Why We Must Defend Religious Liberty

In Appleton, Wisconsin, Marge Christensen labors tirelessly to share the Gospel. In her eighties, Marge is active in her church and has been promoting biblical citizenship for more than twenty years. She and her husband are ambassadors for the Alliance Defending Freedom and have been working lately to encourage churches to promote marriage with greater boldness.

Recently, Marge shared with a colleague of mine that churches do not seem to sense the urgency of teaching on matters of marriage, family and especially religious liberty.

Folks, that’s a problem.

A friend of mine, you may have heard of him, Rick Santorum, shares Marge’s concerns. After a long and illustrious career in politics, Rick has taken over as chief executive of EchoLight Studios with the goal of bringing top-notch and redemptive media to a darkened culture.

EchoLight’s latest documentary film, “One Generation Away,” draws its inspiration from Ronald Reagan’s famous inaugural address as California’s 33rd governor. In it, Reagan warned: “Freedom is a fragile thing and is never more than one generation away from extinction. It is not ours by inheritance; it must be fought for and defended constantly by each generation, for it comes only once to a people. Those who have known freedom and then lost it have never known it again.”

Several of the cases examined in the movie are familiar to us. There’s the decades-long battle to remove the large cross from the Mt. Soledad Veteran’s Memorial in San Diego. And then there’s the coercive healthcare mandate that sought to force businesses like Hobby Lobby to violate Christian conscience and pay for abortion-inducing drugs.

But what makes “One Generation Away” so interesting and valuable is that it interviews leaders on both sides of the issue. Along with a great cast of stalwart defenders of religious freedom like Mike Huckabee and Ryan Anderson of the Heritage Foundation, you’ll hear from members of the ACLU and Americans United for the Separation of Church and State—people who are leading the crusade to restrict religious expression in public life.

And as I myself say in the film (and yes, I was privileged to take a part in it), to preserve our freedom we have to know what our liberties are and what they aren’t. And we have to defend them—and that requires knowing our opponents’ arguments and intentions.

Part of the task will be reminding our fellow Christians that we believers have full rights of citizenship. Too many of us have bought into the idea that religion is purely a private matter. God forbid! As Vincent Munoz of Notre Dame said so well in the film, “Just as other citizens can bring their convictions into the public square, religious citizens can and should bring their convictions into the public square. Don’t you lose your rights because you’re religious!”

Folks, the lesson of “One Generation Away” is that vigilance in defending our freedoms is not a one-time task, but a sacred trust that we pass from generation to generation.

This is why I hope you will get your church to host a screening of “One Generation Away”—and please get your friends and neighbors to attend. Come to BreakPoint.org and click on this commentary. We’ll link you to the movie’s website so you can learn how your church can premiere the movie at no cost to you or your congregation.

Folks, we’ve got to do something. And this is something we can do. I hope you’ll do it.

This article was originally posted at the BreakPoint.org website.

When it comes to supporting God’s design for marriage, Illinois Family Institute isn’t “chicken,” and neither is Chick-fil-A president Dan Cathy.  Christian-owned Chick-fil-A is under attack because Mr. Cathy has publicly affirmed his belief in the biblical definition of marriage. 

As a result, homosexual groups have launched un-relenting and vicious public attacks against Chick-fil-A. Here in Illinois, Equality Illinois, a pro-LGBT activist group, is calling for a “Kiss-In” this Friday, August 3rd.  According to news reports, Equality Illinois says, “LGBT supporters will show their disdain for Chick-Fil-A’s policies with public displays of affection in front of their restaurants.”  And in the process they will once again be demonstrating just how intolerant, insensitive and disrespectful the Left is in pushing its “anything goes” agenda.  

Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day is being promoted by Gov. Mike Huckabee, Senator Rick Santorum, Gov. Sarah Palin, American Family Association, Family Research Council, WallBuilders and Illinois Family Institute.  This is a great way of showing our support for a company whose owners believe in marriage as one man and one woman.

IFI encourages you to patronize a local Chick-fil-A restaurant on August 1st,  if you are able.  If you cannot make it this Wednesday, please visit one sometime this week. For a list of Chick-fil-A locations in the state of Illinois, click HERE.

And when you do, please take a moment to thank the staff and management by letting them know you appreciate the company’s Christian values.

WARNING: Not for younger readers

They used to arrest middle-aged perverts who get their jollies from talking dirty to children. Today, they get a television show, a nationally syndicated column, a lecture circuit and multiple visits to the Obama White House.

You know: “Forward.”

The irony is palpable. Dan Savage, sex columnist and founder of the LGBT anti-bullying “It Gets Better” campaign, has been outed. Not as a homosexual. He’s out and proud in that regard. In fact, Savage pushes his “anything goes” brand of sexual anarchy on kids worldwide. MTV has even given the sex-obsessed radical his own show, “Savage U” – a moral-relativist platform from which to corrupt the kiddos.

Creepy stuff.

No, Savage has finally managed to publicly discredit himself as the anti-Christian bigot and bully he’s always been. Never again will this guy be taken seriously as an anti-bullying crusader.

Savage lectures teens in high schools and colleges around the country on the benefits of “non-monogamy,” the occasional “three-way” tryst and any other disease-spreading sexual impulse that might cross their impressionable, hormone-charged young minds (and many they can’t yet imagine).

Well, recently, rather than just shocking his teenaged audience with vulgar, sophomoric psychobabble as usual, Savage apparently thought it’d be fun to bully the kids with whom he disagreed.

While addressing a crowd of hundreds of high schoolers at the National High School Journalism Convention, Savage launched into an unhinged anti-Christian diatribe. He advised the teens to “ignore the bulls*** in the Bible” about sexual morality. “We ignore bulls*** in the Bible about all sorts of things,” he barked.

He then walked through a list of the same tired left-wing talking points about the Bible – long ago discredited – covering shellfish, virginity, etc. “The Bible is a radically pro-slavery document,” he said (anti-Christian trash we’ve come to expect from the secular left).

But when a hundred or more kids got up and began to walk out on Savage’s anti-Christian rant, the 47-year-old tough guy turned his hostility toward them. “It’s funny to someone who is on the receiving end of beatings that are justified by the Bible how pansy***** people react when you push back,” he mocked. Some of the young girls were seen leaving in tears.

“It took a real dark, hostile turn, certainly, as I saw it,” teacher Rick Tuttle told CNN. “It became very hostile toward Christianity, to the point that many students did walk out, including some of my students.

“They felt that they were attacked … a very pointed, direct attack on one particular group of students. It’s amazing that we go to an anti-bullying speech and one group of students is picked on in particular, with harsh, profane language.”

But the only thing surprising is that anyone is surprised. Dan Savage is known in Christian circles at “the gay Fred Phelps.” Phelps, of course, is the similarly cartoonish Westboro Baptist “preacher” who gained notoriety by protesting military funerals with his incestuous brood of pseudo-Christian haters. Savage is Phelps’ photo negative. Whereas Phelps’ hateful mantra is “God hates fags,” Savage’s central message is “I hate God and anyone who loves Him.”

Savage’s primary claim to fame is that he formed the website “Santorum.com,” to create a “Google bomb” that would smear the good name of former senator and presidential candidate Rick Santorum. On the site he redefined the senator’s last name, Santorum, using language so vile and repulsive that I won’t repeat it. When Christian advocate and Americans for Truth founder Peter LaBarbera asked Savage to take down the website, Savage responded, “I’m asking Peter LaBarbera to go f*** himself.”

Savage also once bragged that he licked the doorknobs at former Republican presidential candidate Gary Bauer’s campaign office in hopes of giving Mr. Bauer the flu.

Savage told the Daily Pennsylvanian in 2006 that Carl Romanelli, a U.S. senate candidate he didn’t like, “should be dragged behind a pickup truck until there’s nothing left but the rope.” In the same interview, he opined: “Mr. Romanelli should go f*** himself.” He also once said on HBO that he “wished all Republicans were f***ing dead.”

Yep, this deviant troglodyte is the face of the left’s anti-bullying efforts. I’ve often said that those wonderfully “tolerant” liberals – the self-styled opponents of “hate” and “bigotry” – are the most intolerant, hateful bigots among us.

Thanks for proving my point, Dan.

Six GOP presidential candidates are battling it out in the great “early voting states trifecta.” Voters launched the process in Iowa last week to select the Republican Party’s nominee to challenge President Barack Obama in November. The remaining weeks in January citizens in New Hampshire and South Carolina will make their voices heard. Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney seems to have a lock on the Granite State while the more conservative presidential hopefuls have better prospects in South Carolina.

Poll Watch?

A recent 7 News/Suffolk University tracking poll has Romney receiving 41 percent support, Texas Congressman Ron Paul was second in the poll with 18 percent and in third 8 percent of likely voters say they support former U.S. Senator Rick Santorum. Former Utah governor Jon Huntsman, who has made New Hampshire the focus of his bid for the GOP nomination, came in at nine percent.

But the world saw what a difference a caucus makes in Iowa. The social conservative, Santorum, who two months ago had one percent support among likely South Carolina Republican Primary voters, now is running a close second there with 24 percent of the vote. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich sits in third with 16 percent of the vote. Bringing up the rear is Texas Governor Rick Perry with five percent and former Utah Governor Jon Huntsman at two percent, according to Rasmussen Reports. Another two percent of these likely primary voters like some other candidate, and 11 percent remain undecided.

Evangelical Christian voters prefer Santorum over Romney 33 percent to 17 percent.  But Romney leads among other Protestants, Catholics and voters of other faiths with roughly one-third of the votes from each group.

Vying for the Evangelical Vote

For weeks now Santorum, Perry, Gingrich, and in some regards Paul, have all vied for the important evangelical Christian vote.

Congressman Steve King (R-Iowa) says developing the right message and a good strategy is critical if a candidate hopes to receive the nomination.

“They’re saying Mitt Romney, who looks like he’s a shoo-in in New Hampshire, if he could have a good, strong showing in Iowa and go through New Hampshire and on down and win South Carolina, he’d be well on his way to the nomination,” King reports. “It’d be awfully hard to reverse it at that point.”

Even if a conservative candidate did not do well in Iowa, he suggests a good showing in South Carolina can sustain a campaign through the summer months.

“On the other hand, a candidate who may not finish first here in Iowa has an opportunity to go to South Carolina, and if they do well there, they can keep their fundraising going enough to get to [the January 31 primary in] Florida,” the congressman adds.

After leading in the pools, Gingrich did poorly in Iowa as a result of millions of dollars was spent in negative attack ads by pro-Romney PACS (political action committees).  Rick Tyler, senior adviser for Winning Our Future, a super PAC for Newt Gingrich, says fundraising has been robust of serious of ads hit the Internet pushing back.

“We intend to lay out the record of all the people in the race and let people make a decision as long as we don’t make a false witness,” said Tyler. “We will extol Newt’s record as a solid conservative who can beat Barack Obama.”

Click HERE TO SUPPORT Illinois Family Institute.
As little as $60 goes a long way toward protecting your values in Illinois!
Sign up as an IFI Ministry Partner for just $60/year, which is just $5 per month.