It’s not enough for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) to use its legal clout to halt graduation invocations or prayers before high school football games.

In Florida, the ACLU insists that even a secular school concert in a building that is used for religious services is beyond the pale. As is often the case, a single “atheist” parent complained, and that was enough for the ACLU to threaten legal action over the possibility of attendees catching religion “cooties.”

Of course, the ACLU did not phrase it as such, nor did they liken the church to a leper colony. But they got their way – sort of.

Rather than fight the legal assault, officials at Barron Collier High School near Naples, Florida at first called off their fifth annual fall concert at Moorings Presbyterian Church. As outraged students who had practiced for weeks for the event objected, school officials fashioned a deal. They would move the fall concert to another district high school and then have a second concert at the church in December.

Students were not thrilled, and they let school officials know it. Only about a third of the chorale’s members performed at the other school on Nov. 20, even though absentees were warned they would be given an F and it would count for one-sixteenth of their final grade.

“It was kind of like, ‘take one for the team,’ ” senior Claire Welsh told the Naples Daily News after the performance:

“She was crying right up to the start of the show, which saw only about 60 of the 175 choirs students take part. ‘It’s my senior year and I’ve been doing this for four years. This is a really sad start to my final year of choir.’

“Parents were told if the concert went off Thursday at Gulf Coast, the December concert would be back at Moorings, which parents and students argue has better acoustics.”

The ACLU had contended that because Moorings Presbyterian Church is regularly used for religious services, the atheist parent rightly found the concert location objectionable, even though the event contains no religious content.

Liberty Counsel, a pro-family, constitutional legal group, offered the school pro bono legal representation to fight the ACLU, urging district officials not to cave in to its “campaign of intimidation and misinformation,” according to OneNewsNow.com.

“The courts have held the use of religious property by a school district to be constitutional if there is a clear secular purpose for the use, the use does not endorse or discourage religion, and the ‘reasonable observer’ would not conclude that the school district endorses religion,” Liberty Counsel asserted. “The clear secular purpose to use the Presbyterian church auditorium is for sufficient room to hold the crowd and appropriate acoustics. … The students know that they are simply using a building.”

In an Oct. 30 letter issued to Collier County Public Schools Superintendent Dr. Kamela Patton, Liberty Counsel attorney Horatio G. Mihet assured district officials that holding the concert would not put the district in legal jeopardy:

“The ACLU’s legal position and threats are baseless and constitutionally infirm. Collier County Schools does not violate any student’s constitutional rights by simply using or even leasing a church building for the performance of concert music by the High School Chorus. Courts have been crystal clear on this point:

“‘Plausible secular reasons…exist for performing school choir concerts in churches and other venues associated with religious institutions. Such venues often are acoustically superior to high school auditoriums or gymnasiums, yet still provide adequate seating capacity. Moreover, by performing in such venues, an instructor can showcase his choir to the general public in an atmosphere conducive to the performance of serious choral music.’” Bauchman for Bauchman v. W. High Sch., 132 F.3d 542, 554 (10th Cir. 1997).

“Thus, if a church can permanently lease a building for operation of a school without violating the Establishment Clause, then surely two hours in a large, air conditioned, acoustically ideal room is perfectly acceptable,” Mihet wrote.

It would have been nice if school officials had bucked the ACLU’s bullying and gone ahead with the fall concert at the church, which they had done the previous four years.

But at least an anemic version of the show went on, with the promise of another, and lots of students who got an ‘F’ showed that they know something very important: that freedom is not free.

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

At noon on Tuesday, December 2, 2014, the Springfield Nativity Scene Committee (SNSC) will unveil its annual display depicting the newborn Christ Child, lying in a manger inside a handcrafted wooden stable. For the seventh year in a row, the crèche will stand in the center of the Illinois State Capitol Rotunda, next to the Governor’s “Holiday Tree.”

The Capitol building is located at South 2nd Street & East Capitol Avenue in Springfield, IL. From noon until 1 p.m. on December 2nd, the SNSC will host a celebration in honor of the true meaning of Christmas, which is not only a secular “holiday” but is also, more importantly, a Christian holy day honoring the birth of Jesus Christ.

The crèche and manger represent a constitutionally protected expression by private citizens, the SNSC, in a traditional public forum, namely, the Capitol Rotunda, where political rallies are routinely held during sessions of the Illinois General Assembly and at other times during the year.

This is classic free speech, as well as the right of Americans to exercise religious faith in the public square, where the sole role of the government is that of a viewpoint-neutral gatekeeper assuring open access for all citizens to have their “say.” Government is neither censor nor endorser of such religious speech. Because the SNSC’s Christmas display is privately funded, temporary in nature, and is sponsored, bereft of any government aid or endorsement, it is clothed and armored with the full protection of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and its counterpart in the Illinois Constitution of 1970.

The SNSC’s primary goal is to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior. Its secondary mission is to proclaim and demonstrate to the public and media alike (statewide and nationwide) that such private expressions of religious belief in the public squares of our nation are not merely tolerated, but fully deserving of robust legal protection.

The December 2nd event is open to the public.  Christmas carols will be sung by the Official Praise Team of the Springfield Baptist Church and led by Music Pastor Brian Morgan. Speakers will include the Most Rev. Thomas J. Paprocki, Bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Springfield; and Peter Breen, Vice President & Senior Counsel of the Thomas More Society, Chicago. Mr. Breen is State Representative-Elect for the 48^th district.

For the second year in a row, Chaplain Steve Holden of the U.S. Emergency Chaplains Corps (USECC) will lay a Christmas wreath, in honor of the service and sacrifice of America’s military veterans.

The Nativity Scene will be on display in the Rotunda during normal business hours starting Dec. 2nd and throughout the Christmas season. Individuals or groups who would like to sing near the Nativity Scene (on weekdays, when the Rotunda is open) can call Salli Chernis of the Sec. of State’s office at (217) 782-8996 for permits. NOTE: Performances are limited to the noon hour.

For more info e-mail SpringfieldNativityScene@xmail99.com

or call Tom Brejcha at the Thomas More Society at 312-782-1680

An Idaho pastor and his wife have won a showdown with the city of Couer d’Alene over demands that they preside over same-sex union ceremonies.

Donald and Evelyn Knapp, who are both ordained Pentecostal ministers, have operated The Hitching Post Lakeside Chapel in Coeur d’Alene since 1989.

City officials had previously informed the Knapps that they must perform same-sex “weddings” at their chapel, or face the potential of a $1000 fine for each day of violation and up to 180 days in jail.

City attorneys said the failure by the couple to do so would violate the city’s non-discrimination ordinance, which prohibits bias against persons based on so-called “sexual orientation” and “gender identity.”

City officials said the Knapps must comply because The Hitching Post is operated as a for-profit corporation.  The Knapps responded by filing suit in federal court arguing that the edict was a violation of their First Amendment right to the free exercise of religion.

The Knapps stated publicly that they would shut down The Hitching Post before they would take actions contrary to what the Bible teaches.

Following a controversy that attracted national headlines, city officials have reversed their position.   They now say that the Knapps’ lakeside chapel is exempt from the ordinance because the business is a “religious corporation.”

In their lawsuit, the Knapps asserted that they believe that “God created two distinct genders in His Image” and “that God ordained marriage to be between one man and one woman.”

The weddings conducted by the Knapps are distinctly Christian in nature.  Scriptures are read during the ceremonies, and couples are provided with sermons on Christian marriage and recommended books on the subject.

Jeremy Tedesco, senior legal counsel for the Alliance Defending Freedom, says the city’s treatment of the ministers is a predictable result of the “special rights” laws pushed by homosexual advocates.

“We’ve been told that pastors would never be forced to perform ceremonies that are completely at odds with their faith.  Yet that’s exactly what is happening here, and it is happening this quickly.”

Tony Perkins, President of the Family Research Council, says that the Hitching Post case reveals the true intentions of the so-called “marriage equality” movement.

“Americans are witnesses to the reality that redefining marriage is less about the marriage altar, and more about fundamentally altering the freedoms of the other 98 percent of Americans.”

Please support the work of Illinois Family Institute.

Randy Sharp, director of special projects for the American Family Association, explains that the homosexual lobby has launched a major petition drive to convince The Learning Channel (TLC) network to drop the show “19 Kids and Counting,” one of the most successful programs the cable channel has ever had.

“But in reality this isn’t a message about the homosexual activists trying to silence a Christian family,” he says. “This is a homosexual activist group that’s trying to silence the Word of God.”

The anti-Duggars petition accuses the family of “fear mongering against gays and transgendered people” for opposing a “civil rights” ordinance passed in mid-August by the Fayetteville (Arkansas) City Council. The ordinance, which is now facing a special-election repeal vote on December 9, would in part permit transgendered people to use public restrooms of their choice.

Leading up to the August decision, Michelle Duggar – in a recorded robocall – urged residents of Fayetteville to stand against the ordinance, stating: “I don’t believe the citizens of Fayetteville would want males with past child predator convictions [who] claim they are female to have a legal right to enter private areas that are reserved for women and girls.” That precipitated the online petition blasting the Duggars and calling for them to be removed from TLC’s lineup.

Sharp goes on to say that the Duggars speak the truth, the Bible – and contends that activists cannot effectively challenge what is very plainly spoken in scripture: that homosexuality is an abomination to God.

“They can’t attack the message, therefore they attack the messenger,” says the AFA spokesman. “The Duggars are everything that’s right with America. They’re everything that’s right with the family. They’re everything that’s right with living out a Godly lifestyle. The homosexual lobby doesn’t like truth.”

TAKE ACTION:  AFA has launched a petition drive of its own to convince TLC that many Americans would be terribly disappointed to see “19 Kids and Counting” forced off the air by homosexuals. The pro-family group hopes to gather one million signatures by Christmas.

The next several years are going to be messy for Christians. We already know that some who claim to be within our fold will continue to challenge the historic, orthodox teaching about sexuality, marriage, and the essence of what it means to be made in the image of God. But even those of us who agree that marriage is what the church has always thought it was, will disagree on how best to move forward in a culture hell-bent on denying it.

Case in point: Over at First Things, a premier publication of Christian thought, Ephraim Radner and Christopher Seitz have offered what they refer to as “The Marriage Pledge,” calling clergy of all stripes to no longer sign government documents of civil marriage. To be a “clear witness,” they have decided they “will no longer serve as agents of the state in marriage” because to do so would be to “implicate the Church in a false definition of marriage.”

This is an idea that has been kicked around for some time. Past First Things articles have suggested it, as has my friend S. Michael Craven in his guest contribution to my recent book “Same-Sex Marriage: A Thoughtful Approach to God’s Design for Marriage.” Among those who have signed The Marriage Pledge are the clergy of my own church here in Colorado Springs. And Anne Morse, one of our terrific writers here at the Colson Center, has praised these clergy for distancing themselves from American lawmakers who are “increasingly making nonsense of marriage.”

Because Anne worked closely with Chuck Colson for decades, I hesitate to disagree with her. No doubt, as Anne writes, Chuck “would have been proud of these ministers” and their commitment to stand on their convictions. In that respect, they exemplify at least part of what he hoped to accomplish with the Manhattan Declaration.

However, I do not think that he would have agreed with this pledge. Neither do I.

Before I go into my reasons, let me first clarify that those who disagree on whether or not to sign this Pledge do not disagree about the nature, definition, or importance of marriage. Rather, we disagree about what to do, now that the state has denied the clear definition of marriage.

I should also make clear that I do not think—not in the least—that any clergy who have signed the Pledge, or anyone—like Anne Morse—who thinks clergy should sign, has “compromised” in any way. (And, I hope they do not think that of me or any of others—like Ryan Anderson, Douglas Wilson,Russell Moore, or Edward Peters—who disagree). My own clergy members who signed the pledge, and who have graciously and vigorously engaged with me on this topic, have more than earned their stripes by standing for marriage in a church that famously, over the last several decades, became neo-pagan. They fought hard before re-organizing under a different denominational identity.

No, ours is a disagreement of strategy and timing, not of faithfulness.

There may very well come a time when the church must take this step. It is quite conceivable that church officials will be forced out of the civil marriage business and not even given the option of being an agent of the state. But my view is that we’ll know when that time comes—because we’ll have been forced out. But let them do it to us. Let’s not leave before then.

This conversation reminds me of 2012. Remember when Louis Giglio stepped down from praying at President Barack Obama’s second Inauguration? The four years between the first and second Inaugurations had made quite a difference. Rick Warren was allowed to pray at the first, despite having vocally spoken out for marriage that same year during California’s Proposition 8 battle. But the critics were far less tolerant of Giglio four years later, even though the only evidence they could find of his so-called homophobia was nearly twenty years old. In light of the controversy, Giglio decided to graciously back out.

I think Giglio made a mistake—not because he was gracious, but because he backed out. I think he should have graciously stayed in. There’s a world of difference between being disinvited and backing out, and one can be gracious either way. I understand Giglio’s reasoning, but in a culture that needs to know where the church stands on things like sexuality and marriage and sin and the Gospel, it was the wrong strategy at the wrong time.

In my view, “The Marriage Pledge” commits the same strategic mistake, only on a much larger scale. We may, in fact, get disinvited from marrying people, and perhaps we’ll even be forcibly removed from this part of the public square. But let’s not leave of our own accord. We can be just as gracious one way as the other, with handcuffs or without.

And clergy can still marry people without compromising the biblical view. As Edward Peters notes, there is nothing on a civil marriage license itself that requires clergy to say marriage is something that it is not. But by refusing to proclaim to the state that those the church chooses to marry are indeed married, we are missing an opportunity to proclaim in the public square what marriage, in truth, is. R. R. Reno suggests that by having a separate church wedding and refusing to sign the state’s marriage license, the church is claiming marriage for itself, and we won’t let it be confused with what the state is now calling marriage. Perhaps, but that assumes people are listening. The boy who takes his ball and goes home isn’t playing anymore, and pretty soon is forgotten.

It could come across from that analogy that I think the state is the one defining the game. Not at all, or at least not any more than players define baseball. Underneath my point is this reality: Marriage is not created by the state, nor is it created by the church. Marriage precedes both church and state, and both are responsible to recognize it wherever it happens. When the church recognizes a marriage, it also proclaims it to the state. This we should continue to do.

By backing out of the civil marriage business, we risk reinforcing the growing opinion that our views on marriage are valid only to us and belong only in the private, religious recesses of our culture. We also risk perpetuating the very troubling myth that marriage is something that government defines, instead of something it recognizes. If we are still in the business, we can remind them. If not, we can’t.

Of course, whether the church can be a legitimate agent of the state without compromise is a valid question. But keep in mind that the church is not an agent of the state per se; it only serves as one in this matter. And don’t agents of the state who demonstrate and proclaim their loyalty to a higher authority have a stronger witness than someone who is not an agent of the state at all?

I’ve already heard of, and even met, several justices of the peace who have either resigned or who now refuse to marry anyone because they may be asked to marry same-sex couples. I understand the dilemma, but to them I say, “Stay in the game! Keep your post, but refuse to render to Caesar authority that does not belong to him. Get fired! Get censured! Get sued! Be nice and kind, but firm; keep the witness as long as you can.”

I realize, of course, that it is easy for me to say this to a justice of the peace from this side of the keyboard. I won’t face that sort of trouble for simply writing a book on the issue. I may get some angry tweets, but that’s not much to worry about. But, with apologies for my cushy position, I still think it’s the right thing to do. It’s what I would try to do if I were in that person’s place.

Clergy members are like justices of the peace, but with a much more protected position because of our religious freedoms, such as they currently are. So they have even more reason to stay in the game. And since the more troubling cultural problem is the precipitous decline of marriage rates in general, taking our exit now would be tantamount to saying that people who really are legitimately married for us are not married for the state.

“But we are marrying them—in a church wedding,” the response might be. True, but because marriage is a creational reality, not a church one, I can’t see how we ought to recognize it in the church while not also proclaiming to the state (and everyone else) that “these two are now one flesh” in a way that others are not. In this way, the church has the unique role of simultaneously being an agent of and a messenger to the state. When it plays this role, it reminds the state of whose world this really is.

Of course, the moment that clergy are asked to marry same-sex couples, they ought flatly to refuse. Period. End of story. And at that point, we’ll have to decide our next step. But let’s not step too soon out of the marriage game happening in the public square.

This brings up two other arguments against “The Marriage Pledge,” neither of which originates with me. First, the document suggests that the couple being married by the church should go off on their own to claim the benefits of civil marriage bestowed by state. But if it is wrong for clergy to be involved with the state on marriage, how is it less wrong for the laity to be involved?

This is a real problem, and creates more problems. For example, if we are to consider church marriage different from civil marriage, by what means will the church enforce its understanding of marriage and divorce to those married by the church? Why should anyone listen?

Even more, if same-sex marriage demands our separation from civil marriage, aren’t we late to the game? Why didn’t we take this step when no-fault divorce made marriage vows a mockery, and children the victim of a parent’s “right to be happy”? Shouldn’t we have done this a long time ago?

Well, we didn’t, and I argue we shouldn’t have. Instead, we should have been more serious about what it means to be married. We should have displayed a little more courage in the matter of whom we married and whom we did not, as well as how we handled those we married that violated their vows. But we didn’t, because that would have “gotten in the way of the Gospel,” or something like that.

In our book “Same-Sex Marriage,” Sean McDowell and I suggest that in this brave new world we’ll need to be more creative. As a model, we point to Daniel, who was faced with two options: Eat the king’s meat or be killed. But Daniel came up with a third option, which allowed him to honor his commitment “not to defile himself with the king’s food” and still stay in the game and influence the power center of Babylon.

Have we really exhausted all of our other options? Have we even thought of all of our options? I don’t think so. Let’s stay in a while longer, pray for strength and wisdom, stand our ground on our convictions, and see what happens. When it’s time to go, we’ll know by the pushy state arm that will be squarely in the center of our backs.

John Stonestreet is a speaker and fellow of the Colson Center and, along with Eric Metaxas, host of BreakPoint Radio.  This article was originally posted at the BreakPoint.org website.

“Remember what I told you: ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will persecute you also. If they obeyed my teaching, they will obey yours also.” ~John 15:20

Christians, pastors, take heed. In case you haven’t noticed, times are a-changin’. Whether at home or abroad, if you follow God’s command to speak biblical truth in all things, most especially, it seems, on matters of sex and sexuality, you will be persecuted.

“A servant is not greater than his master.”

I don’t presume to compare my friend Scott Lively of Abiding Truth Ministries to Jesus Christ. None of us can compare, even remotely, to the one and only God-man – to the Lord of the universe and exclusive path to eternal salvation. That said, Pastor Lively is one of the most “Christ-like” people I’ve had the honor to know.

As did Christ, Scott Lively speaks absolute truth, in absolute love, with absolutely no fear of personal destruction or even death. He loves everyone, whether friend or foe, Christian or pagan, straight or “gay.”

For example, Scott and his family took into their home and nursed, both physically and spiritually, the late Sonny Weaver, a former homosexual who died, as so many have, from AIDS – a natural consequence of unnatural behavior. Sonny became homosexual after being raped at 7 years old by a “gay” man in a local YMCA. He became a former homosexual after accepting Jesus as Lord of his life.

Lively loves those who seek to defend him just as he loves those who seek to destroy him – and, make no mistake about it, precisely because Pastor Scott Lively has chosen to both obey and emulate Jesus Christ, there are people, very powerful people, who seek to destroy him. These people, unless and until they come to know, accept and surrender to the Lord Jesus, are, and will remain, enemies of God.

And so Scott Lively prays for them.

Remember those pastors in Houston who were told to turn over their sermons to radical lesbian-activist mayor Annise Parker? Remember the national outrage over this blatantly unconstitutional act of governmental abuse?

You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.

Pastor Lively, you see, has, in the spirit of Saul Alinsky, been “Hitlerized” by a left-wing extremist group ironically calling itself the “Center for Constitutional Rights” (CCR). CCR is a George Soros-funded organization with, I kid you not, the beastly street address of 666 Broadway, New York, NY.

Because Lively exercised his God-given First Amendment rights, as well as his free-speech rights afforded by the laws of Uganda, and spoke biblical truth about homosexual sin after having been invited there by a number of Ugandan pro-family groups, homosexual activists set-out to make an example of him.

In March of 2012 CCR sued Lively in a Massachusetts federal court for “crimes against humanity” – the same charge filed against Nazis who stood trial in Nuremberg – on behalf of another moonbat organization called “Sexual Minorities Uganda,” which, and again, you can’t make this stuff up, prefers the moniker “SMUG.”

And so Lively enlisted the pro-bono legal services of Liberty Counsel, one of America’s fastest-growing civil rights organizations.

Lively explains: “With full knowledge that these are bald-faced lies, SMUG asserts that 1) I masterminded the 2009 Anti-Homosexuality Bill in Uganda, which they call the ‘Kill the Gays Bill’ [in fact, Lively publicly opposed the bill, which has since been struck down by Ugandan courts], 2) inflamed passions against homosexuals in Uganda by characterizing all homosexuals as irredeemable genocidal child molesters, and 3) introduced to Uganda the heretofore unknown strategy of criminalizing public promotion of homosexuality as a means of opposing the rise of a homosexual movement in Uganda. The proof that these are lies is found in the very same documents they misuse against me.”

CCR and SMUG also tried to blame Lively for the murder of Ugandan homosexual David Kato, a murder he also publicly condemned, making it the centerpiece of their lawsuit until, and as was noted in Liberty Counsel’s Motion to Dismiss, it was revealed that, as Lively predicted, Kato was actually murdered by his “gay” lover who confessed to the crime, was convicted and is now in prison.

But all of this is incidental. It’s a smokescreen. Keep in mind; we’re talking about protected speech here. Lively is being tried for “crimes against humanity” for merely uttering, publicly, millennia-old biblical orthodoxy relative to sexual morality.

So how could such an Orwellian lawsuit – clearly designed as a weapon to both harass and intimidate Lively and anyone else who might dare challenge the global homosexual activist political agenda – even make its way into a U. S. federal court?

Well, CCR and SMUG’s angle was to circumvent that pesky ol’ First Amendment, as well as Ugandan free-speech laws, through a gross misapplication of the Alien Tort Statute. Normally, this would have been laughed out of court and, in fact, just last year, even as this case was ongoing, the U.S. Supreme Court unequivocally ruled this very tactic to be unlawful.

But there’s nothing normal about this case.

Meet federal Judge Michael Ponsor. Ponsor, who thumbed his nose at the Supreme Court and denied Liberty Counsel’s slam dunk Motion to Dismiss, is the textbook example of a judicial activist. He has admitted as much, once saying in another context that, “At some point I realized that judges are the unappointed legislators of mankind, and what we do is just as creative.”

But for this judicial activist, the case would seem personal. At his inauguration to the federal bench he crowed, for instance, “We have a proud, vibrant gay and lesbian community.” Presumably he knows this because one of his ex-wives reportedly later “married” another woman, while his daughter once revealed publicly on social media that she, too, was a lesbian.

And so, to keep afloat the demonization of Scott Lively (of all Christians, really) despite the Supreme Court’s torpedo, and to keep alive this judicial abuse, harassment and intimidation – Ponsor, as promised, got “creative.”

Still, the case will eventually be tossed. It’s inevitable. But in the meantime, and as Harry Mihet, Pastor Lively’s lead attorney, points out, “Because the Court denied Mr. Lively’s Motion to Dismiss, we are now forced to go through many months and years of expensive and protracted discovery on two continents. Literally thousands of pages of documents are changing hands, and dozens of depositions will be taken. This makes the subpoenas to Houston pastors look like small potatoes.”

“SMUG’s and CCR’s end game is clear: Make war criminals out of anyone who encourages any legislative body to pass any legislation upholding the traditional family. If Scott Lively is guilty of the Crime Against Humanity of Persecution, then so are the Houston pastors and anyone who has ever tried to influence legislation against the homosexual juggernaut. There is no limiting principle,” concluded Mihet.

Yet, either way, for these anti-Christian extremists, the damage is done. The process is the punishment.

This was never about winning or losing.

It was always about intimidation.

By Todd Starnes

Do Christian colleges have the right to require that ROTC officers be followers of the Christian faith?

That’s the crux of a controversy surrounding the ROTC program at Wheaton College, one of the nation’s most prominent Christian schools.

The U.S. Army says they have launched a review of ROTC policies nationwide after the Military Religious Freedom Foundation raised concerns about an ROTC assignment listing for an assistant professor of military science at Wheaton.

The MRFF noted that the person hired “must be of Christian faith.”

“While Wheaton is a private Christian college, and can impose a religious test on its own faculty members, it cannot impose that same religious test on the faculty members provided by the U.S. Army for its ROTC program, and the U.S. Army unequivocally cannot require a religious test for any ROTC assignment, regardless of the religious preference of the college at which that ROTC assignment exists,” MRFF founder Mikey Weinstein wrote in a letter sent in November to Secretary of the Army John McHugh.

Weinstein called Wheaton’s policy a blatant violation of the Constitution’s “no religious test” clause and demanded those involved be punished.

“Given the magnitude of these breaches at Wheaton, any and all Army personnel found to be either directly or indirectly complicit in these egregious violations of constitutional and regulatory law must be swiftly, visibly and meaningfully punished,” Weinstein wrote in a letter to the Pentagon.

Wheaton said it’s been their preference from the beginning to have an officer who matches the religious identity of the school.

“We have historically required that the lead professor of military science meet the same basic religious standards as the rest of our faculty, as this person is fully a member of our faculty and serves as the interface of the ROTC program with the rest of the Wheaton College academic program,” Wheaton spokesperson LaTonya Taylor told me.

Other ROTC instructors are not required to meet the same standard, she said. However, they are expected to understand and respect Wheaton’s religious mission.

That sounds fairly reasonable to me. A Christian college wants to hire Christian leaders. Who could possibly take offense at that – besides Mr. Weinstein?

Weinstein fired off a letter to the Pentagon on Nov. 6th demanding an investigation. On Nov. 10 the Army confirmed they had launched a probe.

“The Army is conducting a holistic review of the ROTC agreements and policies in effect to ensure compliance with Army regulations and policies,” spokesperson LTC Alayne Conway told me in a written statement.

Conway said the investigation would not be limited to Wheaton College and would address whether other schools like Wheaton could also require that ROTC leadership adhere to specific religious faith.

The Army denied the investigation had anything to do with Weinstein’s threats. It was coincidental, I’m sure.

Wheaton spokesperson Taylor said the school will cooperate with the Army review.

“We fully support the Army conducting whatever investigations it needs to ensure the appropriateness of the training received by ROTC cadets, and we do so with gratitude that any such examination will take place in the context of the US constitutional standards guaranteeing the free exercise of religion and preventing governmental establishment of religion,” Taylor said.

The ROTC program at Wheaton College has a long and storied history that is steeped in the school’s Christian tradition.

The Rolling Thunder Battalion was established in 1952. The college required all freshmen and sophomore male students to participate in ROTC until 1969.

“There is a call today for a Joshua, a Gideon, a David, as well as for an Elijah and a Paul. ROTC at Wheaton is the answer,” former Wheaton president V. Raymond Edman once declared.

A posting on the ROTC’s website points out their faith-based mission:  “We expect to win, train to win, and compete to win. Ultimately, however, we seek to honor and glorify God in everything we do – how we train, treat each other, interact with other competitors, and compete – and this is our ultimate goal.”

Wheaton Provost Stanton Jones said he believes the school is on solid constitutional ground.

“The constitutional requirement for no establishment does not mean we are all non-religious,” he told me. “It means the U.S. government supports a multiplicity of religions.”

And for the record, Wheaton is not trying to convert the military to Christianity.

Rather, they are trying to “prepare Christians to engage in that pluralistic context where they can serve our country well – by our country’s own standards.”

So why is it important for a Christian to lead the ROTC program at a Christian school?

“Religious faith, evangelical faith is very much alive and at the center of how Wheaton College is defined,” Jones told me. “Wheaton students come here because of the religious distinctive of the school. We feel that the resonance of the lead military officer with that religious identity helps that person bridge the gap with the students.”

Should the Army consider changing its policy, Jones said they would give it due consideration. “We feel very thankful to live in a country that is broadly supportive of religious liberty,” he said.

“For us, the meaning of religious liberty is not that the public square is stripped of all religion, but rather it is a place where multiple religions are respected and where people of differing faiths can have reasoned conversations with civility and in peace about these things.”

I’m not sure what the take away here is, folks.  But one thing is clear – whenever Mikey Weinstein gets offended – the Obama Pentagon takes action.

Todd Starnes is host of Fox News & Commentary, heard on hundreds of radio stations. Sign up for his American Dispatch newsletter, be sure to join his Facebook page, and follow him on Twitter. His latest book is “God Less America.”

Writing in response to my article “Secularism Declares Open War On Religious Faith,” an atheist has assured his readers that there is no such war and that, more importantly, in order to avoid conflict with the larger society, I should simply keep my religion in the closet. He has thereby confirmed my article rather than refuted it, and the comments from his fellow-atheist readers only bring further confirmation.

Writing in the Thinking Atheist blog, Terry Firma mocked the idea that, “if you’re an evangelical Christian, ‘You have been marked, and you have been classified as a dangerous extremist.'”

Dismissing my statement that, “secularism has been waging war against religion for centuries,” Firma asks, “Don’t you think you might have that backwards, professor?”

Of course, a war has been raging both ways for centuries, but the point I was making was simple: Secularism in various forms has been in deep conflict with religious faith for centuries – in other words, this is not the first time such a conflict has arisen – but today, it is taking on an especially shrill form, as conservative Christians are being put in the same category as murderous terrorists (like ISIS and Boko Haram).

Yet rather than refute that point, Firma states that the criticism is not that far off target.

With reference to comments made my radio host (and atheist) David Pakman, whom I cited in my article, Firma writes, “I think Pakman’s comparison to ISIS is unhelpful, but it’s not incorrect. What would be incorrect is to say that conservative Christians go around cutting infidels’ heads off with abandon.

Pakman never goes there, obviously. He says the respective ideologies are similar, not identical; nor does he claim that the outcome of religious fundamentalism is the same no matter whether it’s extremist Muslims or hardline-conservative Christians we’re dealing with.”

Actually, Pakman is far less nuanced than Firma, which is one reason I cited him, and it is clear that Firma’s readers are far less nuanced as well, with choice comments like this one, from Debby, appearing at the end of his article: “I think that many of these religious whackadoos are only saying what even many more moderate Christians also feel. The fact is that people are standing up against Christian privilege in the US. The American Taliban (i.e. fundamentalists) simply don’t like having to consider other people have similar rights.”

In similar fashion, PsiCop branded me “an insanely paranoid religiofascist” and Seeker Lancer opined that when it comes to comparing conservative Christians to ISIS, “Maybe it’s unhelpful since it’s intended to incite but I say call a spade a spade.”

Again, this is what I was highlighting with the examples I cited in my article (in particular, the last three examples).

Yet Firma finds the examples to be very weak, even though I cited the UK gay activist (and atheist) Peter Tatchell, who recently released his “Manifesto for Secularism – Against the Religious Right,” in which he issued a “call on people everywhere to stand with us to establish an international front against the religious-Right and for secularism.”

So, a self-avowed atheist can call for a war against “the religious-Right,” by which he explicitly means the Taliban, ISIS, and al-Qaeda along with “the Christian-Right in the U.S. and Europe,” yet this secularist war against religion is merely a figment of my paranoid imagination. Really?

The problem for Firma, of course, is that he basically agrees with this mentality – although stating that Islam is more dangerous than Christianity – and to buttress his point about “the Christian-Right in the U.S. and Europe,” he points to Uganda, of all places. Uganda?

What does Uganda have to do with “the Christian-Right in the U.S. and Europe”?

Following the standard gay activist narrative, Firma blames Uganda’s harsh anti-gay bill on American evangelicals, although the truth is that: 1) The Ugandan leaders categorically deny that Americans were behind this bill, finding this accusation to be racist (since the American leaders in question are white), as if they didn’t have convictions of their own. 2) The main leader accused of inciting the bill, Scott Lively, publicly criticized the most controversial (and even draconian) measures of the bill, especially in its original form. 3) The other leader in question, Lou Engle, led a previously scheduled prayer meeting in Uganda (that had nothing to do with the homosexuality bill) and at that prayer meeting, simply encouraged the moral stand that Christian leaders were taking (without for a moment demonizing anyone or calling for harsh penalties against anyone).

Yet based on this slender thread (it’s not even that), Firma not only dismisses the evidence of the Tatchell manifesto, but he actually justifies lumping murderous terrorists together with godly, caring, conservative Christians in Europe and America.

Yet there’s more. Firma writes, “I’m not aware of any atheists who are interested in waging war on religious faith. Most of us, I’ll bet, are quite happy, if not adamant, to preserve the right to believe and speak as one sees fit for everyone, believer or agnostic.”

Surely, Firma has read the literature of the so-called new atheists like Richard Dawkins and his ilk, and he knows that Dawkins actually decries parents raising their children with religious beliefs, among other things, yet he is “not aware of any atheists who are interested in waging war on religious faith.” Really? (Ironically, Firma’s article was reposted on Dawkins’ website.)

Some of Firma’s readers were not convinced either, as C. Peterson stated that he was quite aware of such atheists, using himself as a case in point: “I am an unapologetic antireligionist who considers faith to be the primary root of all humanity’s problems, manifested partly by the inability to use reason consistently, and partly by the religions that faith spawns. All my ‘activism’ as an atheist is fundamentally a war on religion and on religious faith.”

Others added their “Amen” to his comments. Is anyone surprised?

Firma, however, had a proposal by which we people of faith could live in peaceful coexistence with the secularists: “As long as the faithful keep their religion out of the public square — that is, out of our public schools, and away from the business of a neutral government – we should all get along relatively well. If Mr. Brown seeks a truce between the religious and the non-religious, all he and his fellow believers need to do is (a) tone down the hateful rhetoric, all Jesus-like [in other words, do not express any moral viewpoints based on Scripture, even though that’s what Jesus did all the time]; and (b) keep their worship and their rule books confined to places where they are constitutionally appropriate. Problem solved.”

There you have it. There is no secular, atheistic war on religion, and whatever conflicts do exist can be resolved if we basically keep our religion in the closet.

Don’t hold your breath.

Written by Peter J. Leithart

A friend is encouraging pastors to run for political office. Like everyone, he’s worried about America’s future, and he’d like to see more experienced Christian leaders in public office. It’s a good ol’ American tradition that goes back to the Founding, and it will bear fruit and frustration, generate success and cynicism, in roughly equal measure.

However effective his campaign is, it’s a strategic error and perhaps reflects a theological mistake. The premise seems to be that pastors must become politicians to influence the nation’s direction, and that in turn suggests that the power of civil institutions is the greater than all others. The plan to push pastors toward politics seems to arise from the secular mentality that my friend so ardently opposes.

As pastors, pastors command unfathomable spiritual resources, the only resources with potential to transform the world. What Samuel Wells has said about the Church applies to pastors in particular: God gives “boundless gifts,” supplies “everything they need.” Love, joy, peace, and hope become flesh “through the practices of the Church: witness, catechesis, baptism, prayer, friendship, hospitality, admonition, penance, confession, praise, reading scripture, preaching, sharing peace, sharing food, washing feet. These are boundless gifts of God.” The pastor’s problem is not scarcity but excess: “God’s inexhaustible creation, limitless grace, relentless mercy, enduring purpose, fathomless love: it is just too much to contemplate, assimilate, understand.”

Pastors look for alternatives when they lose confidence in the tools of their trade. How many pastors believe they are stewards of the mysteries of God? Do we act as if our preaching participates by the Spirit in the creating and re-creating eternal Word? Do we believe that the Word is a weapon of the Spirit, as Hebrews says it is? Are we persuaded that the water we pour does wonders, or that a little ritual meal forms the social body of the incarnate Son of God, the assembly of God among the nations? Do we believe that the God with ears to hear is judge of the nations?

Do we play it safe by limiting the effectiveness of word and sacrament to a “spiritual” realm? How many pastors have forgotten that they already hold public office?

If pastors don’t believe in what they’re doing, we have to look behind them to the institutions that trained them. For a couple of centuries, seminaries have specialized in undermining confidence in the Bible. Filled with what John Milbank arrestingly and accurately calls “false modesty,” otherwise orthodox theologians adjust to the prevailing secular reason. Some seminaries are liturgically anemic, when they teach liturgics at all, and so they produce ministers who can’t even identify half of the tools in their kit.

We don’t need to politicize the seminaries. God knows, we’ve had plenty of that. We need to equip pastors who realize the full weight of pastoral vocation. To that end, a grab-bag of suggestions:

• Get rid of Old Testament and New Testament departments and teach the Bible as one book, centered on Jesus.
• Teach in a way that encourages trust in the Bible.
• Spend a half-hour teaching the text for every minute reviewing the latest biblical scholarship.
• Establish maximally biblical training so pastors can form vibrantly biblical churches.
• Don’t let anyone graduate unless he knows the Psalms—all of them.
• Teach students to pray, and to make their prayers as vast as creation.
• Encourage future pastors to expect God to throw fire from heaven and shake the earth when the church pleads for justice.
• Teach liturgics as theology, and theology as liturgics.
• Don’t politicize the liturgy or sacraments; instead, explain how they’re already political.
• Teach future pastors that they’re engaged in Christian politics every time they call a congregation to confession, pronounce absolution, preach, preside at the Lord’s table, and dismiss with a benediction.
• Aim to produce ministers capable of both binding the broken and confronting the predators—ministers who share Jesus’s compassionate zeal.
• Make sure students are ready to pull the trigger of church discipline.
• Remind them that pastoral ministry is a form of cross-bearing, a form of sacrifice.
• Tell the timid to find another calling.
• Require students to spend ten hours a week at a homeless shelter.
• Encourage graduates to enter business or the military so that they learn to lead before they accept a call to lead the people of God.

For good or ill, pastors will have a major role in determining the future of the church and our country, but not primarily as pastor-Congressmen. The future rests more with pastors who aren’t tempted to run for office, not because they want to keep their cushy curate but because they are convinced that, teaching the word, offering prayer, sprinkling water, and breaking the bread, they are already at the center of the universe.

Peter J. Leithart is president of the Theopolis Institute. He is the author most recently of Gratitude: An Intellectual History. His previous articles can be found here.

This article was originally posted at the FirstThings.com blog.

In the video below, Peter LaBarbera of Americans for Truth About Homosexuality gives an update on his court case in which he was indicted for taking a pro-family stand in Canada.

On April 10, 2014, LaBarbera was denied entrance into Canada for suspicion that his planned speech at a Canadian Pro-Life Conference would violate the nation’s “hate speech” laws. After gaining access, he later was arrested for passing out pro-life literature on a public university’s campus.

For full details on the entire ordeal, view IFI’s interview below from April, 2014 that immediately followed LaBarbera’s imprisonment and release.

Please consider supporting our work of Illinois Family Institute.

During a 2009 interview on France’s Canal+TV channel that is just now being reported widely, President Barack Obama claimed that Americans needed to be better educated on Islam and that, if we compute the total number of Muslims in America, we would be one of the biggest Muslim countries in the world.

In stark contrast, and with reference to a number of President Obama’s recent comments, Rev. Franklin Graham claimed that the president “was ‘fundamentally mistaken’ about radical Islam . . . and argued that Islam ‘is a false religion’ and that ‘it is impossible for a false religion to be a true religion of peace.’”

Who’s right?

Let’s start with some simple math.

Recent surveys indicate that the Muslim population in America is slightly under one percent, so, to be generous, let’s use one percent as the figure, which would mean that roughly three million Americans are Muslim. (Oddly enough, the MuslimPopulation.com website claims that 2.11 percent of Americans are Muslims, supporting this with a reference to a Wikipedia article that puts the figure at 0.8 percent!)

According to President Obama, this figure of three million Muslims would make us “one of the biggest Muslim nations.”

Was he accurate? Not by a mile. Not by many, many miles. In fact, he was embarrassingly wrong and inaccurate.

Here’s the list of the top 10 countries with more Muslims than America (as of 2012, with figures rounded off): 1). Indonesia 209 million; 2). India 177 million; 3). Pakistan 167 million; 4). Bangladesh 134 million; 5). Nigeria 77 million; 6). Egypt 77 million; 7). Iran 74 million; 8). Turkey 71 million; 9). Algeria 35 million; 10). Morocco 32 million.

How big is America’s Muslim population looking right now? How does 3 million compare with 209 million of 177 million?

Uzbekistan, number 15 on the list, has 27 million Muslims; little Yemen, number 17, has 24 million; China, number 18, has 23 million, and Russia, number 21, has 16 million, more than 5 times our national total.

What was the president thinking?

In terms of world Islamic populations, America is about 38th on the list, meaning that we have one of the smaller Muslim populations worldwide, despite the size of our country.

The president’s error, then, would be akin to a stating that the United States was one of the world’s oldest civilizations. Not quite!

Seeing, then, that Mr. Obama was so grossly wrong in his assessment of our Muslim population (again, a matter of simple math), can he be trusted in his assessment of Islam in general?

Rev. Graham said, “I . . . believe our president is completely and fundamentally mistaken about the intolerant and violent nature of hardened Islamic followers.”

So who is more accurate when it comes to the nature of Islam itself?

Without a doubt, there are tens of millions of peace-loving Muslims worldwide, including many American Muslims.

And without a doubt, there are Muslim theologians and political leaders who deplore the actions of groups like ISIS and Boko Haram.

This means that we make a serious mistake when we demonize all Muslims and treat them as if they were murderous terrorists.

In that respect, yes, we need to be better educated regarding Islam. Absolutely.

At the same time, it cannot be denied that large Islamic countries like Pakistan and Iran mistreat and persecute Christians (especially those who convert from Islam), sometimes to the point of death; that countries like Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan allow no true religious freedom for other faiths; and that there are a multiplicity of substantial terrorist groups using the Koran for justification, in glaring contrast with Christianity worldwide.

More importantly, even if 80-90 percent of Muslims are not radicals, this means absolutely nothing in terms of our recognition of the very real dangers posed by radical Islam. After all, what percentage of Germans were Nazis? If the large numbers don’t prevent the small numbers from taking murderous action, why does that matter?

And should we snivel at a figure of, at the very least, 150 million radical Muslims worldwide?

What our president should be doing is recognizing the tremendous dangers posed by radical Islam and making every effort to ensure that our nation is addressing these dangers both here and abroad. (This includes not calling blatant Islamic terror attacks “workplace violence.”)

To paraphrase what I’ve said before, while here in the West we are putting our heads in the sand, in other parts of the world, the heads of the victims of radical Islam are rolling in the sand.

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

Regular readers have read John Stonestreet and me refer to religious freedom as the “first freedom.” You probably think that’s another way of saying that it’s the most important freedom.

Well, it is. But it’s also the source of all of our freedoms.

In a fantastic address at Cedarville University in Ohio, John quoted the French philosopher Luc Ferry, an atheist, who acknowledged the West’s debt to Christianity.

Ferry wrote that “Christianity was to introduce the notion that humanity was fundamentally identical, that men were equal in dignity—an unprecedented idea at the time, and one to which our world owes its entire democratic inheritance.”

But Christianity’s contribution to our “democratic inheritance” was not limited to its ideas about human equality. It was Christianity that taught the West that there are limits to the state’s power and it made our ideas about human freedom possible.

The story that sums up this contribution is what German historians call the “walk to Canossa.” In 1077, the Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV traveled from Speyer, Germany, to Canossa Castle in Northern Italy.

The purpose of his “walk” was to ask Pope Gregory VII to lift his decree of excommunication against Henry. The reason for the decree was an issue that modern minds probably, but wrongly, find arcane: investiture, that is, who gets to select the bishops in a given territory, the Crown or the Church?

Pope Gregory insisted that it was the Church. Henry had insisted it was the Crown, or as we would put it, the State. As Wikipedia puts it, Henry came to realize that his position was “precarious.” So he sought an audience with the Pope. Upon entering Italy he put on a hairshirt and may have walked much of the way as a sign of penitence.

As if to show Henry who was the boss, the Pope kept him waiting three days while a blizzard raged, which is why Italians, who seldom miss an opportunity to tweak the Germans, call it the “humiliation at Canossa.”

The significance of this story goes far beyond medieval power politics. In his book, “The Origins of Political Order,” political scientist Francis Fukuyama argues that, at Canossa, the West gained the idea of an autonomous sphere of authority that could check a ruler’s ambitions.

Stated differently, without Canossa there is no Magna Carta, no parliaments, and thus, no freedom as we understand that word in the West.

What’s more, this sphere of authority leaned heavily on law as a source of legitimacy. This, Fukuyama argues, was crucial in the development of the rule of law in the West. When secular authorities enacted their own laws and established institutions, they were imitating the Church.

And all of this was only possible because the Church insisted that secular rulers had no authority in the spiritual realm.

A thousand-plus years later, secular rulers are once again trying to assert their authority over spiritual matters: From the HHS mandate to whether bakers have to bake a wedding cake for a same-sex wedding ceremony.

Folks, it’s up to us to remind our neighbors that a state that can trample religious freedom is strong enough to put all of our freedoms at risk.

That’s why I really want you to hear John Stonestreet’s powerful, knock-out speech on religious freedom. Please, please, come to BreakPoint.org and click on this commentary. We’ll link you to it. You need to hear it—John lays out what’s at stake in the battle over religious freedom, and how by defending that freedom, we are defending all our freedoms, and the freedom of all.

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

In case you didn’t know it, if you are a conservative Christian, you are just like Boko Haram and ISIS. At least, that’s what the secularists are saying. More absurd still, they actually believe this.

Of course, secularism has been waging war against religion for centuries, but more recently, in America and Europe, the rhetoric of secularism has become more extreme and shrill.

When the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of Hobby Lobby, critics complained that the Court’s eminently reasonable decision was “anti-scientific.”

As noted by Jonathan Adler in The Washington Post, “The Daily Beast’s Sally Kohn decried the Court’s reliance on ‘bunk science’ and The Nation’s Reed Richardson claimed the Hobby Lobby majority’s opinion rested on ‘specious scientific claims.’ ‘Alito and the four other conservative justices on the court were essentially overruling not just an Obamacare regulation, but science,’ reported Mother Jones, while another MoJo story ranked Hobby Lobby to be among the Supreme Court’s four ‘biggest science blunders.’ And over at The Incidental Economist, Austin Frakt simply declared ‘The majority of the Supreme Court doesn’t get science.'”

Adler, hardly a flaming fundamentalist, refuted the claim.

But is anyone surprised that a faith-based challenge to Obamacare would be branded “anti-scientific”?

Shades of the Church’s historic suppression of intellectual progress!

Still, attacks like these are minor compared to secularism’s idea that all committed believers must be the same, be they Islamic extremists or evangelical Christians.

Earlier this year, “City councilors from Nanaimo, B.C. [Canada] voted . . . to ban a Christian leadership conference scheduled to be podcast at the city’s convention center because one of the sponsors of the conference was U.S. restaurant chain Chick-fil-A. According to one councilor, the chain spreads ‘divisiveness, homophobia…[and] expressions of hate’ because of its CEO’s pro-marriage views.”

But it gets worse: “City councilors condemned the event as ‘hateful’, compared it to the Nigerian terrorist group Boko Haram, and said the decision to ban the event from public property was no different than if they had voted to ban an organized crime ring, too.” (Ironically, the conference featured speakers like Laura Bush and Desmond Tutu, both of whom support same-sex “marriage.”)

There you have it. Chick-fil-A is no different than Islamic radicals who burn little boys alive and kidnap and rape young girls, not to mention being similar to an organized crime ring.

In the same spirit, radio host David Pakman stated that he saw no real difference between ISIS and what he called conservative, right wing extremists (a definition that he would use to describe many evangelical Christians), a charge affirmed by his producer during the show as self-evident and irrefutable.

But of course! Bible believing Christians who affirm the sanctity of life and marriage are the same as monstrous brutes who behead the innocent in cold blood. Who can’t see this?

In case this isn’t clear enough for you, on October 14th, the Peter Tatchell Foundation, led by the UK gay activist of the same name, released its “Manifesto for Secularism – Against the Religious Right.”

Tatchell issued a “call on people everywhere to stand with us to establish an international front against the religious-Right and for secularism.”

And what exactly does Tatchell mean by “the religious-Right”? Specifically, “The Islamic State (formerly ISIS), the Saudi regime, Hindutva (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh) in India, the Christian-Right in the U.S. and Europe, Bodu Bala Sena in Sri Lanka, Haredim in Israel, AQMI and MUJAO in Mali, Boko Haram in Nigeria, the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan to the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Islamic Salvation Front in Algeria.”

Read that list again slowly.

Tatchell explicitly places conservative Christians in the US and Europe in the exact same category as the Taliban, ISIS, and Boko Haram, among others. (I’ll not comment here on his reference to ultra-Orthodox Jews in Israel, called Haredim.)

As the manifesto declares in its opening line, “The launch of the Manifesto for Secularism is a challenge to the global rise of the Religious Right and its menacing values, which threaten women, LGBTs, atheists, minority faiths, apostates and many others.”

Yes, dear believer, you are a menace, and war has been declared against you.

“We call on people everywhere,” the manifesto declares, “to stand with us to establish an international front against the religious-Right and for secularism.”

Among the manifesto’s demands, not all of which are outrageous, are the calls for the, “Separation of religion from public policy, including the educational system, health care and scientific research” and, “Abolition of religious laws in the family, civil and criminal codes.”

Make no mistake about it.

You have been marked, and you have been classified as a dangerous extremist capable of all kinds of nefarious acts.

And you have been forewarned.

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

Written by Allen Sears

I recently wrote to invite you to enlist your pastor to participate in our seventh annual Pulpit Freedom Sunday, October 5, and your response has been phenomenal. More than 1,800 pastors from all 50 states plus Puerto Rico have participated so far.(Registration and participation are open through Election Day, November 4 – so if your pastor has not yet joined in, please encourage him to do so.)

The event gives pastors the opportunity to exercise their constitutionally protected freedom to engage in religious expression from the pulpit despite an Internal Revenue Service rule known as the Johnson Amendment, which anti-religious groups often use to silence churches by threatening their tax-exempt status.

The great majority of those participating preached sermons relating biblical perspectives on the positions of electoral candidates. They also signed a statement agreeing that the IRS should not control the content of a pastor’s sermon. Hundreds more who didn’t speak from the pulpit on these issues still opted to sign the statement – bringing the total number of pastors in support of pulpit freedom to more than 3,800 since 2008.

The timing of this growing awareness and activism couldn’t be more crucial, as church leaders all over America are facing the challenges of a political, cultural, and legal climate increasingly hostile to people of faith. Just last week, for example, Alliance Defending Freedom attorneys joined our allies at the Life Legal Defense Foundation in filing a formalcomplaint with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on behalf of seven California churches targeted by their state officials.

The Department of Managed Health Care is trying to force all employers, including churches, to pay for elective abortions in their health insurance plans. The seven churches ADF is co-representing object to that coercion, which they rightly regard as a violation of federal law. We sent a letter to the DMHC itself, detailing those violations; the department responded by affirming its decision to force all plans to cover all abortions, despite federal law.

“Forcing a church to be party to elective abortion is one of the utmost imaginable assaults on our most fundamental American freedoms,” said ADF Senior Counsel Casey Mattox. “California is flagrantly violating the federal law that protects employers from being forced into having abortion in their health insurance plans. No state can blatantly ignore federal law and think that it should continue to receive taxpayer money.”

Last week also saw the filing of our opening brief with the U.S. Supreme Court in the case of Reed v. Town of Gilbert, in which ADF attorneys are defending an Arizona church against government speech discrimination. The high court agreed in July to hear the case in the wake of a 2-1 U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit decision that allows local governments to impose stricter regulations on temporary church signs than other temporary, non-commercial signs.

Many friend-of-the-court briefs have already been filed in this case, supporting our church client and opposing the government’s discrimination. That support is coming from an unusually broad spectrum of the legal community, including several state attorneys general, religious liberty groups, Christian denominations, prominent law professors, and even some federal officials.

“No law should treat the speech of churches worse than the speech of other similar speakers,” said ADF Senior Counsel David Cortman. “As the briefs filed this week indicate, the Supreme Court’s decision may have broad implications for free speech beyond the facts of this situation alone. We appreciate all those who filed briefs in this case that side with constitutionally protected freedoms rather than selective treatment of speech by government.”

Thank you for the amazing grace of God that you make so tangible with your gifts and prayers and encouragement. Please be in prayer for our attorneys and our allies as we defend these churches, and the religious freedom of all Americans – including your family. And please be in special prayer for our nation’s pastors, that they will continue to find new courage to stand up and speak out for the truth of the Gospel.

This article was originally posted at AllianceDefendingFreedom.org