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Americans and certainly Christians will never forget the words of our President when he stated, “We are not a Christian nation.” Whether unintentional or deliberate, President Obama ignored over two centuries of our nation’s history as a Judeo Christian nation. From the Mayflower Compact to the Declaration of Independence, to our Constitution, from the halls of Congress to our national monuments, to our Courts and our Archives, the name of God and his teachings are indelibly etched into the minds and hearts of our citizens.
While our President clearly distances himself from any professions of his stated following of Christianity he had no problem remarking on Ramadan, an Islamic holiday. He said, “Even as Ramadan holds profound meaning for the world’s 1.5 billion Muslims, it is also a reminder to people of all faiths of our common humanity and the commitment to justice, equality, and compassion shared by all great faiths.”
Is the Islamic faith he is referring to the same Islamic faith that chops off peoples’ heads, beats, stones, and oppresses women, hangs homosexuals, and promotes hatred? Is this the same faith that says a Muslim woman is worth half a Muslim man, that states they must slaughter all non-believers, that kills innocent men, women, and children in its name, and that is systematically destroying Coptic Christians?
The behavior of many practicing Muslims in no way mirrors the teachings and practices of Catholics, Protestants, Buddhists, Hindus, and other accepted religions. For the President to make such a comparison is non-factual and flies in the face of reason. While stating that we are not a Christian nation was he inferring that we are now A Muslim Nation?
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Tom Brokaw’s book “The Greatest Generation” documents the wonderful things our parents accomplished and the legacy they will leave us. They built the greatest and most prosperous nation the world has seen and likely will see.
They used America’s wealth under The Marshall Plan to rebuild our allies and defeat communism. Their brave men and women helped defeat Germany and Japan in World War II. They tore down the Berlin Wall and freed hundreds of millions of people in Eastern Europe. As of 1960 only 5% of marriages ended in divorce and only 5% of children were raised without fathers. Our students were #1 in the world. They put a man on the moon.
The current generation has shipped millions of jobs overseas, created $15.2 trillion in debt and an unemployment and underemployment rate of 15%. They have bankrupted Social Security and Medicare, downgraded our credit rating, and allowed North Korea and Iran to build nuclear weapons. They have increased the divorce rate to 50% and fatherless households to 40%. Our students now rank 23rd in reading and 25th in math in the world.
They have increased the population of people dependent on government assistance to 50% and shut down our manned space effort. They have presided over an assault on the lives of unborn infants, our freedom to express our religious beliefs, and a decline in morality. For the first time in our history succeeding generations will experience a lower standard of living than preceding generations.
The Preamble to our Constitution states that We the People of the United States have the responsibility to secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and to Our Posterity.
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A disturbing but increasingly common trend comes to us from Chicago. Groups of young thugs are beating and robbing individuals, recording the attacks on video, and posting them on YouTube for all to see. Morally bankrupt individuals, crying out for attention, believe that bad attention is better than no attention.
When we view our governmental assault on Christianity, traditional marriage, family values, personal responsibility and accountability, and individual liberties the results were predictable. Our Public Schools have become propaganda mills, indoctrinating our children with government sponsored social engineering.
The way we dress, the words we speak, the movies we watch, the products we buy speak volumes about who we are and what we have become. We will accomplish what our enemies have been unable to do, destroy the greatest economy and the greatest culture the world has seen. As we have replaced God with government, people with things, and morality with amorality we have descended into a societal abyss.
The attacks in Chicago are just a symptom of a serious illness, social devolution. Before we can take the cure and rediscover our moral compass we must first recognize this Infectious Virus.
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Gather the children and run for the storm cellar. Governor Perry and Representative Michelle Bachman were seen and heard praying, invoking the name of God, and asking for His help and guidance in these difficult times. Democrats are just beside themselves. Their only true religion is Liberalism and there is no room for another deity.
Liberals allow the most perverse and disgusting behavior, movies, books, songs, advertising, and clothing to permeate the airwaves and infect the minds of our children. But they are intent on stamping out the very mention of the word God or the use of prayer from our schools, our books, and our national icons.
I fail to see how the use of prayer or the word “God” represents a threat to national security. I fail to see how the use of the word “God” is undermining the moral fiber of our nation and its people. I fail to see how anything constructive or useful has come from this attempt to eliminate the word “God” or his representation or the practice of praying. Religious symbolism does not represent a physical or moral threat to our government or its institutions.
Our nation was founded on Judeo Christian principles. Our founding fathers openly professed their belief in God and Christian principles. God is on our currency, in our Pledge of Allegiance, our Declaration of Independence, and in numerous government buildings. We are a nation of great faith and an unshakable belief in God. Democrats and Liberals may not listen to Conservatives or Christians. But, if our nation continues on a path of moral destruction, they will experience the Fear of God.
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The year 2011 marks the 400th anniversary of the publication of the King James Bible. Leland Ryken, a scholar of Christian literature and the Puritans, describes this as one of the most important cultural developments in the history of the English-speaking world. In his new book The Legacy of the King James Bible, Ryken records its sweeping influence on our language, education, religion, and culture.
The King James Bible has been “the greatest vehicle of literacy in the English-speaking world,” by one account. Statesman Daniel Webster credited his famous oratory to its shaping: “If there be anything in my style or thoughts to be commended, the credit is due to my kind parents in instilling into my mind an early love of the Scriptures.”
For almost four hundred years, the King James Bible provided for England and America what Ryken, quoting a sociologist, calls “the mythology of a culture”: “the framework of beliefs, values, expressive symbols, and artistic motifs in terms of which individuals define their world, express their feelings, and make their judgments.”
That framework is no longer pervasive in America, much less England. Instead, recent decades have been marked by challenges to religious liberty in both nations, efforts that misconstrue the role of religion in the public square, and an increasing pluralism that makes it harder to achieve moral consensus on public policy.
But an even more serious challenge to religious liberty is emerging in America, according to Heritage visiting fellow Thomas Messner. As Messner writes in his recent paper, “From Culture Wars to Conscience Wars: Emerging Threats to Conscience“:
Today, religious liberty issues are more complicated than simply freedom from government interference in religious worship or teaching. In many cases this is because, at the same time our society is becoming more pluralistic on questions of basic morality, the government continues to intrude more than ever in both public and private areas of social life. Another factor is an increasing number of incidents in which private citizens and society at large demonstrate intolerance of and hostility to orthodox religious and moral viewpoints.
One example is the challenge to the conscience rights of health care providers. David Addington, Heritage vice president for domestic and economic policy, describes one such case in a paper that asks, “Why Does the Illinois Government Oppose the Religious Liberty of Pharmacists?“ For six years Illinois bureaucrats have sought to force two pharmacists, contrary to their religious convictions, to dispense the “Plan B” or “morning-after” drug or close their businesses.
In 2005, then-Governor Rod Blagojevich threatened, “If a pharmacy wants to be in the business of dispensing contraceptives, then it must fill prescriptions without making moral judgments.” Earlier this month, however, the Seventh Circuit Court of Illinois ruled in favor of the pharmacists, vindicating (for now) their religious liberty.
Despite the victory, conflicts continue.
“Regrettably, there are many in America who express contempt and disdain toward those who bring their faith to bear on their politics,” write Heritage scholars Ryan Messmore and Tom Messner.
That has been most visible recently in the debate over the definition of marriage. Many individuals and churches have faced backlash for defending the institution of marriage on moral or religious grounds, catalogued in Messner’s paper on the California marriage ballot initiative, The Price of Prop 8:
Arguments for same-sex marriage, although often couched in terms of tolerance and inclusion, are based fundamentally on the idea that preserving marriage as unions of husband and wife is a form of bigotry, irrational prejudice, and even hatred… As increasing numbers of individuals and institutions, including public officials and governmental bodies, embrace this ideology, belief in marriage as a relationship between a man and a woman likely will come to be viewed as an unacceptable form of discrimination that should be purged from public life through legal, cultural, and economic pressure.
Clashes such as these may be “signs of the times” (to quote a King James Bible coinage) in an increasingly pluralistic society. But contrary to secularist conventional wisdom, tolerance and respect won’t be achieved by imprisoning religion within the sanctuary walls. Instead, our civic life would be well served by once again drawing on the religious, and specifically Christian, heritage of the American republic.
“At the center of the Christian truth claim is a man on a cross, dying for his enemies, praying for their forgiveness. Anyone who thinks out the implications of that will be led to love and respect even their opponents,” writes Tim Keller, pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Manhattan.
Good Friday marks the event that, in Keller’s words, “best fulfills the yearning of our pluralistic culture for peace and respect among people of different faiths.”
The cultural implications of a kingdom not of this world understandably trouble tyrants. That’s why 20th-century totalitarian states could not abide the presence of the church and why the rise of Christianity in China makes its communist leaders nervous.
But in America, a land for people yearning and still learning to breathe free, the Christian gospel memorialized in the week culminating in Easter ought always to remain good news.
In the spirit of the religious liberty we enjoy in America, we at The Heritage Foundation extend our wishes for a Happy Easter and Happy Passover.
Cross-posted
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The European Court of Human Rights has ruled that crucifixes are acceptable in public school classrooms. The ruling will be binding on all 47 countries that are members of the Council of Europe.
While I have often been critical of the Europeans, they have gotten this one right. Religion is to many Liberals and Progressives like daylight and the cross is to Dracula. The mere presentation of a religious symbol or the mention of the word God sends them fleeing in terror. There has been a relentless effort on the part of government, using our public schools as a conduit, to eliminate any display or mention of our religious heritage, the bedrock of our Declaration of Independence and our Constitution.
I fail to see how the use of the word “God” represents a threat to national security. I fail to see how the use of the word “God” is undermining the moral fiber of our nation and its people. I fail to see how anything constructive or useful has come from this attempt to eliminate the word “God” or his representation. Religious symbolism does not represent a physical or moral threat to our government or its institutions.
The First Amendment was designed to protect religion from our government not our government from religion. When Thomas Jefferson used the term “Wall of Separation”, a term not found in our Constitution, he was reassuring the Danbury Baptists that government did not represent a threat to their religious freedom. Rather than recognize the intent of that term, our government has used it to carry out an assault on our most cherished First Amendment Right.
As we have taken God out of our nation we have become a Godless nation.
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By Maggie Kerkman
Published February 09, 2011
Anne Gebhardt’s kids are learning about geography -- in her dining room in Bedford, Texas. It’s not your typical schoolhouse, but it’s one that Gebhardt says is serving her six children well. "We can teach our religious values to our children freely,” says Gebhardt. “We can teach anything that we want."
Gebhardt is part of a growing trend. Across the county, an estimated 1.5 million children are home schooled and that number's growing. In the span of eight years, home schooling has grown nationally by almost 75 percent.
The reasons parents choose to home school vary. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, 36 percent of home schooled children stay at home for religious reasons.
Twenty one percent don't like the environment in traditional schools. Another 17 percent are home schooled because their parents are dissatisfied with the academic instruction that’s available to them in traditional schools.
"We've become more experimental about the way we offer education to children,” says David Chard, Dean of the School of Education and Human Development at Southern Methodist University. "Many parents are able to provide strong educational opportunity for kids," he added.
But it’s not all about reading, writing and arithmetic. Chard said he worries home schooled students may be lacking in less tangible subjects, things like developing social or coping skills.
Programs have sprung up over the years to help with that. In Texas, the state with the largest number of home schooled kids, there are athletic leagues and learning “co-ops” where kids may attend classes with other children on a variety of subjects.
John Manning helps organize the Home School Athletic Association in Dallas. He says the group has grown by leaps and bounds over the past decade, not just because the number of home schooled students has increased, but also because most parents realize the need for this kind of activity. "What's important to us,” says Manning, "is to try to provide opportunities that kids in any school, public or private, have.”
One of Anne Gebhardt’s kids says she feels anything but deprived. Eighteen year old Meghan Gebhardt graduated from home school last year and has been taking online college classes while planning her next move. She said she feels like her education was better than what she could have received in any traditional school, public or private. “The parent, because she knows the kids, she knows how they learn,” Meghan Gebhardt said. “She can shape the way she teaches so they can learn better."
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2011/02/09/educating-children-evolution-home-schooling/#ixzz1DWw3SQtD
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Posted By Conn Carroll On December 23, 2010 @ 8:07 am In Family and Religion,First Principles | No Comments
Last weekend NPR legal correspondent Nina Totenberg inadvertently created a mini-controversy when she said on Inside Washington [1]: “I was at — forgive the expression – a Christmas party at the Department of Justice.” Some thought that Totenberg added “forgive the expression” as a cave to political correctness. But in fact Totenberg was actually mocking the Obama Justice Department. It was the DOJ that had officially called the event Totenberg attended a “holiday party” and Totenberg later told The Washington Post [2]: “I think that’s kind of silly because it’s obviously a Christmas party. I was tweaking the Department of Justice. It was a touch of irony at the expense of the Justice Department, not at the expense of Christmas.”
So how did we get to the point that the Department of Justice can’t call a Christmas Party a Christmas Party? As part of The Heritage Foundation’s Understanding America [3] series, Director of Domestic Policy Studies Jen Marshall explains [4]:
Today, the religious roots of the American order and the role of religion in its continued success are poorly understood. One source of the confusion is the phrase “separation of church and state,” a phrase used by President Thomas Jefferson in a widely misunderstood letter to the Danbury Baptist Association of Connecticut in 1802. Many think this means a radical separation of religion and politics. Some have gone so far as to suggest that religion should be entirely personal and private, kept out of public life and institutions like public schools.
That is incorrect: Jefferson wanted to protect states’ freedom of religion from federal government control and religious groups’ freedom to tend to their internal matters of faith and practice without government interference generally. Unfortunately, Jefferson’s phrase is probably more widely known than the actual text of the Constitution’s First Amendment: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”
Far from banishing religious expression from the public sphere, the authors of the U.S Constitution intended the First Amendment to ensure that religious believers and institutions could freely engage in politics, policy-making, and helping form the public’s moral consensus. In fact, the American Founders considered religious engagement in shaping the public morality essential to ordered liberty and the success of their experiment in self-government. Marshall again from Why Does Religious Freedom Matter? [4]:
Freedom of religion is a cornerstone of the American experiment. That is because religious faith is not merely a matter of “toleration” but is understood to be the exercise of “inherent natural rights.” As George Washington once observed: “[T]he Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens in giving it on all occasions their effectual support.” And “what is here a right towards men, is a duty towards the Creator,” James Madison wrote in his 1786 Memorial and Remonstrance. “This duty is precedent, both in order of time and in degree of obligation, to the claims of Civil Society.”
The model of religious liberty brilliantly designed by Madison and the other American Founders is central to the success of the American experiment. It is essential to America’s continued pursuit of the ideals stated in the Declaration of Independence, the ordered liberty embodied in the Constitution, and peace and stability around the world.
So this holiday season, rest assured that there is no constitutional ban on keeping the “Christ” in “Christmas” or displaying manger scenes or menorahs. And if you find yourself at a “holiday” party, don’t be afraid to put on a smile and wish everyone a “Merry Christmas.” The Constitution protects your right to do so, and the Founders would have wanted it that way.
Quick Hits:
Article printed from The Foundry: Conservative Policy News.: http://blog.heritage.org
URL to article: http://blog.heritage.org/2010/12/23/morning-bell-why-does-religious-freedom-matter/
URLs in this post:
[1] Inside Washington: http://www.insidewashington.tv/
[2] The Washington Post: http://voices.washingtonpost.com/reliable-source/2010/12/rs-_nina_totenberg.html
[3] Understanding America: http://site.heritage.org/understandingamerica/
[4] explains: http://www.heritage.org/Research/Reports/2010/12/Why-Does-Religious-Freedom-Matter
[5] TSA’s new airport security measures: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/22/AR2010122205941.html
[6] force Catholic hospitals: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/22/AR2010122205454.html
[7] in shambles.: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1210/46743.html
[8] new rules: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1210/46709.html
[9] engaged in legally questionable practices: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/22/AR2010122205828.html
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