Tag Archives: Christianity

Maryland couple files lawsuit alleging school indoctrinated daughter with Islam

A Christian couple in Maryland has lodged a federal lawsuit against their teenage daughter’s school district and other school officials, charging the school indoctrinated her with Islam and gave her failing grades when she wouldn’t complete assignments that violated her beliefs.

John Kevin Wood and Melissa Wood filed the civil rights in U.S. District Court last week, claiming the teachings at Charles County Public Schools promoted Islam over other religions.

The lawsuit alleges the couple’s then-16-year-old daughter was “instructed and indoctrinated in Islam” in 2014-15 during her 11th-grade world history class at La Plata High School. The Woods claim the course spent one day teaching Christianity and roughly two weeks teaching Islam.

The lawsuit claims the school violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment by “implementing a curriculum that impermissibly endorses and advances the Islamic religion.”

One assignment allegedly required students to profess the Shahada, according to the lawsuit.

The statement is a key component of the Islamic religion, though translated into English it reads “There is no god but Allah and Muhammad is the messenger of Allah.” Making such a statement would have violated their daughter’s Christian beliefs, the Woods allege in court documents.

The Thomas More Law Center, which is working with the Woods on the lawsuit, released worksheets purported to be school assignments. None of them specifically prompt students to write the Shahada, though they do contain a fill-in-the-blank sentence where students can write “Allah” and “messenger.” If they do, they will complete the English translation of the Shahada.

“Defendants forced Wood’s daughter to disparage her Christian faith by reciting the Shahada, and acknowledging Mohammed as her spiritual leader,” Richard Thompson, the president and chief counsel of the Thomas More Law Center, said in a statement. “Her World History class spent one day on Christianity and two weeks immersed in Islam. Such discriminatory treatment of Christianity is an unconstitutional promotion of one religion over another.”

The Woods also allege the class taught their daughter most Muslims have stronger faiths than average Christians, while another argument focused on a semantic difference in the teachings.

The lawsuit claims that the Woods’ daughter was taught that the “Qur’an is the word of Allah as revealed to Muhammad in the same way that Jews and Christians believe the Torah and the Gospels were revealed to Moses and the New Testament writers.” The use of “is” and “believe” in that sentence, the Woods argue, represents Islam as fact and the other religions as beliefs.

The lawsuit claims that John Kevin Wood called the school’s vice principal and tried to get an alternate assignment for his daughter, though the request was denied and he was ultimately banned from school grounds after he said that he would contact lawyers and the media.

The Woods claim their daughter didn’t complete the assignments and was given zeroes “because she refused to violate her beliefs and derogate her faith,” according to the lawsuit. The parents argue their daughter was punished “because she would not act contrary to her Christian faith.”

Thompson, of the Thomas More Law Center, warned similar lessons are being taught elsewhere.

“Parents must be ever vigilant to the Islamic indoctrination of their children under the guise of teaching history and multiculturalism,” Thompson said in a statement. “This is happening in public schools across the country. And they must take action to stop it.”

The lawsuit asks the court to declare the school violated the Woods’ civil rights and injunctions that prevent the school from endorsing or favoring Islam and banning John Kevin Wood from school property, according to the Thomas More Law Center. Defendants include the school district, its board of education and La Plata High School’s principal and vice principal.

The lawsuit identifies John Kevin Wood as a former Marine who fought in Desert Storm and later served as a firefighter who responded to the Pentagon following the Sept. 11 terror attacks.

Muslims Shield Christians During Terrorist Attack in Kenya

Muslim passengers helped shield non-Muslim passengers, some of them Christians, during a terrorist attack on a bus in Northern Kenya on Monday, according to multiple published reports.

Daily Nation, a Kenyan newspaper, reported a bus traveling from the Kenyan capital of Nairobi to Mandera was attacked at about 7 a.m. local time by gunmen believed to be tied to Al-Shabaab.

The Associated Press reported 60 passengers were on the bus when the gunmen stopped it in Papa City, and that some of the Muslim passengers helped some of the non-Muslim passengers put on Islamic apparel, such as head scarves, to help mask their identities from the terrorists.

The bus passengers might have been recalling a similar attack that took place last November.

Al-Jazeera reported that Al-Shabaab militants stopped a bus near Mandera, singled out 28 non-Muslims aboard, and killed them. The BBC also reported that Al-Shabaab militants singled out Christians when they shot and killed about 150 people at Kenya’s Garissa University in April.

The quick-thinking passengers ensured that a similar scene wouldn’t take place this time.

A local government official told Daily Nation that the militants reportedly asked the passengers to exit the bus and separate themselves into two groups: Muslims and non-Muslims. The official told the newspaper the gunmen “were trying to identify who were Christians and who were not.”

But the passengers refused to divide themselves. Mandera Governor Ali Roba told Daily Nation that the passengers insisted the gunmen “should kill them together or leave them alone.”

According to the Associated Press, the gunmen ordered everyone back on the bus after a Muslim passenger told them that the bus had a police escort that was due to arrive on the scene shortly.

Two people were killed and three were injured in the attacks, Roba wrote on his Twitter page. The governor said the militants also attacked a truck.

Pakistani Businessman Building 140 Foot High Cross

A Pakistani businessman is taking a bold, dangerous stance for Christ by building a 140-foot tall cross in Karachi.

Parvez Henry Gill wants to encourage his fellow Christians not to flee the country in the wake of intense persecution at the hands of Muslims.

Gill, a native of Karachi, describes himself as a property developer and owner of farmland.  He said that God came to him in a dream and told him to do “something good” for the people.

“I said, ‘I am going to build a big cross, higher than any in the world, in a Muslim country,’ ” said Gill, 58. “It will be a symbol of God, and everybody who sees this will be worry-free.”

Gill believes the cross carries a message to the Christians of his city.

“God will protect you. Stay in your country. Don’t be afraid,” the businessman said, according to CBS.

While many religious leaders in Pakistan believe the cross will be seen as a way to encourage interfaith cooperation, former Pakistani ambassador to the U.K. Akbar Ahmed said some radicals will see the cross as a provocation.

“They will say this a challenge to Islam and that it can only be met by destruction,” Ahmed told HuffPost. “It’s a smaller group, but it’s the smaller groups that can inflict a lot of damage.”

While the cross is not the biggest in the world as the Great Cross in St. Augustine, Florida is 208 feet tall, it is still the biggest in a Muslim dominated country.

A Christian Wife’s Biblical Submission Can Be Beautiful

A Christian counselor is standing up against the world’s redefining the word submission and says a wife submitting to her husband as commanded by Scripture can be a beautiful thing.

Christina Fox says that submission is not about forced control, as the world wants to define the word.  Fox says that the world tries to equate submission with negative words or phrases like “door mat”, “inferior” or “controlled.”  Fox says that when you follow the Scriptures, the exact opposite is actually seen.

“When a man leads his wife, he is leading her to depend on Christ, not on himself,” says Fox, who has been married for 17 years. “The kind of leadership a husband provides his wife is to encourage her growth in grace and prepare her to be a co-heir in the coming kingdom.  Scripture teaches that we are to ‘encourage one another and build each other up’ (1 Thessalonians 5:11).”

Fox says that in today’s world, the only way for a couple to truly have Biblical submission play out properly in their lives is to stick closely to the Word of God.

“It is only through the power of Jesus and his gospel at work in our lives that the beauty of submission can blossom in our marriages,” Fox says.

Fox adds that a woman following her husband in Biblical submission is a reflection of Christ’s people following their Savior with a heart of faith.

Pope Francis Says Without The Church You Can’t Be Christian

Pope Francis said that one cannot be a Christian without the church in their life.

“Our Christian identity is belong to a people: the Church,” the Pontiff said during Mass.  “Without this, we are not Christians.  We entered the Church through baptism: there we are Christians.”

The Pope said that someone who says they are a Christian but not a part of the church is simply a laboratory experiment.  He pointed out that not even Jesus was alone.

“Jesus Christ did not fall from the sky like a superhero who comes to save us. No. Jesus Christ has a history. And we can say, and it is true, that God has a history because He wanted to walk with us. And you cannot understand Jesus Christ without His history. So a Christian without history, without a Christian nation, a Christian without the Church is incomprehensible. It is a thing of the laboratory, an artificial thing, a thing that cannot give life,” Francis said.

The Pope also said that people should seek to renew the covenant of grace with God every day.

“The Days Of Acceptable Christianity in America Are Over”

The chair of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom says the days of it being easy to be a Christian in America is over.

“The days of acceptable Christianity are over. The days of comfortable Catholicism are past. It’s no longer easy to be a faithful Christian, a good Catholic, a faithful witness to the truths of the Gospel,” Dr. Robert P. George said Tuesday.   “They threaten us with consequences if we refuse to call what is good, evil, and what is evil, good. They demand us to conform our thinking to their orthodoxy, or else say nothing at all.”

Dr. George, a Professor of Jurisprudence at Princeton, made his address at the 10th Annual National Catholic Prayer Breakfast.  George said that while he meant his comments to be pointed at Catholics, they are equally as valid for all other Bible believing Christians.

“To be a witness to the Gospel today is to make oneself a marked man or woman. It is to expose oneself to scorn and reproach,” he said.  “To place in jeopardy one’s security, one’s personal aspirations and ambitions, the peace and tranquility one enjoys, one’s standing in polite society.”

“One may in consequence of one’s public witness, be discriminated against, denied education opportunities and the prestigious credentials they offer, one may lose valuable opportunities of employment or professional advancement, one may be excluded from worldly recognition.”

He reminded Christians that we are judged by God, not the world, and that we should reject those demanding Christians change their beliefs to stay on the “right side of history.”

Louisiana Governor Says Accepting Christ “Most Important Moment”

Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal believes the most important moment in his life is the moment he accepted Christ as his Savior.

The governor is scheduled to speak at Liberty University this weekend and released an advanced copy of his speech where he openly and boldly speaks of the importance of Christ in his life.

This is from the text of the governor’s address:

The short story is this, I read the words of Jesus Christ and I realized that they were true. I used to think that I had found God, but I believe it is more accurate to say that He found me. And it happened because people were brave enough to plant seeds of the Gospel in my life.

Many years later, when I became a candidate for political office, in one of my first debates, I got the question– “What is the single most important moment in your life?”

I had just endured countless hours of debate prep sessions with my political consultants and staff. That’s where you sit around and get savagely grilled by people you pay – your political consultants and staffers. I knew exactly what they hoped I would say – they would argue that I should try to appeal to female voters by offering a touching story about when I asked my wife Supriya for her hand in marriage, or about the birth of my first child.  And yes, those were great moments.

But instead, I decided to do something new in politics, I told the audience the truth — that the most significant moment of my life was when I turned it over to Jesus Christ and acknowledged Him as my Savior.

My political consultants then began shifting uncomfortably in their seats…and I have to admit I enjoyed that.

Jindal goes on to talk about how despite what many in the liberal academic community claim about followers of Christ, it is not a faith that is followed by those with a lack of intelligence.  Jindal is a Rhodes scholar.

Pope Calls For Charity In Lenten Message

In a Lenten message to the world, Pope Francis called for fair distribution of wealth and equal access to education and health care for the poor in the world.

He called on followers of Christ everywhere to make an effort to lessen “the poverty of our brothers.”

However, the Pope did not just focus on monetary poverty.  The Pope also had harsh words for Christians that he termed as suffering from “moral poverty” such as alcohol abuse, drug use, pornography and gambling.

The Pope said that those who are caught in alcohol or drug abuse, pornography or gambling are in “slavery to vice and sin” and said that “in such cases, moral destitution can be considered impending suicide.”

The Pope said that while Lent was “a fitting time for self-denial” he was tired of what he called superficial acts by Christians to try and show they were sacrificing something of benefit.

“Our consciences…need to be converted to justice, equality, simplicity and sharing,” The Pope said.

Christian Apologist Says Most Christians Unprepared To Defend Beliefs

A Christian apologist and university professor says that the church is in desperate need of churches who will prepare their members to address the tough questions about faith and God.

Dr. William Craig of the Talbot School of Theology says that Christians should be concerned about recent studies like the Pew survey that showed nearly 20 percent of Americans consider themselves “religious” but not affiliated with any religious group.

Dr. Craig alluded to social changes in the world that have removed the stigma of being an atheist and making them bolder in working to remove Christians from society and shouting down any Christian with hate speech when they defend the faith.

“I think that many Christians are intimidated because atheists are often very aggressive,” Dr. Craig told the Christian Post. “They will attack you personally, and they will do so in the name of reason and intellectual arguments. And many Christians feel utterly unprepared to give a defense of what they believe, and feel unprepared to answer the tough questions that their unbelieving friends will put to them.”

Dr. Craig has defended the faith in many venues with atheists and noted atheist author Richard Dawkins continues to be afraid to debate Dr. Craig in a one-on-one setting. Atheist author Sam Harris said in a recent article Dr. Craig has “put the fear of God into many of my fellow atheists.”

Georgia School District Orders All Christian Items Removed

Update 12/4/13:  A public relations and marketing specialist for the school district has released a statement claiming the information given to Fox News was inaccurate.  The statement claims the Christmas cards involved were personal cards of teachers and that the display was moved because one teacher had expressed “legitimate, personal privacy concerns” about the display.  The statement also said the incident had nothing to do with “current open and ongoing discussions that the school system is having with local citizens about religious liberties and expression.”  The statement did not include any response to accusations teachers were told to remove Christian items like Bibles from their rooms or that they were told to turn their backs on student-led prayers. 

The Bullock Georgia County Board of Education is cleansing an elementary school of any object that could be tied to Christianity.

Teachers say that they were forced to take down Christmas cards made for them by students because of the word “Christ” in Christmas and because some of the cards contained pictures of the nativity. Now students are asking the teachers why they won’t be hanging up their cards as they’ve done in previous years.

The district’s edict, however, goes beyond just Christmas cards.

Teachers have been ordered to remove anything from their classrooms that can be connected to Christianity like Bibles or Christian music even if it is for personal use on break times or lunch. They have also been told that if they come across students leading a prayer, they are required to turn their backs on the students or face disciplinary action.

The Board of Education released a statement to Fox News attempting to justify their attacks on Christianity by saying there are “established legal requirements to which we must adhere.”