Have you noticed that religious liberty is increasingly under attack in the United States? This seems to be especially true for conservative Christians who want to freely exercise their right to live in accordance with the dictates of their faith.

There are good reasons why the first freedom outlined in the Bill of Rights is the “free exercise” of religion. This God-given right is foundational. All of our other civil liberties spring from this precious gift. If our government fails to protect our First Freedom, all other freedoms are at risk as well. Protecting and defending the First Amendment is critically important because to fight for religious freedom is to guarantee the future of all other rights.

President John Adams once said, “A constitution of government once changed from freedom can never be restored.” It is our duty not only to safeguard religious liberty today but also to equip the next generation to defend it tomorrow.

We would be foolish to let this vital freedom fall to the tyranny of godless socialists who see government as a god. We pray this will never happen. Yet there are good reasons to believe that religious freedom will continue to be attacked by those hostile to the things God. And if they have their way, this God-given civil right will erode or even be dismantled over the next several years.

Astonishingly, Illinois is currently recognized as the second-best state in the nation with a religious liberty score of 81 percent from the First Liberty Institute. The fact that we passed a Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) in 1998 is significant as it protects the right of people and business owners from infringements upon their freedom of religion.

However, the future of this protection stands uncertain in light of laws that added the term “sexual orientation” to the list of protected characteristics like race, color, religion, sex, and marital status. Since 2005, RFRA has been in conflict with the Illinois Civil Rights Act, which defines “sexual orientation” as including “gender-related identity.” So, now Illinois law treats two conditions defined by volitional behavior as equivalent to behaviorally neutral characteristics like race or biological sex.

Illinois is one of five states to safeguard the conscience rights of health-care providers, individuals, or institutions that refuse to provide health-care services that violate their conscience, and Illinois prohibits any imposition of liability for such refusal.

Illinois also provides exemptions from childhood immunization requirements; exemptions for employers from having to provide contraceptives in insurance policies; and exemptions for marriage and wedding participation for religious entities and clergy.

Finally, we have tremendous school choice liberty in Illinois. As a result, many Christians are wisely exiting government schools and instead choosing home education, micro schools, private Christian schools, and co-ops.

American was founded on the understanding that conscience and religious conviction come before the demands of the state. Elected officials and government bureaucrats should never be allowed to encroach on religious free exercise.

Defending religious freedom will require constant vigilance and a loud persistent voice on the parts of liberty-loving citizens. 

Woke censors are looking for ways to expand government and diminish “we the people.” They are emboldened by this last election, and they will not be persuaded to stand down. Their goal remains the same: to push the “free exercise” of religion out of the public square.

Religious Schools Can Get State Tuition Aid

The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) issued a decisive victory for religious freedom and school choice this week in a 6-3 ruling in the Carson v. Makin case.

The case revolved around a Maine school-choice program that allowed parents to access taxpayer dollars for private school tuition. However, Maine attempted to prohibit parents from using the program to attend a religious school.

On Tuesday morning, the U.S. Supreme Court, in an opinion by Chief Justice John Roberts, ruled that a Maine private-school-choice statute violated the First Amendment Free Exercise of Religion, writing:

“[T]here is nothing neutral about Maine’s program. The State pays tuition for certain students at private schools— so long as the schools are not religious. That is discrimination against religion. A State’s antiestablishment interest does not justify enactments that exclude some members of the community from an otherwise generally available public benefit because of their religious exercise.”

In response to this important ruling, Kelly Shackelford, President, CEO, and Chief Counsel for First Liberty Institute said:

We are thrilled that the Court affirmed once again that religious discrimination will not be tolerated in this country. Parents in Maine, and all over the country, can now choose the best education for their kids without fearing retribution from the government. This is a great day for religious liberty in America.

Illinois Attorney General candidate David Shestokas celebrates the ruling as well, saying:

The Supreme Court affirmed this nation’s commitment to religious liberty in the case of Carson v. Makin. The court established a far reaching principle that when the government makes a benefit available it may not restrict the benefit based upon religion. While the case involved tuition assistance in schools, the principle established has the potential to extend across our civic life and keeps faith with the First Amendment’s Free Exercise Clause.

Justice Stephen Breyer wrote the dissent. In the dissent, Breyer said the majority gave too little credence to the establishment clause and too much to the free exercise clause, saying:

The Court today pays almost no attention to the words in the first Clause while giving almost exclusive attention to the words in the second. The majority also fails to recognize the ‘play in the joints’ between the two Clauses.

Yet the Chief Justice’s majority opinion ended with these three sentences:

Maine’s nonsectarian requirement for its otherwise generally available tuition assistance payments violates the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment. Regardless of how the benefit and restriction are described, the program, said the chief justice, operates to identify and exclude otherwise eligible schools on the basis of their religious exercise. The judgment of the Court of Appeals is reversed, and the case is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.

This is not the first time the SCOTUS ruled to uphold the religious exercise clause regarding taxpayer tuition aid for religious schools. In its June 2020 decision in Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue, the Court struck down a state scholarship program that excluded religious schools. And in 2017, the court found in Trinity Lutheran Church of Columbia, Inc. v. Comer that a church-owned playground can be eligible for a public benefit program.

Bottom line: The government should not discriminate against citizens who would choose to use their tuition-assistance for faith-based schools schools. Carson v. Makin is a victory not just for religious freedom but also for educational choice.

The U.S. Supreme Court is considering a new case related to school prayer. This story began in 2015 when high school football Coach Joe Kennedy got on his knee at mid-field after a game and thanked God quietly. Some of the players voluntarily joined him in this huddle.

Kennedy was fired for this act by his employer, Bremerton High School in Bremerton, Washington. He sued to get his job back.

Fox News (4/25/22) reports: “Lower courts have all ruled for the school. The 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals concluded that by kneeling and praying in view of students and parents, Kennedy ‘spoke as a public employee, not as a private citizen, and his speech therefore was constitutionally unprotected.’”

Fox News quotes Rachel Laser, the president of Americans United for Separation of Church and State: “No child attending public school should have to pray to play school sports.” But his defenders note the coach was expressing his own public thanks—not forcing anyone else to participate in his prayer.

How dare he, argued the secular authorities in the state of Washington and beyond, acknowledge Almighty God before all those students and parents and members of the community?

How dare Coach Kennedy do this in the state named after George Washington, who acknowledged Almighty God on multiple occasions—even on the day be became our first president and participated in a two-hour Christian worship service with the new government leaders of the United States at St. Paul’s Chapel, in which they received Holy Communion?

Coach Kennedy is closer to the ideals and practices of the founders than his critics who assert a false “strict separation of church and state”—words found nowhere in the Constitution.

Coach Kennedy is being represented by First Liberty Institute based in Plano, Texas, which focuses on defending religious freedom in America. Their name is derived from the fact that the first liberty listed in our nation’s Bill of Rights, the first ten amendments to the U. S. Constitution, is religious liberty.

The First Amendment begins: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” Historically, this was understood to mean that there would no Church of America, like there is a Church of England. That is, there was to be no Church “by law established” at the federal level. Some states at the time had state-churches.

Defenders of Coach Kennedy argue that the same men who gave us the First Amendment also gave us the Northwest Ordinance, which spells out the template that future states in the country were to follow.

They wrote in this ordinance: “Religion and morality being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged.” The founders did not intend schools to be “religion-free zones.”

Judge Darrell White, the president of Retired Judges of America, once told me in an interview on church-states relations: “There is a separation of church and state, but it’s not a separation of God and government.” It is a separation of the institution of the church from the institution of the state.

James Madison, a key architect of the Constitution, wrote a document called “Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments” in 1785. In that document, he notes that because Christianity is of divine origin, it will stand on its own, without the aid of the state.

Madison said, “Whilst we assert for ourselves a freedom to embrace, to profess and to observe the Religion which we believe to be of divine origin, we cannot deny an equal freedom to those whose minds have not yet yielded to the evidence which has convinced us. If this freedom be abused, it is an offence against God, not against man: To God, therefore, not to man, must an account of it be rendered.”

In other words, the state is not to support the church and nor is the federal government (sometimes called by the founders the “general government”) to interfere with the church. Said Madison in 1788: “There is not a shadow of right in the general government to intermeddle with religion.”

Just the idea of a school official bowing the knee to God—not bowing the knee to protest our national anthem, but in respect to our Creator—was enough for those on the left to try and destroy Coach Kennedy’s career and keep him from what he believes is his calling, to coach high school football.

It would seem that the left cares about free speech and freedom of expression when it comes to things the founders would have never dreamed about, like alternative sexualities and gender fluidity, but not for things explicitly protected in the U.S. Constitution like the free exercise of religion.

This article was originally published at JerryNewcombe.com.

Written by Michael Foust

The U.S. Supreme Court handed religious liberty advocates a victory Monday when it vacated a lower court’s opinion that had ordered a Christian baker to design a cake for a same-sex wedding.

At issue was a ruling by the Oregon Court of Appeals that upheld a state decision forcing Aaron and Melissa Klein to pay a $135,000 penalty after they refused to design a cake celebrating a wedding for a lesbian couple. The Kleins eventually closed their business, known as “Sweet Cakes by Melissa.”

The U.S. Supreme Court Tuesday issued a one-paragraph order vacating the judgment and sending it back down to the Oregon Court of Appeals.

“The petition for a writ of certiorari is granted. The judgment is vacated, and the case is remanded to the Court of Appeals of Oregon for further consideration in light of Masterpiece Cakeshop, Ltd. v. Colorado Civil Rights Comm’n,” the unsigned order read.

Masterpiece was a 2018 ruling in which the Supreme Court sided with a Colorado baker who refused to design a wedding cake for a gay couple. Former Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy ruled the Colorado Civil Rights Commission demonstrated hostility toward religion when it ordered bakery owner Jack Phillips to design the cake.

The Kleins are represented by First Liberty Institute.

“This is a victory for Aaron and Melissa Klein and for religious liberty for all Americans,” said Kelly Shackelford, president and CEO of First Liberty. “The Constitution protects speech, popular or not, from condemnation by the government. The message from the Court is clear, government hostility toward religious Americans will not be tolerated.”

First Liberty had hoped the Supreme Court would hear oral arguments and expand on its Masterpiece decision. The high court, though, punted on that decision.

First Liberty filed suit after the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries (BOLI) ruled the Kleins had violated a law banning discrimination based on sexual orientation. The BOLI also handed down a $135,000 penalty. The Oregon Court of Appeals ruled against the Kleins, and the Oregon Supreme Court declined to take the case.

“The State of Oregon drove Melissa and Aaron Klein out of the custom-cake business and hit them with a $135,000 penalty, because the Kleins could not in good conscience employ their artistic talents to express a message celebrating a same-sex wedding ritual,” First Liberty’s petition to the U.S. Supreme Court read.

The Kleins “opened and operated” their baker as an expression of their Christian faith,” the petition said. Further, they believe “God instituted marriage as the union of one man and one woman.”

They served all customers “regardless of sexual orientation.” They even had sold a cake to one of the lesbian complainants in the case for her mother’s marriage to a man. But they could not, the petition said, create a cake celebrating a same-sex wedding.

“The Kleins created these cakes, in part, because they wanted to celebrate weddings between one man and one woman,” the petition said. “The Kleins do not believe that other types of interpersonal unions are marriages, and they believe it is sinful to celebrate them as such.”

The state’s order violated the First Amendment, the First Liberty petition argued.

“Unless this Court enforces the First Amendment,” the petition said, “similar cases will continue to arise, as creative entrepreneurs are compelled, under the guise of public accommodations statutes, to participate in same-sex marriage rituals that violate their sincerely held religious beliefs, or – as the Kleins did – to sacrifice their livelihood.”

The Thomas More Society, Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and Cato Institute were among the groups that asked the Supreme Court to side with the Kleins. The attorneys general for 11 states also issued a friend-of-the-court brief supporting the Kleins. Those states were Texas, Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, Louisiana, Nebraska, Nevada, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Utah and West Virginia.

This article originally posted on ChristianHeadlines.com