Religious Freedom Is Vindicated in the UK--For Now

[Click here for the story at Evangelicals.Org:  EV News :: Street preacher awarded damages over wrongful arrest].


At last we see some vindication for the rights of Christians to speak freely about their religious convictions without being threatened with wrongful arrest.  Perhaps the United States should be more alert to these kinds of abuses.  Simply because someone has religious convictions against homosexual behavior does not mean that that constitutes "hate speech".  Moreover, the government does not have the legal authority to coerce politically correct moral positions which are directly opposed to the teaching of Holy Scripture.  This would be a blatant violation of a basic human right to freedom of religion, which democracy is supposed to uphold.  When our government crosses the line in the culture war and begins to use preemptive arrests to censor and silence religious dissidence, as Obama's administration and certain supporters like George Stephanopoulos has demonstrated a willingness to do, the line has been crossed into totalitarianism.

Stephanopoulos put forward a story promoting Supreme Court Justice Steven Breyer's position that religious organizations and churches should not be able to burn the Koran in protest of the building of the mosque at Ground Zero.  (See Justice Stephen Breyer: Is Burning Koran 'Shouting Fire In A Crowded Theater?'). Everyone should be concerned when a Supreme Court justice thinks that censorship is permissible, especially since the case being discussed involved a tiny pastor who really has no influence over world politics other than the free exposure he got from a politically correct posse of reporters seeking to promote their socialist agenda.  It is ironic that the liberal party accused former President George W. Bush of violating the Constitution and undermining individual rights at Guantanamo Bay.  The irony is that they themselves want to do the same thing to silence religious dissidence against their social engineering and cultural attack against traditional Christian teaching and God's moral law revealed in Holy Scripture.

It has been my observation that the moral relativist values of the political and  theological left, together with outright atheistic influences, has enabled them to use the media to create stories which are then used to create a straw man caricature of the dangers of religious freedom.  That straw man is then used to pass legislation to censor religious dissidence which opposes unjust governmental interference into the God-given right to freedom of conscience and freedom of religion.  The view of the political left and the theological left here in the United States is that federal judges and Supreme Court justices get to overturn constitutionally given rights:

For Breyer, that right is not a foregone conclusion.

“It will be answered over time in a series of cases which force people to think carefully.  That’s the virtue of cases,” Breyer told me. “And not just cases. Cases produce briefs, briefs produce thought. Arguments are made. The judges sit back and think. And most importantly, when they decide, they have to write an opinion, and that opinion has to be based on reason.  It isn’t a fake.”  (Ibid.)

The irony here is that Stephanopoulos and others on the liberal left advocate civilian trials for terrorist war criminals while advocating the further erosion of religious freedom in our country.  This threat to the freedom of every Christian and every Christian church to believe and teach what they believe publicly and without fear of arrest is being undermined and threatened.

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Reasonable Christian Blog Glory be to the Father, and to the Son : and to the Holy Ghost; Answer. As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be : world without end. Amen. 1662 Book of Common Prayer