Father Sammie Maletta's Sermon on Obama's Assault on Religious Liberty

On February 5, 2012 Father Sammie Maletta delivered a sermon at St. John the Evangelist Parish in St. John, Indiana. This Homily addressed how President Obama is threatening religious freedom and at war with the Catholic Church. Please take a few moments to listen and then go to http://bit.ly/zPdgpw to fight this assault on freedom of conscience and religious liberty.

Sermon of Father Jay Scott Newman - Tyrannical Government Decrees and the Religious Liberty Crisis

Sermon of Reverend Jay Scott Newman
(Audio)

Pastor

St. Mary's Catholic Church

Greenville, South Carolina

February 5, 2012

 

Senator Campsen and Others File Amicus Brief with U.S. Supreme Court in Invocation Case

State Sen. Chip Campsen

Senator Chip Campsen has filed an Amicus brief with the United States Supreme Court asking them to review the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that banned invocations, or prayers before a legislative body convenes, from referencing a deity. Campsen was joined by over 20 fellow state senators in petitioning the U.S. Supreme Court to review this case.

Here is the press release he sent out yesterday:

South Carolina State Senator Chip Campsen filed an Amicus Curiae brief yesterday with the United States Supreme Court in the case of Forsyth County v. Joyner. An Amicus Curiae or "Friend of the Court" brief is when someone not a party to a suit files a brief with the Court because of a particular interest in the subject matter.

US Catholic Bishops Establish Religious Liberty Committee

Several weeks ago, in response to the Obama administration mandating that Catholic institutions include coverage of contraception (including abortifacients) and sterilization in all private health insurance plans, Archbishop Timothy Dolan threatened "a national conflict between church and state of enormous proportions."

Bishop William Lori

Today Archbishop Dolan announced that the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) is forming an Ad Hoc Committee for Religious Liberty.  Bishop William Lori of Bridgeport, Connecticut will chair the new committee.  

We are underwhelmed.  If another committee at the corrupt, staff-run, inept United States Conference of Catholic Bishops is to be the bishops' response to immoral and tyrannical actions by the Obama administration, we are doomed.  Do they think they can bore their adversaries into surrender with another staff document?

We hope this is just window dressing prior to the real "national conflict."  For the battle itself, we would suggest that it be commanded by someone who knows what he is doing in public policy and the political sphere and is untouched by scandal -- Governor Frank Keating or Father Frank Pavone come to mind.

It's a shame the 300 old men represented by the USCCB have squandered their moral authority, not on the great moral issues of our time, but on details of public policy better left to the laity, and on which Catholics have every right to disagree.  That a majority of bishops protected perpetrators rather than victims in the sexual abuse of young people, further erodes their ability to counter the Obama administration's assault on Catholic institutions.

Religious Freedom Not an Obama Priority, Former US Official Charges

From Catholic World News

A former US State Department official, Thomas Farr, notes that the Obama administration has shown no special interest in religious-freedom questions, waiting 16 months to nominate an ambassador to handle those issues. Farr writes:

The Obama administration has achieved the unimaginable. It turns out that the list of the most important American values includes things like ensuring transparency, refraining from torture, protecting privacy, and "promoting the right to access information."

But not religious freedom.

Source(s): these links will take you to other sites, in a new window.

• National security without religious liberty? (Washington Post)

Florida Enacts Legislation Protecting Private Prayer in Schools

From LifeSiteNews

By Peter J. Smith

Florida has enacted a new law protecting the rights of individuals at public schools to engage freely in prayer and other religious expression. Gov. Charlie Crist signed the bill, which had been passed by the legislature in May, on Friday.

The bill (HB 31) originated as a response to a controversy surrounding the Santa Rosa County School District, which had been pressured by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) to adopt a policy that forbade all school personnel from engaging in non-official school-related religious activities.

“Our First Amendment rights, granted to us by the U.S. Constitution are absolute, and this law ensures that they remain that way,” said Rep. Greg Evers (R-01) in a statement provided to local Florida online journal, NorthEscambia.com. Evers said the law would protect students “who want to thank God in a commencement speech” or bow their heads in silent prayer “without fear of being questioned or stopped.”

The law states that district school boards and their employees are prohibited from taking proactive measures, including making agreements, that infringe or waive “the rights or freedoms afforded to instructional personnel, school staff, or students by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.” It says that written consent from “the individual whose constitutional rights would be impacted” would be necessary before such steps could be taken.

The version of the bill signed into law by Gov. Crist will prevent school officials from interfering in the religious expression of students and school employees at events. However, it would not authorize official, organized school prayer, religious expression, or recognition of God at events such as sports events and student assemblies.

The original version of the law sought by the state House of Representatives actually would have empowered public schools to permit “delivery of an inspirational message, including a prayer or an invocation, at a noncompulsory high school activity” if a majority of students had requested it. Students also then would have selected a representative to deliver the message.

Nonetheless, the new law will prevent situations like that in the Santa Rosa County school district, where school officials caved to ACLU pressure and signed onto a Consent Decree in 2008 which prohibited religious expression, such as voluntary, student-initiated prayers or off-the-clock religious discussion among adults.

Some public school staff in the district testified in an ongoing lawsuit that the Consent Decree has proved so draconian that among other things they practically have to hide in closets to pray and have been forbidden to participate freely in private, off-campus baccalaureate services. The court testimony also stated that under the agreement reached with the ACLU teachers could not reply to emails from parents containing the words “God bless” or other religious language, and that staff have to censor private, after-school groups from engaging in religious expression or prayer.

Three staff members were charged with violating the Consent Decree, but later found not guilty. Pace High School Principal Frank Lay faced contempt charges for asking Athletic Director Robert Freeman, also charged with contempt, to bless a meal during a dinner held at the high school. Both men faced up to $5,000 in fines, six months in jail, and the possible loss of their retirement benefits.

Local Fox 10 reports that Lay has now retired as principal from Pace High School, ending a thirty-five year career with the school district.

School teacher Michelle Winkler was similarly charged, because her husband, who is not a school board employee, offered a prayer, written by Winkler, at a private awards ceremony honoring non-instructional employees of the district. The charges were later dropped.

School officials also torpedoed a thirty-year tradition of having the student body president address fellow students at Pace High School, because Pace student president for the 2008-2009 school year, Mary Allen, included in her speech a reference thanking God for her success and made other references to God.

The public advocacy group Liberty Counsel is currently litigating against the ACLU and the District to overturn the Consent Decree, and plans to ask the court responsible for the decree to reconsider its enforcement in light of the new law.

Keeping the Faith: Religion, Freedom, and International Affairs

One of the world’s leading authorities on religious persecution, Paul Marshall is a senior fellow at Freedom House’s Center for Religious Freedom in Washington, D.C. He is also an adjunct professor of philosophy at the Free University of Amsterdam, an adjunct fellow at the Claremont Institute, and an adjunct professor at Fuller Theological Seminary.

Dr. Marshall is the author of 300 scholarly and popular articles and such books as Just Politics and Heaven Is Not My Home (just released this January). His best-selling and award-winning 1997 survey of religious persecution, Their Blood Cries Out (with Lela Gilbert), was described in the U.S. Senate as “a powerful and persuasive analysis [that] simply cannot be ignored.”

Paul Marshall reports that not only does religious persecution continue worldwide but that it is also more brutal and more widespread than we have been led to believe by the Western media. He urges us to make religious rights prominent among human rights. If we do so, we should understand and react to world politics more clearly and more consistently.

Dr. Marshall’s remarks were delivered at Hillsdale’s Center for Constructive Alternatives seminar, “Faith and Freedom Around the World,” sponsored in part by the Sage Foundation, on campus last fall.

---

By Paul Marshall

At the end of 1997, former New York Times executive editor A. M. Rosenthal confessed, “I realized that in decades of reporting, writing, or assigning stories on human rights, I rarely touched on one of the most important. Political human rights, legal, civil, and press rights, emphatically often; but the right to worship where and how God or conscience leads, almost never.”

The habit of ignoring religious persecution is all too common in the West. On August 22, 1998, for example, seven leaders of underground churches in China released an unprecedented joint statement calling for dialogue with the communist government. The U.S. media virtually ignored the statement, despite the fact that these leaders represent the only nationwide group in China not under government control. Their membership of 15 million is several times larger than the population of Tibet and hundreds of times larger than the number of China’s democracy and human rights activists. But the press just isn’t interested.

Nor is it interested in religious persecution in Sudan, the largest country in Africa, which still practices crucifixion. After enduring more than forty years of civil war, the predominantly Christian population in southern Sudan is subject to torture, rape, and starvation for its refusal to convert to Islam. Christian children are routinely sold into slavery. Muslims who dare to convert to Christianity are faced with the death penalty.

In the last fifteen years, Sudan’s death toll of more than 1.9 million is far greater than Rwanda’s (800,000), Bosnia’s (300,000), and Kosovo’s (1,000) combined. The United Nations’ special rapporteur on Sudan, Gaspar Biro, produced five official reports documenting the carnage, declaring “abuses are past proving…these are the facts.” He resigned when his reports were consistently ignored.

Not a week goes by that Freedom House’s Center for Religious Freedom does not learn of major stories of religious persecution abroad. Christians are usually the victims, but so are many others, such as Buddhists in Vietnam, Baha’is in Iran, and Shiite Muslims in Afghanistan. These stories rarely make headlines or penetrate the consciousness of journalists and foreign policy professionals.

Secular Myopia

One main cause for this ignorance is what I call “secular myopia,” that is, “an introverted, parochial inability even to see, much less understand, the role of religion in human life.” It is a condition that mainly afflicts the “chattering classes,” which include diplomats, journalists, political commentators, and policy analysts. As strategic theorist Edward Luttwak has observed, the chattering classes are eager to examine economic causes, social differentiations, and political affiliations, but they generally disregard the impact of faith upon the lives of individuals and the lives of nations.

Secular myopia can have painful consequences. Remember how little the U.S. knew about the Ayatollah Khomeini and his followers in Iran during the late 1970s? Luttwak notes that there was only one proposal for the CIA to examine “the attitude and activities of the more prominent religious leaders” and that this proposal was vetoed as an irrelevant exercise in sociology.

As the Shah’s regime was collapsing, U.S. political analysts kept insisting that everything was fine. True to their training, they focused on economic variables, class structure, and the military, and they concluded that, since businessmen, the upper classes, and the military supported the Shah, he was safe. There were, of course, many mullahs (religious teachers and leaders) arousing Islamic sentiment, but the analysts believed that religious movements drew only on folk memories, were destined to disappear with “modernization,” and were irrelevant to the real forces and institutions of political power.

Consequently, the U. S. did not clear its embassy of important documents or staff. When Khomeini seized power, his followers captured both. They used the former to attack American personnel throughout the Middle East and the latter to precipitate a hostage crisis that paralyzed our nation for two years.

According to Luttwak, during the Vietnam War, “every demographic, economic, ethnic, social, and, of course, military aspect of the conflict was subject to detailed scrutiny, but the deep religious cleavages that afflicted South Vietnam were hardly noticed.” He added that the “tensions between the dominant Catholic minority [and] a resentful Buddhist majority…were largely ignored until Buddhist monks finally had to resort to flaming self-immolations in public squares, precisely to attract the attention of Americans so greatly attentive to everything else in Vietnam that was impeccably secular.”

Similar tales can be told of our myopic view of conflicts in Bosnia, Nicaragua, Israel, Lebanon, India, the Philippines, and Indonesia.

Misunderstanding Religion

Religion as Ethnicity

In 1997, when Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamed railed against speculators with the outrageous claim, “We are Muslims, and the Jews are not happy to see the Muslims progress,” the Los Angeles Times described him as “race-obsessed.” Perhaps the Times took its cue from media descriptions of former Yugoslavia. In this tortured land, the war raging between the Orthodox, Catholics, and Muslims is always referred to as “ethnic” and attacks on Bosnian Muslims are always referred to as “ethnic cleansing.”

There are many such examples of media misunderstanding. The Economist headlined a 1997 story about attacks on 25 churches and a temple in eastern Java that were prompted by a Muslim heresy trial as “Race Riots.” A 1998 New York Times editorial on rampant violence in Indonesia cited “tensions between Indonesia’s Muslim majority and Chinese minority” as if there were no Chinese Muslims and no non-Muslims except for the Chinese.

Religion as Irrationality

Western opinionmakers and policymakers consider themselves the heirs of the “Enlightenment,” an 18th-century intellectual movement that stressed rationalism and science over faith and other forms of “superstition.” To them, all contemporary peoples, events, and issues fall into Enlightenment categories, which are most often political or ideological.

Muslims are identified as “right-wing,” even when they advocate leftist economic controls. Hindus who propose to build a temple on the site of the Babri mosque in India and Jews who propose to build a Third Temple on the site of the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem are also labeled “left-wing” or “right-wing” without any regard to religious context.

When the vocabulary of “left” and “right” has run its tired course, we are left with that old standby, “fundamentalist”—a word dredged up from the American past, despite dubious provenance. What “fundamentalist” means when applied to Christians, Buddhists, Hindus, or Muslims is hard to understand. Using the term is a sign of intellectual laziness. If what believers believe does not easily fall into an Enlightenment category, then it is assumed that they must be “irrational.” Thus, “fundamentalist” is now merely shorthand for “religious fanatic”—for someone who is to be categorized rather than heard, observed rather than comprehended, dismissed rather than respected.

Religion as Sublimated Anxiety

When ethnicity and psychology fail to subsume religion, the alternative is to treat it, in quasi- Marxist fashion, as the sublimation of drives that supposedly can be explained by poverty, economic changes, or the stresses of modernity. Of course, these factors do play a role, but, all too often, what we encounter is an a priori methodological commitment to treating religion as secondary—as a mildly interesting phenomenon that can be explained, but that is never an explanation in and of itself.

So great is this bias that when the Journal of International Affairs devoted its 1996 edition to studies of religious influences, it apologized in part for even mentioning faith with the admission, “Religion may seem an unusual topic for an international affairs journal.” The editors added that “it is hardly surprising that scholars…have, for the most part, ignored [religion].”

Taking Religion Seriously

Religion and War

If we do start to take religion seriously in international affairs, then we will learn a great deal about war, about democracy, and about freedom of all kinds.

It was pointed out by religion scholars long before political scientist Samuel Huntington’s recent book, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of the World Order, that chronic armed conflict is concentrated on the margins of the traditional religions, especially along the boundaries of the Islamic world. The Middle East, the southern Sahara, the Balkans, the Caucasus, Central Asia, and Southern Asia are where Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, and Hinduism intersect. It is also where most wars have broken out in the last 50 years.

These are not explicitly religious wars. But since religion shapes cultures, people in these regions have different histories and different views of human life. Regardless of the triggers for conflict, they are living in unstable areas where conflict is likely to occur—in religious fault zones that are also prone to political earthquakes.

Religion and Democracy

Religion also shapes governments. In Eastern Europe, authoritarian governments are finding it easier to hold on in areas where the Orthodox church, with its long history of association with the state, has had special influence. The new boundaries of Eastern and Western Europe are tending to fall along the old divide between Orthodox and Catholic/Protestant.

Huntington makes a strong case that, in the 1970s-80s, a “third wave of democracy” swept over Portugal, Spain, Eastern Europe, Latin America, and the Philippines, in part because of important changes in the dominant nongovernment institution— the Catholic church. (He concludes that changes made after the Second Vatican Council inspired a major movement toward democracy and human rights.)

The role of the church in the fall of communism may not be clear to Western observers afflicted with secular myopia, but it is all too clear to Chinese government officials. As brutal practitioners of communism, they are perversely aware of the power of human spirituality, and so they regard religion with deadly seriousness. In 1992, the Chinese press noted that “the church played an important role in the change” in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union and warned, “If China does not want such a scene to be repeated in its land, it must strangle the baby while it is still in the manger.”

Underground church or “house church” leaders consistently report that the current government crackdown is due to fears prompted by religious events in the former Soviet bloc. Even Chinese government documents actually implementing the crackdown state that one of their purposes is to prevent “the changes that occurred in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.”

Each year, Freedom House conducts a comparative survey of political rights and civil liberties around the world. The 1998-99 survey finds that, of the 88 countries rated as “free,” 79 “are majority Christian by tradition or belief.” Clearly, correlations are not causalities, so this does not imply any direct link between Christianity and democracy (the survey also finds a connection between Hinduism and democracy). However, the existence of such a relationship is significant, not least because it is far greater than material factors such as economic growth, on which theorists and analysts lavish attention.

Politics and the Nature of the Church

One reason for the modern correlation between Christianity and political freedom lies in the nature of the church. From the beginning Christians, while usually loyal citizens, necessarily have an attachment to “another king” and a loyalty to a divine order that is apart from and beyond the political order.

In the Latin churches of the West, the two realms of sacerdotium (church) and regnum (state) emerged. Henceforth, there were two centers of authority in society. As political philosopher George Sabine reminds us, the Christian church became a distinct institution, independent of the state, entitled to shape the spiritual concerns of mankind. This, he adds, “may not unreasonably be described as the most revolutionary event in the history of Western Europe, in respect both to politics and to political thought.”

It is not that the church or the state directly advocated religious freedom or any other freedom— they did not, and often inquisitions were defended. But people in both realms always believed that there should be boundaries, and they struggled over centuries to define them. This meant that the church, whatever its lust for civil control, had always to acknowledge that there were forms of political power which it could and should not exercise. And the state, whatever its drive to dominate, had to acknowledge that there were areas of human life that were beyond its reach.

The very existence of the modern church denies that the state is the all-encompassing or ultimate arbiter of human life. Regardless of how the relationship between God and Caesar has been confused, it now at least means that, contra the Romans and modern totalitarians, Caesar is not God. This confession, however mute, sticks in the craw of every authoritarian regime and draws an angry and bloody response.

Faith and Freedom

This confession also suggests that people interested in democracy should heed religion. For example, attention to China’s courageous pro-democracy activists is certainly deserved, but it must be remembered that their following is quite small.

Therefore, more attention should be paid to China’s dissident churches, which, at a conservative estimate, number some 25 million members (apart from 15 million members in official churches) and which are growing at a rate of 10-15 percent a year.

In a 1997 cover story, “God Is Back,” the Far East Economic Review quoted the words of one Beijing official: “If God had the face of a seventy- year-old man, we wouldn’t care if he was back. But he has the face of millions of 20-year-olds, so we are worried.”

Clearly, the rapid growth of the only nationwide movement in China not under government control merits political attention.

Religion and International Relations

Apart from some of the horrific situations already described in Sudan, the Balkans, and elsewhere, the following religious trends also merit political reflection:

The rise of large, militant religious parties such as the Welfare Party in Turkey and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in India and the growth of radical Islam all over the world. The rapid growth of charismatic Protestantism and Catholicism in Latin America. As Cambridge sociologist David Martin has shown, these indigenous developments represent one of the largest religious changes of the century. They also produce personal reform and provide a major impetus toward entrepreneurial activity. The pattern of violence and warfare along the sub-Saharan boundary from Nigeria to Ethiopia. This constitutes a huge Christian/Muslim breach that must be addressed before peace is possible. Massive rates of Christian conversions in Korea (now 25 percent of the population), China (a minimum of 40 million, up from one million in 1980), Taiwan, and Indonesia. Increasing religious tensions in trouble spots such as Nigeria and Indonesia. There is widespread religious violence in the northern and central regions of Nigeria, with thousands dead in recent years. There could be all-out religious war. In Indonesia, escalating religious strife precedes and has some separate dynamics from recent anti- Chinese violence: 200 churches were destroyed in Java alone in a recent 15-month period, and most of them were not attended by ethnic Chinese. Such incidents threaten to undermine what has been one of the world’s best examples of interreligious toleration and cooperation.

In both of these regions, there is the possibility that instability and violence will spread far beyond the religious communities themselves.

The exodus of Christians from the Middle East—some two million in the last five years. Currently some 3 percent of Palestinians are Christians, compared to an estimated 25 percent 50 years ago. Similar mass flight from Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Turkey, and Iraq has occurred. The emergence of the Orthodox church as a unifying symbol in Russia, the Balkans, and other parts of the former Soviet Union. The increasing prominence of religion in the conflicts between India and Pakistan, which now possess nuclear weapons.

I am not making the absurd suggestion that religion—apart from other cultural, ethnic, economic, political, or strategic elements—is the only or the key factor in international affairs. Societies are complex. But I am saying that it is absurd to examine any political order without attending to the role of religion. We consistently need to deal with religion as an important independent factor. Analyses that ignore religion should be inherently suspect.

The Centrality of Religious Freedom

In the West there are now hopeful signs of a new awareness of the importance of religion and religious freedom. On October 9, 1998, the U.S. Senate passed the landmark International Religious Freedom Act. The following day, the House did the same. On October 27, President Clinton—a strong opponent—cut his losses and signed the act, which establishes a commission appointed by Congress and the White House to monitor global religious persecution and recommend responses. This is a small step, but it is a step, and in a vital area where few have trod. It is vital that we take similar steps—as concerned citizens.

We must support policies, programs, and organizations that promote and defend religious freedom.

We must support people such as Pope John Paul II, a man with no military or economic resources who is nonetheless daily aware of the spiritual dynamics of the world and who, for this reason, is perhaps its most important statesman.

We must make religious freedom a core element of “human rights.” This is not a parochial matter. Historically, it is the first freedom in the growth of human rights, and it is the first freedom in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

While all human rights pressures make “geopolitical realists” nervous, religion carries the additional burdens of touching on deeply felt commitments, of facing confused domestic claims about “separation of church and state,” and fears that the U.S. is an imperial Christian power. But for anyone concerned with freedom and democracy this is no reason to hesitate. Religious rights must be at the forefront of any sound human rights policy. And unless we understand this, our ability to fight for any freedom at all is compromised.

Reprinted by permission from Imprimis, a publication of Hillsdale College.

Florida School District Faces Lawsuit Over Ban on Religious Expression

From LifeSiteNews

The Santa Rosa County School District faces a lawsuit from a Christian legal advocacy group for allegedly violating First Amendment rights of teachers, students, and other individuals by muzzling their ability to exercise their religious beliefs in public.

Liberty Counsel (LC) has filed a comprehensive lawsuit against the Santa Rosa County School District and its Superintendent, Timothy S. Wyrosdick, accusing them of persistent and widespread violations of First Amendment rights.

The lawsuit was filed on behalf of two dozen individuals, including teachers, staff, students, former students, parents, volunteers and local members of the community, all of whom say they have been silenced, censored, intimidated or harassed by the school district at the behest of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

The school district had agreed to a Consent Decree drafted by the ACLU and entered by a federal court, that LC says criminalizes protected religious expression, such as voluntary, student-initiated prayers or off-the-clock religious discussion among adults.

The suit says that students can no longer say “God Bless,” Christian teachers are relegated to the closet as far as any manifestation of their beliefs go, parents cannot communicate frankly with teachers, volunteers cannot answer any questions regarding religion, Christian groups cannot rent school facilities for private religious functions benefiting students, and pastors are dictated how they can and cannot seat their audiences at private, religious baccalaureate services held inside their own houses of worship.

Initially, the ACLU got involved when two graduating minors and their parents appeared as plaintiffs in a complaint filed against the School Board, Superintendent, and H. Frank Lay in his official capacity as principal of Pace High School.

Rather than fight the complaint, the school district voluntarily agreed to pay off the ACLU with $200,000 in legal fees, and enter into a Consent Decree, which the lawsuit says contains “broad prohibitions against religious speech and expression” by school district employees “anytime those employees are present at a ‘School Event,’ regardless of whether they are there in their official or private capacity.”

School events are defined as “any happening sponsored, approved or supervised by a School Official.”

Liberty Counsel says three school officials have since faced civil and criminal contempt charges at the hands of the ACLU and the school district, and that many school employees are afraid of speaking out against the policy for fear of losing their jobs.

“The Consent Decree defines, and the School Board interprets, the word ‘Prayer’ broadly, to include not just communications with a deity in the traditional sense, where the person praying postures with head bowed, eyes closed and hands folded, but any form of religious expression or conduct, such as engaging in religious discourse, reading or discussing the Bible, or merely greeting other individuals with ‘God Bless You’ or ‘I am praying for you,’” says the lawsuit.

School officials torpedoed a thirty-year tradition of having the student body President address fellow students at Pace High School, because the student president for the 2008-2009 school year included in her speech a reference thanking God for her success and encouraged students to go out boldly into the world knowing God loves them and has great plans for them.

At Milton High School, one school official sternly warned every student at a practice for graduation exercises that anyone who would initiate or participate in any prayer during the graduation ceremony would be ejected immediately.

“Freedom fled from Santa Rosa County when the ACLU filed suit. Liberty Counsel intends to restore freedom and end the intimidation,” commented Mathew Staver, Founder of Liberty Counsel.

Liberty Counsel is seeking to have the court issue an injunction stopping enforcement on the Consent Decree, a declaratory judgment on the constitutionality of the order, and award damages to plaintiffs for violations of the United States Constitution.

The complaint and attached evidence can be found here.

Christian's Speech Deemed 'Hateful Propaganda'

From OneNewsNow
By Charlie Butts

A Christian student in the Los Angeles Community College District is carrying his free-speech case to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Jonathan Lopez had an assignment in a public speaking class and was required to give an informative speech on any topic. Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) attorney David Hacker tells OneNewsNow that Lopez chose to speak about his Christian beliefs. "And during that speech, when he mentioned that marriage is between a man and a woman according to his Christian beliefs, the professor called him this horrible name, refused to let him finish the assignment, and told other students in the class, 'If you're offended, you can leave,'" Hacker explains.

When no students left, the professor dismissed the class. Hacker adds that Lopez is an "A" student -- "but the problem is he never got a grade on that informative speech, and in fact, the professor wrote on his evaluation form, 'Ask God what your grade is.'"

The ADF attorney argues that demonstrates the hostility towards religion on many college campuses. The lower court in Los Angeles issued a preliminary injunction against the school, saying its speech code -- allowing administrators to punish Lopez's "hateful propaganda" -- is unconstitutional. That has been appealed to the Ninth Circuit.

School Prayer Order 'Blatantly Unconstitutional'

From OneNewsNow
By Bill Bumpas

A school prayer case in Florida has elevated into "nuclear war," declares one Christian attorney.

Liberty Counsel is representing Christian Educators Association International (CEAI) in a lawsuit against the Santa Rosa County School District after a federal judge denied CEAI's request to overturn a consent decree requiring faculty and staff to stop expressing their faith in public schools.

Mat Staver with Liberty Counsel tells OneNewsNow that the superintendent caved to pressure applied by the American Civil Liberties Union, and now this consent decree is putting the clamps on religious expression.

"A teacher, if she or he gets an email from a parent and the parent has 'God bless you' or scripture anywhere in the email, the teacher is prohibited from responding to that email without first taking out those words," Staver explains.

He adds that in another instance "one of the administrative assistants said that they are afraid to even pray with each other in their own cubicles for fear that they will be targets of contempt under this order."

The Liberty Counsel attorney calls the order "blatantly unconstitutional” and is confident that it will be overturned by an appellate court.

NY High School Cancels Burgeoning Christian Club, Lets 60 Others Remain

Another outrageous example of a government school stifling individual freedom, religious liberty, and the rights of parents to an education for their children that reflects their own goals and values. It's the kind of problem that would not occur in a just system that allowed all parents to direct their share of education funding to the school of their choice.

From LifeSiteNews

ADF attorneys file suit against Board of Education of Half Hollow Hills after officials shut Christian student club down

A student has teamed up with the Alliance Defense Fund to file a lawsuit against a New York school district after school officials cancelled her once-flourishing Christian club.

At the beginning of her freshman year at Half Hollow Hills High School East, the student was told that the Ichthus Club, a student-led group where she was one of the leaders, had been cancelled without any advanced notification. Four years earlier, her older brother had met strong resistance before the club was finally allowed to form.

School officials claim that unspecified budget cuts and a lack of student popularity spurred their decision. However, leaders in the club point out that it had more than 55 student attendees last year, and complain that approximately 60 other student clubs, including the Gay-Straight Alliance and Amnesty International, were allowed to continue.

The student leader sought to work with the administration to keep the club, even offering to cut expenses by meeting every other week and finding a club advisor who would volunteer, but officials and the school board declined the offer.

“Christian student groups in public schools shouldn’t be discriminated against simply because they are religious,” said ADF Senior Legal Counsel David Cortman.

“Singling out a religious student club while letting the vast majority of the others remain constitutes viewpoint discrimination and is unconstitutional. In addition, it’s simply false that this club is not popular with students. More than 90 students signed a petition in favor of allowing the club to continue meeting.”

The Battle of the Textbooks

From Chronicles
By William Murchison

Few things in life are as clear as the futility of a real debate on the clarity of America’s religious origins.

“Debate,” I said? Lay a finger, unsuspectingly, on The New York Times Magazine’s inspection of the attempt by so-called Christian fundamentalists to overhaul history textbooks, and you require treatment for first-degree burns.

I refer less to the article itself than to readers’ sulfurous responses to the claims of Texas State Board of Education members concerning the need they see for forthright teaching of the founding fathers’ Christianity. Yow-ee! “These people are dangerous.” “These people are scary.” “Can’t we simply return Texas to the Mexicans and terminate this national embarrassment?” “Next we will be arresting ‘non-Christians’ and putting them in internment camps.” “There seems to be an unlimited supply of lunatics in America.” This, and more, from readers of our major newspaper of record.

See what I mean? Better yet, see what many Christians, not all of the “right-wing” variety, mean when they suggest the presence in the United States of growing hostility to their faith, or supernatural faith of any kind?

The magazine article in question comes down, tonally, on the side of those who reject the understanding of about half the state education board’s members “that the United States was founded by devout Christians and according to biblical precepts”—and that textbooks should reflect that understanding.

The reason this is a big deal is that Texas buys 48 million textbooks annually, which gives textbooks publishers the incentive to “tailor their products to fit the standards dictated by the Lone Star State.” Jeepers, some innocent Brooklyn kid, on the instance of boot-wearing yahoos from Bushland, could actually hear in class (shudder) that our country’s founders saw Christianity as more than a personal opinion. Clearly, if you read The New York Times, you’re supposed to stew about such a prospect.

Jeez, guys, I consume The New York Times myself, seven days a week, and the major worry I see emerging from behind the sulfur smoke is the sanctification of religious intolerance. In the name of “tolerance.” Such is the irony here. We can’t talk about claims to religious Truth without reviling those who claim such a thing as religious truth exists and requires intellectual notice, if not affirmation.

Was the United States organized as a “Christian nation”? That’s a claim I’m not sure you can get away with. You can say, with total accuracy, that Christianity informed and inspired the whole of the civilization to which the founders belonged. Which seems to me the claim that really is at stake here. No Texas school board member contends the founders intended to “establish” Christianity as the state religion: Merely that they accepted Christianity’s assumptions, in greater (Washington) or lesser (Jefferson) degree—viewed them as reflective of truth about human origins and destiny. From this a second contention follows: Students need reminding, in greater or lesser degree, that the founders prayed. (And, yes, they did pray!)

Why? What goes on? Chiefly, the working out of trends that set in during the early 1960s: growing secularism, growing depreciation of religion’s—any religion’s—importance in shaping motives and actions and consequences. The U.S. Supreme Court’s often hostile rulings on school prayer and religious symbols in public places reflect a growing view, chiefly on the political and social left, that people who want God can look for Him in church and leave everyone else alone.

OK, interesting. Can we talk about that approach to civic life? Evidently not. As with abortion, the Supreme Court governmentalizes the discussion. A theological matter becomes, in our democracy, a power question. The State Board of Education in Texas takes up the question at precisely the level—the political one—to which the Supreme Court invited us all half a century ago.

My fellow New York Times readers don’t appreciate my fellow Texans getting in their faces. Too bad. The secularists started this whole needless foofaraw. Let them, if they care to, pray for an end to it.

William Murchison is a corresponding editor of Chronicles and the author of Mortal Follies: Episcopalians and the Crisis of Mainline Christianity.

Religious Freedom Restricted for Nearly 70% of World's Population

From Catholic World News

Nearly 70% of the world’s people live in countries that restrict religious liberty, according to a study by the Pew Forum. The Pew survey found restraints on religious expression in 64 countries, including some of the world’s most populous nations. The Pew study reported:

The highest overall levels of restrictions are found in countries such as Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Iran, where both the government and society at large impose numerous limits on religious beliefs and practices. But government policies and social hostilities do not always move in tandem. Vietnam and China, for instance, have high government restrictions on religion but are in the moderate or low range when it comes to social hostilities. Nigeria and Bangladesh follow the opposite pattern: high in social hostilities but moderate in terms of government actions.

Northern Africa and the Middle East are the regions where religious freedom is most heavily circumscribed, the Pew study found; the Americas allow the greatest degree of religious liberty. The survey encountered high degrees of both government regulation and popular hostility to religious minorities in countries such as Iran, Egypt, Indonesia, Pakistan, and India. The large countries with low levels of both regulation and public hostility were Brazil, Japan, the United States, Italy, South Africa, and the United Kingdom.

Source(s): these links will take you to other sites, in a new window.

• Global Restrictions on Religion (Pew Research Center)

Federal Judge Nixes SC License Tag with Cross

From CNSNews.com
By Jim Davenport, Associated Press

A federal judge ruled Tuesday that South Carolina can't issue license plates showing the image of a cross in front of a stained glass window along with the phrase "I Believe."

U.S. District Judge Cameron Currie's ruling said the license plate was unconstitutional because it violates the First Amendment ban on establishment of religion by government.

Within hours, a private Christian group said the ruling doesn't stand in the way of its "plan B" to get a similar plate issued using a state law that permits private groups to issue tags they design.

Read the rest of this entry >>

New Hampshire Court Orders Christian Homeschooled Girl to Attend Public School

From OneNewsNow
By Pete Chagnon

A Christian homeschool girl in New Hampshire has been ordered into government-run public school for having "sincerely held" religious beliefs.

An attorney working with the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) has filed motions with a New Hampshire court, asking it to reconsider its order to send the 10-year-old homeschooled girl into public school.

According to ADF allied attorney John Anthony Simmons, the court acknowledges that the girl in question is doing well socially and academically, but he adds that the court went too far when they determined that the girl's Christian faith was a "bit to0 sincerely held and must be sifted, tested by, and mixed among other worldviews."

Simmons contends that parents have a "fundamental right to make educational choices for their children." However the girl's parents divorced in 1999, and she is now living with her mother who has been homeschooling the child since first grade. As part of the schooling, the young girl has been attending supplemental public school classes.

As part of parental custody hearings, a court-appointed guardian stated that the child reflected her mother's "rigidity" on questions of faith and added that girl's best interest would be served by exposure to a public school setting.

According to the New Hampshire Supreme Court, Home Education is an enduring American tradition and right. ADF concludes, based on that statement, that there is no legitimate legal basis for this latest court ruling.

Groups Demand that Jail Stop Censoring Religion

From OneNewsNow
By Charlie Butts

Civil and religious rights organizations are demanding that a Virginia jail stop removing Bible passages and other religious material from letters written to inmates.

Anna Williams, whose son was detained at the Rappahannock County Regional Jail, says officials cut out entire sections of letters she sent to her son that contained Bible verses or religious material. She says the jail cited prohibitions on Internet material and religious material sent from home.

John Whitehead, founder of The Rutherford Institute, represents Williams. His organization is challenging censorship of the mail.

"She's a devout Christian, and her son's in jail there and she's been trying to send him letters with Bible passages and whatever -- and the jail has actually been going through snipping out portions of letters," the attorney explains. "[S]ome of the letters are full of Bible verses, so what her son is getting is absolutely at the end of the letter where she says goodbye, I love you, and those kinds of things."

According to Whitehead, the situation is not an isolated case.

"Various Christian organizations are trying to give Bibles to prisoners...and prisons and local jails are actually prohibiting [that], saying such materials could be dangerous -- and they're actually stopping them," he laments. "So this is a nationwide thing that we're seeing, and [it's] one reason why we're trying to get involved in this case and stop it and nip it in the bud."

Whitehead tells OneNewsNow that courts have ruled there must be a compelling reason for censoring inmate mail -- and Bible verses, he says, hardly represent a compelling reason.

Prison Fellowship, the ACLU, the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty and other groups sent a letter to Rappahannock Regional Jail Superintendent Joseph Higgs, Jr., calling the policy illegal. Higgs issued a statement saying the groups' letter prompted him to launch an internal investigation.

Group Urges IRS Review of Liberty Tax Exemption

From OneNewsNow

The group Americans United for Separation of Church and State wants the Internal Revenue Service to review Liberty University's tax-exempt status because the Christian school revoked its recognition of a student-run Democratic club.

Americans United made the request in a letter to the IRS, arguing that Liberty's recognition of a Republican club offers GOP candidates support that is not available to Democratic candidates.

Read the rest of this entry >>

Valedictorian Barred from Giving Speech Because of References to “God” Files Suit

From LifeSiteNews

Attorneys for The Rutherford Institute have filed a free speech lawsuit in the Montana Thirteenth Judicial District Court on behalf of a high school valedictorian who was forbidden from making any remarks at all in her school's graduation ceremony after she refused to strip references to God and Christ from her valedictory speech.

"This is a case of pure censorship and a denial of the freedom of speech," said John W. Whitehead, president of The Rutherford Institute. "If we don't begin protecting the right to free speech in the schools, we are going to lose the right to speak entirely."

Renee Griffith was a co-valedictorian of her 2008 senior class at Butte High School, which is operated by Butte School District No. 1. By virtue of her scholastic achievements, Renee was selected to speak at the graduation ceremony on May 30, 2008, along with several other students. The students were instructed to speak about what they had learned during their time in high school. Although the valedictorians were asked to prepare their own remarks, Renee and another student, Ethan, planned to deliver their speeches together, alternately mentioning things they had learned in school.

The list of lessons learned ranged from the mundane (Renee: "I learned that Homecoming Week is a time when people can wear underwear on the outside of their pants and no one cares") to the heartfelt (Ethan: "I learned that [i]t takes just one person to get a rock rolling down a hill, and likewise, it takes just one person to traverse this planet to gather change. The power for change is inherent in humanity and each individual. We all have the framework for greatness and impact. Thus, it is important that we all realize the foundation within all of us and step out to better and further the world").

Although school officials allegedly did not object to Ethan's testimonial about humanity's inherent power for change, they did object to Renee's heartfelt statement about how she learned to persevere and not fear by standing up for her religious convictions: "I learned to persevere these past four years, even through failure or discouragement, when I had to stand for my convictions. I can say that my regrets are few and far between. I didn't let fear keep me from sharing Christ and His joy with those around me. I learned to impart hope, to encourage people to treat each day as a gift. I learned not to be known for my grades or for what I did during school, but for being committed to my faith and morals and being someone who lived with a purpose from God with a passionate love for Him."

Just prior to the graduation ceremony, Renee was ordered to remove the words "Christ" and "God" from her speech and replace them with the following phrases: "sharing my faith" and "lived with a purpose, a purpose derived from my faith and based on a love of mankind." When Renee insisted on her right to use the words of her choice, she was forbidden from speaking altogether at the graduation ceremony.

A copy of the complaint is available here:
http://www.rutherford.org/pdf/2009/05-04-09_Griffith_Complaint.pdf

Faith Groups Increasingly Lose Gay Rights Fights

"Faith organizations and individuals who view homosexuality as sinful and refuse to provide services to gay people are losing a growing number of legal battles that they say are costing them their religious freedom. The lawsuits have resulted from states and communities that have banned discrimination based on sexual orientation. ...Some legal analysts suggest that religious groups that do not support gay rights might lose their tax exemptions because of their politically unpopular views. Jonathan Turley, a law professor at George Washington University who supports same-sex marriage, said the Bob Jones (tax exemption) ruling 'puts us on a slippery slope that inevitably takes us to the point where we punish religious groups because of their religious views.'"

From The Washington Post
By Jacqueline L. Salmon


Faith organizations and individuals who view homosexuality as sinful and refuse to provide services to gay people are losing a growing number of legal battles that they say are costing them their religious freedom.

The lawsuits have resulted from states and communities that have banned discrimination based on sexual orientation. Those laws have created a clash between the right to be free from discrimination and the right to freedom of religion, religious groups said, with faith losing. They point to what they say are ominous recent examples:

-- A Christian photographer was forced by the New Mexico Civil Rights Commission to pay $6,637 in attorney's costs after she refused to photograph a gay couple's commitment ceremony.

-- A psychologist in Georgia was fired after she declined for religious reasons to counsel a lesbian about her relationship.

-- Christian fertility doctors in California who refused to artificially inseminate a lesbian patient were barred by the state Supreme Court from invoking their religious beliefs in refusing treatment.

-- A Christian student group was not recognized at a University of California law school because it denies membership to anyone practicing sex outside of traditional marriage.

Read the rest of this entry >>

Christian Valedictorian Case Headed for Supreme Court

From OneNewsNow
By Jody Brown

Attorneys for a high school valedictorian whose microphone was turned off when she began sharing her Christian faith say they'll appeal her case to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Rutherford Institute is representing Brittany McComb, whose lawsuit against school officials was dismissed Friday by the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The appeals court stated that "by preventing her from making a proselytizing graduation speech," McComb's free speech and free exercise rights were not violated, nor was her right to equal protection.

In June 2006, McComb strayed from her school-approved script to tell how faith in Jesus had filled a void in her life. Her microphone was shut off in mid-sentence as she said, "God's love is so great that he gave up -- gave up his only Son..." The audience responded with boos and shouts to turn it back on, and responded similarly when school officials attempted to introduce the next valedictorian speaker, saying "she deserves this chance to speak."

One month later, McComb filed a First Amendment lawsuit against Foothill High (Henderson, Nevada). The school's attempts to have that original case dismissed were rejected by the U.S. District Court for Nevada in June 2007, and school officials subsequently appealed to the Ninth Circuit to have the case dismissed.

The Rutherford Institute says it will now ask the U.S. Supreme Court to rule that school officials violated McComb's constitutional rights.

"This is a very important free-speech case that will affect the rights of all persons across America," states John Whitehead, president of The Rutherford Institute, in a press release. "If government officials can extinguish speech by turning off microphones at public assemblies, then none of us will have any rights."

He argues that McComb's case is another example of a "politically correct culture" that silences Christians in order not to offend those of other beliefs.

"Brittany McComb worked hard to earn the right to address her classmates as valedictorian," Whitehead says on his firm's website, "and she has a constitutional right -- like any other student -- to freely speak about the factors that contributed to her success, whether they be a supportive family, friends, or her faith in Jesus Christ."

Brittany McComb was one of three valedictorians chosen to deliver a speech at the June 2006 commencement ceremony at Foothill High School. She is currently studying at Oxford University.