Sunday movement.  That tells us what the foundation and the IRS will really be investigating.  The IRS will be monitoring churches to listen for pastors supporting the right to life, the sanctity and traditional definition of marriage, traditional values in general, perhaps even patriotism.  Those are the churches, based on the angle that the foundation lawsuit takes, that will potentially find themselves under IRS investigation.

IRS Strikes Deal With Atheist Group to Monitor Content of Sermons.  Alliance Defending Freedom asked the Internal Revenue Service Tuesday [7/29/2014] to release all documents related to its recent decision to settle a lawsuit with an atheist group that claims the IRS has adopted new protocols and procedures for the investigation of churches.  Pastor Holding Bible ca. 2000 [A.D.] submitted the Freedom of Information Act request after learning of the IRS's agreement with Freedom From Religion Foundation in a press release the group issued on July 17 concerning its lawsuit Freedom From Religion Foundation v. Koskinen, which accused the agency of failing to investigate churches the way the atheist group would like.

Federal Court To Atheist Group: The Ground Zero Cross Stays.  A federal court ruled Monday [7/28/2014] that the existence of a cross at Ground Zero does not violate the Constitution, slamming the appeal filed by the secular activist group American Atheists.  The famous cross, formed by two intersecting beams left standing after the 9/11 attacks, has been a powerful spiritual symbol for many since and even during the tragedy.  Frank Silecchia discovered the cross while helping recover bodies from the site.  "It was a sign," he later said.  "[A] sign God hadn't deserted us."  American Atheists felt differently.

Ohio university quiz implies atheists are naturally smarter than Christians.  A psychology class at Ohio State University implied in an online survey that atheists are just naturally more intelligent than Christians — and at least one student said it's an outrage.  The quiz from a Psychology 1100 class at the college poses the question, Campus Reform first reported:  "Theo has an IQ of 100 and Aine has an IQ of 125 — which statement can you expect to be true?"  Students are then directed to choose from the following answers:  Option one is "Aine earns less money than Theo."  Option two reads "Theo is more liberal than Aine."  Option three:  "Theo is an atheist, while Aine is a Christian."  Option four:  "Theo is a Christian, while Aine is an atheist."  The correct answer, Campus Reform reported, was option four:  "Theo is a Christian, while Aine is an atheist."  One student who requested anonymity said the question was part of a class quiz posted online.

Atheist Gives Invocation in Greece, NY.  Efforts to maintain separation of church and state took center stage [7/14/2014] in the Rochester suburb of Greece where an atheist delivered the invocation to open a town board meeting.  Dan Courtney, an atheist, did something no one with his beliefs had every done before in Greece when he gave the invocation.  He used the Declaration of Independence as his inspiration.

Feds: Pastors not welcome at immigration camps.  Pastors and churches have been banned from helping the thousands of illegal immigrant children housed in border detention facilities run by U.S. Customs and Border Protection, clergy in Texas and Arizona tell me.  "Border Patrol told us pastors and churches are not allowed to visit," said Kyle Coffin, the pastor of CrossRoads Church in Tucson, Arizona.  "It's pretty heartbreaking that they don't let anybody in there — even credentialed pastors."

Politics and the Christian Church.  Our founding fathers were men of deep religious convictions based in the Bible and their Christian faith in Jesus Christ.  America's conflict appears to center around the Christian church and the current ruling politics.  The dilemma facing the Christian church today is whether to incorporate politics in its Sunday sermons or risk losing tax-exempt status.  The congregants are voting citizens that should hear where the different political parties stand on issue that may conflict with the Christian faith.  However, for the past five years, there has been an elephant in the room in most [B]ible teaching church services across the United States.  The elephant is the current administration and the Democratic Party's unyielding push for abortion and gay marriage and the infringement on the church's First Amendment rights (i.e. attempting to force the Catholic Church to provide birth control to its employees against its religious belief).  Many pastors will not publically broach the subject of the different parties' platforms from their pulpits due to fear and political correctness that has crept into the church.

Schumer to Religious Americans: Pick One — Your Faith or Your Business.  At a press conference Thursday, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said people with religious beliefs who disagree with the Obamacare contraception mandate should be given a choice between living by their faith or being allowed to form a corporation to do business.  "You're born with a religion or you adopt a religion.  You have to obey the precepts of that religion and the government gives you a wide penumbra — you don't have to form a corporation," Schumer said.  In the Hobby Lobby case, decided last month, the Supreme Court ruled that a closely-held family-owned corporation could not be forced by the government to violate their Christian beliefs by providing insurance coverage for drugs and devices that can cause abortions. Schumer argues that the court "misapplied" the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA).

16 Reasons Why the United States is Going to Hell in a Handbasket.  [#2]  America has turned from a nation promoting morality and a belief in God to a nation where anything goes, with the most perverse and ungodly acts being accepted, promoted and even glorified.  And if anyone disagrees, or speaks out against this immorality they are quickly labeled as promoting hate, bigotry or of being a racist.  This quickly shuts most opponents up while simultaneously, implanting the message in everyone's mind, that those acts in-question are to be accepted and are somehow cool.

VA Chaplain: Gov't Made Me Hide Crosses and Pictures of Jesus, Banned Me From Reading Bible Aloud.  In the wake of the ever-growing VA scandal, actions at the Iron Mountain VA Hospital in Michigan may not have gotten quite as much press as many feel they should.  Patsy Norton, when walking into Iron Mountain's VA chapel, was appalled to find every sign of Christianity hidden from sight. [...] The repression of Christianity isn't limited to Iron Mountain, but has been reported in VA facilities all over the country.

VA hospital hides Jesus behind curtain.  Some folks in Iron Mountain became infuriated earlier this month when they discovered that statues of Jesus and Mary, along with a cross and altar, were hidden behind a curtain in the chapel of the VA hospital there.  The chapel still has stained glass windows, though for how long is unclear.  A VA hospital spokesman told me they are still trying to figure out what to do with the windows.  The decision to hide the religious icons came after the National Chaplain Center conducted an on-site inspection and determined the hospital's chapel was not in compliance with government regulations.
[Emphasis added.]

New Jersey mayor fights feds over prayer during citizenship ceremony.  A New Jersey town canceled its ceremony celebrating new U.S. citizens after federal immigration officials would not allow the event to begin with a prayer.  According to the Star-Ledger, Carteret Mayor Daniel Reiman had assured U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services officials that the prayer leading Saturday's [5/10/2014] ceremony would be nondenominational.  "They refused to budge on that," Reiman said, the paper reported.  The battle came just days after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that local government meetings can include sectarian prayers.

6 Times Democrats Demonstrated Their Hatred of the Bible.  Putting aside the rocky seas and cross-currents of modernity, Kerry's statement that most people do not want to live based on "something that was written down a thousand plus, two thousand years ago" demonstrates his — and his party's — enormous hatred for the Bible.  They see the Bible as an antiquated document, a dire opponent of the new, modern morality.  Kerry makes no distinction between the Koran, the Old Testament, or the New Testament; he makes no distinction between the myriad streams of religious thought throughout history.  They are all the same.  Anyone who believes in ancient codes of morality is out of step with history.

Kerry on Religion: 'Not the Way I Think Most People Want to Live'.  During a talk to the U.S. embassy staff in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia at the first stop on his trip to Africa, Secretary of State John Kerry remarked about what he called the "different cross-currents of modernity" and the challenges they present on the African continent.  The comments contain a veiled reference to religion, and the part that religion might be playing in some of the current conflicts in Africa: [...]

Humanists sue NJ school district over 'under God' in Pledge of Allegiance.  A family represented by a humanist group is suing a Monmouth County school district, claiming that the recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance is discriminatory because it asks students to use the phrase "under God."  According to NorthJersey.com, the American Humanist Association alleges that the Pledge of Allegiance discriminates against atheists and violates the right to equal protection under New Jersey's state constitution.

Calif. moves to ban judges affiliated with Boy Scouts.  California is proposing to ban members of the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) from serving as judges because the Boy Scouts do not allow gay troop leaders, The Daily Caller has learned.  In a move with major legal implications, The California Supreme Court Advisory Committee on The Code of Judicial Ethics has proposed to classify the Boy Scouts as practicing "invidious discrimination" against gays, which would end the group's exemption to anti-discriminatory ethics rules and would prohibit judges from being affiliated with the group.

Another sign of the times.  This little story from Texas about one woman's refusal to pay a $250 permit fee is one more instance where traditional values are being marginalized by an increasingly secular society that wants Christians to go along to get along.

Is the premise of my next movie, 'Persecuted' really so far-fetched?  Despite attempts to revive the fairness doctrine, freedom loving Americans have thwarted every effort, but trust me:  even today there are many political leaders who would reinstate it if they could.  "Persecuted" is a political thriller, not a political campaign, but movies often say something about our society.  "Persecuted" imagines a world in which politicians essentially want to silence ministers by demanding that their messages about God be balanced by opposing points of view, and it deals with the plight of the nation's most prominent televangelist who refuses to support the legislation, making him an enemy of the State — in this case the president of the United States and the Senate Majority Leader.

Atheist Group Sues Clemson Football Program for Prayers, Bible Studies.  Coach Dabo Swinney and his Clemson football program face a blitz again. [...] [I]t's an oddly dour out-of-state assault in the form of a complaint filed against the football program by the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF), an atheist rights group from Wisconsin.  The FFRF claims that Swinney's program is "entangled" and "entrenched" in religion.  Prayers and Bible studies instituted by the team from at least 2011 through April of 2013 serve as the basis for the complaint.

Most and Least Bible-Minded Cities in the United States.  After interviewing more than 46,000 adults nationwide over a seven-year period, the American Bible Society, in conjunction with Barna, ranks Chattanooga as the number one most Bible-minded city in the United States.  Providence, Rhode Island, and New Bedford, Massachusetts, share the dubious distinction of being the least most-Bible minded cities in America.

MI union contract gives "special consideration" to "non-Christian" teachers.  Apparently, no one at the Ferndale Public School District in Michigan took a civics course or bothered to read their own state constitution — and neither did the union representing teachers in the district.  Michigan Capitol Confidential found an interesting, and totally unconstitutional, clause in the contract between the district and the Michigan Education Association local that requires the district to provide "special consideration" to "those of the non-Christian faith" in hiring decisions.

UConn rebukes coach, says Jesus doesn't belong in football.  The president of the University of Connecticut publicly rebuked an assistant football coach for telling The Hartford Courant that "Jesus Christ should be in the center of our huddle."  "Our employees cannot appear to endorse or advocate for a particular religion or spiritual philosophy as part of their work at the university, or in their interactions with our students" President Susan Herbst wrote in a letter to the newspaper.  "This applies to work-related activity anywhere on or off campus, including on the football field."

Obama May Have the Most Anti-Christian, Anti-Israel Administration in History.  Never in America's long history has such a headline even been imaginable.  The gravest threat to religious freedom has been part of what President Obama meant when he said he would "fundamentally transform this country."  Nuns have faced anti-Catholicism, Bible riots, and various forms of Klan-instigated bigotry, but never has the federal government itself threatened to snuff out the lamp of freedom.  Evangelicals and Lutherans, too, face a hostile administration.

Also posted under Is Obama a Christian?

First-grader told to stop talking about Bible.  The parents of a 6-year-old girl said their daughter was humiliated when a teacher interrupted the child's one-minute speech and told her to sit down because she's "not allowed to talk about the Bible in school," attorneys for the California family allege.  The incident occurred Dec. 19 inside a first grade classroom at Helen Hunt-Jackson Elementary School in Temecula, Calif.  The previous day the teacher instructed boys and girls to find something at home that represented a family Christmas tradition.

Gideon Bibles Removed After Atheist Group Pressures U of Wisconsin.  The University of Wisconsin-Extension has agreed to remove all Gideon Bibles from 137 guest rooms at its conference center after an atheist group, the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF), complained, arguing that the Bibles in the bedrooms constituted state endorsement of Christianity.

Western Leaders Abdicate Vast Field by Failing To Defend Christianity.  Our secular leaders in the West, torn between adherence to the agnosticism (or atheism) of most of our press and a mere desire not to offend the fashion, have conspicuously failed to assert Christianity's rightful claim to seniority in chronology, and in intellectual rigor, to all other religions except the closely related monotheistic and messianic one of Judaism. [...] Instead, they have chosen to sidestep the issue, and, by not asserting the West's religious distinction, have abdicated and surrendered this entire vast field of thought and endeavor to the most intellectually disreputable claimants of belligerent Islam.

HISD school bus drivers disciplined for praying after child's death.  On December 16, a 12-year-old girl was struck by a car as she walked home from school in north Harris County.  She would later die from her injuries.  She was the daughter of an HISD bus driver, whose coworkers rallied around her.  Bus driver Cynthia Cormier said, "From a parent's point of view and from a grandparent's, prayer is the answer."  As news of the tragedy spread among the community of HISD school bus drivers, they spontaneously prayed for one of their own who was grieving.  They joined not holding hands, but by using a back channel on the bus radio system.

Religious Hostility in America.  Hostility against religious liberty has reached an all-time high, and the attacks are increasing at an unprecedented rate.  America's First Liberty —the freedom of religion —is being pushed out of public life, our schools, and even our churches.  The Survey of Religious Hostility in America is a collection of more than 600 cases, detailing religious bigotry throughout America — most of which have occurred within the past 10 years.

War on Christmas: the VA and Army Crack Down on Christmas.  As Christians throughout the world prepare to celebrate Christmas, the war on Christmas rages on in the most unlikely of places:  the military.  For centuries, military members have gripped Bibles in foxholes, prayed to God to hear their prayers.  American forces prayed in the Argonne Forest, begged for God's intervention as they withstood a ferocious shelling campaign in Bastogne.  Now, the military is doing everything they can to make the ranks a God-free zone.

A&E declares war on 'Duck Dynasty's' Christian values.  Duck Dynasty has been sacrificed on the altar of political correctness.  By now you probably know that A&E indefinitely suspended Phil Robertson, the patriarch of the Duck Dynasty family, for following the teachings of the Holy Bible.

Penalizing Those Who Hold Biblical Views of Marriage.  In a series of instances we have seen the gatekeepers of civil society attack those who hold Biblical views about marriage and sexuality — Chick-fil-A, Barilla Pasta, Craig James who was fired from ESPN, and now Phil Robertson of Duck Dynasty.  It is even worse, of course, when it is the government that penalizes those who hold Biblical views.  That should be anathema in America.  While A&E exercised its rights, in a growing number of incidents, government has not respected the free-contract and free-speech rights of Americans.

Chaplains Mocked, Forced out of VA Program for Their Christian Beliefs .  In 2012, Lieutenant Commander Dan Klender, a Navy chaplain, and Major Steven Firtko, a retired Army chaplain, enrolled in the VA's Clinical Pastoral Education Center program in San Diego. [...] The two chaplains charge that they were ridiculed and taunted by the program's director, Nancy Dietsch, a VA employee with a reputation for antagonism toward evangelical Christians, charged John Wells, the attorney representing the two chaplains in the suit.  "She's been very, very critical of Christians," Wells told Fox News.  "Instead of teaching anything dealing with faith issues, she's dealing with a holistic, humanistic approach.  It's the idea that the spirit comes from within."

Minneapolis School Bus Driver Fired for Praying With Students.  A Minneapolis school bus driver was fired from his job after someone complained about his practice of praying with students on his route.  The Minneapolis Star-Tribune reported that George Nathaniel, who is also a Minneapolis area pastor, was in his second year of service with Durham School Services, the bus company under contract with the Burnsville-Eagan-Savage district.  After receiving a previous complaint about Nathaniel's prayers with students, the company gave him a warning and assigned him a new route.

Lawsuit: Military Chaplains Banned From Saying "Jesus".  Two Baptist chaplains said they were forced out of a Veterans Affairs chaplain training program after they refused orders to stop quoting the Bible and to stop praying in the name of Jesus.  When the men objected to those demands they were subjected to ridicule and harassment that led to one of the chaplains leaving the program and the other being ejected, according to a federal lawsuit filed Friday [11/8/2013].

Lawsuit: Chaplains Banned From Saying "Jesus".  Two Baptist chaplains said they were forced out of a Veterans Affairs chaplain training program after they refused orders to stop quoting the Bible and to stop praying in the name of Jesus.  When the men objected to those demands they were subjected to ridicule and harassment that led to one of the chaplains leaving the program and the other being ejected, according to a federal lawsuit filed Friday [11/8/2013].

The Editor says...
Are there similar restrictions against Islamic, Hindu, Wiccan, or earth-worshiping eco-fruitcake prayers?  What if one of the chaplains prays directly to Barack H. Obama?  Would there be a reprimand or a promotion?

Would a Christian Commander-in-Chief allow this?
Todd Starnes: Air Force makes 'God' reference optional in oath.  The Air Force Academy has decided to make the phrase "so help me God" optional in its honor code in what it called an effort to "build a culture of dignity and respect."  The decision to make the reference optional came after the Academy's Honor Review Committee met to consider a complaint filed by the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF).

Todd Starnes: Air Force makes 'God' reference optional in oath.  The Air Force Academy has decided to make the phrase "so help me God" optional in its honor code in what it called an effort to "build a culture of dignity and respect."  The decision to make the reference optional came after the Academy's Honor Review Committee met to consider a complaint filed by the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF).

City-Owned Cemetery Refuses to Engrave 'Jesus' on Preacher's Wife's Headstone.  The family of a Colorado preacher's wife is still fuming after the director of the city-owned cemetery refused to engrave her final resting place with the name 'Jesus' because it might offend people.  The city eventually reversed course under public pressure.  "We were in disbelief," said Stacy Adams, the daughter-in-law of Linda Baker.  "Who tries to censor Jesus from a cemetery?"

Making a God of Government.  Liberals love to quote Scripture when they think it might help them further their Big-Government social agenda.  They also love to talk about compassion and morality but would prefer it if you left Scripture out of it.  Perhaps if more liberals were for posting the Ten Commandments in every public school and post office in the U.S., more Americans would feel comfortable putting health care in the hands of the federal government.

Does Faith = Hate?  This summer's Windsor decision from the Supreme Court overturned the Defense of Marriage Act, but it did not declare a constitutional right to gay marriage.  Yet even Maggie Gallagher, the country's most tireless and high-profile opponent of same-sex marriage, now believes such an outcome is a foregone conclusion.  "It's clear that the courts are going to shut down the marriage debate and impose gay marriage uniformly," she says.  "There is not yet a unified sense of where we go from here, except for this:  there is an accelerating awareness that the consequence of marriage equality is going to be extremely negative for traditionalist Christians."

Ohio school district agrees to keep portrait of Jesus off wall, pay $95G fine.  An Ohio school district has agreed to keep a portrait of Jesus Christ off school property and pay a $95,000 fine in the face of legal pressure from the American Civil Liberties Union. [...] The picture had been hanging in Jackson's high school since 1947 as part of a "Hall of Honor" display meant to highlight famous historical figures.

Supreme Court Prepares for a Year of Big Cases.  On Nov. 6, the Supreme Court will consider in Town of Greece v. Galloway whether invocations at sessions of policymaking bodies — called "legislative prayer" — are unconstitutional if the court decides they endorse religion (such as the prayer-givers mentioning Jesus Christ, or if a majority of the volunteer prayer-givers are Christian).  This case also asks the Court to consider whether its overall test on finding Establishment Clause violations for the past forty years needs to change.  If the Court takes the extra step, this could become one of the most important religious liberty Supreme Court cases in American history.

Florida city orders residents to remove 'God Bless America' signs.  Residents of a Florida city who have had "God Bless America" signs posted on their front lawns for months have been ordered by local officials to remove them.  MyFoxTampaBay.com reports that the First Baptist Church of Bartow distributed some 300 signs to residents following a Fourth of July celebration.  The city only permits residents to display signs during major holidays is starting to crack down on the displays.

Atheist students use federal law to pursue same rights as Christians for 'secular safe zones'.  A 30-year-old federal law created to protect the right of Christian students to gather now is being used to protect the rights of students with opposite beliefs.  This school year, the Secular Student Alliance, a national organization advocating the rights of nonreligious students, has created "secular safe zones" on 26 college and high school campuses throughout the country.  "Christianity is so prevalent in society that it's taken as the norm and to many atheists it's off-putting," said the alliance's spokesman Jesse Galef.

The Editor says...
Christianity is "taken as the norm" because it is the norm in this country.  Assimilate or leave.

7 Examples of Discrimination Against Christians in America.  The habitual wimpiness of so many Christians is particularly grating because when Christians shine a spotlight on these attacks and say, "That's enough," more often than not we win.  So, if Christians across the country were consistently willing to speak out and take action, you'd be surprised at how quickly our culture would begin to change.  If that happens, instead of seeing this many incidents every year (All of these happened in 2013), they'd be a once in a blue moon occurrence.

This is reason enough to leave Facebook, if you didn't have plenty of reasons already:
Facebook Group Says 'Virgin Mary Should've Aborted'.  Bible-believing Facebook users who are members of the group, "Catholics & Protestants Against FB Religious Discrimination" led the online fight to have the page taken down — and succeeded.  But, they didn't have long to celebrate.  As the religious group reports, Facebook just reversed its decision.  Now, the newly republished "Virgin Mary Should've Aborted" page has over 8,000 likes.

Mother uploads video of little boy appearing to pray to the President.  A little boy's prayer for President Barack Obama has sparked the ire of conservatives after his mother videoed her son on his knees and uploaded it to YouTube. [...] 'You are good, Barack Obama.  You are great and when you get older you will be able to do great things.  Love, Steven,' the boy concludes as he throws his arms into the air and screams, 'Barack Obama!'  However, the reaction posted online to the YouTube video has been massively negative, with many interpreting the prayer as a sign that the president is being idolized.

The Editor says...
As I have been saying for five years now,  All this adulation is a bit much.

Dhimmitude in the US Military?  Nowhere is the oppression of religiously devout Christians and Jews more apparent than within the US military.  Our warriors are being attacked by militant atheist progressives who have, ironically, much in common with devotedly combative Islamists.  While it might seem that atheists and Islamists have little in common, both groups share a grim determination to suppress the religious freedoms of Christians and Jews.

State Dept.'s 'Faith-Based' Advisor: 'I Am Glad American Civil Religion is Dying'.  Secretary of State John Kerry announced Wednesday the formation of the Office of Faith-Based Community Initiatives, which will be headed by Shaun Casey, a former religion advisor to President Barack Obama's 2008 campaign and a liberal professor who last year touted the end of 'civil religion' in the United States.  "I, frankly, am glad American civil religion is dying," Casey said at a discussion last year at the Center for American Progress focused on "God and Politics" in the last presidential election.

Christian Air Force chaplain under fire for reference to atheists.  Air Force Lt. Col. Kenneth Reyes, a Christian chaplain stationed in Alaska, was censored for a line he wrote in his regular "Chaplain's Corner" musings that are posted at the base's online site, and now the Military Religious Freedom Foundation is saying he should be punished.  Fox News reported that Col. Reyes wrote an essay titled "No Atheists in Foxholes: Chaplains Gave All in World War II."

University Tells Student to Remove Cross Necklace.  A Sonoma State University student was ordered to remove a cross necklace by a supervisor who thought other students might find it offensive, in a case that prompted even one campus official to speculate that "political correctness got out of hand."

Parents angry because religion may get mentioned in optional summer Constitution class.  In an affluent Ohio suburb between Dayton and Cincinnati, a group of parents is upset that the school district is offering a voluntary 12-week course on the U.S. Constitution this summer.  The course at Springboro High School will cost each student $35 and registration fees will cover the costs of the course, reports local NBC affiliate WLWT.  Instructors will not be paid to teach the class.  Those details notwithstanding, angry parents charge that the course, called Institution of the Constitution, is unconstitutional in a public school setting — ironically enough — because its designers and teachers are overtly religious.

Reining in religious freedom.  Think now about the world of big government.  Dallas has an ordinance requiring people who feed the homeless to register and be certified.  Dallas would like to keep Big Heart Ministries from feeding people on the streets.  The city of Alhambra, Calif., has accused the First Baptist Church of violating its zoning and fire codes by hosting homeless families. [...] The state of Montana recently ordered the Hutterite Big Sky Colony to purchase workers' compensation insurance over their religious objection.  The Hutterites take a vow of poverty, hold their possessions in common and self-insure.

Gay marriage fight now becomes a religious liberty fight.  The next offensive in this culture war will involve wielding government to force individuals to accept the new definition of marriage, falsely invoking analogies to civil rights.  As a prototype, consider the assault on the liberty of Elaine Huguenin, the wedding photographer in New Mexico.  In 2006, a couple asked her to photograph their wedding.  When she learned the couple were lesbians, she declined, explaining that pursuant to her faith, she only photographed man-woman weddings.  The couple got a different photographer, but they sued Huguenin.

Mock 'Marriage' Will Criminalize Christianity.  While poorly decided U.S. Supreme Court cases are a dime a dozen, prior to last Wednesday, two stood out among the most wretched and constitutionally groundless in American History.  First was the 1857 Dred Scott decision.  Among other things, it robbed African-Americans of both their U.S. citizenship and their dignity.  Next came the 1973 ruling in Roe v. Wade.  It has robbed over 55 million U.S. citizens of their very lives.  For the first time in American history, the high court imagined a phantom constitutional right for women to dismember alive their own pre-born children.  Both of these cases are blights on American history.

DOJ Defunds Youth Programs That Reference God.  The Department of Justice has summarily removed federal funding from two Louisiana youth programs because a local official refused to sign a pledge stating he would require the programs to ban mentions of God.

Will the Last Religious Politician Please Turn Out the Lights?  If at one time being a member of a church was almost a requirement for anyone running for office, that time has long since passed.  These days, portraying a candidate as a "fine, upstanding Christian" is enough to send any potential office seeker to the political graveyard.  Due to constant stereotyping by liberals, such a description now conjures an image that is a combination of Boss Hogg, Huey Long, and Elmer Gantry.  The result, among others, is that the openly Christian candidate is out of favor with the political establishment here and abroad.

Hotel chain in Britain removes Bibles from rooms.  The decision by one of Britain's largest hotel chains to remove Bibles from its rooms has sparked complaints from Christians.  Travelodge, which operates 500 hotels, says the Bibles were removed for "diversity reasons," citing the country's increasing multicultural influences, the Daily Mail reported.  The chain reportedly said that despite the recent uproar, the decision to remove the Bibles was made in 2007.

"The Christian combats the erroneous doctrines of the infidel with no other weapon than that of argument:  the sophist opposes Christianity with ridicule and misrepresentation."

– George Crabb (1778-1851).   

This is an original compilation, Copyright © 2024 by Andrew K. Dart

(CNSNews.com) - The Vermont Department of Motor Vehicles is accused of infringing the free-speech rights of a Vermont pastor and his wife, by refusing to let them refer to Bible verses on their specialty license plates.  The pastor and his wife chose ROMANS5 and ROMANS8 for their license tags.  The Bible passages, which speak of acquiring peace and joy through faith in Jesus Christ, have given them comfort over the years, they said.  The Vermont motor vehicles department denied their request, saying the religious connotation might be offensive to others.  The Vermont Transportation Agency upheld the DMV's decision to deny the plates, but the case has now landed in Vermont's Washington County Superior Court, where attorneys for the conservative Rutherford Institute are attempting to have the decision overturned.  "The First Amendment does not permit government bureaucrats to decide for the people what is too 'offensive' to appear on a personal vanity plate," said Rutherford Institute President John Whitehead.  "The Vermont DMV surely has better ways to spend tax dollars than to enforce a 'civility code' on the state's streets and highways."

I would laugh out loud if this were not so tragic.
Abortion Is a 'God-Given Right,' Liberal Leader Declares.  Rev. Carlton Veazey, president and CEO of the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, told a small crowd of pro-abortion protesters that women have a "God-given right" to abortion and that opposition from pro-life congressmen and religious leaders would never take it away.

Liberal Neutrality:  Anyone who believes what the average American believed half a century ago — about the role of the courts, abortion, sexual morality, and of course Jesus Christ — is now damned as a "bigot" or "extremist" by liberal opinion.

What's next for liberalism?  The cultural liberalism that emerged from the convulsions of the 1960s drove the liberal faith out of the mainstream.  Its fundamental value is that society should have no fundamental values, except for a pervasive relativism that sees all values as equal.  Part of the package was a militant secularism, pitched against religion, the chief source of fundamental values.

Framing blogs:  Last year the very smart political scientists Louis Bolce and Gerald De Maio completely unwrapped the orthodox newsroom view of religion and politics. … [They] believe newsrooms have been partisan in the debate for many years, partly because so many reporters are Democrats who do not go to church and do not fully understand that secularism is basically an aggressive quasi religion now central to the core constituency of the Democratic Party.

Taliban west?  Secularits are in a state of panic about the role of evangelical Christians in the reelection of George Bush.  They actually believe that American democracy is in danger, that we are on the verge of becoming a theocracy.  "Putting God in the public square runs the risk of turning our democracy into a theocracy," frets DeWayne Wickham in USA Today.  Leonard Pitts of The Miami Herald warns darkly of "the soldiers of the new American theocracy who want to force 'creation science' on the schools."

The Editor says...
Most liberals don't actually believe we're headed toward a Christian theocracy, but it is to their advantage to spread such a story.  Of course there are a few people whose drug-clouded, baby-killing, promiscuous, homosexual, godless, immoral lifestyles really would suffer under a Christian theocracy, and they're probably genuinely afraid.

We all have faith in something.  The Democratic gospel preaches an all-encompassing faith that politics and government will solve our personal problems.  Not earning enough money?  Don't have a high-school diploma?  Not happy with your insurance policy or retirement plan?  Is your daughter pregnant?  Feel in general that your life is out of control?  Turn to President, Senator or Congressman Democrat and get it solved.

Why Liberals Hate Religion:  Liberals seem to have a tough time deciphering certain portions of the writings of our Founding Fathers.  Specifically, the Bill of Rights really seems to trip them up.

Robert Reich:  God is worse than terrorism.  Clinton's labor secretary has problem with those who believe in higher authority.  Robert Reich, the former U.S. labor secretary under President Bill Clinton, believes people who follow God pose a more significant threat to the modern world than terrorists do.

Where will the dems go?  [Senator Paul Wellstone's] Minnesota memorial [showed] us the religious Left:  They don't believe in God; they believe in politics.  The Democratic Party is their church, Wellstone their latest martyr, and the campaign a crusade.

Seven Places Where politics Doesn't Belong.  [#2]  Funerals:  Speaking of respect, how did we get to the point where funerals have become about politics?  [Heck], at Paul Wellstone's memorial service they did everything short of a balloon drop. ... Most people die and are quickly forgotten.  At least give them a decent send-off without cheapening their lives by corrupting their funerals with petty politics.

Just Say Merry Christmas.  Perhaps nothing exposes the gap between secular liberals and conservative Christians as much as Christmas.  It may also help explain why the Democrat Party, which has been taken over by a small, but powerful cadre of secular liberals, is slipping into political oblivion.  Even though practically the whole country is adorned with Christmas decorations, all across America secular liberals are doing all that they can to suppress the public acknowledgment of Christmas.

God and Politics:  Partisan media stalwart Helen Thomas is just the latest in a long line of commentators to argue that religion and politics don't mix.  Like the others, she is woefully misguided.

It's time for American Jews to open their eyes.  It was Rep. Jim Moran, a Democrat from Virginia, who claimed that a Jewish cabal stood behind the Iraq war.  It was former Rep. Cynthia McKinney, a Democrat from Georgia, who took money from anti-American and anti-Israeli terrorist supporters during her candidacy for Congress.  It was Vermont's Howard Dean, a Democrat, who labeled Hamas members "soldiers."  It was Sen. Robert Byrd, a Democrat from West Virginia, who was once Grand Kleagle in the Ku Klux Klan.  It was Sen. Ernest Hollings, a Democrat from South Carolina, who blamed the Iraq war on pro-Israeli interests.

Know Who Your Friends Are.  As an American Jew, one who naively voted Democratic up until 9/11, but now an unabashed Bush and War on Terror supporter, I have seen the proverbial light.  Sadly, precious few others of my ilk have.  I can count on one hand the number of Republican Jews I have in my family or close friend base and can count on two hands the number of Bush supporting Jews I know.

One Nation Under God or One Nation Under Man.  Polling data shows that many who embrace the liberal policies of the Democratic Party are less religious than those who support the pro-life, traditional marriage policies of Republicans.  This divide first became apparent with the 2000 election.  Research notes that those who attended religious services more than once a week supported Bush by a margin of 2 to 1 while those who never attended religious services supported Gore by the same margin.