Religious persecution is not just something that happens "over there"

We all know that our brothers and sisters are persecuted around the world. The case of Youcef Nadarkhani, sentenced to death by the despotic regime of Iran, is a stark reminder that persecution is going on right now and that our brothers and sisters in Christ around the world are suffering daily. They need and demand our prayer. Lest we pull a muscle patting ourselves on the back for how free we are here and how glad we are not live "there", it is worth a reminder that America has not always lived up to her lofty rhetoric about religious freedom and tolerance. I am not talking about the faux persecution that people toss about, normally as a callous ploy to gain political support. Not having a monument with the Ten Commandments on it on public land is not "persecution". There has been persecution in this country, real persecution, and it rarely gets much mention.

As I was reading Guy Hershberger's War, Peace, and Nonresistance the other night I was reminded of the events of World War I. We are often told the story of the Japanese internment camps in World War II but there was a great deal of less publicized persecution going on in World War I. While there was widespread persecution against American citizens who for religious reasons who unwilling to militarily support the war effort in World War , one event stands out: the imprisonment and torture of Jacob Wipf and Joseph, Michael, and David Hofer.

These four men, Hutterites from South Dakota, were conscripted into the Army to fight a foolish war but refused to serve because of their religious convictions, convictions protected under the First Amendment. In response these men were imprisoned and kept in horrific conditions, malnourished and mistreated. After being transferred from Alcatraz to Leavenworth, they continued to be tortured which eventually led to the deaths of two of the men, Joseph and Michael Hofer. Even after the deaths of these two men, the other two men continued to be imprisoned although they were treated marginally better. They were eventually released. Fortunately the mistreatment and martyrdom of these men led to improved conditions for religious conscientious objectors in World War II but the fact remains, buried in the history of this country, that less than 100 years ago the government of the United States imprisoned and tortured four men, leading to the deaths of two of them, for standing by their religious convictions.

For a full treatment of the events of World War I and the imprisonment of Jacob Wipf and the Hofer brothers, check out this article from The Plough, Persecution in the Land of the Free.

Examiner article: Thoughts on the Westboro Baptist decision

I jotted down some thoughts about the Supreme Court decision upholding the right of Westboro Baptist Church to protest at the funerals of American servicemen. It is an important question and one that transcends the specifics of the case. Do we want the state deciding what is or is not protected religious expression. Check out and let me know what you think:

Why Christians should hold their nose and support the Westboro Baptist decision

Thoughts here?

More on Islam and religious liberty...

PORTLAND, Ore. – A law backed by the Ku Klux Klan nearly a century ago to keep Catholics out of public schools is still on the books in Oregon, one of the last states in the nation to prohibit teachers from wearing religious clothing in classrooms.

Both Pennsylvania and Nebraska have similar laws, which try to balance the constitutional conflict between protecting students from the establishment of religion in schools and the rights of teachers to express their beliefs through their dress.

Oregon's law, originally aimed at priest collars and nun habits, survived a legal challenge in the 1980s by a Sikh convert who wanted to wear her turban in the classroom and was recently upheld by the state's Legislature.

A Muslim teacher in Pennsylvania lost a similar challenge in 1991 to that state's even older law for the right to wear a headscarf at school. So far, it has not posed any serious legal issues in Nebraska.

You might read that and say “Good! Islam is evil and should be opposed!” I would agree in principle but not in practice. The only way to counter Islam and other false belief systems is the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Using the proverbial sword of the secular government cannot change hearts. When we abdicate religious approval to the government to say “Religion A is OK, Religion B is not”, we hopelessly entangle ourselves in with an inherently godless organization that cares nothing about truth and everything about power.

The bigger issue has to do with letting the government decide what is appropriate religious practice or not. There is a long history of the state picking sides in religious issues and it normally came out badly for everyone involved. It was once criminal in three states to wear Roman Catholic collars and habits. The various Acts of Uniformity in the 16th and 17th centuries in England required Christians to use a particular liturgy and belong to a specific denomination where they had to attend weekly or face fines. Untold numbers of Christians were martyred by the state in Europe during the Reformation for refusal to baptize infants or practicing believers baptism or for failing to bow the knee to Rome. History is replete with acts of repression under the guise of religion. Ask a Jew what they think of the state having acceptable and unacceptable religions. Ask our brothers in China the same question. We get all self-righteous when our armed forces are not permitted to practice Christianity in the Middle East but feel no similar qualms about restrictions on Islam in the West.

The state deeming which religions are permitted and which are not is fine as long as your religion is in favor. It is not so swell when you find yourself in the minority. This is not at all about Islam and it is not about terrorism. There are laws aplenty against terrorism and the Constitution is clear that the right to the free exercise of religion is protected. This is about the state using religion to control people and too many Christians being willing to go along because of a hatred of Islam.

Today it is Islam and many Americans applaud. Tomorrow it is homeschoolers. Then it is Catholics. Then Protestants. Think it can't happen here? Think again. The Holocaust was only 65 years ago. Never be so naïve as to underestimate the ability of the government to use any means, any excuse to control the people.

The slippery slope of religious intolerance

More on religious tolerance and the infringement thereof in an alleged democracy...

Last week, thanks to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the federal government took a giant leap toward encroaching on the religious liberty of Catholics. Reuben Daniels Jr., director of the EEOC District Office in Charlotte, N.C, ruled that a small Catholic college discriminated against female employees by refusing to cover prescription contraceptives in its health insurance plan. With health-care reform looming before the country, this ruling is a bad omen for people of faith.

In 2007, eight faculty members filed a complaint against Belmont Abbey College in Belmont, N.C., claiming that the school's decision to exclude prescription contraceptives from its health-care plan was discriminatory against women. "As a Roman Catholic institution, Belmont Abbey College is not able to and will not offer nor subsidize medical services that contradict the clear teaching of the Catholic Church," said the college's president, William Thierfelder, at the time.

In March the commission informed the college that the investigation of its employee health insurance plan had been closed with no finding of wrongdoing. Inexplicably, the case was reopened, and now the college is charged with violating federal law. If Belmont Abbey doesn't back down, the EEOC will recommend court remedies.

You can see where this leads. If forced to provide coverage for birth control, I wouldn’t be surprised if Belmont Abbey just ended medical coverage entirely. Partly this is an issue of overindulged people in a litigious society who think they should be able to dictate to their employer the terms of their employment and have no issue with suing if they don’t get their way, a legal system equivalent of a toddler throwing a tantrum. However the greater issue here is the issue of religious tolerance.

Who cares you might ask? I am not a Roman Catholic, I have never heard of this school and no one I know ever has or ever will go to school there. The reason it concerns me and should concern you is that restrictions on religious liberty impact everyone and it is an awfully slippery slope. Religious liberty is not something that is reserved for Protestants. There is an awful outcry whenever the government removes a 10 Commandments monument from public lands but the silence is deafening when the afflicted group is out of favor. Many evangelicals would cry foul if this college was forced to pay for abortions but since most evangelicals don’t care about birth control, we find something else to think about. Even in places, or perhaps especially in places, where we see religious liberty being restricted by the government of a group we are nto part of we should speak up. I will defend to the end the right of a Muslim woman to wear a headscarf or a Catholic college to refuse to cover contraception in the same way I would fight for my right to tell a Muslim or Catholic the Good News of Jesus Christ. It is disingenuous to cry “Persecution” over every perceived affront to Christmas but then turn a blind eye when the impacted party is a religion you don’t subscribe to.

There are many people who see my wife covering her head and think she is being repressed, including people who are Christians. There are many people, including some in the church, who think that we are unqualified to educate our own kids. As people increasingly educate their own children and with the nearly double child-bearing rate of homeschooling families, as public schools become emptier, revenue goes down and teachers need employment, you can be sure that there are many people who will look greedily at the millions of homeschoolers and try to find a way to force them back to the schools. If you think that in an increasingly secular world there are not forces who would like to expunge all religious expression, including private religious instruction of children by their own family, you are dangerously naïve. Government encroachment on religious liberty will not stop with small Catholic colleges or Muslim garments.

This is why we need as Christians to be concerned when religious liberties are being infringed. We may not be Muslim or Catholic or mormon or Hindu, but we all live under the specter of government infringement on the practice of our faith. I despise Islam as I do every other religion that leads people away from Christ, but I no more want the government to tell Muslim women they cannot dress as they choose than I do the government telling me what we can teach in our church. God is sovereign and no government can stop the Gospel from being proclaimed. That is not my concern. However, as a Christian who is an American citizen, I (and you) have a Constitutional right to practice our religion or not practice any religion without government intrusion. That right is being chipped away here and abroad. Today it is headscarves in France and mandated contraception coverage in Catholic colleges. Tomorrow it could be tax funded abortions and outlawing the preaching of the Gospel. We shouldn’t see religious liberty as a buffet where we pick and choose what liberties we like and which ones we leave on the buffet line.

Congress shall make no law...

...respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof

But apparently local bureaucrats feel free to try to restrict home Bible studies or require people to get a permit to have a religious assembly. From Fox News...

Couple Ordered to Stop Holding Bible Study at Home Without Permit

Pastor David Jones and his wife Mary have been told that they cannot invite friends to their San Diego, Calif. home for a bible study — unless they are willing to pay tens of thousands of dollars to San Diego County.

"On Good Friday we had an employee from San Diego County come to our house, and inform us that the bible study that we were having was a religious assembly, and in violation of the code in the county." David Jones told FOX News.

"We told them this is not really a religious assembly — this is just a bible study with friends. We have a meal, we pray, that was all," Jones said.

A few days later, the couple received a written warning that cited "unlawful use of land," ordering them to either "stop religious assembly or apply for a major use permit," the couple's attorney Dean Broyles told San Diego news station 10News.

But the major use permit could cost the Jones' thousands of dollars just to have a few friends over.

I wonder if a group of atheists or homosexual activists were having a meeting in a home, would San Diego county make them get a permit? Methinks not.

Check out this video from Channel 10 in San Diego for more. We have ten people do a Bible study every night in our home just with our family alone. I wonder if we should buy a permit from the government that is supposed to be serving and protecting us in order to exercise a Constitutionally guaranteed right? Think about that, tax payers having to pay a fee to a government agency in order to exercise rights guaranteed in our Constitution long before San Diego was incorporated.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;

From the New York Times this morning (ugh, I feel dirty even typing that name). Barack has made another gaffe (which is becoming more and more common as the luster wears off and people start to examine what he is saying), this time regarding his plans for reaching out to faith based organizations with a golden calf.

On Tuesday, Senator Barack Obama did his best to reclaim for Democrats the idea of partnerships between government and grass-roots religious groups — and except for six little words he did a very smooth job.

First, he recalled his own community service in Chicago, noting that it had been church supported.

Then he reminded listeners that it was President Bill Clinton who signed landmark legislation widening the role religion-based groups could play in government-financed programs, and Al Gore who in 1999 first proposed a full-scale religion-based initiative.

While Mr. Obama acknowledged President Bush’s promise to “rally the armies of compassion” through such an initiative, he maintained that the promise had gone unfulfilled because of too little financing and too much partisanship — and that he, Barack Obama, would not only carry out but also expand what Mr. Bush had pledged.

He was two-thirds of the way through his remarks when he inserted the six words with the potential to put his whole effort at risk. Speaking “as someone who used to teach constitutional law,” he spelled out “a few basic principles” to reassure listeners that such partnerships between religious groups and the government would not endanger the separation of church and state.

“First,” he said, “if you get a federal grant, you can’t use that grant money to proselytize to the people you help, and you can’t discriminate against them — or against the people you hire — on the basis of their religion.”

That little phrase between the dashes — “or against the people you hire” — ignited a political explosion. “Fraud,” declared Bill Donohue of the Catholic League. “What Obama wants,” Mr. Donohue said, is “to secularize the religious workplace.” In its newsletter, the conservative Family Research Council called Mr. Obama’s position “a body blow to religious groups that apply for federal funds.” No less heated reactions came from the other end of the political spectrum, where the Obama proposal was denounced not for that short phrase but for what liberals saw as an abandonment of their principles and part of a suspicious move toward the center.

The intense reaction on both sides was pretty predictable, but some people offered more analytic reactions. They welcomed Mr. Obama’s stance, yet made it clear that those six words pointed to deeper questions about religious freedom that could very well seal the fate not only of any new and potentially improved partnerships between government and religious groups but also even those partnerships that, in reality, had been operating for decades.

Religious groups that know the law have long agreed that federal money cannot be used for proselytizing or discriminating against beneficiaries. But they have never agreed that taking religious considerations into account in hiring personnel — certainly for top positions if not for all staffing — should be considered discrimination. And they point to the religious exemption in the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and subsequent legislative and Supreme Court decisions to back this assertion.

There it is, in a future Obamanation: he wants to expand the partnership between religious groups and the Federal government, but if you take any monetary support from the gubmint you cannot discriminate in any way, even if that requires you to hire people who oppose your identifying religious tenets. I am a banker, so I know this for certain: money always comes with strings attached. People come in to the bank and joke about me giving them a million dollars. I always tell them they can have as much money as they want as long as the get approved for the loan and sign some papers. I thought when President Bush first proposed the office of faith based services or whatever it is called that it sounded like a great idea. But that was naive and kneejerk on my behalf.

The reality is that the First Amendment is more about protecting religious groups and expression from meddling by the government, not banning all form of religious expression in any public forum. When the government starts funneling money with strings and qualifiers attached, the spirit of the Amendment is violated. Like private universities, once you start taking money from the government, you lose your ability to make decisions for yourself. It is very tempting, the idea of all of that money from the government. Sure there are some restrictions, but think of all the good you can do! But that means that Jewish groups may have to hire Baptists. Pentecostals may have to hire Catholics. Answers in Genesis may have to hire atheists. Not just people who are neutral on a key stance, but actively opposed to that tenet. I have worked places before, especially in financial services, where some employees were vehemently opposed to the idea of capitalism and boy they were not great employees.

Faith based organizations of all stripes ought not to be fooled by the Trojan Horse of government partnerships. Any government, especially one run by a far Left leader like Obama, is sure to promise a lot, deliver a little and compromise the message. Better to be tight on money and true to your principles.

More on public education's intrusion in religious life


In an ironic story in the Toledo Blade, the ACLU is threatening the school district in Findlay, Ohio because it is promoting religious indoctrination by Christian radicals! Well, not really. What they are really all riled up about is the school permitting students to leave school grounds for a few minutes, go onto a public sidewalk and get a Bible from the Gideons. Note that the Gideons are not on school grounds and kids are not required to leave to get them. No instruction in the Bible takes place:


FINDLAY - Findlay City Schools got a friendly but stern warning yesterday from the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio: It's not legal to let children out of school to get free New Testaments.

In March, fifth graders at the district's five elementary schools were permitted to walk off school grounds during the school day to receive a New Testament from Gideons International.

The ACLU said that while the Gideons have a right to distribute their materials on public property, the public schools cannot sacrifice class time to help them in their religious mission.

"By agreeing to the Gideons' request, pulling them out of class, and walking them over to receive these Bibles, the school crossed the line," said Carrie Davis, staff attorney with ACLU of Ohio.

She sent a letter to Superintendent Dean Wittwer asking that he "immediately stop school employees from escorting students to visit missionaries during school hours."


I love the "stern warning" part. The ACLU, and in cooperation much of the media, has appointed itself as watchdogs of our society and is treated almost like a law enforcement agency, one not ruled by any sort of democratic process and unaccountable to anyone. I must have missed that rule in the Constitution, or that piece of legislation deputizing the ACLU as the arbiter of what does or does not pass Constitutional muster. I thought that was the role of the Supreme Court. Silly me! They even have a briefing paper with the banner "Guardians of Freedom". There is perhaps no group of liberals, a generally self-important group if ever there was one, that is more self-important than the ACLU.


What probably has the ACLU all riled up is this comment by Chris Brooks, one of the principals:


Chris Brooks, principal of Bigelow Hill Elementary School in Findlay, said for years the Gideons have distributed to students what they call a "pocket testament," a palm-sized booklet that contains the New Testament, Proverbs, and Psalms. He said he doesn't have a problem with it.

"To me, you've got to look at the context of the community," Mr. Brooks said. "This is a Christian community. I'm not saying everybody is, but that's where Findlay is."


That might raise their ire just a bit. The ACLU then passes muster on the Constitution again, and throws a quick threat out there


The ACLU said that's not the point.

Ms. Davis said courts across the country have consistently held that it's unconstitutional for schools to have activities like this during the school day.

"For decades, courts have said the schools cannot be doing this," she said. "They say it's the parents' right to control their children's religious upbringing, not the schools."
....
While the letter from the ACLU said the organization was "prepared to explore other options, including legal action" if the district didn't address the issue, Ms. Davis said nothing is planned at this point.

"Right now, the ball is in their court," she said. "We're waiting to hear from the school district in terms of their response to this and whether they intend to consider policy changes" or whether to allow this in the future.


In other words: Do what we say or we bring an expensive lawsuit and bankrupt the school (all in the name of freedom of course) ! That really takes the cake. Parents are allowed to control their children's religious upbringing, but the law in Ohio requires kids to attend public schools unless you jump through a bunch of hoops (Ohio has some pretty restrictive laws regarding homeschool), and in that public school a decidedly anti-religious viewpoint is taught. So you can teach your kids however you want, once the school is done teaching them what it wants. This is just a further example of mandatory, compulsory public education forcing a religious viewpoint by actively promoting an anti-religious message and pushing the religion of secular humanism in it's place. The ACLU and the acolytes of secular humanism, in their quest to quash religious dissent and freedom, go so far as to threaten a small Ohio school because the school (which is supposed to be a place of learning, I thought) is allowing students a couple of minutes of school time (in a school bought and paid for by their parents) to leave school grounds to get a Bible. The truth is that it is the radical secular Left that are the religiously intolerant and closed minded among us.