Limbaugh Shows How Intolerant 'Liberals' Wage War on Christianity

NewsMax.com ^ | Sept. 30, 2003 | Phil Brennan

[Blue Collar Christian]

No list forthcoming, however, two examples of religious freedom, not specifically Christian-Judeo, being trampled by our "modern" government and society:

Prayer is banned from the Capitol rotunda.

The Boy Scouts being pressured to comply with atheist advocate's demands over reverence, gay rights advocate's demands over homosexuality and women's rights advocate's demands over exclusion of girls in the troops.

If this is invisible to you, no list will open your eyes. You don't want to acknowledge the push for anti-Christianism in America, and really the entire globe. That's OK, it's a truth we are prepared to face.

[Sonnyw]

Well, your discussion had been civil, but equating my position with a child who throws a tantrum dashes that thought.

Your religion must be pretty weak or unattractive if you have to usurp governmental property and institutions to shout out your religious dogma.

Our (you and me!) ancestors came to America to escape oppressive European governments. You and I agree with that, but you seem too quick to forget that it was those European governments' religious demands that forced our ancestors to these shores.

Over time our ancestors realized that in seeking relief from Europena tyranny, especially regarding freedom of religion, they had merely substituted their own form of religious tyranny. Out of this turmoil in the land of the free came the U. S. Constitution, which forbids government from supporting any religious sect. Keep church business in the privacy of your home or the privacy of your church, or pass a Constitutional amendment.

Why are you wounded, battered Christians so afraid of changing the Constitution if you don't like what the Supreme Court has mandated? I'll tell you why. It would reveal the weakness of your position and show you that the vast majority of Americans are very comfortable with the current restrictions regarding the religious invasion of governmental actions.

The American West Coast was all native American when our ancestors hit the Eastern seaboard, so please don't denigrate yourself with that silly remark.

[Sonnyw]

You are free to pray in any government building as long as you refrain from using that right to usurpt someone else's right (i.e. you can't shout out your prayer just so you disrupt the governmental business at hand in the building).

The Boy Scouts are free to discriminate against gays, women or atheists... until they take my tax money to do it.

For instance, would you want your tax money going to a prison welfare group that claims reduced recidivism (a legitimate government concern) if Christian inmates are converted to Buddhism? How about tax money going to a Moslem group that builds houses for the poor but refuses to hire Christian contractors? Is that OK with you?

[MissouriForBush]

Don't you know what figurative speech is?

[Blue Collar Christian]

We agree on how it should be, but that is not how it is.

[f.Christian]

fC ...

I don't understand how someone who believes in a creator ... can be attacked on a conservative site --- strange !

rwp ...

To: ContentiousObjector

Creationists are an embarrassment to Christians the world over.

An embarrassment to conservatives, too.


140 posted on 01/30/2003 10:17 AM PST by Right Wing Professor

[Sonnyw]

OK. The words to which I took umbrage were merely a figure of speech. Back to the point of our ancestors and why they came to America. Undeniably, they wanted a haven in which to practice their Christian faith as they saw fit, not how the State saw fit. But the story doesn't end there (as you'd most conveniently like it to end). Our ancestors soon developed their own brand of religious bigotry, exclusion and state support. Here's an illuminating quote from Justice Black, writing the majority opinion in McCollum v. Board of Education, 333 U.S. 203, 1948.

"It is an unfortunate fact of history that when some of the very groups which had most strenuously opposed the established Church of England [and came to America] found themselves sufficiently in control of colonial governments in this country to write their own prayers into law, they passed laws making their own religion the official religion of their respective colonies. Indeed, as late as the time of the Revolutionary War, there were established churches in at least eight of the thirteen former colonies and established religions in at least four of the other five. But the successful Revolution against English political domination was shortly followed by intense opposition to the practice of establishing religion by law. This opposition crystallized rapidly into an effective political force in Virginia where the minority religious groups such as Presbyterians, Lutherans, Quakers and Baptists had gained such strength that the adherents to the established Episcopal Church were actually a minority themselves. In 1785-1786, those opposed to the established Church, led by James Madison and Thomas Jefferson, who, though themselves not members of any of these dissenting religious groups, opposed all religious establishments by law on grounds of principle, obtained the enactment of the famous ‘Virginia Bill for Religious Liberty’ by which all religious groups were placed on an equal footing so far as the State was concerned. Similar though less far-reaching legislation was being considered and passed in other States.

"By the time of the adoption of the Constitution, our history shows that there was a widespread awareness among many Americans of the dangers of a union of Church and State. These people knew, some of them from bitter personal experience, that one of the greatest dangers to the freedom of the individual to worship in his own way lay in the Government’s placing its official stamp of approval upon one particular kind of prayer or one particular form of religious services. They knew the anguish, hardship and bitter strife that could come when zealous religious groups struggled with one another to obtain the Government’s stamp of approval from each King, Queen, or Protector that came to temporary power. The Constitution was intended to avert a part of this danger by leaving the government of this country in the hands of the people rather than in the hands of any monarch. But this safeguard was not enough. Our Founders were no more willing to let the content of their prayers and their privilege of praying whenever they pleased be influenced by the ballot box than they were to let these vital matters of personal conscience depend upon the succession of monarchs. The First Amendment was added to the Constitution to stand as a guarantee that neither the power nor the prestige of the Federal Government would be used to control, support or influence the kinds of prayer the American people can say - that the people’s religions must not be subjected to the pressures of government for change each time a new political administration is elected to office. Under that Amendment’s prohibition against governmental establishment of religion, as reinforced by the provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment, government in this country, be it state or federal, is without power to prescribe by law any particular form of prayer which is to be used as an official prayer in carrying on any program of governmentally sponsored religious activity."

So I ask once again, begging someone out there who claims to be an oppressed Christian and "in the anti-religious crosshairs" of secularists to be succinct and specific: What specific changes in our current laws, their interpretation or their enforcement would you want to change?

[Sonnyw]

Can you please be more specific?

My earlier statements describe exactly how it is today. You are free to pray wherever you please. You are protected from coercion at work or government, which might force you to acknowledge an idol or another religion's sacrements or another religion's symbols. You are protected from being taxed to support Wiccan causes, Jewish causes or Muslim causes. A privately-funded and supported organization can discriminate against anyone due to their sexual orientation, their gender or their religion. And thanks to the constitutionally-protected tax deduction afforded religious organizations, you can find more churches in most communitities than you can find liquor stores or book stores.

Ain't this a great country we live in???

[Sonnyw]

When you think of "waging war against Christians," you'd do well to read the words of Justice Brennan in his concurring opinion in Abington School District v. Schempp, 374 U.S. 203 (1963). (My comments are included within [] in order to aid the discussion.)

“Inevitably, insistence upon neutrality [which has lead to so many Supreme Court decisions that many Christians view as "anti-Christian], vital as it surely is for untrammeled religious liberty, may appear to border upon religious hostility. But in the long view the independence of both church and state in their respective spheres will be better served by close adherence to the neutrality principle. If the choice is often difficult [like telling students they cannot use the PA system to say a prayer before a football game, or telling senior citizens that they are in a tax supported home, so they cannot have a group-led Christian prayer before meals], the difficulty is endemic to issues implicating the religious guarantees of the First Amendment. Freedom of religion will be seriously jeopardized if we admit exceptions for no better reason than the difficulty of delineating hostility from neutrality in the closest cases.”