Family Research Council analyzed publicly available data from the past five years to determine whether there has been a statistically significant increase in acts of hostility against churches in the United States over time.

Between January 2018 and September 2022, at least 420 acts of hostility against U.S. churches occurred. The types of acts identified include vandalism, arson, gun-related incidents, bomb threats, and more. There also appeared to be an increase in frequency over the course of the reporting period.

This increase in religious hostility should not be taken lightly. Such acts are destructive and have the potential to intimidate a religious community. Therefore, they deserve to be condemned.

Read more at: www.frc.org

In a case against a street preacher charged for speech condemning homosexuality, a government prosecutor in England argued certain Bible passages “are simply no longer appropriate in modern society.”

John Dunn was charged with violating the Public Order Act by engaging in “threatening,” “abusive” and “insulting” speech when he told a lesbian couple that homosexuals will not “inherit the kingdom of heaven,” citing the Bible, the Daily Signal reported.

A prosecutor with the Crown Prosecution Service, the office of government prosecutors for England and Wales, wrote in a document sent to the defense before the trial that “there are references in the bible [sic] which are simply no longer appropriate in modern society and which would be offensive if stated in public.”

The case against Dunn, a 55-year-old British army special forces veteran, was dismissed because the lesbian couple declined to testify.

Read more at: www.wnd.com

Ben Johnson – July 26, 2022

Senate Republicans are feeling the pressure to defend marriage and the natural family, as two large grassroots coalitions warn them that a controversial bill will fuel frivolous litigation and subject the most fundamental unit of society to an infinite variety of experimentation and tampering.

H.R. 8404, which proponents of redefining marriage have dubbed the “Respect for Marriage” Act, would require states to accept any marriage legally recognized in any other state “without any parameters whatsoever,” one of the coalitions notes. “This would include plural marriages, time-bound marriages, open marriages, marriages involving a minor or relative, platonic marriages, or any other new marriage definition that a state chooses to adopt, including through undemocratic imposition by a state Supreme Court,” wrote 83 grassroots organizations led by the Alliance Defending Freedom in a letter to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).

Another letter cites 10 lawsuits that have already targeted Christians for living according to their biblical values, stating if the hastily introduced legislation passes, far-left activists will take Christians and observant Jews to court for living out their faiths.

“The Court’s decision in Obergefell unleashed religious freedom violations across the land, launching a new era of harassment and coercion of millions of Americans who hold a sincere religious belief or moral conviction that marriage is, or ought to be, between one man and one woman,” wrote the Conservative Action Project, which was founded by Reagan administration Attorney General Edwin Meese and is now chaired by former Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell. “The Respect for Marriage Act will further usher in this new era of oppression.”

“This legislation will only hasten and intensify hostility” against “those who decline to openly embrace extreme views regarding marriage and human sexuality,” agreed ADF. “H.R. 8404 effectively deputizes activist groups to sue religious individuals, organizations, and businesses that operate according to their sincerely held religious belief that marriage is between one man and one woman.”

The law could also give birth to draconian federal regulations designed to force Christian and other traditional religious organizations out of the public square. “The Internal Revenue Service could rely on this congressional declaration requiring full recognition of same-sex marriage to strip 501(c)(3) organizations of their tax-exempt status if they continue to adhere to their belief that marriage is only between one man and one woman,” ADF wrote.

https://washingtonstand.com

Kyle Rossiter – July 13, 2022

A former Walt Disney World employee claims the company doesn’t want Christians in their parks or on their payroll.

In an interview with Fox News, Barbara Andreas, who was let go in March, said, “We’ve been very vocal that it feels like Disney is getting closer and closer to not wanting Christians there. Not on their parks, not on their payroll.”

This comes after two other former Disney employees were fired after giving religious exemptions for the vaccine; they are now suing the company for religious discrimination.

Barbara Andreas, says she was called out by a general manager, “made to feel like a bad person, a bad leader, and totally singled out.”Both employees claim to have reached out multiple times about the status of their exemptions but were ignored by their higher-ups at Disney. When Stephen Cribb, the other employee, asked to have an attorney present, they allegedly refused further conversations regarding his exemption.

Carroll Sanders, the attorney representing them, “spent a great deal of time reaching out” as well and was met with similar silence before filling the lawsuit. He continued to say they have “at least a dozen more plaintiffs in the pipeline” meaning the lawsuit could grow to a larger problem for Disney.

“We want to be valued; we want to be accepted… Disney just thinks they are above the law,” said Andreas.

Disney’s decision to jump into the culture wars has caused significant debate with the nation’s Christian community.

https://www.toddstarnes.com

Raymond Ibrahim – June 13, 2022

Another day has passed, and another Muslim man has murdered another Coptic Christian in Egypt.

On Sunday, June 5, 2022 — the same day Muslims attacked a packed church in Nigeria, massacring more than 50 Christians — Abdullah Hosni, a Muslim man with a long history of harassing Christians, randomly attacked a Copt, Kirollos (Cyril) Megali, with a meat cleaver in a village in Sohag, Upper Egypt.

Kirollos, who was rushed to a hospital “drenched in blood and with multiple stab wounds,” spent three days in an intensive care unit before succumbing to his injuries, including hack wounds to his skull.

According to the deceased’s brother, Abdullah was locally known for harassing Christians. He had relocated to Libya for a time but returned two days before assaulting Kirollos. The latter himself had been working abroad (in Kuwait) and was visiting family when Abdullah knocked him off his motorbike and started hacking at him [keep reading for more on this story and for pictures].

A few weeks before this latest murder of a Coptic Christian at the hands of a Muslim in Egypt, another young Copt was murdered by a Muslim man — who later said he was moved to the act due to his “loyalty to Allah” — and Fr. Arsenius Wadid was stabbed to death in broad daylight by another knife wielding Muslim man.

Meanwhile, this sort of savagery that was once reserved for Muslim majority nations has come to the West. Turning to France alone, just the other day, a Muslim man stabbed a Christian man ten times in the throat — “in the name of Allah.” The murder occurred near a Catholic school, where the slain was picking up his children, aged 3 and 7; they witnessed the butchery of their father. A few days before that, also in France, three Muslim men tortured and slit the throat of a 70-year-old French woman in her retirement home.

And how have the “powers-that-be” responded? The UN recently inaugurated a “combat Islamophobia” day, and the European Parliament, after being petitioned to discuss the global persecution of Christians soon after a young Christian girl was stoned and burned to death in Nigeria, refused, saying there’s nothing to talk about. Two weeks later, Muslims shot up another church in Nigeria, killing more than 50.

https://pjmedia.com

Lindy Lowry – March 28, 2022

We have received urgent news through our contacts that there has been a massive sweep against underground Christians in North Korea.

While we can’t disclose the region’s name for security reasons, we can report that security guards broke into a place where several dozen Christians were gathered for a secret worship meeting. The guards arrested all of them and then executed every secret believer in the room.

The information we have suggests that the time and place of the worship meeting was leaked to authorities—it was only a matter of time before they were caught.

As is often the case in North Korea, the families of the North Korean believers will suffer as well. Our contact says that their families—exceeding 100 people—were also arrested and have been sent to political prison—where the inhumane conditions have been reported to be worse than those of the notorious Auschwitz concentration camp during World War II. Inmates are treated as animals, tortured and forced to do harsh labor with little food.

In North Korea, it is illegal to worship Jesus or have a Bible. For the last three decades, believers have been known and treated as “the hostile class.” Anything that gives people an alternative allegiance to the ruling Kim dynasty is deemed to be dangerous to the state. Christians must hide their faith, even from their own children.

As a result, Coming together to worship Jesus is a death warrant. And yet, as this report indicates, secret Christians are risking their lives to be part of a church or own a Bible. They’re facing death to worship Jesus, knowing that their only hope is in Him.

The words of North Korean believer and ex-prisoner Hae-Woo encourage us to pray with these families recently imprisoned and for all secret believers in North Korea. She now lives in South Korea.

https://www.opendoorsusa.org

Katelynn Richardson – May 18, 2022

A new mural in the city of Georgetown, Texas, is generating controversy for its support of LGBTQ ideology. Members of one church who spoke out against public subsidies for sexual politics at a city council meeting believe their subsequent eviction from the Georgetown Palace Theatre was retaliation for their speech.

The mural is part of a jointly sponsored initiative between the Georgetown Independent School District (GISD), Georgetown City Council, and the Georgetown Arts and Culture Board to display the work of one student artist a year. Under the agreement, GISD sponsors materials up to $500, and the city is responsible for hiring an artist costing up to $500, Georgetown Community Impact Newspaper reported in March.

Last year, the mural followed the theme “Everyone Deserves Kindness.” This year’s mural, designed by a student at Forbes Middle School, displays the phrase “be your own person” in rainbow text above an assortment of red poppies, with some flowers painted with the transgender, bisexual, non-binary, and other sexual pride flags.

Church Leaders Speak Up

Church on the Square Pastor Bradley J. Helgerson, along with two other church members, spoke out against the mural at an April 26 Georgetown City Council meeting. Calling the ideology expressed by the mural “an attempt to fundamentally reorder society,” Helgerson said his remarks were aimed to provide “theological context for the ideology lurking behind this artistic expression.”

“Many have been fooled into thinking that such a rebellion against reality is an act of liberation. That when we tear down every norm we will be left with a freer society, that true freedom comes when the shackles of the sacred are removed,” Helgerson said. “But the work of the LGBTQ movement is not the work of liberation, but of liberationists whose desire it is to destroy the societal order itself, precisely because of its demand for conformity.”

“In other words, it’s not a matter of open-mindedness, but of closed-heartedness to right judgment that is the problem,” the pastor said. “Therefore, their goal is to remove all judgment, all boundaries, as is testified to by the endless numbers of genders and sexual orientations they affirm.”

https://thefederalist.com