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.”
Bowdoin College of Brunswick, Maine is openly discriminating against a Christian student organization by revoking official school recognition after the group would not allow non-Christians to be voted into leadership.
The college says that as part of their anti-discrimination policy, a group that is founded for and by a certain religion cannot require their leadership to actually be a part of the faith in that group. The college believes that if someone who hates and wants to undermine the faith of an organization can obtain leadership and destroy the group, they should have the opportunity to do so.
The action by the college is similar to that of other liberal arts colleges and Universities across the country who are seeking to eliminate Christian groups from their campuses.
Members of the group, who will now meet informally wherever they can because the University has revoked their rights to meet on campus, say that it’s a matter of standing up for the Gospel and the faith.
“It would compromise our ability to be who we are as Christians if we can’t hold our leaders to some sort of doctrinal standard,” student Zachary Suhr told reporters.
The national field director for InterVarsity said that the decision shows Bowdoin College believes those of religious faith should be suspect and marginalized.
Pastor Rick Warren and Rev. Samuel Rodriguez said that religious freedom in America is the new civil rights issue.
Rev. Rodriguez, the president of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, said Christians need to fight for their religious freedom or be silenced.
“While ending racial inequality emerged as the civil rights issue of the 20th century … religious liberty will be the civil rights issue of the next decade,” Rodriguez said. “Today’s complacency is tomorrow’s captivity.”
The two spoke as part of a panel discussion at the Southern Baptist Convention’s annual meeting titled “Hobby Lobby and the Future of Religious Liberty.”
A big theme of the meeting was the push by many groups to say that people of faith must proclaim that every religious faith is equally valid and all worship the same God. That misconception is driving the definition of “tolerance” to mean something other than what tolerance truly means according to the panelists.
“The “definition of tolerance has changed from I treat you with respect and dignity even when we disagree to all ideas are equally valid,” Warren said.
The panel said ultimately even if those who want to strip Christians of their rights to worship and be a part of society, the world can do nothing to stop Jesus.
“If the United States crumbles away, the Gospel is not lost,” Russell Moore said.
The North Carolina House of Representatives has passed a bill that would protect the rights of students to express their religion along with allowing teachers and staff to voluntarily participate in student-led religious activities at schools.
The bill, SB370, was presented to the House after an elementary school student was banned from reading a self-written poem about her grandfather. The grandfather was a World War II veteran who often cited his prayers for protection as part of his stories of service. The school said the student could not mention God.
The bill states that students may “[e]xpress religious viewpoints in a public school to the same extent and under the same circumstances as a student is permitted to express viewpoints on nonreligious topics or subjects in the school.”
The bill also prohibits any teacher from issuing a bad grade to a student because they may not like a student’s religious beliefs. In addition, the bill includes protections for teachers and staff to be a part of student-led activities in schools that include religious worship.
“Local boards of education may not prohibit school personnel from participating in religious activities on school grounds that are initiated by students at reasonable times before or after the instructional day so long as such activities are voluntary for all parties and do not conflict with the responsibilities or assignments of such personnel,” the bill states.
The ACLU has taken issue with the bill.
The bill is expected to be approved by the Senate.
The ban in Maryland on prayers at government meetings praying in Jesus’ name has been lifted by a judge following the U.S. Supreme Court ruling the prayers are Constitutional.
U.S. District Court Judge William D. Quarles, Jr., had previously told the Carroll County Commissioners they could not pray at meetings after a lawsuit from the anti-Christian American Humanist Association. The group had claimed the Commissioners were endorsing a religion by praying.
Quarles had ruled with the anti-Christianists, saying that no specific deity could be mentioned in any kind of official capacity in the meeting.
Commissioner Robin Bartlett Frazier said that the judge’s order was infringing on [her] First Amendment rights of free speech and religion.
“I’m willing to go to jail over it,” Frazier declared. “[I]f we cease to believe that our rights come from God, we cease to be America. We’ve been told to be careful. But we’re going to be careful all the way to communism if we don’t start standing up and saying ‘no.’”
The Carroll County Commissioners opened their meeting on Tuesday with a prayer in Jesus’ name.
China’s war on Christianity is continuing with the removal of statues that depicted various parts of the Passion of Jesus.
The Chinese officials removed the statues making the absurd claim the statues were violations of construction regulations.
The statues were located on Longgang Hill in Wenzhou, which is considered “China’s Jerusalem” by Christian and Jewish residents. The statues included images of Jesus, the Virgin Mary and St. Joseph.
Statues that could be lifted by Chinese government workers were lifted and demolished. Those that could not be lifted were covered over with bricks. Cranes are being brought into the area to remove the bricked-over statues.
Wenzhou is the same town where the government demolished a Christian church that took 12 years to build because they said it too violated construction codes. Christian residents of the community say that there were no code violations and the government is lying to cover up an assault on Christians in the nation.
The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom has told the State Department they need to add eight countries to the list of “countries of particular concern” where severe violations of religious freedom are taking place.
The group is calling for Egypt, Iraq, Nigeria, Pakistan, Syria, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Vietnam to be added to the list that already includes Burma, China, Eritrea, Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Uzbekistan.
“With religious freedom abuses occurring daily around the world,” USCIRF Chairman Robert George wrote, “the United States must by words and deeds stand in solidarity with the persecuted.”
The announcement is the 15th from the group since they were founded in 1998. The commission often travels to foreign nations to study the levels of religious freedom in countries and to determine levels of persecution.
Christian persecution advocacy group Open Doors said that all of the countries on the proposed list are in their top 50 worldwide for Christian persecution and 11 were in the top 15.
Mississippi legislators have passed a bill that would protect the freedom of religion for Christians and other people of faith.
The law would allow people of faith to challenge state actions that put substantial burden on the free exercise of their religion.
“State action or an action by any person based on state action shall not burden a person’s right to exercise of religion, even if the burden results from a rule of general applicability,” reads the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, SB 2681.
The bill passed the house and senate on the same day. The House approved the bill 79-43 while the Senate voted 37-14.
Senator Gary Jackson said that those opposing the bill claiming it would open the door to discrimination were just yelling loudly to try and frighten people because they did not have a good argument to stand in the way of protecting religious freedom.
Texas Senator Ted Cruz told the students at Liberty University’s convocation to stand up for their faith because Christians in America will be facing increasing attacks.
Cruz said that religious freedom in America “has never been more imperiled than it is right now.”
“Religious liberty has never been more under assault,” Cruz said, “As believers we are called to action, not to sitting quietly hiding our faith under a bushel, but to stand and speak no matter what the consequences.”
Cruz pointed out the mandate by the Obama administration in the Affordable Care Act that requires employers to cover drugs that can induce abortions as an example of the erosion of religious freedom in America. He said the current case at the Supreme Court involving Hobby Lobby is not about birth control but whether the government can “force people to violate their religious freedoms.”
Cruz spoke about two pastors who have been imprisoned because of standing up for their faith and said they were example for the students: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Saeed Abedini.
Pope Francis held a 50-minute private talk with President Obama Thursday, a time period that one Catholic news service called an “extraordinarily long time.”
The Pope reportedly wanted to discuss two major issues with the President, treatment of the poor and growing inequality around the world and also the increasing amount of military conflicts around the world.
The President was very generous in his praise of the Pontiff after the meeting.
“Those of us as politicians have the task of trying to come up with policies to address issues,” the President said, “but His Holiness has the capacity to open people’s eyes and make sure they’re seeing that this is an issue.”
The Pope reportedly did not directly discuss the Affordable Care Act, which is facing legal challenges to mandates that would force Christian business owners to pay for treatments that include abortion drugs. However, the Vatican’s Secretary of State reportedly took the President to task on issues of religious freedom in America.
The Pope gave the President a copy of his work The Joy of the Gospels. The President said he would probably read it in the Oval Office to which the Pope said “I hope.”
The President reportedly asked the Pope at the conclusion of the meeting to pray for him and his family.
