You may say that there is no
discrimination against Christians in United States or casually dismiss it
because Christians need no protection in America … because this is allegedly a
Christian nation and the overwhelming majority of Americans are Christian. But there is plenty of such discrimination. (read many of my former blog postings) Our nation’s laws don't say that everyone
except for members of majority groups is entitled to equal protection under the
law. They don't forbid discrimination
against only members of minority groups.
There is no question that our liberal
secular culture frequently targets Christians and Christian practices for
discriminatory treatment and rails against the expression of Christianity by
public officials or the presence of Christian symbols in the public square … whether
that be banning of Christmas trees in public squares, the censorship of
high-school valedictory speeches with references to Jesus Christ, the denial of
access to public facilities to certain Christian groups, or the forbidding of
the voluntary exchange of Christmas cards in some public school classrooms. Some even make the outlandishly argument that
the U.S. Constitution forbids public
officials from permitting their Christian beliefs to inform their policy positions.
Many of these discriminatory acts are
not grounded in the law … as evidenced by the many highly competent public interest
law firms specializing in religious liberty that do a great job of vindicating
Christian liberties. Despite the law,
discrimination against Christian liberties persists.
According to David Limbaugh, the
prevalence of political correctness fosters a climate of intimidation and also
causes many to assume Christians have less liberty than they do. For example, many assume high-school
administrators are within their rights to prohibit Christian references in
valedictory speeches on the ground that they violate the ‘establishment clause’
of the Constitution. “It apparently never occurs to them that when
a student refers to Jesus Christ, he is merely exercising his religious liberty
under the ‘free exercise clause’ of the Constitution
or a similar provision of a state constitution. Though both of those clauses in the 1st
Amendment exist to protect religious liberty, the government's practice, as
shown by these public school actions, is often to stifle religious liberty in
the phony name of protecting it,” says Limbaugh. Limbaugh goes on to say, “A similar
misunderstanding is behind a Millington, TN elementary teacher's forbidding her
10-year-old student from choosing God as her subject in an assignment to write
about the student's ‘idol.’”
Todd Starnes of FoxNews reported that the student, Erin Shead, told her mother that
her teacher wouldn't allow her to use God because it had something to do with
religion and that she had to take her paper about God home because it could not
remain on school property. Note that the
teacher didn't forbid the student's choice of God on the grounds that God is
not a person and thus outside the scope of the assignment. No, the ban was apparently on ‘church/state’ grounds.
A spokesman for the school district,
according to Starnes, said, “Teachers are prohibited from promoting religious beliefs
in the classroom.” To which Limbaugh
responds – “Fine, but what does that have to do with the incident at hand? This was a student, not her teacher,
discussing God.”
Our culture has become so paranoid
about the expression of Christianity in government-owned facilities that some teachers
obviously believe that they must forbid their students from voluntarily writing
about the God of the Bible in a harmless school assignment. Limbaugh concludes by asking – “Can someone
please explain how the student's unprompted selection of God as a subject for
her assignment violates the Constitution's
prohibition against establishing a national church?”
It is a sad commentary that militant
anti-Christian secularists have bullied passive, lukewarm Christians in our
society into surrendering their fundamental religious liberties in so many
cases. Whether the upset parties prevail
in correcting this action in Tennessee, the fact remains that Christians'
apathy and spinelessness are responsible for allowing such tyranny against
their own religious liberties – liberties whose protection was at the very forefront
of the foundation of this nation.
Rev.
Dr. Kenneth L. Beale, Jr.
Chaplain
(Colonel-Ret), U.S. Army
Pastor,
Ft. Snelling Memorial Chapel
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