Christian Persecution

The Church’s Fading Influence on American Culture

Silencing Christians Persecuting the Church in Americaby Simon de Hundehutte –
It seems people have misunderstood, as well as misrepresented, the church’s role and influence in “secular society.” The early Christians lived in the secular society of Rome, but by heralding the good news of salvation, what some might call “thumping,” their words along with their deeds changed all of society of their day. In present-day America, however, secularists have taken over and changed the rules of the debate on so many key cultural issues.

Religion, or more accurately, the Christian way of life, is being shoved out of not only politics but the American culture. We believers are being forced to accept things anathema to our way of thinking and living — accept them or be labeled “haters” or, more recently, “thumpers.”

Every Christian is keenly aware of the Great Commission, where Jesus commanded, “Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” (Matthew 28:19). Christians in the earliest days of the Church did not keep silent about their faith, bringing it with them (and many times at great cost) into the public arena. [Read more…]

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The Price of Gay Marriage: The Galvanic Corrosion of Language

Defend Marriage Religionby Geoffrey P. Hunt –
When was that watershed moment where advocacy of gay marriage crossed into the mainstream from the radical chic of the intellectual elite ? Gay marriage, quite apart from homosexuality per se, has only in recent years been embraced by more than just a few libertarian sophisticates. Ironically it wasn’t too long ago when the progressive darlings and the beautiful people believed, to the contrary, that marriage of any kind was oppressive, a form of institutional bondage.

One of the more incomprehensible aspects of the gay marriage movement has been the spectacle of well-educated academics, plaintiff’s lawyers, politicians, judges and Protestant clergymen designing tortured arguments for deconstructing natural law, human biology, the history of civilization, language and logic. On the other hand, creating a new class of civil rights amidst claims of discrimination is easy when your world view equates justice with moral equivalence, accompanied by enabling the slow corruption of language. [Read more…]

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Truth is Hate (To Those That Hate Truth)

Truth is Hate To Those That Hate Truthby Bill Muehlenberg –
On the outside wall of the Ministry of Truth building are the three slogans of ‘The Party’: “WAR IS PEACE,” “FREEDOM IS SLAVERY,” “IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH.” Those who have read Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell will be quite familiar with all this.

In his chilling 1949 novel Orwell warned of where society was heading, and in it offered us a horrific police state where Big Brother controlled everything through extensive use of propaganda, government censorship and surveillance, and nonstop indoctrination and mind control.

The book prophetically spoke of “thoughtcrimes,” “Newspeak,” and “doublethink”. Who would have thought that just sixty years on these very things would increasingly be part of life in Western societies? Today we have “hate crimes” and “hate speech” which refers to anything the secular social militants regard as non-PC. [Read more…]

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When Free Speech Died in Canada

Free Speech Died in Canadaby Joe Carter –
When future historians attempt to narrow down the exact point at which the concept of free speech died in Canada, they’ll likely point to Saskatchewan (Human Rights Commission) v. Whatcott, specifically this sentence:

Truthful statements can be presented in a manner that would meet the definition of hate speech, and not all truthful statements must be free from restriction.

Jesus might have claimed that “the truth will set you free” but in Canada speaking the same truths proclaimed in God’s Word could potentially land you in jail.

“The ruling and the reasoning [behind it] is terrible,” defendant Bill Whatcott told LifeSiteNews.com. “They actually used the concept that truth is not a defense.” [Read more…]

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Metropolitan Hilarion Blasts Anglicans for Renouncing the Faith

Metropolitan Hilarion Alfeyev by David W. Virtue –
The future of ecumenism is in great peril with the gap widening between orthodox and progressives, says Metropolitan Hilarion of the Russian Orthodox Church a noted theologian and church historian.

Speaking before an audience at Villanova University, a Catholic institution on Philadelphia’s historic mainline and one of the oldest in the US, Hilarion said that when the holy fathers of the first millennium abided in unity and while it was subjected to many serious trials, it was the foundation upon which dialogue between Christians was successful and fruitful. “Fidelity to the Christian tradition is the proper means for the restoration of unity among Christ’s disciples.”

The orthodox leader blasted parts of the Anglican Communion for abandoning the faith and said renunciation of the truth by some Protestant denominations makes it difficult for the Orthodox Church to continue co-operation with them.

“I regret this, but dialogues with Protestants and Anglicans which we have had for decades are now under threat because of processes taking place in the Protestant communities of the West and North. I mean the continuing liberalization in the field of theology, ecclesiology and moral teaching. Certain denominations have legitimized the blessing of same-sex unions and the ordination of people openly declaring their non-traditional sexual orientation.” [Read more…]

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The Asymmetry of Intolerance

Christian Persecution Intolerance by Tom Trinko –
A group of Christians have just filed a lawsuit to have a statue of Nietzsche on Federal land near a Montana ski slope removed because they found a single person who says she’s offended.

The vast majority of conservatives, including Christians, would find that lawsuit to be bizarre. Of course Christians, being tolerant, have done no such thing. Atheists, however, have sued to have a statue of Jesus on Federal land near to a ski slope, placed there at the request of WWII veterans back in 1955, removed. At first the litigants, a bigoted group of haters who have no tolerance for the personal beliefs of others, didn’t bother to produce anyone who was in fact bothered by the statue. When forced to, the bigots managed to dig up one person who was bothered.

Some might question the use of “bigoted haters” to describe an organization which exists to drive the free speech expression of religious people off public property. However given that many atheists who support anti-Christian crusades also believe it’s fine for the government to fund “Piss Christ”, a crucifix in a jar of the “artists” urine, and a statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary covered in cow dung it’s clear that these atheist extremists do not believe in the free speech rights of Christians; [Read more…]

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Christians Must Not Retreat from the Culture, We Must Work for its Conversion

Christians Must Convert the Cultureby Deacon Keith Fournier –
Two years before becoming Pope, Karol Cardinal Wotyla spoke to the U.S. Bishops. His observation was republished in the Wall Street Journal on November 9, 1978:

“We are now standing in the face of the greatest historical confrontation humanity has gone through. I do not think that wide circles of the American society or wide circles of the Christian community realize this fully. We are now facing the final confrontation between the Church and the anti-Church, of the Gospel and the anti-Gospel. This confrontation lies within the plans of divine providence. It is a trial which the whole Church must take up.”

And take it up we have. However, there is much, much more to do. The ground has shifted and the struggle is intensifying. Our cultural mission lies at the heart of what it means for us as Christians to be leaven, light, salt and the soul of the world. This is no time to retreat from culture, we must work for its conversion. What is needed are men and women of Christian courage. [Read more…]

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Religious Freedom is Necessary for Other Freedoms to Flourish

Religious Freedom key to all other freedomsby Thomas Farr –
Is religious freedom necessary for other freedoms to flourish? This is indeed a big question. It implicates an array of philosophical issues and scholarly disciplines, but it also has distinctly practical, even strategic, dimensions. That is to say, it raises questions not only about human nature and human flourishing, but about the freedom and stability of whole societies, as well as international peace.

The “other freedoms” with which we are here concerned typically exist in a mature democratic system of civil society and ordered liberty. They include the freedoms of expression, association, assembly, economic activity, and equality under the law, and freedom from persecution or unjust violence. [Read more…]

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Hobby Lobby’s Christian Owners Fight $1.3 Million-Per-Day HHS Mandate Fine

Hobby Lobby CEO David Green and his wife Barbara
Hobby Lobby CEO David Green and his wife Barbara
by Kathleen Gilbert –
The Obama administration is set to levy as much as a $1.3 million per day fine against a Christian retail business based on their religious objection to abortifacient drugs, according to a lawsuit filed this week.

Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc., with more than 500 arts and crafts stores in 41 states and over 22,500 employees, is reportedly the largest for-profit business yet to file suit over the Health and Human Services (HHS) mandate requiring businesses to provide free abortion-causing drugs, such as the “week-after” pill Ella, as non-negotiable “preventive services.”

Lawyers for the private retail chain filed a lawsuit in the US District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma, where the company is based. [Read more…]

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The Silence of the Pulpits

Christian persecution, loss of religious libertyby Bill Warner –
If you are even slightly awake about the world news today, it is no surprise that Christians are being killed, raped, and brutalized throughout the Islamic world.  However, there is a place where you can go to  escape the dreadful and relentless details of Christian annihilation by Islam.  You can just go to church.

For example, Christians were killed this week in Nigeria.  Nothing out of the ordinary — indeed, in the world of Christian persecution, this is routine.

And so the response found in nearly every church to the murder of Christians is…wait for it…complete silence.  Not a mention or reference to it, or to the brutality against Christians that happens almost every day in the Islamic world.

This is not a passive silence, because if you try to change it, you will fail.  The silence is an active, working conspiracy that goes throughout nearly all of Christendom. [Read more…]

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