![\"Christian](\"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/10\/Religious_Liberty_01_240px.jpg\" "\\"Religious_Liberty_01_240px\\"")
by Chuck Colson –\nI\u2019ve been talking a lot lately about the Obama Administration\u2019s relentless attempts to restrict religious freedom.<\/p>\n
by Chuck Colson –
\nI\u2019ve been talking a lot lately about the Obama Administration\u2019s relentless attempts to restrict religious freedom.<\/p>\n
You know by now that the Catholic bishops have strongly rejected the president\u2019s so-called \u201caccommodation\u201d to exempt religious organizations from paying for abortion-inducing drugs, contraception, and sterilization.<\/p>\n
Good for the bishops. What the president outlined changed nothing: religious organizations will still have to provide insurance that covers services that violate their religious beliefs, even if they don\u2019t have to pay for them directly.<\/p>\n
Now why does this matter? Why is it really such a big deal? The Administration is hoping you will think this is all about contraception, which not many people, even the majority of Catholics, care that much about. But this is not about contraception. This battle is all about religious freedom\u2014the first and most important of all our freedoms. <\/p>\n
As Christians, we know that freedom is the natural condition of human beings because we were created in God\u2019s image. God, who enjoys perfect freedom, respected Adam and Eve\u2019s freedom in the garden.<\/p>\n
Even the Deist Thomas Jefferson, author of Virginia\u2019s statute of religious freedom, wrote that \u201cAlmighty God hath created the mind free.\u201d Jefferson rejected \u201call attempts to influence it by temporal punishments or burdens, or by civil incapacitations.\u201d And he recognized that although \u201cthe Holy Author of our religion\u201d had the power to constrain freedom, He chose not to. And to restrict religious freedom was a \u201cdeparture from\u201d God\u2019s plan.<\/p>\n
Our founding fathers\u2014even those who weren\u2019t Christians\u2014believed, as I do, that without freedom of religion and freedom of conscience, all of our other freedoms aren\u2019t worth the paper they are written on. If government can dictate what we may or may not believe, or how we may or may not live out our beliefs, then we are no longer a free people.<\/p>\n
I say this not just because I am a Christian: I say it as a student of the American founding. I can plainly read what the founders said. James Madison, the fourth president and \u201cfather of the Constitution,\u201d believed “that religion or the duty which we owe to our Creator and the manner of discharging it, can be directed only by reason and conviction, not by force or violence\u201d\u2014and not by the \u201cdictates of other men\u201d or by \u201cCivil Society.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s shocking that the leaders of our nation so callously disregard our history, our heritage, our rights. We must not remain silent. We must speak out\u2014reintroduce our neighbors and our leaders to the foundational beliefs of the American Experiment.<\/p>\n
Today, on my \u201cTwo-Minute Warning,\u201d which I urge you to watch at ColsonCenter.org, I will invite you to attend our \u201cBreak the Spiral of Silence\u201d conference, which will be held at a retreat center near Washington, D.C. Come, learn, join with me and a host of great speakers, including Joni Eareckson Tada and Eric Metaxas. We aren\u2019t going to remain silent while our most precious freedom is in danger. Again, that\u2019s at ColsonCenter.org.<\/p>\n
Okay, governments do restrict and do deny freedom of religion. But those that do are not called free democracies. They are called authoritarian dictatorships, which is exactly what we will be living under if we lose this fight.<\/p>\n
HT: Break Point<\/a> (read full article)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Chuck Colson – I\u2019ve been talking a lot lately about the Obama Administration\u2019s relentless attempts to restrict religious freedom. You know by now that the Catholic bishops have strongly rejected the president\u2019s so-called \u201caccommodation\u201d to exempt religious organizations from paying for abortion-inducing drugs, contraception, and sterilization. Good for the bishops. What the president outlined … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":497,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"generate_page_header":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6,113,79,142],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7250","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-american-history","category-christian-persecution","category-freedom","category-leftist-tyranny"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7250","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/497"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7250"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7250\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7250"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7250"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7250"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}