The Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention just released a document titled “Here We Stand: An Evangelical Declaration on Marriage,”  signed by scores of religious leaders. It is largely an excellent document that embodies an unequivocal, courageous commitment to truth.

That said, it also makes the troubling claim that Christians ought not be angry: “Outrage and panic are not the responses of those confident in the promises of a reigning Christ Jesus.”

My concern about this may seem an unnecessary quibble, but the notion that Christians ought not feel angry is integral to the serious problem of Christian silence on matters related to homosexuality.

This statement echoes what Trinity Evangelical Divinity School New Testament professor D.A. Carson said in a recent interview with Desiring God: “This is no time for panic, or resentment, and it is certainly no time for hate.”

Clearly, it is no time for panic, and it’s no time for hate if by hate Dr. Carson is referring to hatred of persons.

I think, however, that resentment of injustice and hatred of wickedness are warranted. A fuller, more nuanced discussion would have been helpful in freeing Christians from bondage to a neutered, passionless complaisance regarding a pernicious Court decision that embodies pernicious ideas about marriage and homoeroticism.

The claims about anger expressed in the declaration and articulated by Dr. Carson seem to contradict the views of Leon Podles in an article titled “Unhappy Fault” published in Touchstone Magazine:

[M]any Christians have a false understanding of the nature and role of anger. It is seen as something negative, something that a Christian should not feel.

In the sexual abuse cases in the Catholic Church, those who dealt with the bishops have consistently remarked that the bishops never expressed outrage or righteous anger, even at the most horrendous cases of abuse and sacrilege.

…
Conrad Baars noticed this emotional deformation in the clergy in the mid-twentieth century….In forgetting that growth in virtue was the goal of the Christian’s moral life, it forgot that the emotions, all emotions, including anger and hate, are part of human nature and must be integrated into a virtuous life.

Baars had been imprisoned by the Nazis. He knew iniquity firsthand and that there was something wrong with those who did not hate it:

A little reflection will make it clear that there is a big difference between the person who knows solely that something is evil and ought to be opposed, and the one who in addition also feels hate for that evil, is angry that it is corrupting or harming his fellow-men, and feels aroused to combat it courageously and vigorously.

Wrath is a necessary and positive part of human nature: “Wrath is the strength to attack the repugnant; the power of anger is actually the power of resistance in the soul,” wrote Josef Pieper. The lack of wrath against injustice, he continued, is a deficiency: “One who does good with passion is more praiseworthy than one who is ‘not entirely’ afire for the good, even to the forces of the sensual realm.”

Aquinas, too, says that “lack of the passion of anger is also a vice” because a man who truly and forcefully rejects evil will be angry at it. The lack of anger makes the movement of the will against evil “lacking or weak.” He quotes John Chrysostom: “He who is not angry, whereas he has cause to be, sins. For unreasonable patience is the hotbed of many vices, it fosters negligence, and incites not only the wicked but the good to do wrong.”

…

As Gregory the Great said, “Reason opposes evil the more effectively when anger ministers at her side.”

…

Sorrow at evil without anger at evil is a fault….

I’m not alone in my concern about the ERLC’s statement about anger. New Testament scholar Robert A. Gagnon is also troubled:

I believe the unnamed author of the document…erred in claiming that Christians should not express outrage at this decision….When I read the document, this statement jumped out at me more than any other. Apparently, I wasn’t the only one for whom this was the case. Christianity Today highlighted that remark above all others (in apparent approval, unfortunately).

Jesus expressed outrage at sin repeatedly in his ministry (the cleansing of the temple is a fairly concrete case in point). So did John the Baptist (his direct criticism of Herod Antipas for taking his brother’s wife is an obvious instance). So did Paul (I would say that outrage was a hallmark of his comments on tolerance for the incestuous man in 1 Cor 5). So did John of Patmos in Revelation (comparing the Roman Empire and its emperors to a harlot and a disgusting 7-headed beast rising from the sea, a puppet of the dragon that symbolizes Satan; likewise symbolizing the provincial imperial cult leaders as a blasphemous beast rising from the earth).

Friends, if this were the Supreme Court attempting to restore the Dred Scott ruling, would it be unchristian to express “outrage”?…Democracy and liberty in America have been struck the greatest body blow in our lifetime. The action of the five lawless Justices will have enormous negative repercussions for the church corporately and Christians individually. And outrage at egregious immorality is not antithetical to love. This action by the Lawless 5 will harm many, especially those who experience same-sex attractions. We should have a godly outrage toward that.

In my view, although the statement polarizes outrage and faith (implicitly also love), the real polarization is between outrage and “niceness.”

It is troubling to have religious leaders advocating a generalized prohibition of anger. There exists evil in the world about which those who know truth should outrage. God does not enjoin followers of Christ never to feel or express anger. We need to guard how we express anger, and we must  temper anger when excessive. But we ought to feel anger about wickedness that harms those we are commanded to love.

Here are just a few evils that warrant Christian outrage:

• We should feel anger that incipient human lives are being daily snuffed out.
• We should feel anger that judges and lawmakers deem the slaughter of the unborn a “right.”
• We should have felt anger when men, women, and children were bought and sold as chattel during the slave era.
• We should have felt anger when black men were lynched.
• We should have felt anger when Plessy v. Ferguson was passed by another group of feckless justices, reinforcing the practice of treating blacks as inferior to whites.
• We should have felt anger over the imprisonment and extermination of Jews by the Nazis.
• We should feel anger when girls and women today are bought or traded for the twisted pleasure of men.
• We should feel anger when children are abused and adults conceal and facilitate their abuse.
• We should feel anger about the existence of child pornography.
• We should feel anger when teachers introduce our little ones to perversion in our taxpayer-funded schools and call it good.
• We should feel anger when teachers in taxpayer-funded schools teach that all family structures are equally valuable.
• We should feel angry when our laws and policies embody the false and destructive idea that children have no inherent right to both a mother and father.
• We should feel angry over parades that celebrate perversion in our streets and when our elected officials join in the corrupt chorus rejoicing in the normalization of sodomy as an “identity” and non-marital sodomitic unions as “marriages.”
• We should be outraged when public high school “educators” teach the egregiously obscene, pro-homosexual play Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes to high school students.

And we should feel outrage that parents of an eight-year-old boy permitted him to cross-dress and “vogue” in the recent New York City “pride” parade after which throngs of adults with darkened minds cackled and shrieked at the tragic spectacle of an exploited little boy in a dress sashaying across a stage.

Perhaps the ERLC marriage declaration needed to be more carefully crafted in order to make a clearer distinction between permissible and warranted righteous wrath and impermissible types of  expressions of anger. Perhaps the writer or writers could have distinguished between bitterness and appropriate anger at evil that harms. Perhaps they should have warned against excessive anger.

With all due deference to men far wiser and knowledgeable than me, I think what America needs right now is righteous anger and fearless, impassioned denunciation of a sexuality and marriage ideology that deprives children of their rights and threatens the temporal and eternal lives of men and women.

Please support IFI!

Sexual Orientation Gender Identity (SOGI) lawsuits against individuals and ministries have increased in the past couple years, but with the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision on same-sex “marriage,” it is even more important that ministries take steps to evaluate and modify their incorporation documents.

SOGI laws are often quietly adopted by local governments in the context of “non-discrimination” policies, but once enacted, they open the door for litigation against churches, Christian schools, mission organizations and para-church ministries.

Learn more about the legal risks and how to protect your church, ministry or business.

Alliance Defending Freedom has created a helpful booklet that describes the risks from sexual orientation (SOGI) lawsuits, offers case examples, and provides suggested language for your legal documents.  It is FREE for the asking.  You can download and print a copy HERE (link here), or click HERE to send an email to Kathy to request a free booklet in the mail.

Written by Dr. Erwin W. Lutzer

The decision of the U.S. Supreme Court to legalize same-sex marriage in all fifty states is not only a direct violation of Scripture, but is contrary to natural law. This decision will accelerate the disintegration of the family, the sexual confusion of our children, and our continuing descent into moral bankruptcy.

Written by Pete Heck

Tear down that cross and toss it in the wood chipper because the American church is toast. So goes conventional wisdom after recent revelations from the Pew Research Center, which found that in just seven years, the percentage of Christians in the United States dropped nearly eight points.

The news was met with glee from liberal publications such as Salon, where writing under the breathtakingly clever headline, “Ding Dong the Church is Dead,” author Patricia Miller gloated that the benefits from the decline of Christianity would be, “huge.” No doubt the scores of natural disaster victims around the globe who have profited from all of the atheist relief trucks rolling in would agree.

Far more annoying than the juvenile taunts of journalists were the suggestions that poured in from Christian thinkers as to how to right the ship, or Ark if you prefer.

The most common refrain echoed repeatedly in both religious and mainstream media was that the church needed to become culturally “relevant” to survive. For some, that term merely implies ministers in jeans and fog machines. I have my own preferences in that regard, but they are just that – preferences. My serious objection is reserved for those who intend the cry for “relevance” in a substantive rather than superficial manner. These are the voices calling to deliberately neuter the confrontational truth of Christianity to compromise with the spirit of the age.

Take the recent Washington Post op-ed by Rachel Held Evans. Evans pinpoints what she sees as the real problem when she chastises Christianity for being too “judgmental” and “exclusive.” In other words, she yearns for a church more open-minded and inclusive of alternative ideas, beliefs and lifestyles.

I suppose there is merit to what she is saying if the sole purpose of the church is to fill seats on Sunday mornings. If the mission of the church is nothing more than a relentless ambition to “affirm” everyone from all walks of life, then her counsel is spot on.

After all, speaking the exclusivity of Christ – that whole “no man comes to the Father except by me” thing – or preaching repentance will not make anyone feel affirmed. Everyone can see how painfully un-hip such a message is in contemporary American society.

In fact, churches committed to that outdated way of thinking might be accused of acting like some prudish carpenter of antiquity whose obsessive devotion to unpopular notions of right and wrong, good and evil, consigned him to the outskirts of society rather than the mainstream, to preaching from hillsides rather than from behind gold-crusted lecterns.

It’s curious, isn’t it? Somehow American Christians convinced themselves that becoming more like Jesus of Nazareth would make them more attractive to the world; but the exact opposite is true. After all, why would they treat us any different than they treated him? Confusing that reality has the American church all kinds of backwards. If the world adores us for the words we speak, it is not because those words are loving and good. It is because they are cowardly and compromising. And that’s the real problem we face in our churches.

I admit that I don’t have the credentials of many weighing in on the unfolding collapse of American Christianity. But I humbly submit that if the church wants to stop the bleeding, it should stop worrying about the praise of men and instead seek the applause of heaven. How is that done?

In a recent seminar I gave to Christian high school seniors about to head to college, I asked them to name five figures from Scripture that God used in a powerful way. Their list included Noah, Moses, Elijah, John the Baptist and Jesus. Question for the American church: how relevant to their respective cultures were those guys?

Noah was a laughingstock, Moses was exiled and hated, Elijah had a bounty on his head, John the Baptist lost his head, and Jesus lost a popularity contest with a despised murderer named Barabbas – all because each was committed to speaking a truth that no one in their time wanted to hear.

True Christianity is confrontational. It is an open and courageous rebellion being conducted deep within enemy-occupied territory. It is counter-cultural, not culturally relevant. It alone recognizes that there is no love without truth.

If Christ’s church dies in the United States, it’s only because it committed suicide on the altar of relevance.

This article was originally posted at the IndyStar.com website.

Written by Thomas Sowell

The political left has come up with a new buzzword: “micro-aggression.”

Professors at the University of California at Berkeley have been officially warned against saying such things as “America is the land of opportunity.” Why? Because this is considered to be an act of “micro-aggression” against minorities and women. Supposedly it shows that you don’t take their grievances seriously and are therefore guilty of being aggressive toward them, even if only on a micro scale.

You might think that this is just another crazy idea from Berkeley. But the same concept appears in a report from the flagship campus of the University of Illinois at Urbana. If you just sit in a room where all the people are white, you are considered to be guilty of “micro-aggression” against people who are not white, who will supposedly feel uncomfortable when they enter such a room.

At UCLA, a professor who changed the capitalization of the word “indigenous” to lower case in a student’s dissertation was accused of “micro-aggression,” apparently because he preferred to follow the University of Chicago Manual of Style, rather than the student’s attempt to enhance the importance of being indigenous.

When a group of UCLA law students came to class wearing T-shirts with a picture of one of their professors who had organized an intramural softball game, those T-shirts were protested as a manifestation of “white privilege.”

Why? Because that professor had written a book critical of affirmative action.

“Micro-aggression” protests have spread to campuses from coast to coast — that is, from California’s Berkeley and UCLA to Harvard and Fordham on the east coast, and including Oberlin and Illinois in the midwest.

Academic administrators have all too often taken the well-worn path of least resistance, by regarding the most trivial, or even silly, claims of victimhood with great seriousness, even when that involved undermining faculty members held in high esteem by most of their students and by their professional colleagues on campus and beyond.

The concept of “micro-aggression” is just one of many tactics used to stifle differences of opinion by declaring some opinions to be “hate speech,” instead of debating those differences in a marketplace of ideas. To accuse people of aggression for not marching in lockstep with political correctness is to set the stage for justifying real aggression against them.

This tactic reaches far beyond academia and far beyond the United States. France’s Jean-Paul Sartre has been credited — if that is the word — with calling social conditions he didn’t like “violence,” as a prelude to justifying real violence as a response to those conditions. Sartre’s American imitators have used the same verbal tactic to justify ghetto riots.

Word games are just one of the ways of silencing politically incorrect ideas, instead of debating them. Demands that various conservative organizations be forced to reveal the names of their donors are another way of silencing ideas by intimidating people who facilitate the spread of those ideas. Whatever the rationale for wanting those names, the implicit threat is retaliation.

This same tactic was used, decades ago, by Southern segregationists who tried to force black civil rights organizations to reveal the names of their donors, in a situation where retaliation might have included violence as well as economic losses.

In a sense, the political left’s attempts to silence ideas they cannot, or will not, debate are a confession of intellectual bankruptcy. But this is just one of the left’s ever-increasing restrictions on other people’s freedom to live their lives as they see fit, rather than as their betters tell them.

Current attempts by the Obama administration to force low-income housing to be built in middle class and upscale communities are on a par with forcing people to buy the kind of health insurance the government wants them to buy — ObamaCare — rather than leaving them free to buy whatever suits their own situation and preferences.

The left is not necessarily aiming at totalitarianism. But their know-it-all mindset leads repeatedly and pervasively in that direction, even if by small steps, each of which might be called “micro-totalitarianism.”

Originally published at FreedomsBack.com.

Christians are often asked by gay activists why they oppose same-sex “marriage.” “How does our marriage hurt you?” they ask.

Well, I can think of one significant way it will hurt us: It will destroy religious freedom and free speech rights.

The handwriting is on the wall in Canada, which legalized same-sex “marriage” in 2005, in effect completely changing its true meaning. Since then, as Michael Coren notes in National Review Online, “there have been between 200 and 300 proceedings … against critics and opponents of same-sex marriage.” Of course he means legal proceedings.

For instance, in Saskatchewan, a homosexual man called a state marriage commissioner, wanting to “marry” his partner. The commissioner, an evangelical Christian, declined to conduct the ceremony for religious reasons. He simply referred the man to another commissioner.

But that was not enough for the gay couple. Even though they got their ceremony, they wanted to punish the Christian who had declined to conduct it.  The case ended up in the courts. And the result? Those with religious objections to conducting such ceremonies now face the loss of their jobs.

Canadian churches are also under attack. Coren writes that when Fred Henry, the Roman Catholic bishop of Calgary, Alberta, sent a letter to churches explaining traditional Catholic teaching on marriage, he was “charged with a human-rights violation” and “threatened with litigation.”

Churches with theological objections to performing same-sex “wedding” ceremonies are being threatened with the loss of their tax-free status. In British Columbia, the Knights of Columbus agreed to rent its building for a wedding reception before finding out that the couple was lesbian. When they did find out, they apologized to the women and agreed to both find an alternative venue and pay the costs for printing new invitations. But that wasn’t good enough. The women prosecuted, and the Human Rights Commission ordered the Knights of Columbus to pay a fine.

Of course, the lesbians knew perfectly well what the Catholic Church teaches about marriage, but they sought out a Catholic-owned building, anyway.

As Michael Coren puts it, “it’s becoming obvious that Christian people, leaders, and organizations are being targeted, almost certainly to create legal precedents”—precedents intended to silence and punish anyone who dares to disagree with so-called gay “marriage.”

If you think this couldn’t happen here, think again. This year [2012] we’ve seen ObamaCare attack the autonomy of Catholic churches by attempting to force them, in violation of Catholic teaching, to pay for contraceptives and abortifacients for church employees. And just last week, a lesbian employee of a Catholic hospital in New York sued the hospital for denying her partner spousal health benefits.

This is what we need to tell our neighbors when they ask us, “How does gay ‘marriage’ hurt us?” It means that those hostile to our beliefs will attempt to bend us to their will to force us to not only accept gay “marriage,” but to condone it as well.

This is why I urge you to join the half-million Christians who have signed the Manhattan Declaration. Please sign it yourself by going to manhattandeclaration.org.

You and I must demonstrate love to our gay neighbors, of course, remembering that we are ultimately engaged in spiritual warfare. But we should boldly stand up when our rights as citizens and the demands of our conscience are threatened.

Originally published at cnsnews.com.

Written by Chris Woodward

A prominent pro-family organization has joined a widely respected evangelist in calling for Christians to close their Wells Fargo bank accounts.

Last month, Wells Fargo released a commercial video featuring two lesbians preparing to adopt a little girl. The move prompted Franklin Graham to say the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association was closing its account with Wells Fargo. The Mississippi-based American Family Association has since joined Graham in calling on Christians to close their accounts at the financial institution.

Ed Vitagliano, executive vice president for AFA, says Wells Fargo has been promoting the homosexual agenda for well over a decade.

“In 2003, AFA began warning people of this,” he notes. “They actually were supportive in the late 90s, but this is a company that has been out front in its support of the homosexual agenda.”

In 2005, Dr. James Dobson and Focus on the Family announced it was withdrawing funds from Wells Fargo after the company supported homosexual activist organizations. Vitagliano is hopeful Wells Fargo listens to its constituents – both current and potential.

“For folks who are a Wells Fargo customer, pulling your funds from that bank sends a message to the leadership, one we hope that they would pay attention to,” he states.

“If you are not a customer of Wells Fargo, you can simply let them know through the various avenues of contacting the company that if you were considering it, you would certainly not because of their open support for a secular view of marriage and family.”

The pro-homosexual Wells Fargo commercial can be viewed below.

Originally published at OneNewsNow.com.

The regular session of the Illinois General Assembly ended on May 31st,  but with lawmakers at an impasse over the state budget, they could be meeting in overtime sessions well into the summer.  Along with debate over a spending plan, workman’s compensation and the public sector pension crisis will keep lawmakers busy in  Springfield for at least several more weeks. According IFI  sources, Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan (D-Chicago) has told  state representatives that the Illinois House will be meeting every Tuesday throughout the month of June, and even into July.

Lawmakers could use their extra time in the State Capitol to address other issues as well.That includes SB 1564, which would require doctors, nurses and pharmacists to distribute referrals to patients who are seeking objectionable medical services such as abortion, sterilization, and certain end-of-life care.

In the video below, Dr. Lainna Callentine, a physician, instructor, writer, speaker, and pediatrician at Bolingbrook Christian Health Center, speaks out against SB 1564 on behalf of the Christian Medical and Dental Association.  IFI also interviewed Dan McConchie, Vice President of Government Affairs for Americans United for Life, who warns that passing this legislation into law would be handing proponents of abortion a tool to dramatically change how crisis pregnancy centers operate.

Take ACTION: Click HERE to send an email or a fax to your state representative. Ask him/her to uphold Rights of Conscience for medical professionals and vote NO on SB 1564.

Please also call your state representative during normal business hours to politely ask them to uphold the rights of conscience for medical personnel.  The Capitol switchboard number is (217) 782-2000.

Click HERE TO SUPPORT Illinois Family Institute.

Written by David Murray

Gay marriage is not primarily about gay marriage; it’s mainly about silencing gay consciences.

Given that so few homosexuals and lesbians actually marry when given legal opportunity, their vigorous and often vicious campaign for gay marriage has always puzzled me. After reading Brendan O’Neill’s The Trouble With Gay Marriage, I’m puzzled no more. Although O’Neill doesn’t approach this from a Christian perspective, his post-referendum article on the Republic of Ireland’s move to legalize gay marriage shines a bright light on the ultimate aim of most gay marriage campaigners – and it’s not gay marriage.

Validation and Recognition
O’Neill begins by noticing how little talk or commentary there actually was about gay marriage in the aftermath of the “Yes” vote. As he puts it, “Instead of saying ‘We can finally get married’, the most common response to the referendum result from both the leaders of the Yes campaign and their considerable army of supporters in the media and political classes has been: ‘Gays have finally been validated.’ All the talk was of ‘recognition’, not marriage.”

He then piles up quotation upon quotation to prove his point. For example:

• Ireland’s deputy PM Joan Burton said the Yes vote was about ‘acceptance in your own country’.
• Writing in the Irish Examiner, a psychotherapist said ‘the referendum was about more than marriage equality… it was about validation and full acceptance [of gay people]’.
• PM Enda Kenny also said the referendum was about more than marriage — it was a question of gay people’s ‘fragile and deeply personal hopes [being] realised’.
• In the words of novelist Joseph O’Connor, the Yes vote was an act of ‘societal empathy’ with a section of the population.
• The official Yes campaign went so far as to describe the Yes victory as a boost for the health and wellbeing of all Irish citizens, especially gay ones.
• A writer for the Irish Times described his gay friends’ pre-referendum ‘nagging shadow’, a ‘feeling that [they are] less somehow’, and he claimed the Yes victory finally confirmed for them that they now enjoy society’s ‘support, kindness and respect’. 
• Fintan O’Toole said the Yes victory was about making gays feel ‘fully acknowledged’.
• ‘My country has acknowledged that we exist’, said a gay Irish businessman.

Feel Good Vote
O’Neill says that “in short, the Yes result made people feel good,” and that what was sought was “not really the right to marry but rather social and cultural validation of one’s lifestyle — ‘societal empathy’ — particularly from the state.” He highlights older literature on gay marriage which also demonstrated that “early agitators for gay marriage seemed to be primarily concerned with ‘relieving adult anxiety.’”  

Why is this state-sanctioned validation, empathy, acceptance, acknowledgment and approval so important to gay marriage campaigners? Why is it far more important than actually being allowed to marry?

Desperate Measures
The answer lies in Romans 1v18-32, where the Apostle Paul explains what desperate measures that homosexuals (and other unrepentant sinners) take to silence the voice of their conscience. They hear God’s prohibition and condemnation in their consciences, hate it, and do everything they can to shut it up – including, in our own day, getting gay marriage legalized everywhere, even if relatively few ever make use of it. Because, in most cases, it’s not about the right to marry; it’s mainly a vain attempt to muffle the inner voice of conscience by multiplying and amplifying external voices of approval.

If I’m wrong, then why don’t they leave alone the alleged minority who still disapprove of gay marriage. Why will they not tolerate any dissenters? Gay activists have got the media on their side, they’ve got the entertainment industry on their side, they’ve got the education establishment on their side, they’ve got corporate America on their side, they’ve got most politicians on their side, and most courts and judges too. Is that not enough? If they are so sure of the rightness of their cause, why can’t they tolerate even a few voices here and there that still insist, “This is wrong”?

Unprecedented Protection
There’s hardly any group in the world that has the level of public acceptance, validation, approval, and empathy now enjoyed by homosexuals. They’ve certainly got far more recognition, protection, and promotion than evangelical Christians anywhere. So why can’t they leave such Christians alone? What more do they want or need?

Only Romans 1:18-32 can explain this. In effect it says that even if gay marriage is legalized everywhere, and even if every dissenting voice is extinguished, gay consciences will still scream “Wrong!” and “Guilty!” Deep inside they will still know “the righteous judgment of God, that those who practice such things are deserving of death” (Rom. 1:32). That’s the “nagging shadow” that forever stalks gay consciousness.

Peace through the cross
The Christian message to the gay community is to give up this futile attempt to secure peace of conscience through the courts, the media, and millions of crosses on ballot papers. Far better to bring such pained consciences to the cross of Christ for full healing and permanent silencing by God Himself, through faith and repentance. That will do a far better job of removing anxiety, shadows, and fears than any amount of referenda or baker and florist bankruptcies. It will also open the way to experience the immeasurable length, depth, and height of the love of God.

And for Christians who are suffering or who will yet suffer the consequences of societal or state disapproval over this issue, take confidence from the power of a good conscience. We are mocked, disapproved, belittled, sidelined, caricatured, and rejected more than any other group in society. We are called bigots, homophobes, and haters. But having a good conscience through which God speaks His approval and acceptance of us means we can continue to stand for what is right and true no matter how many voices of intolerance and hate yell at us.

Originally published at HeadHeartHand.org.

In the first century, Jesus was asked whether the Jewish people, who were under pagan, Roman occupation, should pay taxes to Caesar. The Lord, of course, said we are to render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, and unto God what is God’s. But in 21st century America, Caesar is angling for a better deal—and he’s getting it.

Our old friend Chuck Colson sounded the alarm several years ago when certain political figures on the Left—including former secretary of state Hillary Clinton—began downsizing the First Amendment’s guarantee of our God-given right to freedom of religion into a more manageable “freedom of worship.”

Chuck feared—rightly, it turns out—that opponents of religious liberty were seeking to keep religion within the four walls of our churches, synagogues, and mosques—as if religious belief were no more than a purely private opinion with no practical implications for the real world. In other words, “Feel free to worship, if you like, but keep your religiously informed opinions and actions to yourself.”

It’s a totalitarian impulse, and you can see it in the intensifying efforts to force faith groups to pay for abortions, to shut down Christian businesses that don’t want to participate in so-called “gay weddings,” and so on.

And the totalitarians are getting bolder about it. In Victoria, Australia, doctors are required by law to perform abortions when asked, or refer the patient to a colleague who will. In Canada, meanwhile, the Ontario and Saskatchewan Colleges of Doctors and Surgeons want physicians forced to perform euthanasia—which is now a fundamental national “right”—if no one else is available to do it.

And the totalitarians—being totalitarians—will brook no compromise. According to Canadian bioethicist Udo Schuklenk, “The very idea that we ought to countenance conscientious objection in any profession is objectionable.”

Really? And alas, this totalitarian streak is not confined to the Great White North. Mrs. Clinton, who once said that abortion can be “a sad, even tragic choice,” now asserts that a so-called “right to reproductive health care” trumps religious freedom. “Laws have to be backed up with resources and political will,” she said at a recent meeting of the Women in the World Summit. “And deep-seated cultural codes, religious beliefs and structural biases have to be changed.” Religious beliefs have to be changed?

Now Caesar seeks to regulate not just our actions, but our thoughts as well!

New York Times columnist and gay-rights advocate Frank Bruni thinks we need to change our religious beliefs about marriage, too—since, he says, interpreting the Bible is filled with subjectivity and uncertainty. Therefore believers shouldn’t take it too literally on matters of sexuality. “So our debate about religious freedom,” Bruni says, “should include a conversation about freeing religions and religious people from prejudices that they needn’t cling to and can indeed jettison, much as they’ve jettisoned other aspects of their faith’s history, rightly bowing to the enlightenments of modernity.”

How nice that Mr. Bruni and other sexual totalitarians stand ready to “free us” from our prejudices. What’s next, re-education camps? If you think I’m exaggerating the totalitarian threat, in the same newspaper, David Brooks writes, “If orthodox Christians are suddenly written out of polite society as modern-day Bull Connors, this would only halt progress, polarize the debate and lead to a bloody war of all against all.”

Lord have mercy.

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

Written by Samuel Smith

U.S. Senator Mike Lee, R-Utah, addressed concerns that faith-based schools and institutions would be at risk of losing their tax-exempt status for upholding their biblical belief of traditional marriage if the U.S. Supreme Court delivers a pro-gay marriage ruling this month.

At a Wednesday press conference held in the senator’s Capitol Hill office, Lee, along with prominent members of the evangelical higher education community, voiced concern over comments made in the U.S. Supreme Court’s oral argument in April by the Obama administration’s lead attorney, Solicitor General Donald Verrilli.

Lee explained that Verrilli, who testified as a friend of the court on April 28 in favor of making same-sex marriage a national right, was asked by Justice Samuel Alito whether or not making same-sex marriage a constitutional right would allow for the IRS to revoke the tax-exempt statuses of faith-based schools and universities that choose not to recognize same-sex marriage because of their biblical convictions.

“The response uttered by Solicitor General Verrilli was troubling to say the very least. He responded by saying ‘I don’t deny that. I don’t deny that, Justice Alito. It is going to be an issue,'” Lee explained. “He reiterated this response basically four times that this is going to be an issue that he doesn’t deny that this is a very real possibility, if not a probability.”

“Tax-exempt status for religious institutions has historically been granted because we want to keep the government out of the business of interfering with religion,” the senator continued. “It really ought not be in the business of disrupting the business of a church or religious institution.”

Lee told reporters that he plans to introduce a bill called the Government Nondiscrimination Act, which would essentially prevent the federal government from taking action against an institution based on the institution’s belief that marriage should only be a union of one man and one woman.

Lee did not indicate when he plans to introduce the legislation, but he could introduce the bill after the U.S. Supreme Court reaches a decision on constitutional same-sex marriage sometime in June.

“When the government itself is retaliating against someone based on their religious beliefs, that is a problem and that is what we are trying to protect here,” Lee said. ” We expect that in part because the Obama administration’s chief advocate, before the U.S. Supreme Court, acknowledged that it is going to be an issue, that is that you are going to have some religious institutions losing certain status, perhaps tax-exempt status, perhaps some other type of status and that’s why we feel like we need this law. We need something in the United States code that protects Americans against that type of discrimination by government.”

Also speaking at the press conference was Dr. Keith Wiebe, president of the American Association of Christian Schools, who said that if same-sex marriage became constitutional and religiously-affiliated universities began losing their tax-exempt statuses, it would cause them great financial ramifications and even cause those institutions to close down.

“Absolutely, [some religious schools] would have to close down [if they lost their tax-exempt statuses]. The financial ramifications are pretty significant, in terms of them being able to operate if everything they are doing becomes taxable,” Wiebe asserted. “They are receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in tuition. Our schools, they are private schools, they are Christian schools, they receive money for tuition, that suddenly becomes taxable.”

Wiebe also said that the accreditation of religious institutions and the certification of their teachers would likely be rejected should gay marriage become constitutional and Lee’s legislation is not enacted to protect them.

Dr. Samuel Oliver, president of the evangelical Union University in Tennessee, added that there are over 29,000 faith-based preschools, elementary schools and high schools along with 1,700 faith-based colleges in the United States. He explained that if some of those schools lost their tax-exempt statuses, it would create a “great burden on the taxpayers” and would be “catastrophic for the common good.”

“If say even 100 institutions the size of Union [University] closed, that would be 400,000 students that would be put in the system,” Oliver said. “The state of Tennessee, where we are, funds higher education and putting those students into those systems would cause great burden on the taxpayers, not to mention the loss of the common good that comes from the institutions themselves.”

“If faith-based education ceases to exist, the state educational system will not be able to accommodate the number of students who are dumped into the pool,” he added. “To force students, by default, to attend secular schools is a form of mind control.”

Expanding the issue outside of the realm of educational institutions, Dr. Jerry Johnson, president of National Religious Broadcasters, wondered whether tax-exempt ministries would be at risk of losing their status. He also pondered whether the Federal Communications Commission would choose to not license or revoke licenses of broadcasters who uphold a biblical belief of traditional marriage.

“For radio stations, my interest, the [FCC], those broadcast licenses, are they going to be at risk if they don’t honor that new constitutional right?” Johnson asked. “The solicitor general, as the senator pointed out, cleared up any confusion about that in the mind of the administration. I want to quote even more precisely, he said it is ‘certainly’ going to be an issue. He used the word ‘certainly.’ This is not maybe. ‘Certainly’ for this administration, this is an issue.”

This article was originally posted at the Christian Post website.

Written by John Zmirak

If you have been following mass media over the past few days, you will have learned from an economist at the U.S. Department of Labor that defenders of religious freedom are “Nazis.” Take a moment to ponder that assertion. Roll it around in your head for a while. You’ll be hearing a lot more fighting words as we enter the next phase of Christian life in America.

Sample the hate that has been spewed at the state of Indiana in the past week, and faithful Christians in recent years, by gay activists and their allies. We are “bigots,” “Neanderthals” and “haters,” whose views must be ritually rejected by anyone hoping to keep a job in today’s America — even in a Catholic high school. Where will this end? Is there a logical stopping point for this aggression, where Christians are left in peace?

History teaches that mass vilification rarely stops short of spilling blood. The French Jacobins who spent the 1780s slandering the clergy in pornographic pamphlets went on in the 1790s to slaughter Christians by the hundreds of thousands. The Turks paved the way for killing a million Armenian Christians with a wave of propaganda. The Bolsheviks followed their “anti-God” crusade of the 1920s with starvation camps and firing squads. The Communist governments of Eastern Europe obeyed the same script, as scholar Anne Applebaum documents in her sobering study The Iron Curtain. The Hutu government of Rwanda prepared for its assault on the once-powerful Tutsis by incessantly describing them as “cockroaches” on radio broadcasts, which triggered a genocide.

If the media, the law and our elite institutions succeed in lumping Christian sexual morals in with white racism, how long will it be before believing Catholics, Protestants, Orthodox (and many religious minorities) find themselves labelled as members of “extremist sects,” no more to be trusted with the care of their own children than the Branch Davidians were?

Does that sound crazy to you? Then ask yourself why the German government, and the European Court of Human Rights, felt justified in seizing a Christian home-schooled student — with the apparent approval of the Obama administration. Think about the moral views you teach your own kids. Would your local education bureaucrats approve?

Perhaps Chicago’s cardinal, Francis George, wasn’t guilty of hyperbole when he said, “I expect to die in bed, my successor will die in prison and his successor will die a martyr in the public square.”

Joining him would be many Christians who affirm the Gospel in its integrity — instead of the neutered version that’s now sweeping the denominations to swell the ranks of the persecutors. See the Episcopalians and Presbyterians who are now blessing same-sex marriages; see “Catholic” universities such as Marquette, which fired a professor for defending the Catholic Catechism on this subject, and bishops such as Paul Bootkowski of Metuchen, N.J., who backed up a Catholic school that suspended a Catholic teacher for her Facebook comments critical of gay activism. With shepherds like these, who really needs wolves?

From Libertarian to Totalitarian in Twenty Years

It’s stunning how quickly the demands of gay activists went from libertarian (“Don’t arrest us for sodomy”) to totalitarian (“Take part in our weddings or we’ll destroy your livelihoods.”)

But I am not surprised. I was in New York City when the radical gay activists of ACT UP targeted John Cardinal O’Connor for upholding biblical teaching on sexuality — even as he spent millions offering free care for indigent victims of AIDS. The “Stop the Church” demonstrations featured images of O’Connor in Nazi uniform, and culminated on Dec. 10, 1989, in an orchestrated attack on St. Patrick’s Cathedral during a Mass, where gay militants shouted down the celebrant, and demanded Holy Communion — only to throw it down and stomp on the body of Christ.

This bigoted attack on a religious service did not discredit ACT UP; indeed, you can now read an article celebrating it courtesy of the U.S. government-sponsored Radio Free Europe. Here’s a triumphalist video of the event, which includes appalling footage inside the cathedral:

If Indiana caves and guts its religious freedom law — as Gov. Mike Pence has already promised — it will prove an equal triumph for those who are so enraged at Christian teaching that they are willing to persecute Christians.

If these zealots succeed, they will tear up the civil peace in this country, forcing millions of Americans to choose between church and state. If laws or government policies beggar Christian businesses, close Christian colleges and schools and force faithful Christians into third-class citizenship — making us virtual dhimmis, like the Christian Copts in Egypt — what should we do? What should be our response now that we know what they want to do, and are overplaying their hand, but before they complete their coup d’etat?

We need to ask ourselves some brutal questions: How should the faithful in the U.S. military respond? What about those in the state and local police? City, state and federal employees? What about religious shareholders in corporations led by anti-Christians, such as Apple?

Should we engage in large-scale, non-violent civil disobedience, as black Americans once did in the face of Jim Crow laws? We have the numbers to bring this country to a sudden screeching halt, if we can stand up to the media’s blows and spitting. Those who resist these unjust laws will be treated with all the violence and contempt that was poured out on the pro-life Operation Rescue in the 1980s and ’90s. Local cops from West Hartford, Connecticut, to Los Angeles, California, brutalized teenagers, old women, even nuns and pregnant mothers.

But we need not act alone, like these isolated bakers and florists. The marriage deconstructionists can only succeed by dividing us, vilifying us and picking us off one at a time. This is the essence of their strategy — they’re now trying it with an entire state. Tim Cook (or Apple’s shareholders) would backpedal in an instant if he learned the hard way that he was insulting and infuriating 2/3rds of American states, and half the population.

The frog must jump out of the pan, before it boils.

We should not let the possibility or even the likelihood of “failure” make us timid. Witness is utterly different from propaganda, more fragile but far more enduring.

For centuries, the early Christians endured far worse than we might face, dying in the Colosseum to the taunts of jeering crowds — whose grandchildren would flee the moral chaos of collapsing Rome and flock to the underground churches. All the persecution that a government like China can deal its native Christians has not stopped the church from exploding there, and striking fear at the highest levels of a totalitarian government. The battered church in Poland led the movement that brought down the Iron Curtain, through sober, persistent resistance.

Perhaps the future we face is the one that Cardinal George envisioned. Speaking of a future bishop who would someday die a martyr, George predicted, “His successor will pick up the shards of a ruined society and slowly help rebuild civilization, as the church has done so often in human history.” If we stand for eternity, then history is on our side.

For Part One of this analysis, see #Boycott Indiana: Same-Sex “Marriage” and the End of Tolerance in America.

Originally published at Stream.org.

The Illinois General Assembly adjourned yesterday afternoon, ending their regularly scheduled spring session.  They did so, however, without finalizing a state budget or addressing the looming pension crisis.  That means our lawmakers will be going back to Springfield for an overtime session to work out what they couldn’t resolve during the past five months.  According to the Chicago Sun-Times, Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan (D-Chicago) told state representatives that “the House will be in continuous session this summer.”

While the official end of session is good news, the fact that lawmakers will be returning to Springfield as early as this Thursday means that we will still have to be diligently working against pending legislation.  This includes SB 1564, which has already passed the Illinois Senate and is pending a vote in the Illinois House.

SB 1564 would radically alter the Illinois Healthcare Right of Conscience Act — an Act that allows medical personnel and health care facilities to avoid participating in morally dubious medical procedures such as abortion, sterilization, and certain end-of-life care.  Doctors, pharmacists and other medical personnel have been protected from having to violate their beliefs and values for almost twenty years under this Act.

SB 1564 would mandate pro-life doctors, nurses and pharmacists to distribute information to patients who are seeking objectionable medical services such as abortion, sterilization, and certain end-of-life care.

It is also important to point out that SB 1564 would negatively affect crisis pregnancy centers that provide health care services by requiring that these life centers give referrals to Planned Parenthood or other venues that commit abortions.

No American, let alone vital health care personnel, should be required to violate their personal integrity by being forced to provide referrals to procedures or services they find morally offensive.  Instead, our lawmakers should be working to uphold and reinforce First Amendment conscience protections.

They should uphold liberty, not coerce free people.

 Take ACTION: Click HERE to send an email or a fax to your state representative. Ask him/her to uphold Rights of Conscience for medical professionals and vote NO on SB 1564.

Please also call your state representative during normal business hours to politely ask them to uphold the rights of conscience for medical personnel.  The Capitol switchboard number is (217) 782-2000.

Click HERE TO SUPPORT Illinois Family Institute.

An important lesson I learned early in my theological training was that I ought never violate my own conscience and I must never put pressure on others to violate theirs.  To do so would be immoral and unethical.  One’s conscience may be incorrect, and it is appropriate to educate it when necessary, but in the mean time, it must not be crossed lest that vital “alarm” be deadened.

With the politicians in Springfield debating whether to require medical professionals who oppose abortion to refer abortion seekers to others who will provide those services we see the government of the State of Illinois taking actions that no ethical person can take.  Those of us who oppose abortion see this as similar to someone approaching us to do a “hit” for them, but finding we will not, enlisting the government to force us to refer them to someone who will!

The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution was drafted for the specific purpose of protecting the sanctity of conscience.  The government must never be permitted to force people to in any way support actions that violate their personal convictions.  This vital protection has been eroded significantly already, but it must be reestablished!

SB 1564 is not merely a bad piece of legislation that goes against the most precious values that made America great, it is also an insult against young women!  What it says is that while a woman may be wise enough and smart enough to choose an abortion, she may well be incapable of finding an abortion provider on her own.  Apparently, the Yellow Pages and Google are just too complicated for her.  In fact, she may be so helpless that the only possible way for her to exercise her choice is to force those who disagree with her to help her locate an abortion provider!

Does this mean the Left sees its conservative opponents as smarter than these young women?

Strange, don’t you think?

I am sure that proponents of this legislation would reply that the trauma of an unwanted or crisis pregnancy sometimes makes such things as locating assistance difficult.  Well, maybe, if the “crisis” of the moment is such that she struggles to use the moderately simple contemporary tools available for locating service providers, she is in that moment too confused to terminate the life within her as well.

 Take ACTION: Click HERE to send an email or a fax to your state representative. Ask him/her to uphold Rights of Conscience for medical personnel, and vote NO to SB 1564.  

Please also call your state representative during normal business hours to politely ask them to uphold the rights of conscience for medical personnel.  The Capitol switchboard number is (217) 782-2000.