Tag: Christianity

Judge rejects religious freedom argument, rules school was justified in forcing out Christian teacher who refused to use students’ transgender pronouns

Phil Shiver – July 15, 2021

A federal judge in Indianapolis this week rejected an argument based on a Christian teacher’s religious liberty rights by ruling that a school was justified in forcing him to comply with the school’s transgender-affirming agenda or else resign.

Judge Jane Magnus-Stinson of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Indiana sided against 30-year-old John Kluge, a former orchestra teacher who claimed that in 2018 he was discriminated against by being forced to resign for refusing to refer to students by their preferred gender pronouns.

In a ruling issued on Monday, Magnus-Stinson concluded that Brownsburg Community School Corporation could not accommodate Kluge’s “religious beliefs without sustaining undue hardship,” and so it was justified in overriding his constitutional freedoms.

In support of her decision, the judge argued that Kluge’s “religious opposition to transgenderism is directly at odds with [the district’s] policy of respect for transgender students, which is grounded in supporting and affirming those students.”

She added that a public school “has an obligation to meet the needs of all of its students, not just a majority of students or the students that were unaware of or unbothered by Mr. Kluge’s practice of using last names only.”

Kluge taught orchestra at the school from 2014 to 2018, when he resigned over the transgender-affirming policies, WISH-TV reported.

According to court filings, the controversy began at the end of the 2016-2017 school year, when faculty at the school heard a presentation on “what it means to be transgender and how teachers can encourage and support transgender students.”

Soon after, the school adopted policies to promote transgenderism, one of which was the requirement that faculty and staff refer to transgender students by their preferred pronouns.

But Kluge indicated to school administrators that due to his religious beliefs he would not be able to comply with the new policy.

https://www.theblaze.com

This Big Development in China Is Setting Up the World for the Mark of the Beast

Gordon Robertson – July 6, 2021

China is on the cusp of launching a digital currency that will give the communist regime total control over the Chinese people. MORE HERE. The move has huge implications for the rest of the world too, and CBN’s CEO Gordon Robertson says it’s setting us up for the fulfillment of End Times prophecy. Here’s his analysis as delivered on The 700 Club:

COMMENTARY

Have you ever wondered about the passage in the Bible about a government restricting the population so that you cannot buy or sell unless you have a particular mark? Well, China’s move toward a cashless society is the answer. This is where the entire world is literally being set up for that kind of government control.

The Chinese government is pushing ahead on many fronts to restrict what its population can and cannot do. They already restrict the right of assembly. They already restrict religious freedom. They certainly restrict political speech. And any speech that is critical of their government (and the way they run things) is definitely cracked down on.

All you have to do is look at what’s happened in Hong Kong over the past just two years and you get a very clear picture of where they’re going. But they want to control, and they’re doing it right now with social credit scoring where if you don’t score a particular way you’re not allowed to travel. That’s already in place.

But just imagine a government that if you step out of line they can now turn off all your money and do it instantly so you cannot buy or sell, you don’t have the right in the marketplace to participate anymore.

That’s what digital currency allows a government to do. And if you think it’s just going to happen in China think again. The Federal Reserve already has a study group looking at a digital currency for the United States.

https://www1.cbn.com

Church of England bishop calls for ‘gender neutral marriage canon’ to ‘bless’ same-sex unions

Christian Today – July 2, 2021

The Bishop of Liverpool, Paul Bayes, has ramped up pressure on the Church of England to allow clergy to bless same-sex relationships by making the controversial call for a “gender neutral marriage canon.”

The call comes in advance of elections to the governing body, the General Synod, where evangelicals are seeking to increase numbers in a bid to protect the doctrine of the Church.

Speaking to a national conference on Saturday for revisionist activists in the CofE, Bishop Bayes said: “I want to see a gender-neutral marriage canon, such as they have in the Episcopal Church (in the U.S.) or in the Scottish Episcopal Church.

“And as a necessary but not sufficient first step I want to see conscientious freedom for the Church’s ministers and local leaders to honor, recognize and, yes indeed, to bless same-sex unions whether civil partnerships or civil marriages.”

Bishop Bayes was addressing the Movement of Supporting Anglicans for an Inclusive Church (MoSAIC), which launched in February.

The group announced: “The movement aims to have a presence in each diocese of the Church of England, where it will work with local clergy and laity on projects that promote inclusion for all those who are currently marginalized by the Church of England — whether that be due to race, ability, sexuality, gender or gender identity.”

https://www.christianpost.com

DOJ cancels plan to ‘vigorously’ defend religious rights

Mary Margaret Olohan – June 10, 2021

Following backlash, the Justice Department has edited a court filing to remove a comment indicating that it will “vigorously” defend religious rights.

In the Tuesday court filing, the Justice Department said that it will defend the religious exemption of Christian schools, a religious exemption included in Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, as it applies to “‘sexual and gender minority students’ attending private religious colleges and universities that receive federal funding,” according to the filing.

The filing formerly mentioned that the Justice Department would “vigorously” defend religious rights — a comment that was taken out Wednesday following backlash against the Biden administration, the Washington Post reported.

The Biden administration’s filing opposed a motion from several Christian schools to join the court case in order to protect their religious exemptions. The federal lawsuit involves a group of students who sued the government for giving funding to religious schools that the students say discriminate against LGBTQ persons.

The Justice Department instead inserted the word “adequate” multiple times and removed four instances of the phrase “ultimate objective,” including part of a sentence saying that the Department of Education and Christian schools “share the same ‘ultimate objective’ … namely, to uphold the Religious Exemption as it is currently applied.”

“We welcome the Biden administration’s commitment to the Title IX religious exemption, but we do believe that the Christian colleges and universities whose rights are at stake should have a representative at the table, and in the courtroom, for these important conversations,” Council for Christian Colleges & Universities president Shirley Hoogstra said in a statement to the Daily Caller News Foundation.

CCCU filed a motion to be an official participant in the case “so it can defend Title IX’s religious protections” in May.

Critics claimed that the move contradicts the Biden administration’s public statements on discrimination against LGBTQ persons. The Biden administration said in a March memo from the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division that “[a]ll persons should receive equal treatment under the law, no matter their gender identity or sexual orientation,” according to CNN.

https://www.wnd.com

Girl has Bible confiscated by school officials

Bob Unruh – June 5, 2021

It’s been some 30 years or more since the U.S. Supreme Court established some of the most significant precedents for students in schools, including one that the First Amendment does indeed apply to students in schools.

But still sometimes educators don’t understand, as happened with a recent case in Illinois where officials confiscated a Bible from a second-grader simply because she was reading it during recess, and would talk about it with friends.

The documentation of the situation comes in a report from Francis J. Manion at the American Center for Law and Justice, whose founder, Jay Sekulow, argued some of those precedent-establishing cases at the Supreme Court.

“A little girl had her Bible confiscated by school officials. How could this still be happening in America?” the report wondered, then explaining it’s because “local school officials still don’t seem to have gotten the message.”

“We recently heard from the parents of Gabrielle, a second grader in Illinois. It seems Gabrielle likes to bring her Bible to school and read it during recess. Sometimes she reads it aloud, and sometimes other kids listen in and talk with her about what she’s reading,” the report said. “Constitutional crisis? It shouldn’t be; but little Gabrielle had her Bible taken away by a teacher and was told, ‘You just can’t be doing that.'”

The school then told the little girl’s parents she was not allowed to read the Bible during recess.

They objected, and the school changed its course slightly, determining she “could read it during outside recess but not during inside recess,” the report said.

That was after the school confirmed there were no complaints about the bible reading.

“It was a simple case of public school officials’ hypersensitivity to the specter of a threat from the ACLU or some similar spreader of long-debunked propaganda about ‘separation of Church and State,'” the organization reported.

https://www.wnd.com

Suffer the Little Children

Joseph Hippolito – June 2, 2021

For centuries, the Catholic Church represented unmitigated opposition to abortion. But as recent events seem to indicate, Pope Francis is preparing to sacrifice that historic position — and those it protects — on the altar of his globalist agenda.

On May 7, Cardinal Luis Ladaria issued a letter from the Vatican discouraging American bishops from preventing elected officials who support abortion to receive Communion. Only the pope himself ranks higher as a theological authority than Ladaria, prefect of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

Ladaria released the letter after several bishops publicly said Joe Biden, the virtual president who supports abortion, should not receive Communion. San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone even wrote a forceful pastoral letter on the subject, without mentioning Biden. But other bishops, such as Cardinal Wilton Gregory of Washington, D.C., said they would welcome Biden at Communion.

A church-going Catholic, Biden was denied Communion by a priest in Charleston, S.C. while campaigning in that state in 2019. Since replacing President Donald Trump, Biden has used legislation and executive action to give abortion providers nearly $500 billion from taxpayers.

At that pace, Biden will have provided more federal funding for abortion than any President in American history.

The Catholic catechism describes abortion a “moral evil,” quotes a pastoral document in calling it and infanticide “abominable crimes,” and demands excommunication for anyone involved in “formal cooperation.” Catholic canon law also states that Catholics “persevering in manifest grave sin are not to be admitted to holy communion,” and that Catholics who “are conscious of grave sin” must not receive Communion “without previous sacramental confession.”

If giving $500 billion to abortion providers fails to constitute “formal cooperation” with a “moral evil,” then what does?

https://www.frontpagemag.com

A ‘Killing Field’ of Christians: 8 More Killed, Church Burned to Ground in Nigeria – 1,470 Christians in 4 Months

CBN News – May 25, 2021

Eight Christians were killed and a church was burned down on May 19 during an attack by gunmen in the Chikun area of Kaduna State of Nigeria.

International Christian Concern (ICC), a persecution watchdog, reports Samuel Aruwan, the Kaduna State Commissioner for Internal Security and Home Affairs, confirmed the report in a statement to the media.

Aruwan said “bandits” also burned down several homes during the attack, which consisted of unknown gunmen shooting sporadically at civilians.

As CBN News has reported, these “bandits” or “unknown gunmen” are often radical Muslims who target Christians in their relentless attacks on villages across the West African country.

In another unrelated incident, The Premium Times newspaper reports Nigerian Navy troops stationed in the Kujama General Area killed three bandits and arrested two accomplices after repelling an attack on Wakwodna community, near Kasso village, Chikun Local Government Area.

According to the Kaduna state government, the naval troops responded to reports of an attack on the village. The gunmen fled into the surrounding jungle when confronted by the troops, abandoning several rustled cattle. The cattle were rounded up by the troopers and returned to their owners.

“Two locals who were injured in the exchange were evacuated for medical attention,” Aruwan said.

According to the rights group Intersociety Rule of Law, 1,470 Christians were murdered and over 2,200 were abducted by radical Islamists in Nigeria during the first four months of 2021.

Of the 1,470 Christians murdered, 800 of those were killed by the Muslim Fulani Herdsmen, according to the group’s report.

https://www1.cbn.com

Judge Sides with Atheist Group, Strikes Down Pre-Court Prayer as Unconstitutional

Michael Foust – May 24, 2021

A Texas judge’s practice of opening his court sessions in chaplain-led prayer violates the U.S. Constitution’s prohibition on government establishment of religion, a federal district court ruled Friday.

Judge Wayne Mack, a justice of the peace in Montgomery County, Texas, created a chaplaincy program in 2014 allowing volunteer chaplains to “assist the Court system and Law Enforcement with grieving families on tragic death scenes or death call notifications.” Chaplains also were allowed to offer an invocation for Mack’s court sessions.

The Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF), which calls itself an organization of “atheists, agnostics and skeptics of any pedigree,” sued Mack in federal court, arguing that the prayers were unconstitutional. FFRF represented an attorney who is a member of the organization and who frequently argued cases in Mack’s courtroom.

On Friday, U.S. District Judge Kenneth M. Hoyt issued a 15-page decision siding with the atheist organization. Hoyt was nominated by President Reagan. Mack’s attorneys say they will appeal.

“The Court is of the view that the defendant violates the Establishment Clause when, before a captured audience of litigants and their counsel, he presents himself as theopneustically-inspired, enabling him to advance, through the Chaplaincy Program, God’s ‘larger purpose,” Hoyt wrote. “Such a magnanimous goal flies in the face of historical tradition and makes a mockery of both religion and law.”

About 90 percent of the chaplains between November 2017 and October 2020 were Protestant Christians, although the chaplains list also included representatives of Buddhism, Hinduism and Judaism, Hoyt said.

https://www.christianheadlines.com

Judge sides with Biden, rules that Christian college must open women’s bedrooms and showers to biological males?

Phil Shiver – May 21, 2021

A federal judge this week rejected a Christian college’s request to bypass new rules under the Biden administration that force religious schools to open their dormitories — including shared bedrooms and shower spaces — to members of the opposite sex.

Judge Roseann Ketchmark issued the ruling Wednesday denying the College of the Ozarks a temporary restraining order and a preliminary injunction, which would have provided temporary protection for the school while its federal court case is pending.

The school filed a lawsuit in April arguing that the Biden administration was forcing religious schools to violate their beliefs by opening up female dormitories to biological males, and vice-versa, under subject of punitive damages, six-figure fines, and attorneys’ fees.

After President Joe Biden issued an executive order titled, “Preventing and Combating Discrimination on the Basis of Gender Identity or Sexual Orientation” in January, the Department of Housing and Urban Development put forward a directive in line with the administration’s new interpretation of “sex.”

The directive holds that entities covered by the Fair Housing Act cannot discriminate against someone based on their sexual orientation or gender identity. Meaning that a transgender person who is biologically male but identifies as a female must be permitted to share dormitory spaces such as bedrooms, bathrooms, and showers with female students.

“The government cannot and should not force schools to open girls’ dorms to males based on its politically motivated and inappropriate redefinition of ‘sex,'” Alliance Defending Freedom Senior Counsel Julie Marie Blake said in a statement. The religious liberty law firm is representing the school in its legal fight.

https://www.theblaze.com

Wisconsin Senate approves bill to dissolve dead bodies, dump them in sewer

Lifesite News – May 13, 2021

MADISON, Wisconsin, May 13, 2021 (LifeSiteNews) – Wisconsin senators approved a bill earlier this week allowing dead bodies to be dissolved in a chemical bath and disposed like sewage.

The bill, Senate Bill 228, authorizes a practice called alkaline hydrolysis, or “water cremation,” which liquifies the human body using a mixture of water, heat, and chemical agents, leaving only bones behind. The liquid is then dumped into the sewage system or boiled off, and bones can be crushed and deposited in an urn.

The Republican-led Senate passed the legislation without debate on Tuesday over the objection of the Catholic bishops of Wisconsin.

“Catholic teaching is centered on the life and dignity of the human person because each person is created in the image and likeness of God,” Kim Vercauteren, executive director of the Wisconsin Catholic Conference, wrote to the senate health committee. “The heart, mind, flesh, and bones of a human person are all elements of a unique creation, down to the DNA, which must be honored even after death.”

“Our concern is that with alkaline hydrolysis, remains are washed into a wastewater system as though the body created by God never existed,” Vercauteren added. “Wastewater does not honor the sacredness of the body, nor does it allow the grieving to honor the dead after disposition.”

Sen. Patrick Testin, R-Stevens Point, who sponsored SB 228, argued for the measure as a means to promote “consumer choice.” At a hearing for the bill, he said that “Wisconsin funeral directors are receiving more and more requests for flameless or water cremation.” “I believe in allowing consumers choices. And if a consumer chooses flameless cremation, I would like to empower Wisconsin funeral directors the means to fulfill that choice,” Testin said.

https://www.lifesitenews.com