Alliance Defending Freedom attorneys representing an Illinois doctor and two pregnancy care centers filed suit in state court against Gov. Bruce Rauner after he recently signed a bill into law that forces doctors and medical facilities to promote abortion regardless of their ethical or moral views on the practice.

ADF sent a letter to Rauner in May on behalf of numerous pro-life physicians, pregnancy care centers, and pregnancy care center network organizations advising him that the bill, SB 1564, would violate federal law and therefore place federal funding, including Medicaid reimbursements, in jeopardy. ADF also warned legislators about the problems with the bill last year. The lawsuit claims the new law, which is actually an amendment to the existing Illinois Healthcare Right of Conscience Act, violates state law and the state constitution.

“No state should attempt to rob women of the right to choose a pro-life doctor by forcing pro-life physicians and entities to make or arrange abortion referrals. What’s even worse is that Illinois did this by amending a law designed specifically to protect freedom of conscience,” said ADF Senior Counsel Matt Bowman. “The governor should have vetoed this bill for many reasons, including its incompatibility with Illinois law and the state constitution, which specifically protects freedom of conscience and free speech.”

The new law forces medical facilities and physicians who conscientiously object to involvement in abortions to adopt policies that provide women who ask for abortions with a list of providers “they reasonably believe may offer” them. Illinois law prohibits government from placing burdens on religious conscience without a compelling interest for doing so. Additionally, the Illinois Constitution protects “liberty of conscience,” saying that “no person shall be denied any civil or political right, privilege or capacity, on account of his religious opinions.” It also protects free speech, which includes the right not to be compelled by government to speak a message contrary to one’s own conscience.

“Pro-life health care professionals shouldn’t be forced to hand out lists describing how to contact abortionists, yet that’s what this law mandates that they do,” explained ADF Senior Counsel Kevin Theriot. “If this profane amendment to Illinois’ conscience protection law remains on the books, doctors and medical staff committed to saving all lives will be forced to promote the killing of some children, women will lose access to doctors who unconditionally value human life, and pregnancy resource centers that offer free help and hope to pregnant women will be forced to refer to abortionists. This is the kind of government coercion that the state constitution, the state Religious Freedom Restoration Act, and the very law that was amended were all designed to prevent.”

Mauck & Baker LLC attorney Noel Sterett, one of more than 3,000 private attorneys allied with ADF, is co-counsel in the case, The Pregnancy Care Center of Rockford v. Rauner, filed in the Circuit Court of the 17th Judicial Circuit in Winnebago County.

Attorney Noel Sterett, co-counsel in the case and partner at Mauck & Baker, LLC, in Chicago, says, “These crisis pregnancy centers have been doing tremendous work serving their community for years, but now their core mission is being threatened. People disagree on whether abortions end human lives, but I’d hope we can all agree that pregnancy centers dedicated to protecting the unborn should not be forced to recommend abortion to mothers.”

Alliance Defending Freedom attorneys representing an Illinois doctor and two pregnancy care centers filed suit in state court against Gov. Bruce Rauner after he recently signed a bill into law that forces doctors and medical facilities to promote abortion regardless of their ethical or moral views on the practice.

ADF sent a letter to Rauner in May on behalf of numerous pro-life physicians, pregnancy care centers, and pregnancy care center network organizations advising him that the bill, SB 1564, would violate federal law and therefore place federal funding, including Medicaid reimbursements, in jeopardy. ADF also warned legislators about the problems with the bill last year. The lawsuit claims the new law, which is actually an amendment to the existing Illinois Healthcare Right of Conscience Act, violates state law and the state constitution.

“No state should attempt to rob women of the right to choose a pro-life doctor by forcing pro-life physicians and entities to make or arrange abortion referrals. What’s even worse is that Illinois did this by amending a law designed specifically to protect freedom of conscience,” said ADF Senior Counsel Matt Bowman. “The governor should have vetoed this bill for many reasons, including its incompatibility with Illinois law and the state constitution, which specifically protects freedom of conscience and free speech.”

The new law forces medical facilities and physicians who conscientiously object to involvement in abortions to adopt policies that provide women who ask for abortions with a list of providers “they reasonably believe may offer” them. Illinois law prohibits government from placing burdens on religious conscience without a compelling interest for doing so. Additionally, the Illinois Constitution protects “liberty of conscience,” saying that “no person shall be denied any civil or political right, privilege or capacity, on account of his religious opinions.” It also protects free speech, which includes the right not to be compelled by government to speak a message contrary to one’s own conscience.

“Pro-life health care professionals shouldn’t be forced to hand out lists describing how to contact abortionists, yet that’s what this law mandates that they do,” explained ADF Senior Counsel Kevin Theriot. “If this profane amendment to Illinois’ conscience protection law remains on the books, doctors and medical staff committed to saving all lives will be forced to promote the killing of some children, women will lose access to doctors who unconditionally value human life, and pregnancy resource centers that offer free help and hope to pregnant women will be forced to refer to abortionists. This is the kind of government coercion that the state constitution, the state Religious Freedom Restoration Act, and the very law that was amended were all designed to prevent.”

Mauck & Baker LLC attorney Noel Sterett, one of more than 3,000 private attorneys allied with ADF, is co-counsel in the case, The Pregnancy Care Center of Rockford v. Rauner, filed in the Circuit Court of the 17th Judicial Circuit in Winnebago County.

Noel Sterett, partner at Mauck & Baker, LLC, in Chicago, says, “These crisis pregnancy centers have been doing tremendous work serving their community for years, but now their core mission is being threatened. People disagree on whether abortions end human lives, but I’d hope we can all agree that pregnancy centers dedicated to protecting the unborn should not be forced to recommend abortion to mothers.”

View Complaint

Article originally published at MauckBaker.com.

Written by David E. Smith and Laurie Higgins

Despite a full-court press by IFI and many Illinois pro-life groups–including dozens of pregnancy resource centers (PRCs)–Governor Bruce Rauner chose to sign legislation (late Friday afternoon) that will result in our state government requiring pro-life medical professionals to refer patients for medical procedures/services they find morally objectionable such as abortion, sterilization and certain end-of-life care protocols.

This is not the result for which so many hoped and prayed.

Nonetheless, IFI wants to thank all those who took time to call or email the governor to ask him to veto SB 1564.

IFI also wants to acknowledge and thank those handful of pro-life state lawmakers who recently met with Rauner in an attempt to persuade him to reject this proposal.  IFI is deeply grateful for those who took time to plead the pro-life, pro-conscience position with Rauner.

Despite the fact that not one Republican voted for the final version of SB 1564, Rauner decided to side with the Democrats in approving its final passage.

Thankfully, we have a system of checks and balances.  IFI has been informed that a lawsuit is being planned to challenge this onerous and tyrannical new law.  So now we must now shift our focus to praying for the Thomas More Society in their effort to overturn this unconscionable law in court.

This legislative travesty accentuates the need for Christians to be involved in the political process and engaged in the public square.  No American should ever be required by the government to do or say something that violates their deeply held beliefs.

It is because so many Christians have abdicated their civic responsibilities with regard to self-government (also known as “politics”) that we are seeing tyranny rise and religious liberty erode. Unless and until conservatives cease being one- or two-issue voters (e.g., focusing almost solely on the economy and defense), secular humanists, cultural Christians, and libertarians will continue their perversion of the legislative process.

Unless and until social conservatives exercise their power while they still have any, there will remain no party to defend social conservatism, including issues related to life, marriage, properly ordered sexuality, physical privacy, religious liberty, and conscience rights. Unless social conservatives reject those who reject social conservatism, the already-present hostility to social conservatives and rejection of social conservatism will intensify.

Instead of throwing in the towel in response to the traitorous outrage perpetrated by Rauner–who has demonstrated his willingness to thwart the will of Democrats with regard to the budget bill–IFI wants to challenge conservatives to double down instead.  We desperately need more–many more–pro-life/pro-family/pro-children’s rights men and women in Springfield.

As we head into fall, the November election looms large. Don’t disengage! Find a local candidate you can get behind, and volunteer and/or financially support him or her. Support those candidates who demonstrate an unequivocal and unashamed commitment to the social issues, which are essential to the continued flourishing of America.

In addition, consider volunteering and/or financially supporting a local pregnancy resource center, starting a pro-life/pro-family committee at your church, and attending IFI events and forums.

And let us not grow weary while doing good,
for in due season we shall reap if we do not lose heart.
~Galatians 6:9~

Moral revolutions require legal revolutions. This is certainly the case with the sexual revolution and its various causes of sexual liberation. A revolution is only complete when the legal structure aligns itself with a new moral understanding. This alignment is exactly what is taking place in American public life on the issue of gay liberation.

Every society has a structure of systems that either influence or coerce behavior. Eventually, societies move to legislate and regulate behavior in order to align the society with what is commonly, or at least largely, considered morally right and wrong. Civilization could not survive without a system of moral controls and influences.

Throughout almost all of Western history, for the most part, this process has played out in a non-threatening way for the Christian church and Christians in the larger society. So long as the moral judgment of the culture matched the convictions and teachings of the church, the church and culture were not at odds in the courts. Furthermore, under these conditions, to be found on the wrong side of a moral assessment was rarely a likelihood for Christians.

All that began to change in the modern age as the culture became more secularized and as Western societies moved more progressively distant from the Christian morality they had embraced in the past. Christians in this generation recognize that we do not represent the same moral framework now pervasively presented in modern academia, the context of creative culture, and the arena of law. The secularization of public life and the separation of society from its Christian roots has left many Americans seemingly unaware of the fact that the very beliefs and teachings for which Christians are now criticized were once considered not only mainstream beliefs, but essential to the entire project of society. As the sexual revolution completely pervades the society, and as the issues raised by the efforts of gay liberation and the legalization of same-sex marriage come to the fore, Christians now face an array of religious liberty challenges that were inconceivable in previous generations.

In one of the most important of these recent cases, a judge found that a wedding photographer broke the law by refusing to serve as a photographer for a same-sex wedding. In an incredibly revealing decision, the court stated, quite straightforwardly, that the religious liberties of the photographer would indeed be violated by coerced participation in a same-sex wedding. Nevertheless, the court found that the new morality trumped concern for religious liberty.

Similarly, we have seen religious institutions, especially colleges and schools, confronted by the demands that amount to a surrender to the sexual revolution with regards to nondiscrimination on the basis of sex, sexual behavior, and sexual orientation pertaining to admissions, the hiring of faculty, and student housing. In some jurisdictions, lawmakers are contemplating hate crime legislation that would marginalize and criminalize speech that is in conflict with the new moral consensus.

We now face an inevitable conflict of liberties. In this context of acute and radical moral change, the conflict of liberties is excruciating, immense, and eminent. In this case, the conflict of liberties means that the new moral regime, with the backing of the courts and the regulatory state, will prioritize erotic liberty over religious liberty. Over the course of the last several decades, we have seen this revolution coming. Erotic liberty has been elevated as a right more fundamental than religious liberty. Erotic liberty now marginalizes, subverts, and neutralizes religious liberty—a liberty highly prized by the builders of this nation and its constitutional order. We must remember that the framers of the Constitution did not believe they were creating rights within the Constitution, but rather acknowledging rights given to all humanity by “nature and nature’s God.”

The challenges we will face with regards to religious liberty are immense and increasing by the season. The government has at its disposal mechanisms for moral coercion that reach far beyond prisons, jails, and fines. For example, at least some business people who refused to participate in same-sex weddings, such as photographers, bakers, or florists, were required to undergo “sensitivity training.” In order to understand how the new moral regime uses sensitivity training, it is helpful to think back to iconic works of the twentieth century such as Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World and George Orwell’s 1984. These sensitivity training programs represent efforts to bring intellectual cleansing. And now, in some jurisdictions they can be inflicted upon religious believers who dare oppose the morality of the new regime.

The religious liberty challenge we now face consigns every believer, every religious institution, and every congregation in the arena of conflict where erotic liberty and religious liberty now clash. This poses no danger to theological liberals and their churches and denominations because those churches have accommodated themselves to the new morality and find themselves quite comfortable within the context of the new moral regime. Furthermore, some of these liberal denominations and churches style themselves as defenders of the new morality and actually advocate legal modifications that restrict the religious liberty rights of more conservative churches and denominations.

Interestingly, Jonathan Rauch, one of the early advocates of gay marriage warned his fellow moral revolutionaries that they must be careful lest they trample upon the conscience rights and religious liberty of their adversaries. In his book, Kindly Inquisitors: The New Attacks on Free Thought, Rauch voiced his concern:

Today, I fear that many people on my side of the gay-equality question are forgetting our debt to the system that freed us. Some gay people—not all, not even most, but quite a few—want to expunge discriminatory views. “Discrimination is discrimination and bigotry is bigotry,” they say, “and they are intolerable whether or not they happen to be someone’s religion or moral creed.”

Rauch also stated, “I hope that when gay people—and non-gay people—encounter hateful or discriminatory opinions, we respond not by trying to silence or punish them but by trying to correct them.” Very few signs, however, are signaling that Rauch’s admonition is being heard. A review of the religious liberty challenges already confronting the conscience, conduct, and belief rights of convictional Christians shows us how daunting all this really is. We can be sure this is not the end of our struggle. It is only the beginning.

Article originally published at albertmoehler.com.

The Pro-Life Action League is not willing shut up about abortion and just live with it. The group’s annual Face the Truth Tour brought a disturbing reminder to Chicago area streets that abortion kills babies. But leaders of the Pro-Life Action League are also reminding Christians that they should vote for candidates who support the rights of the unborn and who back legislation that protects the choice to not collaborate in abortion.

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Written by Richard Wiley

Freedom of conscience is at risk, and the attack upon it has officially enveloped the field of medicine.

Remember the 11,588,500 word bill passed by Congress in 2010, accompanied by the hopeful promise of easy-access healthcare? The bill that continues to cause the closure of small businesses and price hikes in the insurance market? That’s right, the Affordable Care Act (aka “Obamacare”) strikes again. Pointing back to Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and the Age Discrimination Act of 1975, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is now using Obamacare to target the right to liberty of conscience.

Reminiscent of the rainbow colors projected on the White House after Obergefell v. Hodges, the HHS is doing everything it can to solidify its celebration and special treatment for those struggling with their sexuality. Pursuant to a final rule to become effective July 18th entitled “Nondiscrimination in Health Programs and Activities,” every medical practice treating any patient who participates in HHS administered or funded health programs or in the health insurance marketplaces will be required to comply with Obamacare’s new “nondiscrimination protections”.

According to HHS, unlawful “discrimination” based on “sex” is not limited to choosing to operate on a female instead of a male simply because she’s a female and he’s a male; the new definition includes refusing to provide sex-reassignment surgery because you disagree with it as a matter of medical or moral judgment. The rule thus mandates that medical institutions provide sex reassignment surgeries to patients regardless of the religious interests of the institution or physician. Possible penalties for violating the rule include civil suits, fines, and criminal investigations.

It doesn’t stop with transgender conundrums, however; the new rule also includes those requesting abortions to the list of protected classes. Although the HHS declares that the rule (section 1557) does not replace the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act or other provisions pertaining to religion, it fails to articulate any means of seeking relief under religious exemptions and is silent as to which provisions would be lifted and which would be stayed, should any relief be requested. The rule simply states, “[i]nsofar as the application of any requirement under this part would violate applicable Federal statutory protections for religious freedom and conscience, such application shall not be required.” No other mention of religious exemption is provided, leaving further procedural steps in limbo to be determined on a case-by-case basis with no uniform application.

Regulations will typically lay out a section detailing which providers are exempt under which circumstances because not doing so produces nebulous interpretations of the law. The practice is more than a courtesy, and omitting such a provision is a telling action indeed.

In addition to breaking down the freedom of conscience and religion, the rule erodes doctors’ professional judgment regarding which procedures are necessary, effective, and plausible for their patients. It’s another case of micromanagement that will have additional economic and moral ramifications for the medical field.

In the end, it’s clear that the rule is a ruse. While the federal government brandishes the colorful flag of the downtrodden class of sexual revolutionaries in its hand, it tramples on the ashes of truth, proudly proclaiming its fidelity to the cause of the deceived. Ironically and tragically, the very thing that can cause healing, that can provide some long overdue stability to struggling families, is the very thing the government continues to deride: the truth.

This article was originally posted at the FamilyFoundation.org blog.

Last night the U.S. House of Representatives passed the federal Conscience Protection Act (CPA) by a vote of 245-182.  This vital legislation will help protect health care providers from being forced to pay for or participate in abortions, and allow victims of discrimination a “right of action” to defend their rights in court. (Read more HERE.)

Three Democratic Members voted in favor of the bill, including Dan Lipinski of Chicago’s south side.  The only Republican to vote against the bill was Richard Hanna of New York.  (Democrats voted 3 to 181. Republicans voted 242 to 1. There were six members not voting.)

This legislation will now move to the U.S. Senate for consideration.

How Did Illinois’ Congressional Delegation Vote?

Rep. Bobby L. Rush (D)—NAY
1st Congressional Dist.
Washington Phone: (202) 225-4372
District Phone: (773) 224-6500
Webform

Rep. Robin Kelly (D)—NAY
2nd Congressional Dist.
Washington Phone: (202) 225-0773
District Phone: (708) 679-0078
Webform

Rep. Daniel Lipinski (D)—YEA
3rd Congressional Dist.
Washington Phone: 202-225-5701
District Phone: 312-886-0481
Webform

Rep. Luis V. Gutierrez (D)—NAY
4th Congressional Dist.
Washington Phone: (202) 225-8203
District Phone: (773) 342-0774
Webform

Rep. Mike Quigley (D)—NAY
5th Congressional Dist.
Washington Phone: (202) 225-4061
District Phone: (773) 267-5926
Webform

Rep. Peter Roskam (R)—YEA
6th Congressional Dist.
Washington Phone: (202) 225-4561
District Phone: (630) 232-7393
Webform

Rep. Danny K. Davis (D)—NAY
7th Congressional Dist.
Washington Phone: (202)225-5006
District Phone: (773) 533-7520
Webform

Rep. Tammy Duckworth (D)—NAY
8th Congressional Dist.
Washington Phone: (202) 225-3711
District Phone: (847) 413-1959
Webform

Rep. Janice D. Schakowsky (D)—NAY
9th Congressional Dist.
Washington Phone: (202) 225-2111
District Phone: (773) 506-7100
Webform

Rep. Bob Dold (R)—YEA
10th Congressional Dist.
Washington Phone: (202) 225-4835
District Phone: (847) 793-8400
Webform

Rep. Bill Foster (D)—NAY
11th Congressional Dist.
Washington Phone: (202) 225-3515
District Phone: (630) 585-7672
Webform

Rep. Mike Bost (R)—YEA
12th Congressional Dist.
Washington Phone: (202) 225-5661
District Phone: (618)-233-8026
Webform

Rep. Rodney Davis (R)—YEA
13th Congressional Dist.
Washington Phone: (202) 225-2371
District Phone: (217) 791-6224
Webform

Rep. Randy Hultgren (R)—YEA
14th Congressional Dist.
Washington Phone: (202) 225-2976
District Phone: (630) 584-2734
Webform

Rep. John Simkus (R)—YEA
15th Congressional Dist.
Washington Phone: (202) 225-5271
District Phone: (217) 347-7947
Webform

Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R)—YEA
16th Congressional Dist.
Washington Phone: (202) 225-3635
District Phone: (815) 708-8032
Webform

Rep. Cheri Bustos (D)—NAY
17th Congressional Dist.
Washington Phone: (202) 225-5905
District Phone: (309) 966-1813
Webform

Rep. Darin LaHood (R)—YEA
18th Congressional Dist.
Washington Phone: (202) 225-6201
District Phone: (309) 671-7027
Webform

Take ACTION: Contact both of our U.S. Senators to urge them to sponsor and pass The Conscience Protection Act of 2016, to defend the conscience rights of those who wish not to be involved in supporting abortion. You can also call the U.S. Capitol switchboard at (202) 224-3121 and ask to be transferred.

Passing this law is even more urgent with the recent decision by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to allow the state of California to continue forcing healthcare plans to cover elective abortions. This bill is needed now to stop further discrimination against people who respect unborn human life. It is wrong for the government to force Americans to violate their deeply held moral convictions and respect for human life.

Support the work of IFI for your family and community

We must continue, now more than ever, to champion immutable moral principles and take a strong stand for traditional values. IFI will continue to be your voice at the capitol, in the community, in the media, and in the culture.  Bible believing Christians and true conservatives cannot afford to run the risk of complacency while anti-God, anti-American, and anti-freedom forces work overtime.

If you believe in the mission and purpose of Illinois Family Institute, please send your most generous contribution to IFI today. IFI is supported by voluntary donations from individuals like you across the state of Illinois. Donations to IFI are tax-deductible.

Illinois Family Institute
P.O. Box 876
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(All gifts to IFI are tax-deductible.)

Written by Carl R. Trueman

Last week, Chad Vegas, a good friend of mine and the Reformed Baptist pastor in Bakersfield, California emailed me as follows:

As you know, CA has mandated this [school transgender policy] for the whole state. I have served on the largest high school board in CA, and the nation, for 12 years. I basically lead that board. Our board voted to adopt the new law into policy. I voted against it. I was breaking the law for doing so. I could be personally sued and our attorney tells me the board insurance won’t cover me because I am breaking the law and I am a bigot. Anyway, I announced I would not seek reelection. The community came unhinged when I announced that. I remain the most popularly elected official in the history of our school board. Thousands of parents filled our board room in protest of the law. Thousands are pleading with me to reconsider and keep fighting. My elders are still considering what to have me do…. [T]he board and administration, and even some leaders in the liberal teacher’s union, are asking me to reconsider.

On Thursday, he announced that he would not seek re-election in a letter to his congregation.

There you have it: A popular, longstanding, and effective member of a school board has had to stand down—not because he does not enjoy the confidence of the community, but simply because he does not accept the latest demands that every knee must bow to whatever the political taste of the moment has decided is non-negotiable.

It reminded me of my review of John Inazu’s new book on confident pluralism and his response. Essentially, I argued that confident pluralism depended upon a balance of cultural and political power. As that balance no longer existed, pluralism was effectively dead. John responded that I was too pessimistic and that my own tone in my review was not entirely conducive to promoting pluralism.

Well, the fate of Chad Vegas in Bakersfield is a great example of precisely my point. He is a popular member of the schoolboard, perhaps the most popular. Even his liberal opponents acknowledge that and want him to stay. But he cannot. He has already broken the law by voting his conscience. He could be sued for that. And how many of those who want him to stay would be willing to stand shoulder to shoulder during a long, exhausting and punitively expensive legal action?

This cultural moment has been taking shape for some time. A few years ago my oldest son was running track for an Ivy League school. One of the team came out as a lesbian and it was decided that all athletes should wear a rainbow armband in support. My son did not want to comply but also did not wish to cause unnecessary offense to his friends and so he called me and asked what argument he should make against the idea. I told him to say that, as one of America’s greatest virtues was its freedom, he should tell his teammates that he absolutely respected their right to wear the armband in solidarity with their friend. They were free to do so and he rejoiced to live in a nation where they could do so. But by the same token, they should respect his right not to wear the armband in accordance with his personal religious convictions. That’s a good argument, I said, and I told him he should make it modestly and politely and then simply not wear the band without drawing any great attention to his act. But I also advised him that it would not be greeted with approval because the issue was not really about the freedom to be tolerant and diverse, whatever the rhetoric. It was about the intolerant political demand that all should be the same. Sure enough, he was decried as a bigot and homophobe.

Thus it is in modern America. To repeat myself: Confident pluralism assumes either a balance of power or a basic common decency between the various sides in any of the cultural debates. The balance and the decency no longer exist. Nor does it matter that there might be a democratic majority supporting the dissenter in whatever public-square conflict occurs. Power is not a function of numbers any more, if it ever was. It is a function of organization and of having one’s hands on the levers of cultural and legal power. Expect no quarter in the conflicts that are already upon us, however many of your neighbors may initially express sympathy with you.

The long Gramscian march of the activist bien pensants through the institutions is reaching its conclusion. It really is. And it is time to face that fact and abandon the myth that the world is run by people who respect difference and diversity, and that all we need to do is behave decently in order to win their respect and earn their favor. They do not think that way. They will never think that way. And they will crush those who do. By any means necessary.

Carl R. Trueman is Paul Woolley Professor of Church History at Westminster Theological Seminary.

This article was originally posted at FirstThings.com

The kind of draconian restrictions of speech and religious rights that corrupt Canadian governance are  arriving bit by corroded bit on America’s church steps sooner than many expected and in, of all places,  Iowa. Make no mistake though, this is coming to every state.

Iowa, like many other states, has a law banning discrimination based on, among other conditions, “sexual orientation” and “gender identity,” in places of public accommodation. To be clear, the rhetorical contrivance “sexual orientation” really means “subjective homoerotic attraction and volitional homoerotic acts,”* and the rhetorical contrivance “gender identity” really means “the subjective desire to be the opposite sex or no sex,” both of which are ontological impossibilities.

Iowa also has a Civil Rights Commission that has issued “guidance” on how the state law and corresponding city codes affect churches. It states that the anti-discrimination law—including its provisions regarding homoerotic feelings and sex-rejection—does, in fact, apply to churches. Fortunately, the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) has filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of the Fort Des Moines Church of Christ to prevent the civil rights commission and Iowa attorney general “from forcing Fort Des Moines to use its facility in a way that violates its religious beliefs about human sexuality.”

Here are some of the tricksy ways the Iowa Civil Rights Commission seeks to violate the civil rights of Christians.

Place of public accommodation

The Iowa law banning discrimination based on “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” applies to  places of public accommodation, from which historically churches have been exempt. But inventive (or cunning) Iowa public servants have found a way around that pesky obstacle to their absolutist cultural ambitions. The commissioners write that if any place that is “distinctly private by its nature….offers some services, facilities, or goods to the general public, it will be treated as a public accommodation for those services,” and, of course, church services are open and offered to the general public. By that very act of opening church services to all, churches—in the opinion of the Iowa Civil Rights Commission—become subject to Iowa’s anti-discrimination law and vulnerable to lawsuits for non-compliance.

Churches and their “bona fide religious purposes”

The commission explains that “Iowa law provides that these protections do not apply to religious institutions with respect to any religion-based qualifications when such qualifications are related to a bona fide religious purpose. Where qualifications are not related to a bona fide religious purpose, churches are still subject to the law’s provisions.”

Many Christians will be scratching their heads at those statements in that virtually everything that takes place within churches has a bona fide religious purpose or, more precisely, is informed by religious belief. Since neither the law nor the commission’s interpretation of the law defines a “bona fide religious purpose,” I will take a stab at the definition: To the commission, a “bona fide religious purpose” is a religious purpose so narrow in its scope and application that no secularist can hear or see it.

For those still baffled by the commission’s gaseous emanations, the commission provides two specific examples of church activities that because of their public nature are unrelated to a “bona fide religious purpose” and, therefore, “subject to the law’s provisions”: “a child care facility operated at a church or a church service open to the public.”

Bodily sex and physical privacy

The commission warns that churches that offer services open to the public must allow sex-rejecting men and women to use opposite-sex restrooms or risk lawsuits. According to the commission, the law and city codes require that “ndividuals [be] permitted to access… [restrooms, locker rooms, and living facilities] in accordance with their gender identity, rather than their assigned sex at birth, without being… questioned.”

ADF charges that the commission is  engaging in viewpoint discrimination: “The Act and City Code permit churches and others to distribute and disseminate religious statements that support or condone policies permitting access to restrooms and showers based on one’s gender identity, but punish religious statements that support or condone access to restrooms and showers based solely on one’s biological sex.”

Big Brother is stomping across the Iowa cornfields belching that church restrooms should no longer correspond to objective, immutable biological sex, but henceforth should correspond to the strange, subjective feelings of those who believe sex per se has no intrinsic meaning. Such a moral claim, however, is based on prior assumptions about the meaning of sex, modesty, and privacy—assumptions that contradict Scripture.

Harassment

According to the commission, “illegal harassment” could include “repeated remarks of a demeaning nature…demeaning…stories…and intentional use of names and pronouns inconsistent with a person’s presented gender.” Would the story of Sodom and Gomorrah be a demeaning story? Could a pastor’s exposition of Leviticus 18:22 or 20: 13, or Romans 1: 26-27, or 1 Corinthians 6:9 be construed as “remarks of a demeaning nature”? If a pastor uses the man formerly known as Bruce Jenner as an illustration in a sermon and refers to him by the grammatically correct male pronoun because Jenner remains to this day male, could the pastor be fined or jailed?

Let that sink in for a moment: The government is intruding into sacred space to force Christians to lie in violation of their religious convictions. Astonishing. The government has passed a law that bans “demeaning remarks” and compels lying thus violating First Amendment speech and religious protections. The left has long sought to scrub the public square of religion, but now the poisonous tentacles of “progressivism” are slinking into even our sanctuaries.

Churches may be exempt from Iowa’s anti-discrimination law when it comes to hiring a pastor—which means churches may discriminate based on a candidate’s embrace of a homosexual or “trans” identity—but if, in a church service open to the public, pastors preach sermons based on theologically orthodox beliefs about homosexuality or if churches require that restroom-usage corresponds to objective sex, churches risk lawsuits. Leftists will no longer allow religious purposes to remain unmolested by anti-biblical, Caesarist policies even within church buildings unless those buildings are hermetically sealed off from the public.

It appears that states are careening down the greased up slope at the bottom of which they’ll find Dystopia watched over by the gimlet eyes of debauched Big Brother.

*No one is discriminated against based on their heterosexuality because objectively all humans are heterosexual. Their bodies are designed for hetero-sex and they reproduce heterosexually. The term “sexual orientation” in law actually refers only to subjective homoerotic feelings and volitional homoerotic acts, which means the legal door is open to add other conditions constituted by subjective feelings and volitional acts to anti-discrimination laws and policies.

Blue, blue California is not just an entity unto itself. As many have opined, as goes California, so goes the nation.

In their arrogance–or is it “pride”–California’s Department of Managed Health Care (DMHC) has  defied “the Hyde/Weldon amendments approved by the U.S. Congresses and leaders of both parties every year since 2004 by mandating “coverage of all elective abortions in all health plans under its jurisdiction.”

The Hyde Amendment (original amendment passed 9/30/76) “is a legislative provision barring the use of certain federal funds to pay for abortion unless the pregnancy arises from incest, rape, or to save the life of the mother.”

The Weldon Amendment (2009) stated:

(d)(1) None of the funds made available in this Act may be made available to a Federal agency or program, or to a State or local government, if such agency, program, or government subjects any institutional or individual health care entity to discrimination on the basis that the health care entity does not provide, pay for, provide coverage of, or refer for abortions.

(2) In this subsection, the term “health care entity” includes an individual physician or other health care professional, a hospital, a provider-sponsored organization, a health maintenance organization, a health insurance plan, or any other kind of health care facility, organization, or plan.

In spite of Hyde/Weldon Amendments allowing for the rights of conscience, California’s DMHC deems itself omnipotent, and in 2014 began bulldozing any and all conscientious objections, forcing all health plans to cover abortions, including late term abortion.

Religious entities in California lodged a complaint, an objection with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the governing body for conscience laws. But on June 21, 2016, HHS ruled that California may continue forcing all health plans to cover all elective abortions.

This willful defiance of Hyde/Weldon sets a dangerous precedent, and other states (e.g., Washington and New York) are poised to follow. Don’t be deceived: Abortion would only be the first wicked act forced on people of faith and conscience. Euthanasia and other reprehensible acts would most likely follow.

In a counter move to stop the willfully immoral rulings of California’s DMHC and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, legislation has been sponsored by U.S. Senator James Lankford (R-OK), S. 2927, and by U.S. Representative John Fleming (R-LA), H.R. 4828. Co-sponsors of this bill, titled The Conscience Protection Act of 2016, include four Illinois federal lawmakers: Randy Hultgren (R-Geneva), Dan Lipinski (D-Chicago), Darin LaHood (R-Peoria), and Peter Roskam (R-Wheaton).

The bill, The Conscience Protection Act of 2016, begins with a portentous quote from a Founding Father:

Thomas Jefferson stated a conviction common to our Nation’s founders when he declared in 1809 that “[n]o provision in our Constitution ought to be dearer to man than that which protects the rights of conscience against the enterprises of the civil authority”.

Members of the full U.S. House have repeatedly demanded answers from HHS Secretary Sylvia Burwell for her acquiescence concerning California’s defiant mandates. It would seem Secretary Burwell feels she and California are above federal law, and certainly she cares not a whit about God’s laws.

The Conscience Protection Act of 2016, which is the remedy that will constrain arrogant legislators, makes clear its intent:

To prevent governmental discrimination against providers of health services who decline involvement in abortion, and for other purposes.

Now what’s needed is swift action on the part of citizens who revere life and abhor California’s despotic actions.

As noted at Human Life Action:

Even if you have responded to a previous alert, please contact your representatives again and urge them to support this bill. Read the Bishops’ news release here and a fact sheet on the ruling here.

Take ACTION: Contact your U.S. Representative to urge him/her to sponsor and pass H.R. 4828, The Conscience Protection Act of 2016, to defend the conscience rights of those who wish not to be involved in supporting abortion. You can also call the U.S. Capitol switchboard at (202) 224-3121.

Passing this law is even more urgent with the recent decision by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to allow the state of California to continue forcing health plans to cover elective abortions. This bill is needed now to stop further discrimination against all people who respect unborn human life. It is wrong for government to force Americans to violate their deeply held convictions on respect for human life.

California and HHS reaffirm why President John Adams declared:

Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.

Let your voice be heard loudly and often. It’s up to moral people of faith to stop this hastening of the “slouching toward Gomorrah.”

Please re-post the link to this alert on your Facebook page or other social media platforms.

In the wake of England’s historic Brexit vote, and during America’s own Fourth of July celebrations, we’re reminded that man’s longing for individual freedom is a contagion, and that to declare independence from overreaching governmental control is a big part of the cure.

Still, while the UK’s recent “Declaration of Independence” from a decidedly socialist European Union was largely driven by socio-economic considerations, not to mention a desperate attempt to remedy Britain’s demographic suicide cocktail of political correctness, multiculturalism and deadly immigration jihad, America’s own freedom revolution was driven by a longing for both fiscal independence, and, to a larger extent, an effort to secure the unalienable right to individual and corporate religious liberty – particularly the free exercise of Christianity.

“The general principles on which the fathers achieved independence were the general principles of Christianity,” observed John Adams, our second U.S. President. “I will avow that I then believed, and now believe, that those general principles of Christianity are as eternal and immutable as the existence and attributes of God.”

At our founding America at once declared independence from tyranny and reaffirmed our dependence on the one true God of the Bible.

We must do so again.

Or perish.

The historical record is irrefutable. Consider this formal statement issued by the U.S. House Judiciary Committee in 1854: “Had the people, during the Revolution, had a suspicion of any attempt to war against Christianity, that Revolution would have been strangled in its cradle… In this age, there can be no substitute for Christianity… That was the religion of the founders of the republic and they expected it to remain the religion of their descendants.”

Sadly, today’s secular left has indeed declared war against Christianity, the “religion of the founders of the republic,” which was “expected [to] remain the religion of their descendants.”

And the war has reached fever pitch. It’s high time this anti-Christian “revolution” was “strangled in its cradle.”

Indeed, contrast the above Judiciary Committee declaration with one recently made by Hillary Clinton: “Rights have to exist in practice – not just on paper,” the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee recently said in the context of some phantom “right” to sacrifice undesirable infants on the altar of “choice.” “Laws have to be backed up with resources and political will. And deep-seated cultural codes, religious beliefs and structural biases have to be changed (emphasis mine).”

“Religious beliefs have to be changed.” And change them (or, more accurately, criminalize them) they intend.

As I detail at length in my latest book, “Hating Jesus: The American Left’s War on Christianity,” God’s natural created order, His immutable, scientific and transcendent moral precepts, as well as the very lives and livelihoods of Christian Americans, are under vicious attack today at a level unprecedented in American history.

This is, in every way conceivable, anathema to what the founders, and the U.S. Constitution, intended.

“Suppose a nation in some distant region should take the Bible for their only law book and every member should regulate his conduct by the precepts there exhibited. … What a Eutopia – what a Paradise would this region be!” pined John Adams. “Without [Christianity], this world would be something not fit to be mentioned in polite company: I mean hell,” he added.

Yet it bears repeating: Jesus continually warned that this anti-Christian war declared by the pagan left would occur: “If the world hates you, you know that it hated Me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love its own. Yet because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. Remember the word that I said to you, ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted Me, they will also persecute you. …” (John 15:18-20)

So what should we do?

Jesus commands His followers to be His hands and feet – to be salt and light in a rotting world that loves darkness (Matthew 5:13-16).

While it is true that salt preserves; in an open wound, it also burns. Today’s anti-Christian, moral relativist culture is an open wound.

While it is true that light’s bright glare can be illuminating to those eager to see, it is likewise blinding to those whose eyes have become adjusted to darkness. When the light of Christ is shined, it sends lovers of evil scurrying for the shadows.

For this reason, Christ also warned, “You will be hated by everyone because of me, but the one who stands firm to the end will be saved” (Matthew 10:22).

For Christians, those times when the right people call us the wrong things are among those times we should “rejoice in our sufferings.” I received two emails this week alone that have given me great cause to rejoice. Because, as John Adams put it, I very publicly advocate the “general principles of Christianity,” I receive from those who hate Jesus, dozens of the following types of communications each month.

“Your fate is the same fate as ISIS. The only difference between you and them is the religious symbol on your armband and the fact that in their countries they can get away with murdering those who do not and will not bow down to their perversion of religion,” emailed someone identified as Mark Anderson (MA1779@gmail.com). “ISIS deserves to die and so do you,” he continued, “and when the United States government puts both of you rabid savages down the world will be a better place.”

Thank you, Mr. Anderson.

Someone calling himself Anthony Marks (AM999@aol.com) continued with the same theme: “You, Matt Barber, deserve to be riddled with the same bullets that took down the Orlando Terrorist. You deserve to hang at the neck just as Heinrich Himmler would have had the anti-LGBT savage not killed itself before it could be punished for its crimes against humanity. You deserve to be burning in Hell. … You are a non-human abomination worthy of death and you will get what you deserve…you disgusting barbarian filth.”

Thank you, Mr. Marks.

People ask me, “How do you take this kind of hatred day in and day out? Does it frighten you? Does it upset you?”

To which I reply, “No, I count it all joy.”

In fact, while I’m always buoyed by notes of encouragement, it’s the vile hate mail and death threats that lift my spirits more than anything else. They bless me. “Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me” (Matthew 5:11).

I pray for these people. They’re not my enemies. They’re lost. I hurt for them. I want those who hate Jesus to come to know Him as their Lord and Savior.

Their eternity depends on it.

And then I once again declare my dependence on God.

This article originally posted in Town Hall.

Written by Ravi Zacharias

Years ago, Francis Schaeffer and C. Everett Koop penned their book, Whatever Happened to the Human Race? It was a book that warned of the decisions that were being made within a culture stepping into new and terrifying terrain. They saw clearly where we were headed. We are now there.

I narrow that title down to what is happening on the home front here in America.

Listening to the blistering political rhetoric, I am asked all over the world, “What has happened in America?” The question should go deeper. Whatever happened to the American soul? We are truly at the cliff’s precipitous edge and the fall could be long and deadly. Why? We have a deep crisis of the soul that is killing us morally and we have no recourse. We have no recourse because the only cure has been disparaged and mocked by the elite and the powerful. And those very ideologies are now presiding over the slaughter of our citizens while the abundance of speeches is inversely proportional to the wisdom they contain and Reason bleeds to death before our eyes.

These may be strong words but I am staggered by all that is happening around us while the powerful fiddle and bodies litter the floors of offices, airports, and even restaurants. How many families will be shattered and offered up at the altar of our foolishness?

Let me connect some dots to trace where the real killing is happening. Dare I say a kind of genocide stares us in the face? Genocide is defined as the mass killing of a particular group of people. I have started to ask myself whether genocide is the first step towards mass murder or has a kind of mass murder already taken place before we experience genocide and the mangled bodies? I propose to you that multiple killings have preceded the horrors with which we now live. Those killings prepared the ground for the literal burial of our own people.

Three killings in particular are as real as the carnage we see when suicide vests are detonated: the death of morality, the death of truth, and the death of reason. With such tragic exterminations, we now find ourselves in ever-present danger, constantly lectured to by those who have all the bodyguards they and their families need while the rest of us are sitting ducks for evil people whose rights are protected more than those of their slaughtered victims. Why is this happening? We are at war but not only with an enemy. We are at war within our own culture, and whether we will ever win over the enemy depends on whether we win this war within our own souls.

At first, how I connect these dots may seem far-fetched, but they are indeed connected. Some time ago Robert Shapiro, the well-known lawyer of the famed O.J. Simpson trial, was being interviewed by Megyn Kelly of Fox News. She asked if justice had been served in that case. In a mind-stupefying, pathetic answer, he said, “There is legal justice and moral justice. Legal justice was served.” Maybe it was rightly called the trial of the century: We have entered the twenty-first century having amputated law from morality. Welcome to the uncivil civilization legalizing murder. That an intelligent, educated, supposedly legal scholar can make a statement like that and think he has defended a noble cause is fatal to our culture. Maybe that’s why Shakespeare described Satan as “the prince of lawyers.” If that’s what legal theory espouses we are in great peril. I have no doubt many an honorable lawyer cringed at that response but probably none was shocked. This is where law has drifted and come unhinged from any moral moorings. When justice is decapitated and something can be legal but immoral, we know we have already killed the heart of what it means to be human. The morality of the beast is now normal. Is it any wonder that Nazi judges felt they were doing the “right thing” by upholding their legal prerogative that resulted in the death of millions? Our society is being dragged towards the morgue because the law has held the gun to the heart of morality.

Ironically, there was something in his response to be applauded. At least he granted there was such a thing as moral justice. So that leads to a deeper question: Should not Morality and Truth be inextricably bound together? That is at the heart of all judgments. What is the truth when a person is killed? But now, I dare say, not only does morality not matter, the truth doesn’t matter either. That has also been buried. If you want a snapshot of our times, here it is: Four brave Americans serving their country murdered by a bunch of hate-filled thugs, whose ideology we are not allowed to identify, received and presided over by a litany of lies, their bodies draped in the national flag, while assurance is given to the bereaved that the culprits will be hunted down, including the one because of whom they were killed. If that scenario doesn’t drive us to our knees, Lord have mercy!

We are in the graveyard of a culture when a most somber moment cannot compel the conscience to tell the truth. Oh, that the victims could have sat up for just a moment and stared down that heinous lie! But it was not to be.  One day it will be so as their blood cries out from the ground. As Muggeridge said, “The lie is stuck like a fish bone in the throat of the handheld microphone…. Truth has died, not God.” The noble thing to have done when that blunder was made was to admit a failure for whatever reason and ask for pardon, but not to bury the dead with a lie! As if it is not dark enough for a handful to tell a lie, even worse, in our culture today the lie is no longer a posture to be shunned. We celebrate power over truth, enshrouding the lie with our flag. That is a form of national murder. You see, a blunder is a momentary reality. Upholding a lie is a character flaw, sending that lie into eternity.

The death of morality, the death of truth; then we come to the last, the death of reason. Aristotle reminded us that the first law of logic is identity. We must identify what we are talking about. A particular identifiable characteristic is indispensable to the referent. We must identify the characteristics of the thing we define. That is necessary to understanding the thing and to resisting contradiction. But as destroyers enter our lands and desire to pillage and kill, we are led by rhetoric that kills the first law of logic, the law of identity. We are told that identifying the enemy is not that important; strange that the same logic is not employed to all other local inimical ideologies but only seems to apply to Islam. Honest Muslims themselves wish to call it for what it is but our clever linguistic sleight of hand seems to restrict us from such identity—and so we bury our dead without identifying why the killer killed them. First, we try to mitigate our peril by this incredible new coinage, “radicalized,” that conveniently shifts the blame from the active shooter to the remote controller. Now we don’t even wish to identify what controls the remote controller. Propaganda that kills identity is deadly to the soul of a culture.

We are sliding into the future with evil stalking us but no morality, no truth, and no reason to guide us. America may be flirting with a self-inflicted mortal wound. Or it could well be a killing that is designed by a postmodern ideology masquerading as political correctness. When liberalism, whose legitimate child is relativism, has played itself out it will be a Pyrrhic victory to find ourselves in the hands of those whose identity is no longer in doubt. And when they are in control, the very means they used to hide their identity will be silenced as well. They will preside over the last rites of politically correct enforcers and a “free press” that abused freedom and celebrated the lie ‘til they themselves were silenced, buried by the truth they never wanted to expose.

There always has been, and is now more than ever, only one hope for rescue. If we abide in God’s truth revealed in his Son, then we shall know the truth and the truth will set us free. That is why I say again and again that we must dispense with our verbal arsenal that speaks only in terms of right and left. We have forgotten there is an up and a down. May God help us! We need His transforming power to change our thinking and to give us a hunger for what is true. True freedom is not in doing whatever we wish but in doing what we ought. That has been buried in America. And only one who knows the way out of the grave can give us a second chance to live: Jesus, the way, the truth, and the life that sets us free from within first, before we learn to deal with the lies around us.

As my prayer for this July 4th, I think of the great hymn by Isaac Watts prayed often in moments of drastic transition. I have added a fourth verse for our times:

Our God, our Help in ages past,
Our Hope for years to come,
Our Shelter from the stormy blast,
And our eternal Home!

Under the shadow of Thy throne
Thy saints have dwelt secure;
Sufficient is Thine arm alone,
And our defense is sure.

Before the hills in order stood
Or earth received her frame,
From everlasting Thou art God,
To endless years the same.

We need thee now as ne’er before,
We mourn the wisdom gone;
Transform our land forevermore—
Redemption through your Son.

This article was originally posted at RZIM.org

My topic, if you could not guess from the cryptic title, is religious liberty. Vanity Fair, if you have not guessed, does not celebrate the Fourth of July. That’s a problem.

Lots of Americans still celebrate it, but because we are now governed by non-elected functionaries from Vanity Fair, the celebrations are merely impressive displays of light, noise, and little else. Among our other liberties, we still celebrate our putative religious liberty on the Fourth, but we do this in lieu of actually being able to practice it anymore. It is kind of like religious liberty without the religious part, and without the liberty part either, come to think of it. If we had some ham, we could make a ham and cheese sandwich, if we had some cheese.

Celebrating religious liberty is way easier than defending it, or exercising it. Setting off a squib or a firecracker is much to be preferred, because much easier, than acting like you don’t need permission from the government to live like a free Christian. You don’t, incidentally.

LEST YOU THINK I OVERSTATE . . .

Scarcely a day goes by without some reeking testimony to the official kind of contempt directed at religious liberty by aficionados of the totalitolerant state. Just this last week I read about the Virginia governor vetoing a bill that would allow ministers to opt out of sodomite ceremonies, another story about a judge insisting that Christian Mingles, a Christian dating site, start matching up folks what actually don’t go together because the pieces don’t fit, and I also read some more about that noxious bill in California that would require Christian colleges to abandon their Christian convictions in order to function legally. The secularist commitment to religious liberty resembles the rabbinical commitment to the ham and cheese sandwiches mentioned earlier.

VANITY FAIR HAS NO TRADITION OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY

“Therefore they took them and beat them, and besmeared them with dirt, and then put them into the Cage, that they might be made a Spectacle to all the men of the Fair” (The Pilgrim’s Progress).

But because Christian and Faithful responded to the persecution with grace, “some men in the Fair that were more observing, and less prejudiced than the rest, began to check and blame the baser sort for their continual abuses done by them to the men.”

Religious liberty comes from intractable Christians, and from some unbelievers who are favorably impressed by those intractable Christians.

So what kind of society produces religious liberty? What are the preconditions of religious liberty? The answer is “not our kind.” The kind of society we have become would be entirely incapable of creating a respect for religious liberty, and is rapidly proving that it is not even capable of sustaining it.

This is because we are Vanity Fair. We are Babylon the great, and so naturally we traffic in the souls of men (Rev. 18:13).

In order to get back to a true respect for religious liberty, we have to recover something. Even the millions of Christians who live here in the Fair have to recover something — I should say especially the Christians have to recover something. The first thing they have to grasp is the realization that they have been had.

THE ROOT OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY

The doctrine of religious liberty is itself a religious doctrine. There is no neutrality, and this reality is especially pronounced when it comes to this subject. The doctrines of religious liberty can be derived from the realization that Jesus is Lord. They cannot be derived from the realization that we are all the mindless end product of so many aeons of a blind and groping evolutionary process. They can be derived from the Christian faith, and cannot be derived from secularism.

A society that allows for no transcendent court of appeals is a society that cannot allow for religious liberty. In other words, on its own terms, because a secular state cannot come under judgment from outside it cannot allow for its citizens to act as though it could ever come under judgment from outside.

The living God is the giver of all rights. Man can give certain privileges, but we are endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights. This includes our right to worship Him as His Word requires. Our right to worship Him includes not only the right to worship Him in weekly religious services, but also to worship Him with our bodies and vocations every day of the week. We are called to present our bodies to Him as a living sacrifice (Rom. 12:1-2), and this is a 24-7 religious obligation. It means that we not only have the religious duty not to engage in sexual uncleanness ourselves, but that we have the corresponding duty not to applaud or celebrate it in others.

And so it is that Christian bakers, florists, and wedding planners have the religious obligation before God and consequent right before man to abstain from any such celebrations. The owners of a Christian dating site have the obligation before God and consequent right before man to refrain from acting as a pimp or procuress. Christian colleges have the obligation before God and consequent right before man to teach foundational Christian morality, and act in their admissions and discipline policies as though they actually believed what they taught.

Without that word consequent, we have no rights whatever.

But if God has bestowed these obligations upon us, as He most certainly has, then it is not possible for any parliament or congress or assembly of men to take the consequent rights away. It is not up to the rulers of men. It is not within their jurisdiction. They have no authority in this whatever. And this leads us to . . .

PIOUS DISOBEDIENCE

So the ultimate cause of religious liberty is the will of God. But the proximate, intermediate cause of religious liberty in history has been the firm and cheerful disobedience of Christians. The idolatrous state requires certain things, and Christians, because they know what the will of God is as outlined above, say no.

They do not bow before the statue of Nebuchadnezzar. They do not kill the Hebrew children as Pharaoh required. They hide their crops from the Midianites. They ignore the arrest warrant issued by Saul the tyrant. They refuse to bow to Haman. They pray facing Jerusalem with their windows open. King Aretas sets up a roadblock and they run that roadblock. They preach in the name of Jesus. They just say no.

Let me cut to the chase. There can be no religious liberty unless and until certain Christians are hard enough and tough enough simply to disobey. And they will not exhibit that kind of hardness toward tyrants unless and until they are soft toward God. When men recognize the sovereignty of God, they simultaneously realize that man does not possess that sovereignty. Resistance to tyrants is therefore submission to God. And without that submission to God, resistance to tyrants is futile. With it, liberty is inevitable.

Given the nature of the encroachments being made by the secular state, the clash between Christians and the secular state will not be a narrow one. It will extend across the board, touching on every area of life. Of course, when they say we must not preach the gospel, we must continue to preach the gospel. But this is an all-encompassing collision. It involves everything. It is a clash of worlds.

They do not simply say not to preach the gospel. They also say that if we do not take the mark of their beast, wearing it proudly on the forehead or right hand, we cannot buy or sell from any of their federally regulated outlets (Rev. 13:17). What do we do then? Well, we refuse the mark, and head on out to buy and sell from unregulated outlets. We have a religious duty and right to function in the black market.

Christian photographers go underground. They do a wedding “for a friend,” and take a token of gratitude in cash. Wedding cakes are sold out the back door, after hours. Christian colleges become unauthorized study centers, offering online certificates issued from servers located somewhere in the Caribbean. And when I am finally shut down here at Mablog for being an “enemy of mankind,” along with my other bad deeds, you can head on over to the dark web, and try to find me there. Perhaps you might say, “but that’s illegal,” and I would reply by inviting you to ask me if I care. The catacombs were illegal too.

Religious liberty is not something we have to get a permit for.
It is not something we possess if they agree to it.

THE THEOLOGIC OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY

The Christian faith is therefore source of religious liberty, and secularism cannot be that source.

“Therefore whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man, which built his house upon a rock: And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell not: for it was founded upon a rock. And every one that heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them not, shall be likened unto a foolish man, which built his house upon the sand: And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell: and great was the fall of it” (Matt. 7:24–27).

Too many Christian advocates for Christians retaining their religious liberties are actually theologically compromised. They want the secular storm to help prop the house up. But secularism is the storm, not part of the foundation. Christ is the foundation. The words of Christ are the foundation. Without Jesus, we cannot have the house. With Jesus, we can withstand this current storm, not to mention the next one.

When we appeal to the secularists to respect our liberties, they can simply respond with “why should we?” We must either appeal to an ultimate standard that they reject, or to a humanistic standard that we ought to reject. If we apply to their humanistic standard, and they say, “no,” what then?

We need to work it out in our hearts and minds first. We need to be prepared to say to them, along with the friends of Daniel, that our God is able to deliver us. But even if He does not, we are not going to comply. This includes private individuals like Gideon not complying and government officials like Daniel not complying. It includes John Q. Citizen not complying and Chief Justice Roy Moore not complying.

Wherever you are, just say no. Bloom where you are planted.

ONE FINAL THING

These are not new issues. We have been here before. For those Christians who want to read up on these themes, there is a long and inspiring story. I would recommend starting with The Emergence of Liberty in the Modern World by Douglas Kelly.

This has all been done before, and it most certainly can be done again.

…

If you intend to be part of that movement, as you certainly ought to be, then a few anticipatory fireworks tonight would not be out of place at all.

This article was originally posted at the Blog & Mablog

In an effort to expand abortion services in our state, Springfield lawmakers have sent Governor Bruce Rauner SB 1564. This radical proposal would coerce medical professionals to violate their consciences by forcing them to refer patients for medical procedures they find morally objectionable such as abortion, sterilization and certain end-of-life care protocols. (Read more HERE.)

Take ACTION: Governor Bruce Rauner has this legislation on his desk now, and he has sixty days to decide to reject it or sign it into law. We need your help to urge him to veto this ominous proposal. No American should be forced by the government to violate his or her deeply held convictions.

Please call Governor Rauner’s office numbers and let his administrative assistants know that you want him to VETO this tyrannical bill. Encourage him to uphold conscience rights for Illinois medical personnel.  Here are the office numbers:

(217) 782-0244 — Springfield
(312) 814-2121 — Chicago

More ACTION:  

1. Click HERE to send an email message to Gov. Rauner to urge him to veto SB 1564.
2. Pray that Gov. Rauner is wise enough to protect conscience rights.
3. Contact like-minded family and friends and let them know that they should speak out against this radical proposal. Also, share this on Facebook and Twitter.

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The California legislature is poised to consider legislation that could destroy the ability of numerous faith-based colleges and universities to pursue the mission for which they were created. SB 1146, one of two similar bills recently introduced into the California legislature, would essentially restrict fully faith-based education to seminaries.

As explained in the Biola University news:

If passed as is, this bill would strip California’s faith-based colleges and universities of their religious liberty to educate students according to their faith convictions.

The proposed legislation seeks to narrow a religious exemption in California only to those institutions of higher learning that prepare students for pastoral ministry. This functionally eliminates the religious liberty for students of all California faith-based colleges and universities who integrate spiritual life with the entire campus educational experience.

Biola is one of the schools potentially affected if SB 1146 is passed into law. Barry Corey, the president of Biola, expressed his concerns to me via email while on his way back from Ethiopia:

California’s faith-based colleges and universities make profound contributions to the common good of society, not in spite of but because of our deeply held faith convictions. It would be a step backwards if California, a state that has long been a leader in diversity, inclusion and pluralism, could not find a way to value and honor the religious freedom of Christian universities like Biola while at the same time respecting the dignity of our students.

Richard Kriegbaum, president of Fresno Pacific University, writes on the school blog:

Stated very simply, SB 1146 would severely restrict the free and full exercise of religious freedom granted by the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States. This bill would limit freedom of religious faith and practice to programs, courses and activities directly and narrowly intended to train pastors and similar vocational church leaders. At FPU religious freedom would only apply to the seminary and to undergraduate programs such as Bible and Christian ministry.

This is no minor thing.

There is a commonly held—and erroneous—belief that Christian colleges and universities are backward scientifically, repressive sexually, and inept socially. That such institutions are academically weak, Bible-thumping, 17th century good-old-boys clubs full of bigots and legalists. For those who hold such views, cutting off state or federal aid to these institutions, or to force them to shed some of their strongly-held Christian convictions, would be no great loss.

Many faith-based universities hold to the traditional Christian view that sex and gender are distinct and united. If SB 1146 is passed without amendment, the state of California would drastically limit the religious freedom of such institutions to believe and live according to these traditional beliefs. In other words, the “free exercise of religion” becomes meaningless or restricted to only those schools that train pastors for ministry.

Writes Brett McCracken of Biola University:

[SB 1146] now moving through the California legislature would force Christian colleges and universities into submission when it comes to their beliefs and policies regarding sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI). Sec. 1 of SB 1146 would remove an existing religious exemption and narrow it so that faith-based institutions (including Jewish, Muslim, Catholic, etc) could no longer think and behave differently on these most central human questions. What Sacramento says is true about SOGI is now what every knowledge institution in California must acknowledge in practice (if not in belief) to be true.

So much for valuing diversity.

That the Founding Fathers never intended this kind of schism between academia and religion is evident. The earliest institutions of higher learning in the United States were Christian schools, founded by Christians, for Christian education. Indeed the first Christian college, Harvard, was founded over a hundred years before the founding of the country. Other such schools were William & Mary (1693, Church of England), Yale (1701, Puritan), Princeton (1746, Presbyterian), Columbia (1754, Church of England), Rutgers (1766, Dutch Reformed), and others.

The first college chartered to grant degrees to women was Macon, Georgia’s Wesleyan College in 1836. In 1881 80% of colleges in the U.S. were church related. Oberlin College, named after minister Jean-Frederic Oberlin, was the first college in the United States to admit students of all races and in 1844 graduated the first black student, George B. Vashon. Vashon became one of the founding members Howard University which was birthed from a vision for a black theological school. Its founding president, Oliver Otis Howard, was known as the “Christian General.”

Christian colleges and universities have always and continue looking outward, seeking to love and serve others, as Jesus did.

One of the reasons I’m going to serve at Wheaton College is I desire to be involved in the kind of educational setting where followers of Jesus are trained and equipped to impact our culture in the same positive ways Christians have historically.

This California moment must be stopped, but we also have to be honest about something.

I work hard to avoid excessive political partisanship, which makes some evangelicals unhappy, I assure you. As I do every year, I will invite representatives of both major campaigns to The Exchange for interviews and to make their case.

In this case, I’ve written this whole article without using the word Democrat, but it would be intellectuality dishonest not to point out that what is now happing in California is led by the Democratic Party. And, if this moves forward, it will soon be happening nationally, led by that same party.

If you care about Christian education anywhere in the United States, then speak up now. If you are in California, call your representative, and not just the ones who agree with you. But, since this is a Democratic Party initiative, perhaps you can kindly ask your Democratic representative if there is no place for people of sincere belief to continue the great work that they do, including the benefits of religious exemption that go back decades.

If you are a Democrat, what a great opportunity it would be to share that with your elected representaive and encourage some space for those who dissent from the new cultural reality.

That would be pretty tolerant, I think…

This article was originally posted at ChristianityToday.com