Tag: persecution

Christianity in the U.S. is quickly declining, May no longer be the majority religion by 2070

ETH – September 14, 2022

(OPINION) Christianity has remained at the forefront of the nation’s political and social conversations for centuries — but new research shows that could be changing.

A new report by Pew Research Center and the General Social Survey published on Tuesday found that the large numbers of people in the U.S who practice Christianity are declining. The religion’s demographic has been dwindling since the 1990s, the report said, as many adults transition to an identity of atheist, agnostic or “nothing in particular.”

In the early ’90s, about 90% of people in the U.S. identified as Christians, the report said. In 2020, Christians accounted for about 64% of the U.S. population, including children. Meanwhile, those who are not affiliated with a religion has grown from 16% in 2007 to 30% in 2020, according to the research. All other religions, including Judaism, Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism, accounted for about 6% in 2020.

Pew and GSS paired up to analyze how those numbers could change if the Christian decline accelerates or stops, and how other demographic trends, including migration and rates of birth and death, would influence the outcomes. The researchers only looked at religious identity, rather than religious beliefs and practices.

Four potential scenarios were considered: a stable rate of people moving in and out of Christianity; an increasing share of Christians leaving their religion as a decreasing number of people with no religious affiliation switching in; the same as the former but with no more than 50% of Christians switching their identity; and a scenario in which no person changes their religion.

“Depending on the future of religious switching, people who identify as atheist, agnostic or ‘nothing in particular’ could become America’s largest (non)religious group within our lifetime,” Pew researcher Stephanie Kramer tweeted.

In all of the scenarios, even if nobody switches their religious affiliation in the coming decades, the number of religiously unaffiliated people is hypothesized to approach or exceed the number of Christians by 2070, the report found.

https://endtimeheadlines.org

Is religious liberty ‘hanging by a thread’?

Rev. Robert J. Pacienza – August 8, 2022

Several years ago, North Carolina Supreme Court Chief Justice Paul Newby sparked a significant public debate when he said that our “religious liberties are hanging by a thread.”

Are they? Well, U.S. Supreme Court Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas and the late Antonin Scalia have issued similar warnings – and for good reason.

As the president and CEO of D. James Kennedy Ministries, and the pastor of Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church in South Florida, I’m concerned about the curtailing of religious liberty and the negative effects of this trend on all citizens – religious and non-religious alike.

The First Amendment to the United States Constitution declares that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” The Constitution is clear: Religious freedom extends not only to beliefs, but also public actions based on those beliefs.When religious freedom is upheld, the conditions are set for all of society to flourish. Yet, when religious freedom – the freedom to be Christian, atheist, Buddhist, or otherwise – is threatened, every other freedom is threatened as well.

Yet, in spite of religious liberty’s enshrinement in the Constitution, a number of political trends and Supreme Court rulings have diminished its legal stature. Chief among these threats is the effort to redefine religious liberty itself. Progressives have made a concerted effort to reduce the “free exercise” of religion either to private piety or the semi-public worship that takes place within the four walls of a church building.

https://www.wnd.com

Now They Are Literally Bowing Down And Worshipping Baal Right In Front Of Our Eyes

– August 4, 2022

They aren’t even trying to hide it anymore.  During the opening ceremony of the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham, England on July 28th, a giant mechanical bull with glowing red eyes was rolled out into the center of Alexander Stadium.  The bull was approximately 10 meters high, and it took more than five months to build.  It had been given the nickname “Raging Bull”, and it absolutely dwarfed all of the human participants that were involved in the performance.  The “hero” of the opening ceremony, a character known as Stella, calmed the creature down and then all of the human performers gathered around the giant bull and literally began to bow down and worship it.  I have seen a lot of really weird things in recent years, but I have never seen anything quite like this.

A total of 72 nations participate in the Commonwealth Games, and so this opening ceremony was being viewed on countless television screens all over the planet.

The symbolism in this “ritual” was well planned in advance, and the organizers knew exactly what they were doing.

But they were also counting on the fact that the vast majority of the general population would not consciously catch on to what was actually taking place.

The bull has always been a symbol of an ancient deity from the Middle East known as “Baal”.  The following comes from Christianity.com…

In artistic depictions and archeological finds, Baal took the shape of a bull or ram and had associations with fertility.

This god also, apparently according to Canaanite lore, defeated El and had associations with the sun and thunder. And of all the foreign gods the Israelites came into contact with, they appeared to struggle the most with worshipping this one.

If we could go back thousands of years and roll out a giant bull with glowing red eyes for the people of the ancient Middle East, they would instantly understand what was going on.

Nobody would need to tell them that it was a statue of Baal and that they were intended to worship it.

http://endoftheamericandream.com

Respect for Marriage Act Will Usher In ‘New Era of Oppression’ for Christians

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

Elites finally reveal their #1 enemy: CHRISTIANS

WND Staff – June 27, 2022

Two shocking and unprecedented megatrends are unfolding simultaneously in the United States of America right now.

The first is the explosion of what can only be described as openly predatory targeting of America’s children by legions of “gender activists” obsessed with seducing, grooming and recruiting kids into the phantasmagoric transgender world of puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, surgical amputation of healthy body parts and astronomical suicide rates.

Incredibly, this wild celebration of transgenderism is being praised, promoted and funded by the ruling class at the highest levels, from the White House on down, while all who sound the alarm are demonized and canceled.

At first, this trend manifested most notably as “drag queen story hour” events hosted in public libraries across the nation, during which innocent toddlers would be made to sit at the feet of severely mentally ill men (often made-up to appear openly demonic) and be regaled with tales of heroic LGBT characters. But that was just the warm-up.

Today, while almost all of America’s big institutions – big media, big tech, big government, big education, big business, big sports – gush uncontrollably over “Pride Month,” glorifying everything homosexual, transgender and “nonbinary,” the push to groom America’s children into the LGBT lifestyle has gone into overdrive. Disney staffers explicitly brag on camera about inserting as much “queerness” as possible into their entertainment products. After-school “gay-straight alliance” (GSA) clubs, which purport to be support groups but in reality are all about recruitment, are rapidly proliferating throughout America’s public schools. Teachers with bizarre hairdos and multiple facial piercings openly proselytize America’s children, some evangelizing the new transgender salvation aggressively on social media platforms like TikTok.

However, as Tucker Carlson recently put it, “Having some purple-haired loser in a nose ring convince your six-year-old to get a sex change is not why most people send their children to school.”

And yet, although the nation is wracked with violent crime, edging toward financial collapse and losing 290 people daily from drug overdoses, the Biden administration is focused on recruiting children into transgenderism, with Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra fully supporting taxpayer-funded amputations of healthy body parts of these vulnerable young people. Or as Becerra ghoulishly put it, “We should help those have the life-affirming care that they need.”

Predictably, as a result of this explosion of LGBT proselytizers, promoters and cheerleaders, a newly minted syndrome has magically emerged among America’s youth: “Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria,” or ROGD. Mission accomplished.

Consider now the second megatrend.

While this sexual-gender anarchy is exploding nationwide – and alongside it, of course, the rest of the deranged Biden agenda, from engineering an ever-expanding foreign invasion of America across its southern border, to destroying the nation’s fossil fuel industry, to bringing the U.S. to the brink of nuclear war with Russia – the very same political, financial, cultural and sexual revolutionaries responsible for all of this chaos have finally dared to “come out” and publicly identify who exactly they consider to be their biggest enemy.

Christians.

https://www.wnd.com

Supremes rule on state discrimination against religious schools

Bob Unruh – June 21, 2022

The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled the state of Maine cannot discriminate against religious schools by excluding them from a state program that lets parents use vouchers to pay tuition for their children.

Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the 6-3 majority opinion that explained Maine’s tuition program, which blocked the funds from being used at religious schools, cannot stand.

The ruling echoes a similar ruling from just a few years ago involving religious schools in Montana.

In the Maine case, a family argued that by excluding religious schools from the voucher program, the state was actively discriminating against religion.

Michael Bindas, an attorney for the nonprofit legal group Institute for Justice, argued the case on behalf of the plaintiffs.

“Maine’s ‘nonsectarian’ requirement for its otherwise generally available tuition assistance payments violates the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment,” Roberts wrote in the case of Carson v. Maykin.

“Regardless of how the benefit and restriction are described, the program operates to identify and exclude otherwise eligible schools on the basis of their religious exercise.”

Christopher Taub, the chief deputy attorney general for Maine, had claimed that the state shouldn’t be funding anything that instills religious beliefs, and that providing money for secular private schools does not do that, but that money going to religious schools does.

The state of Maine provides such vouchers to families of students who live where is no local public school to attend – but insisted that the vouchers not be used at religious or “sectarian” schools.

Roberts, during oral arguments, wondered openly about the state’s demands.

“You’re discriminating among religions based on their beliefs,” he said.

https://www.wnd.com

Stop banning Jews and Christians from praying on the Temple Mount, Orthodox rabbi tells ALL ISRAEL NEWS – it’s time to make site a ‘house of prayer for all nations’

Joel C. Rosenberg – May 25, 2022

JERUSALEM—Beginning the evening of Saturday, May 28, and running through Sunday, May 29, Israelis will celebrate “Jerusalem Day.”

This is the day on the Hebrew calendar (28 Iyar) that marks Israel’s reunification of the Holy City under its sovereign control during the Six-Day War of 1967, after the IDF defeated Jordanian forces that had previously controlled the city.

On the Western calendar, the “liberation of Jerusalem” occurred on June 7, 1967.

TEMPLE MOUNT TENSIONS RUNNING HIGH

With tensions already running high on what Jews and Christians call the Temple Mount and what Muslims call Haram al Sharif, Israeli security forces are bracing for trouble.

Just yesterday, ALL ISRAEL NEWS reported that Jerusalem Magistrate’s Court ruled in favor of three Jewish teenagers whom the police temporarily banned from going to the Temple Mount after they had prayed at the site on May 15 saying that it constituted “a disproportionate infringement on their freedom of movement.”

However, the court also made it clear that “this [decision] does not intervene with the police’s job in enforcing public order at the Temple Mount, nor does it determine anything regarding freedom of worship at the Temple Mount.”

Judge Zion Saharay criticized police for barring the teenagers from the Temple Mount and said that a public statement made by the police chief “clearly suggests that all residents of the country are allowed to enter the Temple Mount and pray.”

https://www.allisrael.com

Germany Prosecutes Christian Pastor For Biblical Stance on Homosexuality (Video)

Amy Mek – May 25, 2022

“While today this is about a view found in the Bible, tomorrow it will be about any other opinion.”

Evangelical Pastor Olaf Latzel has been acquitted of hate speech against homosexuals by a German court after they had previously found him guilty in 2020. The charges stem from statements the 54-year-old conservative pastor of the Bremen St. Martini congregation made during a November 2019 marriage seminar at his Church. A video of the seminar was posted months later on his Youtube channel and then deleted. The LGBTQ community accused him of sedition for speaking God’s word.

A court in Bremen, Germany, has previously condemned the pastor for hate speech against homosexuals in 2020. He was fined 8,100 euros and vowed to appeal the sentence.

The court said the pastor promoted hate against homosexuals and violated their dignity in the marriage seminar in which he addressed the activities of what he called the “homolobby.”

Speaking to around 30 couples, he said at one point: “All around walk the criminals of the Christopher Street Day [the Berlin Pride March]. All this gender crap is an attack against God’s order of creation; it is demonic and satanic”.

The pastor claimed that homosexuality is “a ‘degenerative form’ of society.” Latzel warned that the “whole gender crap is an attack on God’s order of creation.”

In the process, the defense of Latzel said these views were based on the Bible and referred to homosexuality and violent LGBT activists and not to homosexual people.

The judge dismissed it, considering that “the homosexual orientation of a person is a part of its personality.”

Latzel’s lawyer said the sentence is a “catastrophe.” He described it as “the opening of a door to restrict freedom of speech” and added that “while today this is about a view found in the Bible, tomorrow it will be about any other opinion.”

https://rairfoundation.com

Leading Into Passover and Easter Weekend, The New York Times Calls on Readers to Kill God

Robert Spencer – April 17, 2022

Passover started Friday and Sunday is Easter for most Christians (Orthodox Christian Easter, or Pascha, is next Sunday). In keeping with the season, The New York Times thought Thursday was the perfect day to publish a rancorous anti-God screed written by an angry former believer. The Times is now openly proselytizing for atheism, and while that’s certainly its prerogative, it also must be asked: why now, in the lead-in to two of the holiest of times for both Jews and Christians? And also, cui bono — who benefits?

The Times op-ed was the work of Shalom Auslander, the author of a book called Foreskin’s Lament: A Memoir, in which he bitterly recounts his Orthodox Jewish upbringing and how he has said goodbye to all that. He does essentially the same thing in the Times piece, presenting some acid recollections of being an eight-year-old learning about Passover, and adding, “In this time of war and violence, of oppression and suffering, I propose we pass over something else: God.”

This is because God’s judgment on the Egyptians in the Exodus story seems to Auslander to be excessive. “God, it seems, paints with a wide brush. He paints with a roller. In Egypt, said our rabbi, he even killed first-born cattle. He killed cows. If he were mortal, the God of Jews, Christians and Muslims would be dragged to The Hague. And yet we praise him. We emulate him. We implore our children to be like him.” Auslander adds, “Perhaps now, as missiles rain down and the dead are discovered in mass graves, is a good time to stop emulating this hateful God. Perhaps we can stop extolling his brutality. Perhaps now is a good time to teach our children to pass over God — to be as unlike him as possible.” That’s the Times’ message for Passover and Easter.

Auslander doesn’t explain, of course, where he thinks he got the moral sense that he used to judge God’s actions in the Exodus account as he understands them. The Times, of course, has no space to consider answers to Auslander’s theological questions, which have been considered by Jews and Christians throughout the ages who were far more thoughtful than Auslander himself is. It does, however, have plenty of space for Auslander’s practical conclusion: “Killing gods is an idea I can get behind.”

https://pjmedia.com

China has now banned the word ‘Christ’ on Social Media platforms claiming it causes ‘Incitement’

Michael Foust – April 7, 2022

China has banned “Christ” and other religious words from social media apps under a new policy that went into effect on March 1. According to a new report, the policy also requires licensing and training to post Christian and religious content on the internet.

The Chinese Communist Party’s new law – dubbed the “Measures for the Administration of Internet Religious Information Services” – prohibits individuals and organizations from posting religious information on the internet unless they have first obtained permission from a provincial government department, according to China Aid, which monitors religious freedom within the country.

Early Rain Covenant Church, a Chinese congregation, recently discovered the far-reaching impact of the new law. Using the messaging app WeChat, a church member tried posting the names of eight books for members of a reading group, asking them to vote on their favorite. Among the titles: The Defense of the Faith by Cornelius Van Til, Tradition and the Individual Talent by T. S. Eliot and The Imitation of Christ by Thomas à Kempis.

But the WeChat app rejected the post, saying the word “Christ” was not allowed.

“The word ‘Christ’ you are trying to publish violates regulations on Internet Information Services, including but not limited to the following categories: pornography, gambling, and drug abuse; excessive marketing; incitement.”

The issue could only be resolved by editing the post, which the church member did.

“Unfortunately, the group administrator had to replace part of the word ‘Christ’ to pass censorship,” China Aid said.

https://endtimeheadlines.org