Category: Religious Freedom

Religious organizations and persons of faith can expect to be dragged before courts and potentially face very severe penalties in the form of fines, jail time, even closure of churches and other places of worship simply for expressing and living out their religious convictions and beliefs.  

In a unanimous judgment Thursday, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of a faith-based foster care agency, saying the city of Philadelphia could not disqualify it because of its religious beliefs.

The high court noted that Catholic Social Services has “long been a point of light in the city’s foster-care system” and that the agency simply wishes to be allowed to “continue serving the children of Philadelphia in a manner consistent with its religious beliefs.”

HB 1239 prohibits government officials and agencies from ordering houses of worship closed

In this episode of The Bishop Strickland Show, the bishop of Tyler, Texas, calls on Christians in America to pay attention to the persecution of Catholic priests, bishops, and faithful in China. He also discusses the teachings of the Church on sexual morality, and whether proclaiming the truths of the faith on homosexuality and gender ideology is “too judgemental.”

The Biden Department of Justice briefly instigated outrage from progressives recently when it filed a routine legal brief promising to defend Title IX’s statutory exemption for religious colleges. The DOJ filed the brief to fend off efforts by religious colleges, some of whom are represented by Alliance Defending Freedom, to intervene in a lawsuit brought by 40 past and present LGBT college students who claim the exemption violates the U.S. Constitution.

The exemption safeguards the ability of religious colleges that receive federal funds to maintain faith-based polices governing such things as student sexual conduct and sex-specific student housing. The DOJ wrote in its brief that it shared the proposed intervenors’ “ultimate objective…to defend the statutory exemption and its current application.”

A Virginia school district has declared it will fight all the way to the state Supreme Court in order to punish a gym teacher for respectfully announcing his refusal to indulge “transgender pronouns” during a school board meeting.

Loudoun County Public Schools physical education teacher Byron “Tanner” Cross was placed on administrative leave after testifying before a school board meeting that he has only “love for those who suffer with gender dysphoria,” but “will never lie to them regardless of the consequences.”

While certainly religious liberty is a freedom worth defending, and good citizens should always stand up for the dictates of their conscience and moral preferences in the public square, I wonder if somewhere along the way some Christians and conservatives have lost sight of what it really means to be both.