The Rise of Anti-Christian/Anti-Traditionalist Persecution in America
By Donald S. Mcalvany
”They will lay hands on you and persecute you. They will deliver you to synagogues and prisons, and you will be brought before kings and governors, and all on account of me…You will he be raved by parents, brothers, relatives and friends, and they will put some of you to death. All men will hate you because of me. ” Luke 21:12, 17.
“If the world hates you, you know that it hated me before it hated you.” John 15:18
Worldwide persecution of those who have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ has begun. Christians are the most widely hated and persecuted group of people on earth today. Marxists persecute Christians from the Siberian labor camps to the Cuban prisons, from the Red Chinese gulag to the midnight disappearances in Angola and Mozambique.
Muslims persecute Christians from Saudi Arabia to Libya from Algeria to Pakistan to the Sudan (where over a million Sudanese Christians have been killed in the 1990s alone). Animists, agitated by occult witch doctors, persecute Christians in many parts of Africa and Asia.
The World Christian I Encyclopedia reports that Christians in two-thirds of the countries of the world are under some form of restrictions or outright persecution ranging from reduction of their freedoms to overt attempts to eradicate their faith. Up to 30 percent have no political freedom or civil liberties: 25 percent live under anti-Christian regimes; 13 percent live under atheistic governments; and 17 percent are experiencing extreme oppression for their faith ranging from beatings to imprisonment, from seizure of property to execution.
In America increasingly vicious attacks against Christians are being launched by the homosexual groups, the pro-abortion and radical feminist movements, the pornography industry, the film and television industries, liberal judges, government bureaucrats, and academicians, by atheist and occult groups, and by the political left.
Growing pressure against Christians and Christian groups: against their freedom of speech and assemble, and against their beliefs, teachings, and practices is being exerted by an increasingly hostile, liberal, anti-Christian U.S. government and judiciary.
As Pat Robertson has said: “Acts of Congress, signed by the president of the U.S., carry with them the full enforcement power of’ the FBI and the Justice Department. The time may come in America when the federal government will hunt down and prosecute any Christian who dares protest the slaughter of unborn children or the flagrant practice of homosexuality. Instead of those who break God’s laws being criminals, those who uphold God’s laws will be considered criminals and enemies of the state!”
As stated in an earlier issue of MIA, traditional Bible believing, Fundamental, evangelical Christians are hated by the secular humanists, by the socialists, by the homosexuals, by the abortionists and by those advocating abortion, by the women’s libbers, by the liberal media, by the New Agers, and by the New World Order globalists. They fear and hate Christians as much as the Roman Caesars, Hitler, Lenin, Stalin, and Mao did and see them as a great hindrance or obstacle to their secularist/socialist/people control/New World Order vision for America.
The liberal media, television and film industries are beginning to openly trash Christians, traditionalists, pro-home schoolers. etc., to equate those groups with dangerous cults, and to describe them as homophobes, the dangerous religious right, religious bigots, as poor, uneducated and easy to command, as fanatic censors of the thoughts of others, as intolerant religious warriors, as hook burners, as purveyors of fear and intolerance, as rats (as a Pat Oliphant political cartoon depicted), and as dangerous as (or similar to) the Klu Klux Klan, the Nazis. or the Hezbollah Partly, etc.
Today, anyone defending Christianity and Biblical morality is becoming the target of malicious attacks. We see incredible hatred of those who are not ‘politically correct” from the media the entertainment industry, academia, the government and the judiciary. This issue of MIA will explore this Christian bashing. the growing attacks against Christians and traditionalists in the legal and public arenas, and the growing war against Christian conservatives and their leadership.
A. CHRISTIAN BASHING IN AMERICA
It’s ”open season” on Christians and traditionalists in America, with the trashing of Christians and their beliefs a popular national sport. Recently, novelist Gore Vidal wrote a blasphemous book, Live From Golgotha, which (among other things) portrayed Paul and Timothy as homosexual lovers. The author said of Christianity that it is “the greatest disaster to ever befall the West.”
In recent television programs and motion pictures, Christians have been portrayed as bigots, censors, intolerant, narrow-minded, hypocrites, idiots, charlatans, rapists, murderers, cannibals, as a threat to our freedom and to our very way of life. To illustrate, Showtime’s movie Flight of the Black Angel featured an Air Force pilot (who is a fundamentalist Christian) who goes berserk, murders his family and shoots several fellow pilots. His ultimate objective was to nuke the world, starting with Las Vegas. The Christian villain states “I’m doing (God’s) work. Everything (on earth) must be destroyed. I’m bringing the light of heaven (to) the diseased, the unclean the corrupt, the liars.”
Syndicated columnist Don Feder, a conservative Orthodox Jew, wrote in April 93 in an article entitled Christian Bashing Reaches New Heights. ”White Christians are about the only easy target left…Christian bashing, in all of its raw ugliness is: 1) ridiculing conservative Christians as benighted and sheeplike; 2) suggesting there is something sinister about political ideas based on scriptural standards; or 3) implying that the clergy forfeit their constitutional rights when they don a clerical collar. ”
Because of their commitment to chastity, fidelity, and heterosexuality, Christians are commonly depicted in the media and entertainment industry as narrow-minded bigots At abortion protests and homosexual marches the following chant can be heard “Racists, sexists, anti-gay born again bigots go away.”
A few years ago, liberal editorial cartoonist Olipllant drew a syndicated cartoon showing a group of Christians portrayed as a pack of rats dragging the Republican elephant into a Christian mission, replete with a cross which says “Jesus Saves.” Christians should recognize that such dehumanizing characterizations of Christians are very similar to the dehumanizing portrayal of Jews by the Nazi press prior to World War II. The anti-Christian hate campaign in America is looking more and more like the Nazi anti-Jewish hate campaign of the 1930s.
News week magazine seems to have a special flair for Christian bashing by utilizing stereotypes, innuendos, exaggeration and outright anti-Christian bias in venous articles. In a Newsweek cover story (9/14/96) entitled:
Gays under Fire: “The religious right” (a derogatory epithet coined by the liberal media) was blamed for “a powerful backlash against gay America’s struggle for acceptance.” Newsweek blamed the Christians bigotry against the downtrodden homosexuals and their struggle for equal treatment on the Christians’ belief in the Bible.
In a 3/1/93 Newsweek article entitled Onward Muscular Christian the writers compared the growing Christian influence in Colorado Springs as being similar to “Muslims in Mecca, ” and referred to the Christians’ “hate campaign” against homosexuals in Colorado. The inference was clear: wherever Christians gather, hatred, bigotry, and even violence are sure to follow.
The print and electronic media now regularly refer to Christians and traditionalists using terms such as “hate,” “violent,” “detrimental,” “bigoted,” “gay bashing,” “homophobic,” the same as Ayatollah Khomeini etc. and refer to their faith as a contagion from the right. Ted Turner has called Christians and pro-life demonstrators “bozos and idiots.” These terms are used in the context of fundamentalist, evangelical, conservative Catholics, and religious right.
The malignant examples of Christians in the media come in three primary flavors: 1) Roman Catholics; 2) Fundamentalist Christians; and 3) Rabid Lunatic Pentecostals. The Roman Catholic is often stereotyped as a neurotic, timid, paranoid who is obsessed with superstitious practices that more closely portray witchcraft than Christian worship. The female version of the Roman Catholic is usually timid and nervous, whereas the male version is aggressive, belligerent and emotional, and perpetrates horrible crimes while often conducting pseudo-Catholic rites.
The Fundamentalist Christian is the most wicked of the Christian villains on the silver screen. This stereotype is generally white, male, a racist, a bigot, a chauvinist, ignorant, hypocritical, evil, or some combination of those negative attributes. In rock music, movies, and television, the fundamentalist is portrayed as the perpetrator of the most horrible crimes while maintaining his facade of piety, self-righteousness, and religiosity.
The Pentecostal Christian is regularly stereotyped as a crazed, homicidal maniac, who while speaking in tongues or expressing dreams or visions commits heinous crimes (murder, rape, incest, dismemberment. etc.)
Today’s rock and rap musicians, stand-up comics, Hollywood screenwriters, TV talk show hosts, news commentators, journalists, and novelists have developed the bashing of these three groups of Christians almost to an art form, referring to them regularly as: fools, bigots, hypocrites, and as dangerous.
A growing number of movies and TV shows portray Christian ministers, priests, nuns, and laymen committing horrible murders, dealing or using drugs, having sex or incest with children, or killing or maiming while quoting Bible verses or praying to God.
And, usually opposite this Christian reprobate is a clever, poised skeptic or non-believer who helps to expose the mendacity of the Christian or bring him to justice. In this way, the political left in Hollywood is creating a stereotype of Christians which is loathsome, easy to hate, and easy to create negative emotion against.
B. HOLLYWOOD’S ATTACK AGAINST CHRISTIAN TRADITIONALISTS
Hollywood producers and screenwriters are propagating a vicious form of anti-Christian propaganda that characterizes practicing Christians as wicked devils who prey upon the weak, the sincere, the good people. Michael Medved, a Jewish critic of the Hollywood left, has documented this anti-Christian stereotype and trashing in his book “Hollywood as America”.
He points out how “clergy kills illicit lover” is a theme in a number of modern films, a theme that portrays Christian clergymen as dangerous murderers who prey upon innocents while hiding behind the mask of peaceful clerics. Medved cites a number of films which trash Christians:
– The Runner Stumbles (1979) – with Dick Van Dyke in a deadly serious role of a small town priest who falls in love with a young nun and then stands trial for her murder.
– Monsignor (19X2): In this film, a priest (a cardinal) engages in every imaginable sin, seduces a glamorous nun, and is involved in her death. The corrupt and powerful cardinal is involved with the Vatican bank and the Mafia under the approving eye of the pope.
– Agnes of Cod (19X5) – with Jane Fonda. A young nun gives birth to an illegitimate baby in a convent, murders the baby and then flushes the tiny, bloody corpse down the toilet. The movie has an anti-Catholic, pro-feminist, pro-abortion theme (if the nun could have aborted she wouldn’t have been forced to murder the baby)
The Penitent ( 1988) – Raul Julia plays a farmer in New Mexico who joins a primitive and brutal Catholic cult which every year crucifies (sacrifices) an unlikely victim “with a maximum of blood, gore, and whacked-out, quasi-religious visions.” As Medved points out, the desecration of the Crucifixion, the Mass, worship, preaching, and baptism is thematic in much of Hollywood s anti-religious fare.
Crimes of Passion (19X4): Anthony Perkins portrays ”a sweaty, Bible-toting skid row evangelist” who frequents peep shows while quoting Bible verses who is obsessed with a hooker and who plans to “save her soul” by a grotesque sexual murder.
The Handmaid’s Tale (1990), starring Robert Duval and Faye Dunaway. As Medved wrote: “This film is a pointedly political polemic about what life would be like if Christian fundamentalists came to power in America. These religious zealots are considerably less loveable than Nazis… The vicious theocratic government pursues genocidal policies against ethnic minorities, bans hooks with nonscriptural messages…assembles huge crowds to watch public hangings and torture and uses brute force to enforce the most arcane regulations from the Bible… The evil evangelists who run the country aren’t even sincere in their fanaticism, as they secretly operate bordellos for their pleasure.”
– The Rapture (1991): As Medved wrote ”An ex-swinger, addicted to group sex, suddenly becomes a Christian. Her new faith causes her to go to the desert with her six-year old to wait for Rapture. When it doesn’t come, she blows her daughter’s brains out while mumbling invocations to the Almighty.”
– At Play In the Fields of the Lord (1991): Medved writes that no faith is spared. In addition to the psychotic repressed, relentlessly obnoxious and mean spirited Protestant missionaries the cast of characters include a foul smelling, cynical Catholic priest and an alcoholic, whore-mongering, heavily tattooed Jewish mercenary who offers contemptuous recollections of his own Bar-Mitzvah.
– Guilty As Charged (1992): Rod Steiger is a murderous maniac who just happens to be a Christian fanatic… He imprisons poor souls in a homemade dungeon and one by one executes them in a huge electric chair decorated with religious motifs. As the victims fry, howling in fear and pain, Steiger exalts at the top of his lungs:
“We praise the Lord for the Department of Water and Power! The Holy Spirit is electricity, and the chair is God’s instrument of Justice and Salvation!”
Priest (1995): This Walt Disney film portrayed a troubled gay priest, a self-satisfied heterosexual priest openly living with his housekeeper, an alcoholic priest, a spiteful bishop and a teenage girl abused by her Catholic father – all warped by the Christian doctrines to which they adhere.
These are just a few of the hundreds of anti-Christian films which have emanated from Hollywood over the past decade or so: in The Quick and the Dead (1995), a preacher’s faith and his God are shown to be irrelevant; in Alien 3 (1992), born again Christians in a future world are rampant rapists and violent criminals; in Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, God is presented as an evil being and all religions as man-made, both of which will be obsolete in the future; in Johnny Mnemonic ( 1995) the evil character is a street preacher who stabs people to death with his crucifix.
In the film Cape Fear, Robert DeNiro plays a Pentecostal Christian (adorned with a body-sized cross tattooed on his back) who is homicidal, a rapist and murderer. This “Pentecostal Christian” smokes pot, tries to seduce a teenage girl, brutally rapes and partially cannibalizes a woman, commits serial murder, and finally sinks to a watery grave while speaking in tongues.”
As Don Feder wrote in response to the 1988 film. The Last Temptation of Christ produced by MCA’s Universal Studios (which depicted Jesus as a fag, a whore monger, and demon possessed) Christians are the only group Hollywood can offend with impunity the only, creed it actually goes out of its way to insult. Clerics from fundamentalist preachers to Catholic monks are routinely represented as hypocrites, hicksters, sadists, and lechers. The tenets of Christianity are held up to ridicule.
While Hollywood continues to depict practicing Christians (and to a lesser extent observant Jews) as hypocritical, lunatics, fanatics, rapists, mass murderers, and cannibals, television is not treating believers any better. The same is true of a number of prime time television series on MTV and on rock and rap music. It is open season on Christianity in pop culture.
Anti-Christian diatribes and stereotypes are found throughout television programming and on thousands of music recordings. MTV ridicules Christ, Christians, priests, ministers, the Bible, and the crucifixion while mixing them in with sex (straight and gay!) and making them appear sadistic. Madonna told Spin magazine “Crucifixes are sexy because there is a naked man on them.”
Robert and Linda Lichter of the Center for Media and Public Affairs conducted a survey of 104 of the most influential television writers, producers and executives, which confirmed their liberal, anti-religious mindset.
93% say they seldom or never attend religious services.
75% describe themselves as leg of center political compared to only 14% who place themselves to the right of center.
97% are pro-choice with respect to abortion.
80% do not regard homosexual relations as wrong.
Only 5% agree strongly that homosexuality is wrong, compared to 49% who disagree strongly.
6% support the rights of homosexuals to teach in public schools.
51% do not regard adultery as wrong.
Only 17% strongly agree that extramarital of fairs are wrong.
These are the people who are creating anti-Christian. anti-traditional values television programming and brainwashing 75-100 million American television viewers every day! with the new anti-Christian consensus Primetime television continues to Portray Christians as miscreants. fun-hating puritans. sexually dysfunctional women haters. and dangerous fanatics.
It could be argued, “Well just don’t watch such movies or television, or listen to such anti-Christian music. After all, as the children’s rhyme goes: ‘sticks and stones can break my bones, but words can never hurt me.'” Yes, but what these vehicles for anti-Christian propaganda are doing is changing the way tens of millions of people think about Christians, and Biblical and traditional values.
They are making it socially acceptable to demean and hate Christians. And American movies and rock/rap music do not just reach an American audience: they reach billions of people all over the world and are consequently helping to establish an anti-Christian consensus, not just in America, but on a global scale as well
C. ATTACKING CHRISTIANS IN THE LEGAL ARENA
For the past 40 years or more, the political left in America has been quietly working to take over our legal institutions, starting with the law schools in the 1950s and ’60s and now reaching into our entire legal system: our judiciary (local, federal, and state) and even our legislatures (state and federal).
Virtually all judges in America and most legislators are lawyers Most lawyers in America have graduated from liberal, secular, humanist oriented law schools who take a liberal or socialist view of the Constitution, a big government approach to politics, and a secular humanist/Freudian/evolutionist approach to religion or Christianity.
Hence, over the past 30 years, the legal system has moved dramatically against Christians and the traditional Biblical values. They support and believe in: outlawing prayer in schools and God or any manifestation of Christianity in public life; legalizing the murder of unborn children (now totaling over 35 million since 1973); expanding the definition of child abuser to include Biblically-ordained spanking; creating special rights and legal protections for homosexuals; expanding the definition of sexual harassment; undermining parental authority; legalizing pornography; forcing the teaching of alternate lifestyles (homosexuality ) to students in public schools; and much more.
New legal initiatives which arc now being pushed throughout our leftist-dominated legal system and which will put Christians and traditionalists on a collision course with the government and the new anti-Christian consensus include 1) euthanasia; 2) homosexual marriage; 3) greater government involvement in child raising and decisions regarding children’s education and careers (as per Hillary Clinton’s “It Takes A Village”; 4) government registration and tracking of all children from day one to death; 5) new ”hate crime legislation which will make it a federal crime to criticize a homosexual or their lifestyle or to oppose abortionists: 6) new anti-discrimination legislation which will make it a federal crime not to hire a homosexual or have up to a 10% quota of homosexuals working for a business or ministry; new “anti-terrorist legislation which will make it illegal to criticize the government, to pray, or demonstrate in front of an abortion clinic and much more.
Most practicing Christians (fundamentalist Catholic and Pentecostals) will have a major problem with many of these initiatives-the ones already in place and the ones which will be adopted over the next few years. So the liberal U.S. legal system and the Christian traditionalists are on an unavoidable collision course.
The more the Christian traditionalists oppose these unbiblical (and unconstitutional) measures, the more they will be isolated, slandered, ostracized, marginalized, and ultimately targeted for persecution by the liberal power structure and the new anti-Christian consensus. This is the was the pressure began to build against the Jews in Nazi Germany in the 1930s.
The tragedy is that the liberals have been able (with very little opposition from conservatives or Christians) to co-op the courts in their drive to suppress religious ideas. From 1988 forward many judges allowed themselves to be used as patron saints of the abortion industry in America by writing restraining orders and in junctions prohibiting conscientious Christian protectors the rights of assembly, speech, religious exercise, and expression.
During this period (especially from 1988 through ’92) Christians were hauled into courts, fined tens of thousands of dollars, had their assets frozen, and were imprisoned for violating court orders against kneeling in prayer, singing hymns, distributing Bibles and religious tracts, and preaching in public. This period saw the most blatant denials of civil and human rights since the civil rights struggle of the previous generation.
1. LEGAL ATTACKS ON CHRISTIANS’ FREEDOM OF SPEECH
Over the past eight years dozens of liberal, anti-Christian judges have handed down orders, edicts, and injunctions prohibiting Christians from their exercise of free speech and religious freedoms (praying, carrying a Bible or mentioning God on public property, in or around a courtroom, etc.). Paul Schenck, author of the excellent book The Extermination of Christianity, was sentenced to 30 class in Jail in 1992 by a New York judge for praying in the courtroom.
During the course of the trial of pro-life demonstrators who had been arrested in the “Spring of Life” rescue campaign in Buffalo, the judge, Sherwood L Bestry, ordered that any prayers anywhere in or near the courthouse would be punishable by 30 days in the count! Prison Judge Bestry considered public prayers “disgusting and would not tolerate any religious ceremonies” that included clergy vestments in or around the courthouse.
As Schenek wrote, “Judge Bestry’s ban on prayer is an example of the same kind of bias that shows up in scores of judicial decrees in the form of restraining orders, injunctions, and decisions that have intruded upon that form of speech once considered sacrosanct (religious exercise). In fact, utilizing their enormously broad powers, politically correct judges have seriously curtailed the first amendment rights of Christians and other religionists.”
“There is a growing trend throughout the country for secularist organizations, groups, and individuals to petition the courts to restrict religious expressions in public. Take, for instance, a state court judge in Houston. Texas granted relief to abortion groups by issuing an injunction barring preaching, hymn singing, witnessing, and Bible and tract distribution on public sidewalks around abortion clinics. Similar injunctions were issued in Atlanta, Wichita, and Buffalo.”
So, courts are now moving to deny Christians their basic constitutional rights, with judges prohibiting the possession and distribution of Bibles and religious tracts, witnessing and prayer in public buildings, parks, and on street comers with huge fines and imprisonment for violation thereof. And these violations of Christians constitutional rights of free speech and freedom of religion are growing and expanding each year, even as the media and the vast majority of Americans, including most Christians, barely take note. No other groups in America (homosexuals, feminists, African Americans, Hispanics, Muslims, Jews, atheists, witches, Satanists, etc.) are being restricted in this manner – only Christians!
According to Keith Fournier executive director of the American Center for Law and Justice “Under the banner of:..liberty…as redefined in our secularized state unpopular speech and in a particular way Christian speech its being censored from the public arena. Rather than free speech, we now have a growing effort to enforce speech free zones throughout the country. The political correctness movement is but one example of a growing intolerance toward religious speech.”
2. SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE
Dr. D. James Kennedy recently wrote in his book The Gates of Hell Shall Not Prevail: The Attack on Christianity and What You Need 70 Know To Combat It, ”The attack on Christ in America in the public arena stems from a misreading of the religion clause of the First Amendment: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”
“Although the First Amendment has historically given Americans unprecedented religious freedom, today the Amendment’s interpretation has been so twisted that it has become a hammer of oppression. Traditionally, it has been understood that the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment meant that in America there would be no national church like they had in England. The framers wanted a separation of the function of the church from the function of the national government; they did not want a separation of God or Christianity from the state which we find in our country today.”
Our founding fathers never expected or intended our liberal/secular humanist leaders of today to take this Establishment Clause of the First Amendment and interpret it as the separation of church and state and distort it so as to ban all religious free speech or expression in public in schools, or public prayer in the courts, in government, etc. The First Amendment, written to guarantee religious freedom, is now being used by the political left to take it away.
This liberal distortion of the First Amendment is resorting in the following twisted decisions A guilty verdict in a murder trial was thrown out of court because the prosecution quoted from the Bible: the Supreme Court has mica that the Ten Commandments cannot be posted in public school classrooms: Christian pro-life activists arc now being prosecuted for public prayer under RICO (racketeering) statutes designed for use against organized crime.
There is an interesting parallel here with the former Soviet Union. Throughout the Communist history of the Soviet Union, the Soviets prided themselves on having separation of church and state. It is even written into their Soviet Constitution (Article 52). But, the church-state view of the Soviets was used to muzzle the freedom of the church and virtually all religious free speech in the former Soviet Union. This was a major factor in forcing the persecuted Russian church underground.
In theory, religion was free to do anything that the government was not involved in, but the government was involved in everything. So religion the Bible, witnessing, etc. was banned from virtually every aspect of Soviet life. The same thing is happening on American soil, where the doctrine of separation of church and state is being used to ban religion and the Christian church from almost every aspect of American life (no public prayers, Bible readings, prayer in school or at graduation commencements, football games etc.)
After all the government in America (like its former Soviet counterpart) is involved in almost everything including the running of the public schools The parallels with the restriction of religion in Russia and in America using separation of church end state is ominous It has fumed the First Amendment into a hammer that pounds at the church and any public expression of Christianity. It could one day result in Christians being thrown off the airwaves. revocation of the tax exempt status of all churches and para-church groups. and possibly! one day the illegality! of Christianity as `~-e have known it in America.
3. THE ACLU ATTACK ON RELIGIOUS FREEDOM IN AMERICA
The American Civil Liberties Union (founded in 1920), the legal arm of the political left in America, has pursued a relentless campaign of legal harassment against Christians Christian symbols, Christian practices, and traditional Judeo-Christian values for many decades, but especially over the past 100 years. The ACLU was actually founded as the Bureau for Conscientious Objectors in 1918 by Roger Baldwin who served one year in federal prison for sedition. He renamed the group the American Civil Liberties Union upon his release from prison. According to an investigative committee of the U. S. Congress, “The ACLU claims to stand for free speech, free press, and free assembly, but it is quite apparent that the main function of the ACLU is to attempt to protect Communists in their advocacy of force and violence to overthrow the U.S government. ”
Several of the original board members besides Baldwin, including William Foster, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, and Louis Budenz, were later prominent members of the Communist Party USA (Foster became head of the Communist Party USA ). As of 1993, the National Board read like a Who’s Who of the American Left, George McGovern, Norman Lear, Ed Asner, Carl Sagan, Patricia Schroeder, Norman Cousins, Birch Bayh, Ramsey Clark, Arthur Schlessinger, Lowell Weicker, Morton Halperin, etc.
The ACLU presently maintains a membership of 250,000: 70 staff lawyers and 5,000 volunteer attorneys. handling an average of 6,000 cases at any one time, with an annual budget of $14 million In recent years (according to Coral Ridge Ministries-writing in 1993) the ACLU has sought to:
-Halt the singing of Christian carols like Silent Night and Away In A Manger in public facilities
-Deny the tax-exempt status of all churches
-Disallow prayer, not just in public classrooms, but in locker rooms, sports arenas, graduation exercises, and legislative assemblies
-Terminate all military and prison chaplains
-Deny Christian school children access to publicly funded services
-Eliminate nativity scenes, crosses, and all other Christian symbols from all public property
-Repeal of ”blue (Sunday) law” statutes
-Prohibit voluntary Bible reading in public schools, even during free time or after classes
-Remove “In God We Trust ” from our coins
-Deny accreditation to science departments at Bible believing Christian universities
-Prevent the posting of the Ten Commandments in classrooms
-Terminate all voucher programs and tuition tax credits
-Purge the words “under God” from the Pledge of Allegiance
In an incredible twisting of the principles of freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and separation of church and state, the ACLU has pursued efforts to legalize all forms of pornography (including child porn), legalize and legitimize all kinds of deviant sexual behavior as victimless crimes, and eradicate all vestiges of religious faith from public life.
Churches, Christian schools, and other Christian structures have been the targets of lawsuits by the ACLU all over the country. Most of its lawyers and representatives are rabidly anti-Christian. Its lawsuits are designed to cripple and then eliminate Christian structures and institutions, to undermine America’s few remaining traditional values (especially the family), and to advance the agenda of the political left. This should not be surprising when one considers that the ACLU’s founder said in 1935 (at the height of Stalinism), “Communism is the goal. ”
In 1988, the ACLU sent a letter to the California Assembly Education Committee opposing a proposed sex education bill. The letter stated,
“It is our position that teaching that monogamous, heterosexual intercourse within marriage as a traditional American value is an unconstitutional establishment of a religious doctrine in public schools. There are various religions which hold contrary beliefs with respect to marriage and monogamy. ”
A Gadsden, Alabama state judge, Roy S. Moore, has been sued by the ACLU for having a hand-carved copy of the Ten Commandments hanging on his courtroom wall and for allowing a guest clergyman to pray monthly at the opening general sessions of his court (once a month), Judge Moore has said he will fight the ACLU all the way to the Supreme Court if necessary. In Bloomingdale, Michigan, a painting of Jesus had been hanging in the public high school since 1962. One agnostic student claimed he received “psychological damage” from seeing the portrait. The ACLU sued on his behalf and won, and the portrait came down.
The ACLU is very active during the Christmas season to make sure there are no manger scenes or other remnants of religion on public property. In the late ’70s, the ACLU tried to stop Congressman Henry Hyde’s (R-IL) Hyde Amendment, which prohibited federal funding for abortion. The ACLU opposed the Hyde Amendment on the basis that ”it violated separation of church and state,” because Hyde was a Catholic, his religion was opposed to abortion, and therefore the legislation should be opposed.
The ACLU even followed Hyde to church to overhear him read from the Bible at a special service, illegally intercepted his mail looking for ”religious communications,” and tried to use this as ”a separation of church and state” argument against the legislation. Such mendacity is not new to the ACLU.
In 1925, during the Scopes “Monkey Trial” which the ACLU initiated, their attorney, Clarence Darrow, belittled Biblical fundamentalism as personified in William Jennings Bryant, and created ”scientific” evidence that was later proven to be false.
Two excellent books have been written exposing the nefarious agenda of the ACLU by Dr. William Donohue (founder of the Catholic League): The Politics the American Civil Liberties Union and Twilight of Liberty: The Legacy of the ACLU.
The ACLU is not the only legal group leading the charge against Christian America. The American Bar Association held a seminar in San Francisco in May, 1989 to train attorneys on how to use tort law to sue religious organizations and churches. The seminar was advertised as being for attorneys who want to be on the leading edge of an explosive new area of law. The selling point of the seminar was that attorneys could make money using this ideological weapon against churches and religious organizations.
Subjects presented at the seminar included: “Expanding The Use of Tort Law Against Religions ”; “Tort As An Ideological Weapon ”; “Tort Law As Essential Restraint on Religious Abuses”; “Tort Liability For Brainwashing”; etc. “Brainwashing” was described as emotionally traumatizing a person by telling them they will go to hell if they do not accept Christ, or that they are sinners in need of a Savior. Goodbye Christian witnessing. Goodbye Billy Graham Crusades!
Clearly war has been declared and Christianity is in a fight for its life. Incidentally, churches are being sued in America (seven years after this seminar) like never before. One conservative Christian attorney who attended this seminar (Shelby Sharpe) described it as a nuclear attack against Christianity.
D. USING RICO (RACKETEERING) STATUTES AGAINST PRO-LIFERS
On 5/21/1993, the Clinton Administration petitioned the Supreme Court to allow the National Organization for Women (NOW) and the government to use the federal racketeering (RICO) statutes against abortion protesters. RICO punishes people and organizations which operate through a pattern of criminal activity (two or more repetitions of the misdeed). The government’s appeal claimed that anti-abortion groups (which consist largely of Evangelical and Catholic Christians) compose a national criminal conspiracy of extremists bent on unlawful and violent methods to drive abortion clinics out of business.
U.S. District Courts in New York and Philadelphia had hit abortion protectors with huge fines for RICO violations. But the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals revered the fines ruling that RICO requires proof that alleged racketeering acts were motivated by an economic purpose.
On 11/25/94, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Clinton Administration, NOW, and the abortionists that criminal racketeering statutes can be used to prosecute pro-life demonstrators who are demonstrating or praying in front of abortion clinics, with terrible damages to be awarded. This ruling means that any government agency (or private group) can file a RICO suit against any group, or its members, who commit any act that the agency (or private group) claims constitutes “criminal conspiracy” and that uses unlawful and violent methods.
There would be no need to demonstrate that economic gain was a consideration. Potential targets could be any politically incorrect group of Christians conservatives or traditionalists. RICO can therefore be used against any organization or its members which do their ”misdeed” twice (bold an anti-government, anti-abortion, anti-war demonstration or any other “politically incorrect” activity targeted by the government). If public prayer in front of an abortion clinic can be a punishable offense under RICO, dozens of other “politically incorrect” offenses will eventually be included as well.
E. A NEW LEGAL STRUCTURE TO PROTECT HOMOSEXUALS AND ABORTIONISTS
There is a strong push by the political left to have homosexuals and women seeking abortions classified as protected minorities and certain forms of speech defined as hate crimes. “The government can then protect such groups under the guise of compelling interest.” If a Christian or traditionalist refers to homosexuality or abortion as a sin, or quotes scripture regarding same, he (or she) will be guilty of a hate crime.
The political left is also pushing to have abortion legislatively guaranteed as a constitutional right (a civil right) under the Freedom of Choice Act. Under that act, any effort to persuade a young mother to put up for adoption or keep her baby instead of aborting will be an obstruction of that unfettered right. People causing that obstruction will be guilty of violation of federal law and prosecuted accordingly. Pro-life (pro-adoption) Crisis Pregnancy Centers and their representatives will be targeted. Incredible! It may soon be against the law to suggest to a pregnant girl to put her baby up for adoption rather than to kill it!
Special protection for homosexuals has some frightening implications. When homosexuals become a protected class of citizens, they will be entitled not only to special treatment, but also to extraordinary rights, one of which will be a government guarantee of legal (same-sex) marriage. The ramifications for Christian churches and organizations are ominous.
For a clergyman to refuse to marry a homosexual couple will be a civil rights (criminal) violation pullisilabic be fines, imprisonment, or a court-ordered ban from the ministry. Clergv who refuse to officiate such unions (believing it violates scripture) will be denounced as hateful, bigoted, or even guilty of a hate crime. Many clergymen in the former Soviet Union, in Red China, Cuba and other Communist countries have been officially banned from the ministry, have suffered civil penalties, imprisonment, exile, or execution for refusing to obey such compulsory (anti-Biblical) measures. The coming special protection for homosexuals: a church, ministry, or business which refuses to hire homosexuals or to hire them in the ratio they falsely say they represent in the general population (10%) will be guilty of a civil and criminal ”civil rights” violation.
So Christians and traditionalists in America who oppose abortion and the practice of homosexuality who speak or write of that opposition, who take overt action to stop these practices, or who teach their children that they are wrong, could soon be declared to be criminals. Shades of Nazi Germany and Communist Russia and China!
In 1993. Dr. Robert Isay, Chairman of an American Psychiatric Association committee formed to legitimize homosexuality, was quoted in the New York Times as calling for strong measures to be brought against anyone who considers homosexuality to be a perversion. Psychiatrist Isay said that an ”irrational fear and hatred of’ homosexuals is a psychological abnormality that interferes with the judgment and reliability of those affected.” In other words, straight Christians who believe in the Bible’s prohibition of homosexuality are the “sick ones” (now called “homophobes”).
F. BANNING CHRISTIANS FROM THE PUBLIC ARENA
The political left in America. after several decades of carefully laving the groundwork. has almost totally banned religion religious personalities and moral issues based on Biblical consideration from the public sector.
This includes banning from courthouses, public buildings, sports arenas, libraries, schools, colleges, universities, public broadcasting and publishing all references to God, Jesus Christ, the Gospel, the crucifixion, prayer and hymn singing. Thousands of lawsuits have been launched in recent years by the ACLU and other leftist or atheist groups to remove the last vestiges of Christianity from the public square.
In 1994, the Clinton Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, through a series of regulations, almost succeeded in banning all mention of God, the Bible, religion, etc. in the American work place. The ban would have included all Bibles or religious books in the office or factory, on a desk, in a bookcase, etc. No crosses, Stars of David, or yarmulkes could be worn. No Christmas or Thanksgiving parties, prayers, witnessing, singing of hymns or any activity even remotely related to God, Jesus Christ, or any religion would have been tolerated. No prayer meetings, Bible classes, religious pictures, or quotations on the wall could have been allowed in the work place.
These regulations would have been quietly implemented had not over a million Christians loudly protested to Congress, which pressured the Clinton Administration to back off. When the time seems right, and the Christians and traditionalists are not paying attention, the Clintons will again try to put this EEOC religious ban into place.
Today most public or school libraries carry very few (if any) religious books or Bibles. They have never been stocked, have been officially removed or stolen and not replaced. In most instances, churches or religious groups are precluded from renting auditoriums at public schools or universities using “separation of’church and state” as the justification. On a practical level, however, it is usually only Christian churches or groups which are denied access.
Time magazine (12/9/91), in an article entitled “Has The Separation of Church and State Gone Too Far?” wrote, ”In this nation of spiritual paradoxes, it is legal to hang a picture in a public exhibit of a crucifix submerged in wine, or to utter virtually any conceivable blasphemy in a public place; it is not legal, the federal Courts have ruled, to mention God reverently in a classroom, on a football field or at a commencement ceremony as part of a public prayer.”
Rush Limbaugh said on his television program on 6/19/96 “There is an all-out assault on the Christian community in this country.” Indeed there is! The political left has changed the rules so that the ideal of freedom of religion has now become freedom from religion. As Nathan A Fonrester of the Bechett Fund for Religious Liberty commented, ”The perception now is that the Constitution requires that we purge all religion from the public square.”
It is an interesting paradox how the U S. government funds anti-Christian activities (abortion, homosexuality, and pornographic art) while at the same time banning and opposing all public manifestations of Christianity. The government (via the U.S. taxpayer) has been funding the National Endowment for the Arts.
As Dr. D. James Kennedy wrote in his recent book, ”Some of these ‘works of art’ have been directly blasphemous against Jesus of Nazareth-such as the bust of Jesus as a transvestite, the picture of’ Christ as a heroin junkie, the photo of the crucifix submerged in the artist’s urine or the sketches of Christ engaged in homosexual acts…Think about the implications of’state-sponsored blasphemy: on the one hand, the government, in all its various branches, prohibits the public expression of pro-Christian symbols (even if paid for privately). On the other hand, that same government sanctions anti-Christian expressions (and even sponsors them). Wow. The NEA’s finding of anti Christian art has clearly put the official government approval on the attack on Christ in America.”
The U.S. courts have played a major role in censoring Christianity (and even Orthodox Judaism) from public life in America. The U.S. Supreme Court has called it unconstitutional for a rabbi to deliver a non-sectarian general prayer at a high school graduation. A U S. district court judge declared a prayer before a school football game to be “illegal.” A federal Judge in Michigan ordered a portrait of Jesus that hung in a high school for 20 years next to one of Martin Luther King Jr. to be a violation of “the separation of church and state” and forced the school to take it down. The courts across America seem to be totally consistent on one thing: the concept that religion in America can be incredibly dangerous!
EXAMPLES OF GOVERNMENT CENSORSHIP OF CHRISTIANS IN THE PUBLIC ARENA
On June 24 1991 the Supreme Court ruled that it is illegal for clergy to offer prayers as part of an official public school graduation ceremony.
A federal appeals court in Zion, Illinois ruled that a 100-year old City seal, which incorporated a cross and the motto ”God reigns ” are unconstitutional. The seal, which was supported by 90% of the townspeople, was removed.
In December, 1991, a county court in San Diego ruled that a monument which was designated as an historic landmark must be removed because it contained a cross. The monument, located on Mt. Soledad, was originally on private property which was given to the State of California with the agreement that the cross would remain. The court reneged the contract and gave the county 90 days to remove the cross.
– In Orange County (Orlando), Florida, a fourth grader brought his Bible with him to school to read in his spare time. His teacher took it away and chastised him, telling him to never bring it back. As punishment he was forced to sit in a corner facing the wall and was later questioned by the principal and detained in her office all day for his wrongful violation of church and state.”
In Tulsa Oklahoma, a fourth grader attempted to pray before a math test. He was sent to the principal’s office and made to write 100 times, “I will not pray in class”.
In San Jose, California, the city ruled that a manger with the baby Jesus in it was illegal, but went on to build a half million dollar, tax-payer funded statue of the Aztec god Quetzalcoatl to whom tens of thousands of human victims were sacrificed in centuries past. The mayor said the Aztec religion possessed “those elements that seek to elevate the human consciousness to a higher plane.”
In Chicago, Illinois, the city over a four-year period shut down 30 South Side storefront churches (mostly African American) and denied building permits to over a dozen more churches – utilizing special stringent zoning requirements.
The American Center for Law and Justice cited few (of hundreds) such religious censorship and harassment cases:
-An elderly man was arrested and handcuffed for distributing religious literature outside an office complex. The charges were later dropped.
-Two New York street preachers (who had ministered on the same streets for 10 years) were arrested for preaching without a permit and charged with disorderly conduct. The charges were later dropped.
-A school district in the midwest was sued for allowing the Gideons to distribute Bibles to students who requested them-a practice they had been doing for 41 years.
-A pastor from North Carolina was denied use of a public building because he wanted to use it to perform a Christmas play.
-Christian students were denied by their school board the right to announce after school meetings in their school newspaper.
-There are thousands of such examples across America every month whereby Christians are being censored, harassed, and denied public access and the incidents (backed by the courts and the legal system) are growing geometrically. We are seeing the onset of official government censorship of Christianity in America. This is how it happened to Christians in Russia, China, and Cuba. This is how it happened to Jews in Nazi Germany in the mid-1930s. First they were stereotyped, then vilified, then marginalized, then ostracized and finally persecuted, jailed, and exterminated.
G. THE INTELLECTUAL ASSAULT AGAINST CHRISTIANITY
Over two generations of Americans have been educated in a public school system (from grade school through the university), Christianity, and almost all forms of traditional religion. In Nazi Germany, Hitler recognized the importance of controlling education. As William Shirer wrote in The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, “The German schools from the first grade through the universities were quickly nazified.
In a speech on November 6, 1933, Hitler said, “When an opponent declares, ‘I will not come over to your side,’ I calmly say, ‘Your child belongs to us already, Where are you? You will pass on. Your descendants, however, stand in the new camp. In a short time they will know nothing else but this community.'” As Shirer wrote, quoting a speech by Hitler on May 1, 1937, “This new Reich will give its youth to no one but it will take youth and give to youth its own education and upbringing.” So we can learn an important lesson form the Third Reich – those who control the classroom will control the next generation.
Today, trashing Christ, Christians and Christianity is a major endeavor at many (if not most) large universities and many high schools across America. Dr. D. James Kennedy in his book, “The Gates of Hell Shall Not Prevail,” quotes a Campus Crusade for Christ staff member who heads a campus ministry at a state university in the Bible Belt, wherein a professor teaches, “Jesus was a homosexual,” “Jesus had sex with Mary Magdalene,” “Both Jesus and Moses were legends,” and “Jesus had a twin brother.” Across America, Christ and Christianity are denigrated in the college classroom, funded with our tax dollars in state schools.
Don Feder, the Jewish columnist who often speaks out against anti-Christian bigotry, wrote in his book, A Jewish Conservative Looks At Pagan America, ”It has reached the point where public school students can experience anything- hinge the average sailor on shore leave doesn’t encounter-except God. Sex education, suicide studies, life boat ethics, condom distribution, abortion pleading, which when taken together constitute the propagation of’ the humanist creed, all are essential aspects of the public school experience in the 1990s. It is only prayers, Bibles, and references to a supreme being which offend the sensibilities of secularist puritans.
“We may fail to teach our students the rudiments of literature, science and history. Twenty percent of high school graduates may be functional illiterates, or semi-illiterate. We may be unable to maintain even a semblance of order in our urban schools, which increasingly resemble happy hour in Beirut. But, hallelujah, we sure know how to protect kids from God.”
The anti-Christian consensus in American education didn’t just start in the 1990s. It started in the 1960s (and probably much earlier) when the political left began to take over American education-especially at the university level. The theories of Marx, Sigmund Freud and Darwin (all three hardcore atheists) began to really take root in academia in the 1960s and ’70s.
Freud’s writings were extremely anti-religion (both Christianity and Judaism). Freud even taught that religious faith was a manifestation of mental illness-a sickness which is a severe danger to normal human development. This helps explain why so many college educated people over the past 30 years have emerged from academia so hostile (or at best neutral) to the Christian faith. They have been taught that religious people are mentally and emotionally ill, and that Christianity must be treated, eradicated. or at least managed and closely controlled.
The theories of Darwinian evolution have also been a major element of American education since the 1960s. Now accepted in academia as a fact (not theory), this unproven, and unscientific theory has replaced the Biblical account of God’s creation in the minds of tens of millions of high school and college educated Americans in recent decades and set the stage for wholesale rejection of God, the Bible, Jesus Christ, and Christianity. Anyone who would deny the accidental advent of biological life, in the face of “overwhelming evidence,” we are told is an idiot, a fool, a charlatan-in other words, a mentally unstable, irresponsible Christian.
As tens of millions of Americans have come through America’s higher education system in recent decades, this helps to explain the growing hostility toward and ostracism and isolation of Christians in America. In Russia and other Communist countries, Christians and other ”reactionary” traditionalists have been locked up in mental institutions and subjected to imprisonment brainwashing, shock treatment, and drug reprogramming “therapies.” Could this be the growing anti-Christian consensus in America as well?
In addition to the now-widely accepted theories of Marx Freud and Darwin, the pervasiveness of atheism, agnosticism, and skepticism in American education have led to a growing hatred of religious faith in general and Christianity in particular. Had these theories and ideologies remained isolated in the universities, the damage to America, its culture, and foundations would have been minimal, or at least contained. Unfortunately, that has not been the case.
Since the early 1960s, the political left and those espousing these theories and ideologies have systematically taken over the law schools the journalism schools. the teachers’ colleges. the schools of psychology, philosophy, sociology, etc. and have produced millions of lawyers. journalists. teachers. psychologists and Americans in every walk of life who arc hostile to Christianity, traditional values. the U. S Constitution. etc.
For over 30 years, the great majority of teachers emerging from American colleges and universities have been educated (or brainwashed) in the theories or ideologies of Marx, Darwin, Freud, atheism, agnosticism, and secular humanism. These teachers went into America’s elementary middle and high school classrooms with these philosophies, helped write textbooks espousing same, and have redirected tens of millions of students away from, or against, Christianity and traditional American values (ED. NOTE: There are teachers who are notable exceptions. but they are a small minority).
These essentially anti-Christian philosophies have also been spread over the past three decades by journalists, reporters and writers, who were fumed away from God, religion and Christianity in their colleges or universities and who now propagate the political left’s ideology through the entertainment/news media to hundreds of millions of Americans who have been gradually influenced by their anti-Christian, anti-traditionalist, liberal philosophy.
The same process has happened to a whole generation of lawyers who were educated for over 30 Years in American law schools dominated by the political left and who now are writing and interpreting laws as attorneys, legislators, and judges that are neutralizing and undermining our Christian, Biblical, traditional values and traditions in America.
The fuming of America’s educational system, legal system, and media/entertainment industries to the political left and against Christianity and traditional American values did not happen by accident. It all began with the political left’s takeover of the education system in the 1960s and ’70s and has now infected the thinking and actions of the great majority of Americans.
As the political left moved into a dominant position in education, entertainment, the media, the legal establishment, and government over the past 30 years, evangelical/fundamental Christians, who were being taught not ‘to concern themselves with the affairs of the world,” increasingly avoided participation in these arenas, leaving them almost exclusively, by default, to the political left.
So today, even though the political left (like the Nazis in Germany and the Communists in Russia) is still just a minority, they have carefully and successfully strategized the takeover of these critical and influential bastions of cultural influence.
POLITICAL CORRECTNESS AND THE GROWING ANTI-CHRISTIAN CONSENSUS
“Political correctness” has swept the university and college campuses in recent years and is now emerging in high schools as well. One major element of political correctness is the total separation of religion from education in America Speech codes have sanctioned students for opposing homosexuality or abortion and for taking a stand for or even mentioning God. Christ. the Bible. or traditional values For a practicing Christian today. the American campus is a very hostile environment
Now intimidation and punishment of Christian students who are not “politically correct” has begun to spread in U S. high schools. Anti-Christian decrees are now regularly announced by teachers, school boards, and administrators which attack students’ First Amendment rights and individual civil liberties.
Students regularly receive a low grade, or no grade, or are failed because they have written a paper on a Christian or “politically incorrect” topic. They have been disqualified from school assemblies or special programs for choosing a piece of religious music to perform. They have been arrested and/or removed from the campus by police (like drug dealers) for simply gathering in prayer around the flag pole.
Paranoia over separation of church and state in education has caused a growing number of educators and educational institutions to become extremely hostile toward religion and religious persons. A whole generation of students has now been educated in America’s public school system to believe that religious faith (and its values) is incompatible with intelligence and the honest pursuit of knowledge.
Many liberal educators are actively fostering hostility toward religious students, treating them with condescension and contempt. This is the way it began against the Jews in Nazi Germany and the Christians in Russia and China.
H. THE EEOC GUIDELINES OUTLAWING RELIGION IN THE WORK PLACE
In 1994 the Clinton Equal Employment Opportunity Commission tried to implement regulations which would have banned all mention of God, Christianity, the Bible, or any religion in the American workplace. The Clinton Administration backed off after over a million irate phone calls, faxes, and letters from Christians opposing this banning of religious free speech swamped the Congress.
Twenty-five actions on the job that, according to retired senator Hank Brown (R-CO), would have been prohibited by the EEOC.
1 Wearing a cross around the neck, wrist, or any openly visible part of the body.
2 Wearing a yarmulke (yarmulkeh), a century-old tradition of Jews wearing a head covering while they are attending synagogue. Orthodox Jews, however, wear the head covering seven days a week.
3 Displaying a picture of Christ on an office desk or wall.
4 Wearing a T-shirt, hat, or other clothing that has any religious emblem or phrasing on its face.
5 Displaying a Bible or other religious book on a desk or otherwise making the same openly visible in an office or lounge area.
6 Hosting Christmas, Hanukkah, Thanksgiving, or Easter celebrations, parties or events in any forth that have any focus on Christ, God or other religious connotations.
7 Celebrations or parties in any forth which have any religious focus or reference.
8 Opening or closing prayer or invocation at a company program banquet, celebration, or event.
9 Witnessing the gospel, sharing your faith, and generally speaking to other employees about religion.
10 Nativity displays or scenes.
11 Inviting a fellow employee to a synagogue, church, temple or other place of worship.
12 Conversations about religion or religious groups, functions, and events.
13 Prayer breakfasts.
14 Singing or humming a religious song while at a copy machine.
15 Serving only pork or beef at a company Fourth of July picnic.
16 Having a local church choir or school choir come in for a Christmas celebration and sing any songs which make reference to Christ, God or any religion or religious principle (Christmas carols would be out!)
17 Telling any Joke (regardless of the innocence of the subject matter or intent) that refers to an! religion or religious group whatsoever.
18 Giving a fellow employee a holiday card, birthday card, get-well card, greeting card, or plaque which includes any religious reference.
19 Making reference to Christ, God or any religious figure or subject matter in a company mission, plan or goal statement.
20 Praying while in the workplace.
21 The display of calendars or ”thoughts of the day” books which make reference to Scripture or religious sayings.
22 Displaying any religious artwork, book, devotional, figure, symbol or trinket in an openly visible area.
23 Hosting a Bible study or other religious gathering.
24 Company uniform and work apparel requirements.
25 Almost any form of religious expression in the work place.
(ED. NOTE: Do you get the idea? The political left is serious about shutting down Christians and their free speech!!)
Columnist Don Feder put the matter into historical perspective. Coming soon to your office-courtesy of Bill Clinton and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission-the religion free workplace. The areas in which religion is tolerated in our society are constantly contracting. In the 60s school prayer was eliminated. Since then, invocations at graduation have been banned, Christmas decorations and caroling are out, and even voluntary, student-initiated activities (Bible study groups, etc.) are suspect.
The Clinton Administration is likely to push this EEOC ban on religious free speech again during its second term when the time seems right (i.e. when the growing anti-Christian sentiment is deemed to be high enough)
[ED. NOTE: The above article is excerpted from this writer’s new book Storm Warning: The (coming Persecution of Christians and Traditionalists in America, now due to be published in the first quarter of 1997. Three excellent books were utilized in the researching and writing of this article (and book), and are highly recommended to MIA readers:
1) The Extermination of Christianity The Tyranny of’ the Consensus by Paul and Robert Schenck. Huntington House Publisher. 1993 (ED. NOTE: For a copy of this excellent book write to Reverend Paul Schenck. American Center for Law and Justice P O Box 64424. Virginia Beach. VA 23467 cost $15 (postage and handling included) This book is HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!
2) The Gates of’ Hell Shall Not Prevail. The Attack on Christianity and What You Need to Know to Combat It. Dr. D James Kennedy publisher Thomas Nelson. 1 996
3) Preparing For The Coming Persecution. Dr. Larry Poland. director of Master Media. Here’s Life Publishers 1990.
THE ABOVE MATERIAL WAS PUBLISHED BY THE MCALVANY INTELLIGENCE ADVISOR, JANUARY 1997, PAGES 1-13. THIS MATERIAL IS COPYRIGHTED AND MAY BE USED FOR STUDY & RESEARCH PURPOSES ONLY.
