Freedom of Religion At Stake: Employers Want Your Facebook Password

Recently the story came out in the news that potential employers want your Facebook password so they can rummage through your personal pictures and other private information.  Since the freedom of religion is guaranteed why should this sort of infringement be allowed?

Of course, I do both Facebook and I do a theologically based blog here.  Last year I was hired at two different hospices as a chaplain.  However, within one day I was rejected after the background check.  Could it be that the potential employers saw that I object to homosexuality and the transgender propaganda being perpetuated in the media?

If so, this is a blatant violation of my right to freedom of religion.  The problem is that potential employers are allowed to withhold the reason for not proceeding with the hiring process after the interview.  I will never know why these two hospices changed their minds and decided not to proceed with the hiring process.

But if that is the price I must pay for expressing my personal religious and theological views in public, then so be it.  The apostle Paul was a tentmaker and supported himself with secular work rather than being supported by any religious institution (Acts 18:1-3).  Perhaps this is the way that the true Christian religion will be preserved since it would appear that many religious institutions and denominations are on the slippery slope to apostasy.

Charlie

Funeral Picketing Is Free Speech, Court Rules - NYTimes.com

The Supreme Court gets this one right. While no one likes what this Primitive Baptist group has to say, if we deny them the right to speak freely then the freedom of speech for everyone else is undermined. Besides, the Westboro Baptist Church might have a point that the United States is under God's judgment for its many departures from the biblical revelation of God's moral law. Deistic moralism seems to be the position of many "Evangelical" theologians these days, including the ever popular Carl Trueman, professor of historical theology at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia.

This is encouraging, especially since many on the socialist and liberal left want to shut down the freedom of speech for religious groups and even infringe on the freedom of religion. Speaking out against homosexual sins is both a freedom of speech and a freedom of religion.


Funeral Picketing Is Free Speech, Court Rules - NYTimes.com

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.

--
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

Government Intrusion into the Freedom of Religion

I'm not Roman Catholic and I am not sympathetic to the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church. However, in the United States the Bill of Rights and the First Amendment guarantees the freedom of religion and that there can be no government interference in religious matters or teaching. When the state tries to impose its politically correct views on abortion and birth control on a Catholic college the rights of every Christian church and institution is threatened. The principle of the separation of church and state works both ways, not just in the direction of preventing churches from posting the Ten Commandments on court house grounds. The state may not tax, hinder or interfere with individual churches or denominations or any of their institutions in any way. To do so is to violate the First Amendment rights of individuals and their churches.

Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed

If there has ever been a movie that has provoked me and aroused anxiety and concern it is Ben Stein's Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. Every Christian and every religious person should see this documentary. What is particularly disturbing is that atheists and socialists and communists are now out of the closet and openly declaring that religion is a delusion and a fantasy and should be regulated and done away with. In one clip, the comic Bill Maher openly says that religion is dangerous and should be regulated, presumably by the government. How much more in your face do we need for them to be before we get the message?


This sounds amazingly like some of the things the communists have been saying for decades. I remember in particular in high school in the 1970's we were required to take a class called Americanism Versus Communism. In that class we were told that communism is an atheistic and materialistic regime which believes that religion is an "opiate" of the people. That is, they believe that religion is used by capitalists to drug and delude people into accepting their subservience as the proletariat.


Atheists would have us to believe that religion and Christianity is evil and that wars are always fought over religion. The fact is more wars have been fought over power struggles than religion and materialistic atheism is not without its responsibility for genocide and worse, if we examine the Nazi regime of Hitler and Stalinists of Russia.


What is particularly troubling is the efforts of atheistic scientists to use their power and influence in academic and scientific organizations and publications to suppress any idea of intelligent design or of any intellectual inquiry or research into such ideas from a scientific perspective. There can be no academic freedom if there is no room for all kinds of questions, including intelligent design regarding microbiological evolution, macro evolution and Darwinism.


Astonishingly, socialists and communists are no longer working behind the scenes but now openly attack religion on cable television channels like Show Time and HBO. One has to wonder how long the United States can maintain its moral conscience once the atheists and communists have their way?


It seems to me that there is an open agenda by many in the mass media to attack and undermine religion. The attack comes on many fronts. Pornography is openly pushed for free on the internet so that the morals and inhibitions of young people are undermined more than it has ever been before. In my teenage years the worst was a few suggestive sex scenes in R rated movies. Hardcore porn was illegal in most states and difficult to obtain. These days porn is everywhere.


Another attack against religion is on the political front. Anyone who opposes abortion and homosexual marriage and special rights is "evil" according to the liberal media. So Christians are portrayed as idiots who are deluded and stupid. The really "enlightened" people are "tolerant" of homosexuality and a woman's right to make decisions about her own body; in other words, she has the right to kill her unborn child.


The real message of Ben Stein's moving documentary is that people of faith will be ridiculed and ostracized if they dare to think for themselves. There comes a time when people of faith must either give in and be persecuted or even eradicated by force--including genocide if history teaches us anything--or we must begin to speak out and stand up for faith. If we do not get involved in protecting religious freedom and academic freedom those freedoms may soon be gone forever. Moreover, the Constitution of the United States guarantees us the freedom of speech and the freedom of religion. Those freedoms are quickly evaporating before our very eyes. Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed confronts us with the sad truth that faith in God is being undermined in front of our noses and no one is doing anything about it.


One has to wonder if the political left has any conscience remaining? They seem willing to use every dirty tactic in the book to win the culture war and to undermine traditional family values and to redefine and re-engineer society as a whole. Ben Stein's documentary is a poignant and disturbing expose of the conspiracy to put religion in the closet and to make wickedness, evil and atheism the new moral compass of America. I have to agree with Stein that we need to tear down this wall which suppresses the truth and attempts to force free thought into oblivion. (Romans 1:18-21).