A Vermont high school is suing state officials after they were banned from all athletic and academic events for refusing to allow their girls basketball team to compete against a transgender player, Fox News reported.

Mid Vermont Christian School says they were barred from all athletic play after forfeiting against a Long Trail girls high school basketball team that had a biological male on their team on Feb. 21.

The Christian PK-12 school says they were “irreparably harmed by being denied participation” and “losing out on playing competitive sports as well as academic competitions,” their lawsuit, filed by Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), reads.

The ADF is a Christian legal advocacy group that works to defend and preserve freedom of speech to expand Christian practices within public schools and in government, outlaw abortion, and curtail LGBTQ rights — their website states.

Immediate action was taken by the Vermont Principal’s Association (VPA) following Mid Vermont’s decision to cancel their game against Long Trail, stating the school violated it’s policies on “commitment to racial, gender-fair, and disability awareness” and on “gender identity.”

The VPA initially put out a statement back in February saying “VPA policies prohibit discrimination and/or harassment of students on school property or at school functions by students or employees.”

Mid Vermont refuted such claims in their lawsuit and made clear they were only acting in accordance to the religious beliefs their school abides by.

Mid Vermont says that VPA was “denying the Christian school and its students from participating in the state’s tuition program and sports league because of their religious beliefs.”

The small Christian school, located in Quechee, lists itself on its official school website as “intentionally non-denominational,” emphasizing their education is strictly engrained with “the mind of Christ.”

“The State is entitled to its own views, but it is not entitled, nor is it constitutional, to force private, religious schools across the state to follow that orthodoxy as a condition to participating in Vermont’s tuitioning program and the State’s athletic association,” the lawsuit reads.

Read more at: nypost.com

First Liberty is representing Pastor Chris Avell of Dad’s Place, a church in Bryan, Ohio. He’s facing 18 criminal charges for violating the city’s zoning laws.

The city is going after him because earlier this year Pastor Chris opened the church 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. He’s seeking to serve homeless people.

In November 2023, the city sent a letter ordering the church to stop allowing overnight guests or face criminal prosecution. This past Sunday—on New Year’s Eve—police showed up at the church. They handed the Pastor a packet of multiple charges and violations.

Our attorneys will be attending a court hearing next week, on January 11, to defend the Pastor and the church.

Pastor Chris said he’s willing to face those charges for the sake of the church’s mission.

“I was spiritually homeless and God provided a home for me. He’s put a burden on my heart for the homeless,” Pastor Chris said. “Many of these people have been rejected by their families and cast aside by their communities. So, if the church isn’t willing to lay down it’s life for them, then who will? This is what we’re called to do.”

“The city would rather kick these folks to the curb in the cold outdoor months of December and early January than allow the church to remain open 24/7 to those who need it the most,” Dys said. “It’s unconscionable. We’re going to hold them accountable.”

“This isn’t a homeless shelter, it’s a church,” said Pastor Chris in an interview with The Village Reporter. “But we have put in things people can use, like a shower and a small ability to do laundry. Some who found this to be a home for them have stuck around.”

The Pastor says he began opening the building this way, because the local homeless shelter was often full, which led to the needs of many vulnerable people not being met. He says at least a hundred have been helped in some way by his church being opened 24/7.

Read more at: firstliberty.org

ROME — The global persecution of Christians rose sharply in 2023, according to the 2024 World Watch List (WWL) published Wednesday by Open Doors Christian charity.

More than 365 million Christians worldwide suffer “high levels” of persecution and discrimination for their faith, WWL reveals, which means that one in seven Christians are persecuted because of their faith.

During 2023, 4,998 Christians were killed in connection with practicing their faith, counting only the number of reported cases, WWL found.

Attacks on the homes of Christians nearly quadrupled (+371 percent) from 2022 to 2023, rising from 4,547 to 21,431, and the number of attacks on churches, Christian schools, and hospitals jumped sevenfold, from 2,110 in 2022 to 14,766 in 2023.

Moreover, 42,849 Christians suffered physical violence or death threats in the course of the year, and 278,716 Christians were driven from their homes or forced to go underground. This represents more than double the figure from 2022 (124,310).

Topping the World Watch List, which ranks the 50 most dangerous countries for Christians, is once again North Korea, which also occupied the number one spot in the 2023 WWL findings.

North Korea is an officially atheist country run by a brutal communist regime that is particularly hostile to Christians. As WWL notes, being discovered to be a Christian in North Korea “is effectively a death sentence.”

Read more at: breitbart.com

A Barbadian theatrical dance group is taking legal action after being “excluded in the name of inclusivity” following their “unconstitutional” disqualification from a national competition due to their Christian beliefs on gender.

Praise Academy of Dance Barbados was banned from performing at the National Independence Festival of Creative Arts (NIFCA) in October for allegedly breaching the rules by exceeding “the bounds of good taste,” and making “defamatory claims,” the St. Vincent Times reported.

The infraction was found due to the group’s “Speak of Life” performance produced for the event, in which they “presented a Christian viewpoint of gender identity and sexual orientation and declared the Christian worldview that there are only two genders.”

A recording of the full performance includes a depiction of a teen girl who struggles with her gender identity in school, with a dialogue sharing biological and biblical explanations for the two sexes.

At one point, the performers announce, “It’s not a choice, you don’t get to pick. That’s the science, period!”

Banners with verses from the biblical book of Genesis hung on the stage, stating: “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.”

Despite the dance troupe sharing their Christian faith for the last 20 years without disqualification, they say that Senator Gregory Nicholls, arbiter of the National Cultural Foundation (NCF), “unconstitutionally” canceled them without referring the matter to the Barbados Supreme Court.

“The case is believed to be the first time that a group has been canceled for the expression of traditional Christian beliefs in Barbados and brings into question whether the LGBTQ agenda is being brought in by the back door,” the Carribean outlet reported.

Praise Academy has raised an official complaint, arguing that the decision of the NCF and NIFCA judging panel was illegal and unconstitutional.

Read more at: breitbart.com

ROME, Italy — Nigeria is the most dangerous place in the world to be a Christian, according to a report on Christian persecution by International Christian Concern (ICC).

In ICC’s 2023 “Persecutors of the World” report, Nigeria is billed as the world’s top oppressor because of its “endemic” anti-Christian violence.

Radical Muslim terror groups such as Boko Haram and Fulani militants have waged a “20-year genocide against Christians in Nigeria,” the report declared, and as a result “Christian men, women, and children are brutally kidnapped, tortured, and killed every week in Nigeria.”

In just 128 days of 2022, spanning from March 4 to July 6, a total of 55 separate attacks resulted in the deaths of 549 Christians, ICC reported.

The adoption of Sharia criminal law in 12 northern states has exacerbated the ongoing persecution of Christians in the region, the text stated, and meanwhile the Nigerian government and much of the international community “continue to deny religious motivation behind ongoing violence, despite the clear targeting of Christians and churches.”

“Once again, Nigeria’s Christian community is suffering at the hands of radical Fulani militants,” ICC president Jeff King noted. “And once again, rather than intervening, the Nigerian government continues to turn a blind eye to the violence, aiding and abetting the ongoing genocide.”

“No longer can this trend of violence be dismissed as a complicated, regional conflict over land rights,” King added. “The government’s inaction on the matter is inexcusable and the violence will only worsen unless the international community steps in.”

The principal driver of Christian persecution in Nigeria is radical Islam and, according to ICC, the three main perpetrators of persecution are Boko Haram, Fulani militants, and Islamic conservative communities.

While Boko Haram has killed tens of thousands of people, mostly Christians, Fulani militants operating in Nigeria’s Middle Belt “have killed more Christians in the past several years than Boko Haram and have displaced millions of Christian farmers.”

To add insult to injury, in 2021 the U.S. State Department removed Nigeria from its list of Countries of Particular Concern (CPC) despite unabated violence and atrocities against Christians.

“This lack of designation essentially indicates to Nigeria that the U.S. approves of all its actions,” the ICC noted. “Whether the U.S. acknowledges the plight of Nigerian Christians or not, the fact remains the same: Nigeria has become a burial ground for believers of the Christian faith.”

Read more at: breitbart.com

You know you live in scary times when the simple act of prayer lands you in trouble.

Although this happened in Britain, America, which shares much of the same Western ideology, likely isn’t far behind.

Pat Gray plays the clip of a woman being confronted by law enforcement for “silently praying” outside an abortion center in Britain.

The officer, reading from some kind of handbook, asked a range of questions, such as, “Are you here as part of an organized protest,” “Are you part of a pro-life organization or pro-choice organization,” and “Are you protesting?”

The woman responded “no” to all of the questions.

“Can your action be carried out elsewhere?” the officer pressed.

“I can pray elsewhere, but I want to pray here today,” the woman responded.

“Are you aware that there is a Public Space Protection Order in place here?” the officer inquired, to which the woman responded that she was aware of the order but did not believe she needed to move because she was only praying silently and not protesting.

The officer then informed her that she would be issued “a fixed penalty notice … for failing to comply with the Public Space Protection Order and the Antisocial Behavior Crime and Policing Act of 2014.”

“Just to make it clear, I’m not protesting,” the woman said again, but the officer’s only response was “OK” before she issued the fine anyway.

“She wasn’t hitting people with a hammer as they walked by. She wasn’t blocking an entrance. She wasn’t doing anything but praying on the sidewalk,” sighs Pat Gray in disbelief, “and you can’t do that in Great Britain?”

Read more at: theblaze.com

A Harbingers Daily commentary argued that Christians in the United States could face increasing social or professional pressure because of their religious convictions. The writer contrasted longstanding protections for worship in America with accounts of persecution in other countries and urged readers to prepare for challenges to public expressions of faith. This is the author’s assessment of cultural and religious trends, rather than a finding that religious freedom has ended in the United States. The original article contains the full argument and examples.

Read more at harbingersdaily.com

A 2023 article described a devastating fire during a wedding celebration in the predominantly Christian town of Hamdaniya, Iraq, which killed more than 100 people and injured many others. The writer challenged Iraqi authorities’ characterization of the fire as accidental and cited objections from local religious leaders and survivors. The cause and responsibility were contested in the commentary; allegations of deliberate action should not be treated as established fact without further evidence. The original article details those competing claims.

Read more at pjmedia.com

In October 2023, the American Center for Law and Justice said it was pursuing records from the Internal Revenue Service following a dispute involving the tax-exempt application of Christians Engaged. The organization reported that its records request and litigation had identified large numbers of potentially responsive pages containing religious terms, including references to prayer and the Word of God. The page counts describe documents identified in a search; they do not by themselves demonstrate that the IRS was targeting Christians. The dispute raised questions about how federal tax authorities assess religious organizations and respond to public-records requests.

Read more at aclj.org

The slaughter of Christians has become a regular occurrence in sub-Saharan Africa, the Barnabas Fund reports on Saturday, and the “cause is Islamism.”

Hotspots of Islamic terrorist activity include the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), northern Mozambique, and northern and Middle Belt Nigeria, the Christian aid and persecution watchdog group asserts, and the perpetrators “are not just rebels or militants, but jihadists.”

The report notes that Islamic terrorists from the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) are affiliated with the Islamic State and together with Islamic State Mozambique, they form the Islamic State Central Africa Province.

The violence in Nigeria and across West Africa “is carried out by the Islamic State West Africa Province, jihadi group Boko Haram, and other Islamist extremists,” the document states.

Terrorist groups affiliated with the Islamic State or al-Qaeda “have proliferated across sub-Saharan Africa,” the group observes, leading some observers to make “sobering predictions of an African caliphate stretching from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean.”

Many secular governments and international bodies have condemned violence such as the recent atrocious massacre of Christian schoolchildren in Uganda but downplay the vital religious element in these attacks.

Massacres like that in Uganda are often blamed on “economic downturns, marginalization and lack of opportunity, corrupt or authoritarian government, or environmental problems that reduce the supply of arable and pastoral land,” but the simple fact is: “the victims were Christians who were targeted for that very reason,” the report points out.

Commentators too often ignore “the stated aim of Islamists across Africa: to kill as many Christians as they can,” it adds.

The ADF terrorists who carried out the Uganda massacre “have been slaughtering Christians in their hundreds in north-eastern DRC,” the text states, and in northern and Middle Belt Nigeria, “more than 11,000 Christians have been murdered by Islamists since 2015.”

Read more at: www.breitbart.com