Free Republic

These are my thoughts on the current situations and future possibilities of violations of the "Conscious Clause" or Religious Freedom aspects. Keep in mind that the current Administration did not want to acknowledge the War on Terror while it is still going on. It has been said that Osama Bin Laden had declared war on America but we did not declare it as a war. So there is a war even if we do not choose to acknowledge it. Similiarly, the Administration's War on Religion (other than Muslims, of course) is evident even when some refuse to acknowledge that.From the...

The federal government will no longer forgive student loans in exchange for public service if that service is related to religion, according to a new Education Department rule from the Obama administration. The Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) program announced the change Jan. 31 with little fanfare, while most of Washington was focused on the new ObamaCare rule requiring religious organizations to provide free birth control through health insurance. “Generally, the type or nature of employment with the organization does not matter for PSLF purposes,” reads the new language. “However, if you work for a nonprofit organization, your employment will...

Senator Boxer warned yesterday that if the HHS contraception mandate was repealed it would set a dangerous precedence of religious rights trumping the right to be insured. On MSNBC's Politics Nation with Al Sharpton last night, Boxer affirmed that under the proposed amendment proposed by Sen. Roy Blunt, an employer would not be forced by the government to pay for medical practices against his religion. "I mean, are they serious? Sharpton exclaimed, "How do you make a law where an employer can decide his own religious beliefs violate your right to be insured?" "Oh Absolutely," Boxer said,

What a sad state of affairs. Well, what do you expect? When schools don’t teach history or government and focus on community organizing this is what you get… An ignorant population of leftists ready to hand control of their lives over to some dictator-wannabe. 39% of American voters believe it’s OK for Obama to trample on religious freedom. Rasmussen reported: Half of voters do not agree with the Obama administration’s action forcing Catholic institutions to pay for birth control measures that they morally oppose. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 39% of Likely U.S. Voters believe the...

“Darn tooting.” Back in October when the HHS contraception/abortifacient/sterilization mandate issue was more under the radar than it is now (the announcement on January 20 was far from the first communication about it from the administration), President Obama bragged about it during a Democratic National Committee fundraiser in Chicago. From the White House transcript: And to make sure that those laws are upheld, we appointed two brilliant women to the Supreme Court. (Applause.) We repealed “don’t ask, don’t tell” so that every single American can serve their country, regardless of who they love. (Applause.) And, yes

I believe that our right to religious freedom is now being censored. Each day as I write this message, I wonder if it will be my last. For those of you who “pooh pooh” that, and think it is a gross exaggeration, think again.

The political furor over President Obama's birth-control mandate continues to grow, even among those for whom contraception poses no moral qualms, and one needn't be a theologian to understand why. The country is being exposed to the raw political control that is the core of the Obama health-care plan, and Americans are seeing clearly for the first time how this will violate pluralism and liberty. *** In late January the Health and Human Services Department required almost all insurance plans to cover contraceptive and sterilization methods, including the morning-after pill. The decision came after passionate lobbying by religious groups and...

A website affiliated with Iranian leader Ayatollah Ali Khameni has published the legal and religious justification for Iran to exterminate the State of Israel and all of its Jews (Hat Tip: Memeorandum). The doctrine includes wiping out Israeli assets and Jewish people worldwide. Calling Israel a danger to Islam, the conservative website Alef, with ties to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said the opportunity must not be lost to remove “this corrupting material. It is a “‘jurisprudential justification” to kill all the Jews and annihilate Israel, and in that, the Islamic government of Iran must take the helm.” The...

Pittsburgh Bishop Zubik: 'To Hell' With New Contraception Rules The Obama administration is requiring church-affiliated employers to provide health care plans that cover access to contraception. By Larissa Dudkiewicz Email the author January 29, 2012 Pittsburgh Catholic Bishop David Zubik Friday joined a growing segment of religious leaders speaking out against the Obama administration’s new law that requires religious employers to offer health plans covering free contraceptives. In an open letter titled "To Hell With You," Zubik on Friday characterized some of the mandates in the administration’s Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act as a "slap in the face" and...

http://www.cracked.com/article_15759_10-things-christians-atheists-can-and-must-agree-on.html

Many big brands are intensely religious, even though consumers may not realize it. Most of the time, it comes from a devout founder passing his or her values on down the line. Some companies put their religion right out in the open, and are proud of their identities. Chick-fil-A is infamous for closing on Sundays, and In-N-Out puts Bible verses on its packaging. Interstate Batteries' mission statement states up front that it exists "to glorify God" while selling its products. Still, it's risky for brands to affiliate themselves with a religion directly. Since it's just a polarizing subject, it often...

President Obama must prevent the shutting down of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom. The need for its work has never been so acute as Islamists gain power. Prof. Phyllis Chesler Prof. Phyllis Chesler is the author of fifteen books, including Women and Madness (Doubleday, 1972), The Death of Feminism: What's Next in the Struggle for Women's Freedom (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005) and most recently, The New Anti-Semitism. She is the co-founder of the Association for Women in Psychology and the National Women's Health Network. â–º More from this writer Time has run out for the cause of worldwide religious...

If you swallow poison and are out of ipecac, you can always watch this video. It's an outstanding emetic. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6920eI6ZwL0 The virtuous Charlie Rangel being canonized by the profoundly spiritual Nancy Pelosi.

The English Separatist congregation, known to history as the Pilgrims, was known as the Scrooby Congregation before they made their way across the Atlantic in the Mayflower. Named for the Scrooby Manor, which was the Nottinghamshire English home of one of their leaders William Brewster, the congregation had gathered at the Brewster home for meetings and services while in in England. King James I, following the more lenient Queen Elizabeth I in 1602, rejected the demands of the separatists across England who sought independent religious congregations and who had accused the Church of England of being too much like the...

The Pilgrims had landed in a cold and forbidding land with no friends and rocky soil. More than a third of their population died of starvation and exposure during the first winter. Adding to the misery was the effects of their contract with their merchant sponsors which required them to share all property and the fruits of labor in common. William Bradford illustrated the problems associated with this arrangement in his diary: The experience that was had in this common course and condition, tried sundry years and that amongst godly and sober men, may well evince the vanity of that...

JOE AMES is an alumnus of the Pennsylvania State University. He served as editor of The Lionhearted: Penn State’s Only Independent Newspaper from 1991 – 1993. The paper gained national attention when two female undergraduate students, both journalism majors and members of the student club “Womyn’s Concerns,” stole and burned thousands of Lionhearted newspapers on the lawn of its advisor’s State College law office, to the applause of Penn State faculty and administrators. Mr. Ames offers his view here of the recent scandal. “WE are Penn State.” Even those with superficial exposure to Penn State are familiar with its famous,...

If a church broadcasts the word of God on TV without closed captions, it risks incurring the wrath of the FCC. Some 300 small- to medium-sized churches can expect letters from the commission within the next few days explaining why their closed captioning exemptions were lifted for TV shows like “Power in the Word” and “Producing Kingdom Citizens.” The FCC has been mailing the letters for the past few days to churches from Maine to California, explaining that the hundreds of exemptions are now rescinded and giving the programmers 90 days to reapply. The churches were granted FCC exemptions from...

Episcopal, Roman Catholic and Methodist bishops have joined with civil rights groups to challenge an immigration bill signed into law in June by Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley on grounds it violates religious freedom. The law makes harboring, transporting or shielding undocumented people a criminal offense. Yet faith communities are often transporting immigrants to church, hospitals, and events, while assisting them with food, shelter and school supplies—the very hospitality commanded by scriptures. “Religion is not just about what we do on Sunday morning in worship, it’s about how we live and love our neighbor, how we do justice, love mercy and...

With Representative Michele Bachmann's victory in the Ames, Iowa straw poll, and Texas Governor Rick Perry's triumphal entrance into the GOP presidential primary, there's been a sudden spike of attention drawn to the extremist religious beliefs both candidates have been associated with - up to and including their belief in Christian dominionism. (In the Texas Observer, the New Yorker, and the Daily Beast, for example.) The responses of denial from both the religious right itself and from the centrist Beltway press have been so incongruous as to be laughable - if only the subject matter weren't so deadly serious. Those...

UTJ Chairman says Chareidi Jews are the ones hardest hit by Likud and Kadima's "disastrous" policies. MK Rav Yisrael Eichler, Chairman of the hareidi United Torah Judaism faction in the Knesset, lambasted Opposition Leader Tzipi Livni over the diatribe she directed Saturday night at hareidi Jews and settlers in Judea and Samaria. "The angry outburst by Kadima chairwoman Mrs. Livni, according to which hareidim get everything through blackmail and therefore do not take part in the social protest, stems from Kadima's drastic downturn in the polls, with a loss of ten Knesset seats." "The protesters know that Kadima and Netanyahu...

(CNN) – Bennington College students recently learned that their Vermont school had received an honor that some might consider dubious: They attend the least religious college in America, according to an annual educational survey. Bennington’s selection was part of an intriguing national survey listing the Top 5 colleges in the U.S. for most and least religious students. The survey is part of a larger study conducted by the Princeton Review, a Massachusetts-based educational services company, for its new book, “The Best 376 Colleges: 2012 edition.” Princeton Review interviewed 122,000 students at 376 top colleges to rate their schools and describe...

An Episcopal bishop, a Methodist bishop and a Roman Catholic archbishop, all based in Alabama, sued on the basis that the new statute violated their right to free exercise of religion, arguing that it would “make it a crime to follow God’s command to be Good Samaritans.” “The law,” said Archbishop Thomas J. Rodi of Mobile, “attacks our core understanding of what it means to be a church.” While church leaders have spoken out against similar laws elsewhere, Alabama is the only state where senior church leaders have gone so far in formal, organized opposition. But the law in Alabama,...

When Ron Chernow was travelling the country last year to talk about his new biography of George Washington, he was often asked about Washington’s 1790 letter to the Jews of Newport, R.I. — the one that famously promised that the United States government would give “to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance.” “There were very few speeches that I made where people didn’t ask about that letter,” Chernow recalled. “I can vouch for the fact that there’s tremendous curiosity out there.” He’s curious, too. Even though Chernow spent six years reading through Washington’s papers to research his book, and...

NEVER FORGET THE PRICE THAT WAS PAID WHEN GOD BECAME MAN AND PROVIDED US THE MEANS FOR OUR SALVATION. NEVER FORGET THE PRICE THAT WAS PAID BY BRAVE PATRIOTS WHO BY GOD’S GRACE WERE ABLE TO GRANT US THE LIBERTIES WE NOW ENJOY! Amazing to discover that in the minds of early Patriots, the 4th of July signified a religious holiday like Christmas. To many of the followers of Jesus Christ, who by The Grace of Almighty God, had helped form this nation of ours, God who became Man had granted us freedom of knowing God and becoming like Christ;...

The American Civil Liberties Union have filed a lawsuit so that prisoners at a South Carolina jail can have access to pornographic-type material. Lawyers defending the religious freedom lawsuit against the Berkeley County Jail in Moncks Corner, South Carolina, said that the inmates were not allowed to have any reading materials apart from the bible.

Obama Easter Breakfast Has Religious Leaders Who Enabled Abortion Washington, DC -- President Barack Obama hosted a collection of "religious leaders" at the White House this morning for an Easter prayer breakfast. The event would have been a respected Christian one had it not been for the abortion enablers in attendance. http://www.lifenews.com/2011/04/19/obama-easter-breakfast-has-religious-leaders-who-enabled-abortion/

While most Israelis worry about a prospective demographic imbalance between Jews and Arabs in the Land of Israel, with demographers claiming that, under current trends, Arabs will eventually outnumber Jews in the country, Professor Arnon Sofer of Haifa University says that there is a more realistic demographic change afoot. And while the notion of Arab births eventually causing Jews to become a minority in the Land of Israel is by no means accepted by all demographers, the imbalance Sofer speaks of – that between the diminishing of the secular Israeli population in the State of Israel and the growth of...

PORTLAND — A group of Maine's top religious leaders called on policy makers to keep Maine a welcoming place for immigrants. Bishop Richard Malone of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Portland, Rabbi Carolyn Braun of Temple Beth El in Portland, Eric Smith, associate director of the Maine Council of Churches, and leaders of the Episcopal Church and Unitarian Universalist community spoke at a news conference this morning to support a civil discussion of more than 30 legislative and budget proposals that could affect Maine's immigrants and refugees. Some, such as an Arizona-style proposal to ask immigrants to prove legal status,...

<p>MILWAUKEE (AP) -- Marquette University in Milwaukee will begin offering domestic partner benefits to its employees beginning next year.</p> <p>The move by the Catholic, Jesuit university comes about a year after the school rescinded a job offer to a lesbian and scholar at Seattle University. Marquette officials said at the time, rescinding the job offer to Jodi O'Brien had nothing to do with her sexual orientation. But, it triggered heated debate on campus over the issue.</p>

San Francisco, Calif., Feb 19, 2011 / 01:04 pm (CNA).- One of the fastest growing orders of women religious in the United States is expanding to California where the Dominican Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist, took over administration of a Sacramento Catholic school this school year.Perhaps more significantly, the Dominican Sisters have outgrown the motherhouse in Ann Arbor, Mich., and are planning to build two new houses of formation in California and in Texas. Each would hold about 100. The order’s lifestyle intrigued Oprah Winfrey, who featured the sisters twice on her show in 2010. As a result...

TUNIS, Tunisia (AP) -- Tunisia's official TAP news agency says a Catholic priest from Poland has been killed and his body had multiple stab wounds and his throat was slit. The report cites the Tunis archbishopric as saying 34-year-old Marek Marius Rybinski worked at a religious school in the Tunis suburb of Manouba.

Apple is telling us that the apps' content is considered "likely to expose a group to harm" and "to be objectionable and potentially harmful to others." Inasmuch as the Manhattan Declaration simply reaffirms the moral teachings of our Christian faith on the sanctity of human life, marriage and sexual morality, and religious freedom and the rights of conscience, Apple's statement amounts to the charge that our faith is "potentially harmful to others."

Return of the ‘death panels’ Posted by Mollie Even in a health care bill that was unpopular, the panels that would make end-of-life recommendations in order to save the government on health care costs (said recommendations being passed on by paying doctors to share them with patients) were even more unpopular. Some people call these panels that make end-of-life recommendations “death panels.” Others, thought the term inaccurate and prefer terms like “end-of-life planning” and “consultation” and “directives.” These end-of-life panels in Section 1233 of the health care legislation were so unpopular, in fact, that they were removed from the bill...

Things Fall ApartHow Democrats gave up on religious voters. Tiffany Stanley Edition December 18, 2010 | 12:00 am When Barack Obama burst onto the national scene at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, he represented—among many things—the shining hope for the religious left. Here was a liberal politician who was not afraid of the language of faith, who just might reclaim territory that the Democratic Party had, willingly or not, ceded to Republicans. Red America did not own religion, Obama declared: “We worship an awesome God in the blue states. Between 2004 and 2007, when Obama announced his candidacy for president,...

Outside Right Nation 2010–A leftist “religious” mob assembled outside the Sears Center at the Right Nation event featuring Glenn Beck and Andrew Breitbart. Protesters spit on Right Nation attendees and called them homophobic slurs. The “religious leaders” also lashed out at Glenn Beck.It was quite a religious experience.Dana Loesch caught video of the spitting.Obama’s Organizing for America (OFA) members were bussed into the parking lot before the Right Nation 2010 Conference in Chicago. The leftist protesters harassed Andrew Breitbart and called him a homo. This is while one of the members was leading the group in prayer.

When Muslims want to engage in an activity which is insulting to non-Muslims, the left calls opposition to such activity as racist or bigoted or Islamophobic. After all, Muslims have a Constitutional right to build where they want regardless of whom it may offend. But when that wacko from Florida wanted to burn a Quran, did the left support him? Did they call the President a racist for criticizing what the preacher wanted to do? Did they call General Petraeus a bigot for asking the preacher not to do what he wanted because it might offend some group? Doesn't an...

Survey finds public not so bothered about growing number of IDF commanders and officers who stem from the national-religious camp. A majority of the public is not concerned with the growing number of IDF commanders and officers who stem from the national-religious camp, according to a survey by the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies at Bar Ilan University. Some 79 percent of the respondents said they were not “concerned at all” with the growing number of religious officers in the IDF, in contrast to 1 percent who said they were very concerned. The study was conducted ahead of a conference...

The Coming Explosion in Vocations: Seminaries & Convents Filling Up Fast! Tim Drake is one of my favorite Catholic journalists--he always seems to have the inside scoop. Now he has another great article, this time about the explosion of vocations to the priesthood and religious life. Here I'll post his story. Later I'll tell you about my friend Brother Cajetan, who made his "simple profession" of vows last month in August--I was there and it was a glorious! But before the anecdotal account, here's the bigger story Brother Cajetan is a part of: Take a look at some of the...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. religious leaders joined on Tuesday to condemn an "anti-Muslim frenzy" in the United States, and the head of U.S. forces in Afghanistan warned that a Florida church's plan for a Koran-burning could endanger American troops abroad. Christian, Muslim and Jewish religious leaders denounced the "misinformation and outright bigotry" against U.S. Muslims resulting from plans to build a Muslim community center and mosque not far from the site of the September 11, 2001, hijacked plane attacks in New York by the Islamist militant group al Qaeda that killed 2,752 people. Tensions have risen with the approach of...

Harvard's Valedictorian to Become Dominican Nun Here's a great story. . . Don’t tell Mary Anne Marks the Catholic Church is an oppressive, misogynistic disaster. She knows better. And she’s got a Harvard degree, too. Miss Marks, a native of Queens, N.Y., graduated from Harvard University this past semester with an undergraduate degree in classics and English, delivering her commencement address in Latin. This fall, she begins a new life, discerning her future consecrated to Christ as a Catholic religious sister with the Dominican Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist, in Ann Arbor, Mich.. . . KATHRYN JEAN LOPEZ:...

Seriously. I am not kidding. I’m not rick rolling here. This site, although an important site, still has me shaken and a bit nauseous. It depicts pictures and videos of barbaric acts done in the name of Islam and Allah. I link to it with a strong warning. Very strong. Very, very strong. What makes these videos compelling is that they were not made with surveillance cameras, capturing moments that were not to be seen. Many of these videos, depicting incredible brutality, were made by the perpetrators of these inhuman acts. The video that left me shaken was one titled...

RALEIGH, N.C. – A prestigious North Carolina private college cannot have police officers with the power to arrest suspects and enforce state law because the school is a religious institution, the state Court of Appeals ruled Tuesday. ... Allowing the school's security officers to carry out laws on behalf of the state violates the U.S. Constitution's prohibition against laws establishing religion by creating "an excessive government entanglement with religion," Judge Jim Wynn wrote in the unanimous opinion.

From the Charism page at the Sisters' website. Our Charism The foundress of our Community one day heard in her heart the words of Our Lord, “My people do not know Me. Those who were to give witness to Me no longer do so.” With these words she also felt the deep sadness in the heart of Our Lord Who has been left alone and abandoned by so many of His specially chosen ones. From that time on she felt called to give explicit witness to the reality of the living God and to do all that she could to...

Churches for Middle East Peace (CMEP) tries to organize American religious opinion against Israel with relatively measured tones. Its participants predictably include officials from the left-dominated Mainline Protestant denominations, liberal Catholic orders, and the Greek Archdiocese of North America, as well as the Antiochian Orthodox Church in the U.S. Its official “friends” include more overtly anti-Israel diehards like Friends of Sabeel – North America, which essentially wants to dissolve Jewish Israel in favor of a multi-ethnic “Palestine.” Various advocates of anti-Israel divestment, an otherwise largely defeated cause, are also “friends” to CEMP, including the Episcopal Peace Fellowship, the Presbyterian Peace...

Lea Klibanoff, 34, was a student at the Ma’aleh Film School when she started filming “The Messiah Will Always Come.” Before deciding to focus on Ofran in her movie, Klibanoff, who is religiously observant, wanted to sketch a portrait of the new breed of activists who are religious or formerly religious and have become prominent in many leftist, human rights organizations. People such as the founders of Breaking the Silence, members of B’nei Avraham, several leaders of the struggle in Sheikh Jarrah, as well as people affiliated with Ta’ayush, Yesh Din, Machsom Watch and Ir Amim.

Washington – The Obama administration has been criticized since it took office for putting realist foreign-policy goals ahead of more idealistic principles such as democracy and human rights. Now a bipartisan national commission finds President Obama wanting when it comes to defending and promoting global religious freedom, as well.

Robert Spencer is a scholar of Islamic history, theology, and law and the director of Jihad Watch. He is the author of ten books, eleven monographs, and hundreds of articles about jihad and Islamic terrorism, including the New York Times Bestsellers The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) and The Truth About Muhammad. His latest book, The Complete Infidel’s Guide to the Koran, is available now from Regnery Publishing, and he is coauthor (with Pamela Geller) of the forthcoming book The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration’s War on America (Simon and Schuster).

WASHINGTON -- A federal appeals court ruling allowing a school district to veto an orchestral religious piece at high school graduation survived Supreme Court review Monday over a dissent by a conservative justice, who said the decision would stifle freedom of expression. The justices denied a 12th-grade musician's appeal of a ruling in September by the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco. The appeals court said school officials' decision to keep the graduation program secular was a reasonable effort to avoid a constitutional controversy and did not violate students' rights. The ruling, in a case from Washington...

Social conservatives put religious twist on 'tea party' messageMany on the Christian right see growing government as a threat to religious freedom. The shared views are an opportunity to strengthen the bridge between the camps for the midterm election, some say. By Kathleen Hennessey March 11, 2010 Reporting from Washington — For most of a year, the small-government advocates of the "tea party" movement have stolen the spotlight from the Republican Party's veteran performers: the Christian conservatives who have long driven voters to the polls for the GOP. Now the veterans are stealing the tea partyers lines. In news releases,...

Australian Catholics were celebrating the country's first saint Saturday after Pope Benedict XVI confirmed that a Melbourne-born nun was to be canonised. Mary MacKillop, who founded her own order of nuns and devoted her life to building schools and helping the poor, has been a revered figure in Australia since shortly after her death in 1909. "We are delighted that the goodness, the holiness of the life of Australian Mary MacKillop has been recognised by the Catholic Church throughout the world," said Anne Derwin, head of MacKillop's Sisters of St Joseph. The Vatican had earlier recognised two miracles by MacKillop...