Category: Life in America

USCCB: Fortnight for Freedom – Current Threats To Religious Liberty

Peanut Gallery: We are not living in North Korea or Saudi Arabia… no one in America is being tortured or imprisoned for their Christian beliefs.  Not yet anyways. 

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A bald eagle and U.S. flag are seen in an illustration for religious liberty that was created by photographer Lisa Johnston of the St. Louis Review.

But Religious Freedom in America is intentionally and systematically being dismantled by secular statists in our government… one seemingly small battle at a time. They are moving with the secular tide… sinking one boat at a time.

The USCCB has been in the forefront of the battle to stem the tide. You may, or may not, agree with all their positions… but it doesn’t matter.  Christian believers of every stripe are in this battle together like it or not. It’s time to wake up and join the fray.

See USCCB “Fortnight for Freedom” – everyone can pray. 

Do what you can where God has placed you.  The secularists have not won the war yet. Exercise your right to speak up for what you believe.  Silence is consent. 
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An Overview of Specific Examples

Pope Benedict XVI spoke last year about his worry that religious liberty in the United States is being weakened.  He called religious liberty the “most cherished of American freedoms.”  However, unfortunately, our most cherished freedom is under threat.  

Consider the following:

HHS mandate for contraception, sterilization, and abortion-inducing drugs.  The mandate of the Department of Health and Human Services forces religious institutions to facilitate and fund a product contrary to their own moral teaching.  Further, the federal government tries to define which religious institutions are “religious enough” to merit protection of their religious liberty. 

Catholic foster care and adoption services.  Boston, San Francisco, the District of Columbia, and the State of Illinois have driven local Catholic Charities out of the business of providing adoption or foster care services—by revoking their licenses, by ending their government contracts, or both—because those Charities refused to place children with same-sex couples or unmarried opposite-sex couples who cohabit. 

State immigration laws.  Several states have recently passed laws that forbid what they deem as “harboring” of undocumented immigrants—and what the Church deems Christian charity and pastoral care to these immigrants.

Discrimination against small church congregations.  New York City adopted a policy that barred the Bronx Household of Faith and other churches from renting public schools on weekends for worship services, even though non-religious groups could rent the same schools for many other uses.  Litigation in this case continues. 

Discrimination against Catholic humanitarian services.  After years of excellent performance by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Migration and Refugee Services (MRS) in administering contract services for victims of human trafficking, the federal government changed its contract specifications to require MRS to provide or refer for contraceptive and abortion services in violation of Catholic teaching. 

Christian students on campus.  In its over-100-year history, the University of California Hastings College of Law has denied student organization status to only one group, the Christian Legal Society, because it required its leaders to be Christian and to abstain from sexual activity outside of marriage.

Forcing religious groups to host same-sex “marriage” or civil union ceremonies.  A New Jersey judge recently found that a Methodist ministry violated state law when the ministry declined to allow two women to hold a “civil union” ceremony on its private property.  Further, a civil rights complaint has been filed against the Catholic Church in Hawaii by a person requesting to use a chapel to hold a same-sex “marriage” ceremony. 

Is our most cherished freedom truly under threat?  Yes, Pope Benedict XVI recognized just last year that various attempts to limit the freedom of religion in the U.S. are particularly concerning.  

The threat to religious freedom is larger than any single case or issue and has its roots in secularism in our culture.  The Holy Father has asked for the laity to have courage to counter secularism that would “delegitimize the Church’s participation in public debate about the issues which are determining the future of American society.”

Link to “Fortnight for Freedom” pdf flyer.

Religious freedom is not a ‘second-class right’ – WaPo Re-Blog

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A rosary is held in the hand of a walker during a “Rosary Walk” rally supporting religious freedom. Over 100 people from through out the Belleville Diocese participated in the walk and mass at St. Peter’s Cathedral in Belleville, Illinois. The walk was in response to the recent U.S. Department of Health and Human Services mandate that requires private health care plans to provide coverage of contraceptives. (AP)

by Mary Ann Glendon, m.washingtonpost.com

The recently-erupted scandal over efforts by IRS officials to penalize conservative organizations has taken Washington and the country by surprise. Few scandals in recent decades have captured the public discourse so quickly or completely.

But careful observers of this “new” scandal will see that it fits a larger pattern of governmental efforts to use state power to enforce ideological conformity. Nowhere is that pattern more evident than in the realm of religious freedom where recent years have seen efforts, both subtle and overt, to squelch diversity of ideas.

No one in the United States is at risk of being tortured or killed by the government on account of his or her religious beliefs, as is the case in many other countries. But as the old Woody Guthrie song goes, “Some rob you with a six gun and some with a fountain pen.”

Today, millions of Americans whose religious convictions conflict with government-favored policies on abortion and same-sex marriage are increasingly subjected to penalties and classified as enemies of government policy. And official insistence that religious providers of health, educational and social services cooperate with government’s ideological programs threatens a death blow to the diversity that has made our vibrant civil society one of the wonders of the world.

The gravity of the situation is clear from the fact that religious freedom itself is in danger of becoming a second-class right.

Continue reading “Religious freedom is not a ‘second-class right’ – WaPo Re-Blog” →

Scrap the Senate Immigration bill

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“You have to have some detailed knowledge of evangelicalism and the people involved to recognize that EIT and its acolytes represent a fringe element of political activism, and not the duly adopted positions of thousands of evangelical congregations and their local leadership.  American evangelicals haven’t changed their views on Congress’s approach to immigration; rather, a small group of left-wing activists has been funded by Soros to urge evangelicals to act in a certain way – and to advertise its agenda as an evangelical one.”

theoptimisticconservative's avatarThe Optimistic Conservative

It’s as bad as the Tea Party thinks it is.  It’s worse.  In some ways, it’s a pig in a poke: it’s not about immigration as much as it is about changing the way government business is done in the United States.

A couple of points up front.

Legal immigration is good

First, I am a pro-immigration voter.  Not only am I pro-immigration, I am happy to accept immigrants who aren’t Ph.D.s, IT professionals, and bioengineers.  I have nothing against credentialed professionals, but the truth is that they are not the economic accelerators that small business entrepreneurs are.  America has had tremendous success with legal immigration; we should do more of it than we do today, and we should not seek to admit only those who come laden with wealth and credentials.  That is not the path to national prosperity.

America does need to repair other failures,

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Men in Black Robes: Revolutionary Preaching – The Christian Post (Re-Blog)

Bestselling author Eric Metaxas address industry leaders at the National Religious Broadcasters dinner in Nashville, Tenn., on Sunday, March 3, 2013 (Photo: The Christian Post/Scott Liu)
(Photo: The Christian Post/Scott Liu)

By Eric Metaxas, Christian Post Contributor
June 11, 2013

The secular powers that be are putting pressure on pastors to limit their practice of the Christian faith to just the four walls of the local church.

That’s why the current administration has emphasized a restricted “freedom of worship” rather than the First Amendment’s robust guarantee of Freedom of Religion; it’s why believers concerned about the redefinition of marriage are being told to shut up and go along, and why organizations such as Catholic Charities face crushing fines if they don’t provide contraceptives to their employees.

Now of course, we all know that some churches and ministers have been accused of becoming too involved in partisan politics. Even when we’ve been right to enter the political arena for good causes, too often we have been self-righteous, a tad arrogant, and sometimes beholden to this party or that.

But just because sometimes we get it wrong doesn’t mean we should stop altogether. As G. K. Chesterton observed, “If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly.”

Fortunately, we have plenty of good examples of how pastors can be effectively and biblically engaged in the issues of the day-pastors who stood tall as our Republic was being founded.

The Colson Center‘s T. M. Moore points to certain men in black. “The British,” T.M. says, “referred to colonial pastors as the ‘Black Brigade,’ men in robes who fought against them by the words of their mouths as effectively as the colonial militia did with their weapons. To show their disdain of the American clergy, the British quartered their horses in the churches when they could.”

 That harassment did not deter the clergy, however. “Many sermons urging the revolutionary cause,” T.M. says, “were printed as broadsides and circulated up and down the eastern seaboard, where they were read and discussed in what were called Committees of Correspondence. These ‘small groups’ were highly effective in preparing the ground for the Revolution.”

Now T.M. isn’t advocating a revolution-except, perhaps, in our thinking about the role of ministers in the American experiment. “Ministers helped to lead the way to a new country,” he says. “Their preaching was bold, visionary, and soundly biblical, and many of their sermons worked to rally their people to the patriotic cause, but within the framework of a Kingdom vision.”

That kind of preaching-and thinking-is rare in our churches today. And that’s why as we approach the Fourth of July, T. M.’s “Pastor to Pastor” e-newsletter is focusing on classic sermons from the revolutionary era: to encourage today’s pastors to rethink their own callings as preachers, especially in the light of our nation’s great need for revival, renewal, and awakening.

You-and your pastor-can get “Pastor to Pastor” in your inbox each day. Please come to BreakPoint.org, click on this commentary, and sign up.

Just to whet your appetite, here are the words of John Witherspoon, from his sermon, “The Dominion of Providence over the Passions of Men:” “There is not a greater evidence either of the reality or the power of religion than a firm belief of God’s universal presence, and a constant attention to the influence and operation of his providence. It is by this means that Christians may be said, in the emphatic scripture language, ‘to walk with God, and to endure as seeing him who is invisible.’ ”

T. M. says, “What our nation needs today is ‘greater evidence of the reality and the power of religion.’ Why is there so little evidence of these among the members of the Christian community today?”

For the answer, and for inspiration, please come to BreakPoint.org and sign up for “Pastor to Pastor” today!

Read more at http://www.christianpost.com/news/men-in-black-robes-revolutionary-preaching-97735/#pVxYKtrwOQcvPkmb.99

Duke Grad Student Secretly Lived In A Van To Escape Loan Debt [Photos] – Business Insider

Mandi Woodruff | Jun. 7, 2013 | Business Insider

Ken Ilgunas at Duke
Ken Ilgunas at Duke

By the time Ken Ilgunas was wrapping up his last year of undergraduate studies at the University of Buffalo in 2005, he had no idea what kind of debt hole he’d dug himself into.

He had majored in the least marketable fields of study possible –– English and History –– and had zero job prospects after getting turned down for no fewer than 25 paid internships.

“That was a wake-up call,” he told Business Insider. “I had this huge $32,000 student debt and at the time I was pushing carts at Home Depot, making $8 an hour. I was just getting kind of frantic.”

Back then, student loans had yet to become the front page news they are today. Ilgunas could have simply deferred his loans or declared forbearance. He also could have asked his parents (who were more than willing to help) for a leg up. He could have thrown up his hands and gone to grad school until the job market bounced back.

Instead, he moved to Alaska and spent two years paying back every dime. And when he enrolled at Duke University for graduate school later, he lived out of his van to be sure he wouldn’t have to take out loans again.

“I had no idea what I was getting into at the time. I didn’t even know what interest was when I was 17,” he said. “I just think that’s awfully indicative of the incredibly poor personal finance education young people have at that time in their lives.”

In his book, “Walden on Wheels: On the Open Road from Debt to Freedom,“ Ken chronicles his journey out of debt.

He was kind enough to share his story with us this week.