The New York Times is being accused of showing their anti-Christian bias by accepting an ad that bashes Christians on the Supreme Court while they have rejected ads that were critical of Islam.
In 2012, a group of anti-Muslim activists had tried to place an ad in the Times critical of Islam and its stances on non-Muslims and treatment of women. The newspaper said they would not run the advertisement because they didn’t want to “inflame” Muslims with an ad critical of their faith.
Then Thursday, the virulent anti-Christian group Freedom From Religion Foundation was permitted to place an ad in the New York Times that personally disparaged the five justices on the Court who voted to uphold religious freedom by condemning them as “all being Roman Catholic.”
Matthew Balan, a news analyst for the Media Research Center, says while Times has every right to decide what ads to run in their newspaper, the fact they would allow a bigoted attack on Christians in an advertisement while denying an ad critical of Islam in any way shows their bias.
Catholic League statement Bill Donohue said that there were multiple examples of bigotry toward Catholics in the media following the ruling. He cited the Boston Herald that headlined a story “Court’s Catholic Justices Attack Women’s Rights.”
A Louisiana sheriff says that he is not going to cancel a planned public prayer event even if the ACLU is objecting to the event as unconstitutional.
Sheriff Julian Whittington of Bossier Parish, Louisiana is hosting the second annual “In God We Trust” rally on the Fourth of July. The event will include food, games, prayer and what the Sheriff termed “patriotic and God-lifting music.” The event is taking place on the grounds of a sheriff’s substation in Bossier, property that is owned by the city.
The ACLU is complaining that the existence of the event on the city property means they’re violating church and state and the event needs to be shut down no matter how much of a benefit it is to the city.
Sheriff Whittington said he’s not the least bit concerned about the ACLU.
“Not only am I elected to serve the people of Bossier Parish, but I live here and my family lives here. I think Bossier Parish is a better place with Christianity and Christian values involved in it,” Whittington told the Shreveport Times. “I don’t work for anybody in Washington. What they do, what they say, I couldn’t really care less.”
The ACLU says the event is telling non-Christian residents of the area that “they are less than equal and not worthy of support by their sheriff” even though Sheriff Whittington has not made any statements nor taken any actions that back up the ACLU’s assertion.
A petition demanding the Air Force Academy respect the religion freedom of Christian cadets has been sent to the Academy.
The Family Research Council and the American Family Association organized the movement after a series of decisions that basically eliminated the rights of Christian cadets to display their faith on the same level as those without any faith or of other faiths.
“I trust the Air Force Academy to train up the best young men and women our nation has to offer to be prepared to faithfully defend my family, my community and my country,” read the petition delivered to Academy Superintendent Lt. Gen. Michelle Johnson. “Part of that trust hinges upon the notion that the Academy would protect the religious freedom of the cadets we send it.”
The Academy has been keeping Christian students from expressing their faith because of actions taken by extremist anti-Christian Mikey Weinstein of the anti-Christian Military Religious Freedom Foundation.
“If cadets are taught to be afraid of Bible verses, how will they respond against terrorists who are willing to die for their cause?” continued the petition. “Our U.S. Air Force Academy cadets should be taught how to intercept the enemy, not how to tiptoe around the hyper-sensitive complainants.”
A man who identified himself as “Satan’s Son” will be spending the rest of his life behind bars.
A Dallas judge sentenced Randy Torres, 23, to life in prison without parole for the killing of 55-year-old Cathy Wilder in June 2010. Torres stabbed the woman repeatedly after he invited her to his mobile home.
Torres lured the victim by saying he wanted to have a Bible study, prayer and to learn more about Jesus. The body was found with a note on it that was signed “Satan’s Son.”
Wilder’s family said that she was a committed Christian who was dedicated to helping others come to Christ. Her husband had warned her not to go visit the young man the day of her death but she said that she had to “help people with God wherever I can.”
Torres went to a bar after the killing and then called police to turn himself in. He said that he stabbed the woman in the back so hard it broke the knife’s handle and he had to get another knife. He said he enjoyed the killing and would have kept on killing other people.
Dallas police officer Sean Moses said in testimony the killing was one of the goriest he’d ever seen in his career.
A Missouri school district has announced a settlement in a lawsuit with an anti-Christian group that claimed they violated the U.S. Constitution by promoting Christianity on the campus.
The anti-Christian American Humanist Association of Washington had filed a lawsuit in November 2013 against the Fayette School District on behalf of an “anonymous student” and “anonymous parent” who claimed the school wrongly promoted Christianity over other religions or no religion.
The complaint said that one of the school’s teachers prayed with students and that the high school’s principal announced weekly prayer meetings of a Christian group on the intercom.
The settlement was reached because the school said they did not want to spend more tax dollars fighting the anti-Christianists. The school added that while they did find one allegation was accurate, most of the complaints from the anti-Christian group were false, misleading or deliberately taken out of context.
The judge in the case has banned the schools’ teachers from participating in prayer or other religious activities at student events and prohibits teachers from having religious materials in sight of students.
The anti-Christian American Humanist Associated celebrated their latest removal of Christians from public life.
“Public schools must uphold the separation of church and state,” remarked AHA Executive Director Roy Speckhardt.
The developers of a Bible-themed park in Sioux City, Iowa have announced they rejected a $140,000 grant from the state after the anti-Christian Freedom From Religion Foundation made harassing complaints.
Vision Iowa, a group aimed at renovating and rehabilitating green spaces within the state, had offered a $140,000 grant to the park’s designers for trees, plants and other non-religious parts of the park. That wasn’t good enough for the anti-Christian group FFRF, who said that any funding given to a public park that might have a religious element is a violation of church and state.
The board of the Shepherd’s Garden told the Des Moines Register they just want to build the park and not be in the middle of frivolous lawsuits.
The FFRF celebrated the decision to harm the Christian park by having the funds withdrawn, claiming it was a “victory for the separation of church and state.”
The good news in the story is that after the word of the anti-Christianists actions hit the news, private donors provided a significant increase in funding that should allow for completion of the park in September.
Graduates of a Virginia high school thumbed their nose at the demands of the ACLU that a song sung at graduations since 1940 be banned because it references God.
Students at Thomas Walker High School in Ewing, Virginia locked arms after receiving their diplomas and sang “God Be With You Till We Meet Again.” The song has been sung during graduation since the school’s 1940 founding.
The ACLU had sent a threatening e-mail to school officials saying that students should be banned from singing the song, even at their own initiation, because the song makes a reference to God.
ACLU lawyer Rebecca Glenberg, in addition to wanting to remove any references to God from the graduation ceremony, also objected to a plaque of the Ten Commandments being displayed in a school hallway. The administration responded to the anti-Christianist demand by removing the plaque and eliminating the song from the ceremony.
The students, however, chose to revolt and refused to let the ACLU deny them their Constitutional right to express their faith.
The students also rose and recited the Lord’s Prayer at the invocation because it had also been removed from the ceremony.
Christians in Sudan are telling media outlets and international aid organizations that they no longer feel safe to even pray after the religious persecution of Meriam Ibrahim.
One Christian activist told CNN that they are refusing to publicly identify themselves anymore because they don’t want to face the same situation as Ibrahim, who was sentenced to 100 lashes and then being hung to death for her failure to renounce Christ and praise Allah.
“The church is now contaminated with terror. You don’t feel safe in prayer,” he said.
A human rights lawyer in the country who is a Christian said that the Christian minority will never be able to make traction because of the government’s systemic persecution. The government-controlled media routinely tell the public that Christianity is an “illegitimate religion.”
The U.S. State Department continues to be virtually silent on the matter even though Ibrahim is the wife of an American and her children are legally American citizens.
A number of residents and students protested at the offices of the Ector County (Texas) Independent School District after officials said they would be making prayer in the graduation ceremony optional.
High school students in the district had voted to have prayer as part of the ceremony but the administrators completely ignored their wishes in scheduling an “opening” and “closing” delivered by students instead of an invocation and benediction. The students would not be chosen by the graduating seniors or by academic achievement but entirely by random selection.
The move came because the anti-Christian group Americans United for the Separation of Church and State threatened to sue the school if they allowed the students to follow through on their vote to have a prayer included in the event.
Students held up signs saying “We are a democracy; we voted to pray” and “As Americans, we have the freedom to pray.”
School board member Doyle Woodall said that the board did not want to take the action they did but that it was forced upon them by anti-Christianists using the courts to force their will on the majority.
A recent panel discussed the massive expansion of Christianity in China even as the government increases their crackdown on Christ’s people.
One of the panelists talked of the persecution as a source of joy for many of the Chinese Christian leaders because it’s bringing forward the true followers of the faith.
“Chinese Christian leaders look at this as a winnowing effect, so those who are not true Christians will leave the churches; the ‘Sunday Christians,'” said Professor Carsten Vala of Loyola University Maryland. “The really committed, devout believers will be increasingly strengthened in their faith by this ‘winds of persecution’ and honestly the church buildings may be torn down, but that doesn’t mean the congregations themselves have scattered.”
Reverend Zhang Boli spoke about the growth in the underground church movement that is surpassing the “registered” and “official” churches according to the Chinese government. He attributed the crackdown to the growth.
“Recently we have seen some changes in the Chinese government’s policy towards religion,” said Boli via an interpreter. “The reason that caused them to decide to make those changes is because Christianity is moving very, very quickly in China.”
Official government statistics say there are 33 million Christians in the country but panelists say that because of unregistered “house churches” the amount is likely higher.
