Free Republic

Interview: the former attorney general says he fears that 'aggressive' secularism is pushing the Christian 'faith out of the public space' Britain is at risk of being “sanitised” of faith because an “aggressive form of secularism” in workplaces and public bodies is forcing Christians to hide their beliefs, a former attorney general has warned. Dominic Grieve said he found it “quite extraordinary” that people were being sacked or disciplined for expressing their beliefs at work. He described Christianity as a “powerful force for good” in modern Britain and warned that Christians should not be “intimidated” and “excluded” for their beliefs....

Many people in this country were shocked when the U.S. Navy recently announced the removal of all Bibles from military hotels under their control. This was in response to pressure from the Freedom From Religion Foundation, a well-known atheist group. The surprise is not the hypocritical stance of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, but rather the fact that an established bulwark of American strength and patriotism caved to a self-serving group of religious fanatics. The previous sentence may seem out of place if you don't realize that atheism is actually a religion. Like traditional religions, atheism requires strong conviction. In...

Part Three: What the People of a Free Biafra Need from AmericaDo the Christian indigenous people of Kurdistan and Biafra deserve our support in their fight against Islamic extremists? While supplying weapons to some insurgents fighting for freedom in Syria, why has the Obama administration not supplied support and weapons to those in Kurdistan or Christian Nigeria fighting for their survival? Why has the administration refused to give support to the independence of these beleaguered peoples? As ISIS expands its grip on lands in Iraq and turns its attention to Kurdistan, Prime Minister Maliki has finally sent in air support...

Part Two: What a 'Christian Spring' in a Free Biafra Would Bring to the World This week President Obama is hosting an Africa Summit in Washington. Fifty heads of state are coming together to focus on security and development. But the president's dreams of leaving a legacy of democracy building and economic development have been consistently frustrated. It's becoming painfully evident that not every country has the values and culture supportive of democratic principles. Contrary to the early hopes expressed in Washington and in the media, the "Arab Spring" has brought more chaos and upheaval than freedom and opportunity to...

President Barack Obama's executive order of July 21 has installed workplace rules forbidding the firing of gays, lesbians, bisexual and transgender people by the federal government and federal contractors -- a key provision in the Employment Non-Discrimination Act languishing in Congress. The U.S. bishops have opposed the bill, known as ENDA, which was passed by the Senate last November but was never scheduled for a vote in the House. The bill has been introduced in almost every Congress since 1994. "Today's executive order is unprecedented and extreme and should be opposed," said Archbishop William E. Lori of Baltimore, chairman of...

The mask is off. All pretense has been dropped, and the anti-Christian left’s boundless depth of hatred for individual liberty, our First Amendment and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) is now on full display. I wrote last week about the Supreme Court’s recent Hobby Lobby opinion, a rather tepid acknowledgement of every American’s non-negotiable right to religious free exercise (yes, that includes Christian business owners). I observed, among other things, that “the secularist left’s utter meltdown over having but a small measure of control over others wrested away is highly instructive.” The meltdown continues. This week brings two new...

I'm not sure that anyone can reason with Harry Reid right now. He is one angry white dude. Before we get started here, do me a favor. Go to the Internet and search "supreme court justice Clarence Thomas" and click on "images." And leave it up while you read. Harry Reid is railing against "white men" on the U.S. Supreme Court. Harry, Senate majority leader and one grumpy old man, is angry that the Court ruled 5-4 in favor of Hobby Lobby recently in a major case involving religious freedom. In case you don't know what the Hobby Lobby decision...

Blessed John Paul II: Champion of Religious Freedom Most Reverend William E. Lori, S.T.D. Address at the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast Washington, D.C. April 27, 2011Introduction“Ladies and gentlemen: On the threshold of a new millennium, we are witnessing an extraordinary global acceleration of that quest for freedom which is one of the great dynamics of human history. This phenomenon is not limited to any one part of the world; nor is it the expression of any single culture. Men and women throughout the world, even when threatened by violence, have taken the risk of freedom, asking to be given a...

It's been almost a week since the Supreme Court issued their ruling on the Hobby Lobby case, and there appears to be no end in sight to the Left's outrage over the outcome. As expected, given the controversial nature of the issue at hand, most of the ire is reflexive and purely visceral. It's unlikely that many are taking the time to actually educate themselves on the Court's reasoning behind the decision. In their eyes, misogyny and religious fanaticism won out over women's rights, period. On the Right, there is a temptation to fall into essentially the same error: ascribing...

After the Supreme Court handed down a defeat for supporters of the contraceptive mandate, which gave religious exemptions to for-profit, “closely-held corporations;” Democrats are moving to amend the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA). When it was passed in 1993, the bill almost had unanimous support; three votes were against it in the Senate. It seems that our more left-leaning members on the Hill seem to think that RFRA is being used haphazardly to benefit conservatives. As Megan McArdle of Bloomberg View wrote yesterday, RFRA isn’t a “blank check:”

As a Christian lawyer — even when I was engaged in the “commercial” practice of law rather than the nonprofit, constitutional work I do now — I always drew moral lines around my representations decisions. I was not going to use whatever meager talents God gave me to advance or celebrate causes or principles I knew to be wrong. In other words, I discriminated. But not on the basis of race, gender, disability, or sexual orientation, but rather on the basis of the action or legal principle the case would advance. I’d happily represent anyone, gay or straight, in a...

Sunday, June 29, 2014 United Kingdom: Disciplinary Board Finds Christian Guilty of "Bullying" for Praying with Muslim Can anything be weaker than Islam? It brags about being the true religion, but recoils from the slightest challenge. Under Sharia, Christians are not allowed to share the Gospel with Muslims. In the United Kingdom, Sharia is already being enforced. Christians who so much as pray with a Muslim are accused of bullying and are punished accordingly. Victoria Wasteney The Telegraph—A Christian health worker has begun a legal challenge after being disciplined by the NHS for praying with a Muslim colleague. Victoria Wasteney,...

In the days following a Supreme Court ruling upholding religious freedom in the workplace, several lower courts have issued decisions protecting religious liberty in similar circumstances. Several new injunctions issued since the Supreme Court’s ruling on Hobby Lobby’s case “show that the HHS Mandate is on its last legs when it comes to religious non-profits,” said Lori Windham, senior counsel at the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which is defending many of those challenging the controversial mandate. “The sad part is that it has taken almost three years of litigation to get to a result the Administration should have supported...

In 1878, the Supreme Court unanimously rejected a Mormon's First Amendment challenge to the federal ban on bigamy. Because marrying more than one person is a crime, the court reasoned, allowing it for religious reasons would be akin to allowing human sacrifice by someone who sincerely believes his deity demands it. The court had a point, but only if you accept the analogy between polygamy and murder. Likewise, critics of this week's Supreme Court decision concerning religious objections to Obamacare's birth-control mandate have a point, but only if you accept their argument that declining to pay for something is the...

Looked at from a distance, it may seem as if the Supreme Court struck a mighty blow in defense of religious liberty in the case of Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, which it decided this week. Yes, the court ruled that a law called the Religious Freedom Restoration Act could apply to "closely held" corporations, and under its terms the federal government could not force the Christian family that owns Hobby Lobby to provide insurance coverage for certain drugs and devices that violate the family's religious beliefs. But looked at more closely, the case shows how profoundly the Supreme Court has...

The U.S. Supreme Court had a banner day, a crackerjack day, with horns and ice cream, as it trumped the federal government's brazen claim of power and authority to define which religious convictions, if any, have a proper place in the health care arena. Hooray for the Hahn and Green families for carrying to the high court their plea to be released from the duty of providing employees with contraceptive coverage under Obamacare. Never mind (as the government saw it before the court's 5-4 ruling) the two families' religiously grounded conviction that the mandate violated their religious beliefs and moral...

It was a good week for the rule of law in the never-ending case, challenge and general struggle of U.S. v. Obama, which is sure to be continued. Thursday the Supreme Court of the United States ruled -- unanimously -- that a president of the United States can't make recess appointments while, as it happens, Congress is not in recess. How about that? The justices must have read the Constitution of the United States at some point during their distinguished legal careers and, even more impressive, decided to heed it. Which is more than one can reliably say about Current...

Prof. Mark Rienzi, who won last week’s McCullen v. Coakley, and who litigates together with the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, has these thoughts on Hobby Lobby; I thought our readers would be interested in them, so I’m passing them along. (Please note that these are Prof. Rienzi’s thoughts, on behalf of the Becket Fund, not my own.) * * * Here are a few initial thoughts on today’s decision in Hobby Lobby from the perspective of a law firm — The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty — that has been litigating these cases against the Department of Justice across...

First Amendment: The pen may be mightier than the sword, but President Obama's pen is not mightier than the Constitution or Americans' right to run businesses without sacrificing their religious beliefs and consciences. While the Supreme Court's 5-4 decision in favor of Hobby Lobby and a furniture maker in Pennsylvania was limited to "closely held" for-profit businesses, and is limited to the contraception mandate, its effect could be one more Obama-Care thread unraveling under the weight of its own injustice and inefficiencies. The court has rightly decided that businesses such as Hobby Lobby, which is solely owned by founder David...

The Supreme Court won't strike down Obamacare's contraception mandate, but a ruling for the law's challengers could still render the policy toothless for millions of women. The justices are set to rule any day now in a challenge to the birth-control mandate, and any decision against the policy would have ripple effects far beyond the two companies that filed this lawsuit. Just how far, however, depends on how broadly the Court rules—and it has plenty of options. No matter what happens, the Court won't strike down the entire mandate. The two companies that brought their challenge to the Supreme Court—Hobby...