Tag Archives: Secularism

News

Good news! Liberty University offers scholarship to persecuted Eagle Scout

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This is such a heart-warming story that I had to post it!

Fox News reports.

A North Carolina Eagle Scout who was arrested and faces expulsion for accidentally leaving a shotgun in his pickup truck in the school parking lot has been offered a scholarship to attend Liberty University.

Cole Withrow was just a few weeks from graduating with honors from Princeton High School when he was arrested on Monday and slapped with a felony weapons charge. Withrow had been skeet shooting with friends a day before and had only noticed he had left his shotgun in his truck as he reached to grab his book bag.

When he realized his mistake, he went to the front office and called his mother. An administrator overheard the conversation and called police.

Withrow’s story has generated national attention. Hundreds of people have joined a Facebook community to show their support. And many local parents are upset over what many believe is a case of a young man getting severely punished for trying to do the right thing.

“You teach your kids if you’re in trouble or if you see you’ve done something wrong, go ahead and admit it,” family friend Kimberly Boykin said. “Be a man and it’ll be fixed. In this case, that’s what he did and he’s being punished for it. That’s not the lesson we need to teach our kids.”

Jerry Falwell, Jr., the chancellor of Liberty University, had been traveling through North Carolina and saw a local television news account of Withrow’s ordeal. He also noticed that the 18-year-old was wearing a “Liberty University” t-shirt.

Falwell told Fox News that he made a few calls and discovered that Withrow’s sister is a Liberty graduate.

“I was really impressed with what a meek and humble Christian kid he is,” Falwell said. “I thought he would be a perfect fit at Liberty.”

So the chancellor made the 18-year-old an offer he couldn’t refuse.

“I told him that we would give him whatever scholarships he needed to attend Liberty University,” he said.

Falwell said the university is willing to do whatever it takes to make sure the teenager gets a college education.

“The anti-gun zealots seem to be vilifying him for making an honest mistake,” he told Fox News. “We want to reward him for trying to do the right thing.”

And that means even helping the young man finish his last few weeks of high school. Falwell said they offered to let him finish his high school work through their online academy.

Wow! Isn’t that a great way to show the public school tyrants a better way? Be sure and share / tweet this story if you liked it, because it really shows how Christians can step up and do the right thing when the secular left is too brainwashed by political correctness make a right judgment.

Commentary

Department of Defense states that it will punish Christians for evangelizing

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ECM posted this story from Breitbart.

Excerpt:

The Pentagon has released a statement confirming that soldiers could be prosecuted for promoting their faith: “Religious proselytization is not permitted within the Department of Defense…Court martials and non-judicial punishments are decided on a case-by-case basis…”.

The statement, released to Fox News, follows a Breitbart News report on Obama administration Pentagon appointees meeting with anti-Christian extremist Mikey Weinstein to develop court-martial procedures to punish Christians in the military who express or share their faith.

(From our earlier report: Weinstein is the head of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, and says Christians–including chaplains–sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ in the military are guilty of “treason,” and of committing an act of “spiritual rape” as serious a crime as “sexual assault.” He also asserted that Christians sharing their faith in the military are “enemies of the Constitution.”)

Being convicted in a court martial means that a soldier has committed a crime under federal military law. Punishment for a court martial can include imprisonment and being dishonorably discharged from the military.

So President Barack Obama’s civilian appointees who lead the Pentagon are confirming that the military will make it a crime–possibly resulting in imprisonment–for those in uniform to share their faith. This would include chaplains—military officers who are ordained clergymen of their faith (mostly Christian pastors or priests, or Jewish rabbis)–whose duty since the founding of the U.S. military under George Washington is to teach their faith and minister to the spiritual needs of troops who come to them for counsel, instruction, or comfort.

This regulation would severely limit expressions of faith in the military, even on a one-to-one basis between close friends. It could also effectively abolish the position of chaplain in the military, as it would not allow chaplains (or any service members, for that matter), to say anything about their faith that others say led them to think they were being encouraged to make faith part of their life. It’s difficult to imagine how a member of the clergy could give spiritual counseling without saying anything that might be perceived in that fashion.

Wow. So you can be openly gay in the military but you can’t be openly Christian. Thanks Barack Obama.

See, the problem is that the people who pass these laws think that a person can be a Christian without evangelizing. But Christianity is a missionary faith, there is an obligation to evangelize included in the practices of an authentic Christian life. To forbid evangelism is to be intolerant of genuine Christainity. The people who made this law are ordering Christians to override their obligations to Jesus Christ. It’s essentially fascism – using the power of secular government to force individuals to deny their freely chosen religion.

Let me illustrate from the Bible exactly what is expected of Christians.

Matthew 10:32-33:

32“Whoever acknowledges me before men, I will also acknowledge him before my Father in heaven.

33But whoever disowns me before men, I will disown him before my Father in heaven.

Deuteronomy 6:4-9:

4 Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.

5 Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.

6 These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts.

7 Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.

8 Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads.

9 Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.

That’s what’s at stake here. These are just a couple of examples, there are many more.

People on the left should reflect and understand what it is exactly that they are doing by marginalizing Christianity and trying to stop people from believing it by shaming and intimidating Christians, and leading people into sin. If Christianity is true, then actions like that are probably the absolute worst thing you can do. It’s particularly nasty when you realize that the reason that secular leftists try to suppress Christians from being authentic Christians is because of their feelings. Secular leftists feel that they have a right to suppress the freedoms of others by force of law. They feel justified in forcing Christians to act like atheists because they feel offended.

Let’s double-check that with the Bible and make sure. (Note: This is Jesus talking)

Matthew 18:6-14:

6 “If anyone causes one of these little ones—those who believe in me—to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.

7 Woe to the world because of the things that cause people to stumble! Such things must come, but woe to the person through whom they come!

8 If your hand or your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life maimed or crippled than to have two hands or two feet and be thrown into eternal fire.

9 And if your eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into the fire of hell.

10 “See that you do not despise one of these little ones. For I tell you that their angels in heaven always see the face of my Father in heaven.

12 “What do you think? If a man owns a hundred sheep, and one of them wanders away, will he not leave the ninety-nine on the hills and go to look for the one that wandered off?

13 And if he finds it, truly I tell you, he is happier about that one sheep than about the ninety-nine that did not wander off.

14 In the same way your Father in heaven is not willing that any of these little ones should perish.

Trying to persuade a Christian that they are wrong is fine, but using the power of the state to take away a faithful Christian’s job, which discourages them from being Christian, is something else. It is wrong to intimidate someone away from an authentic relationship with God as he really is, just because of your feelings of discomfort at public expressions of religious faith. The right of each person to express their religion in public is a basic right, but there is no right not to be offended by someone else’s use of liberty to just be themselves. No one is asking for non-Christians to be forced to convert to Christianity or to be forced to celebrate and affirm Christianity by the power of the state. We’re just asking to be who we are without losing our jobs.

News

Five terrorist attacks succeeded under Obama, but none succeeded under Bush after 9/11

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The Weekly Standard reports.

Excerpt:

Congressman Tom Cotton took to the House floor “to express grave doubts about the Obama Administration’s counterterrorism policies and programs”.

“I rise today to express grave doubts about the Obama Administration’s counterterrorism policies and programs,” said the freshman congressman from Arkansas. “Counterterrorism is often shrouded in secrecy, as it should be, so let us judge by the results. In barely four years in office, five jihadists have reached their targets in the United States under Barack Obama: the Boston Marathon bomber, the underwear bomber, the Times Square Bomber, the Fort Hood shooter, and in my own state—the Little Rock recruiting office shooter. In the over seven years after 9/11 under George W. Bush, how many terrorists reached their target in the United States? Zero! We need to ask, ‘Why is the Obama Administration failing in its mission to stop terrorism before it reaches its targets in the United States?’

FIVE terrorist attacks linked to Islamic fundamentalism under Obama, but ZERO such attacks once Bush got serious after the 9/11 attack.

This accusation comes on the heels of a new Congressional report that shows that the Obama administration did indeed lie to cover up their failures on the Benghazi debacle.

The Washington Times summarized what’s in the report:

The report says the State Department quickly notified the White House that the attack was taking place in Benghazi, and that within two hours of the start of the attack the department was telling the White House that al Qaeda-linked Ansar al-Sharia was claiming responsibility for it.

“In an ‘Ops Alert’ issued shortly after the attack began, the State Department Operations Center notified senior Department officials, the White House Situation Room, and others, that the Benghazi compound was under attack and that ‘approximately 20 armed people fired shots; explosions have been heard as well,’” said the report.

“Two hours later, the Operations Center issued an alert that al-Qa’ida linked Ansar al-Sharia (AAS) claimed responsibility for the attack and had called for an attack on Embassy Tripoli,” said the report. “Neither alert mentioned that there had been a protest at the location of the attacks. Further, Administration documents provided to the Committees show that there was ample evidence that the attack was planned and intentional. The coordinated, complex, and deadly attack on the [CIA’s] Annex [down the road from the State Department mission]–that included sophisticated weapons–is perhaps the strongest evidence that the attacks were not spontaneous. “

“The U.S. government knew immediately that the attacks constituted an act of terror,” says the report.

The report says that the Obama administration purged references to al Qaeda from the talking points that U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice used when she appeared on Sept. 16 on five Sunday talks shows to discuss the Benghazi attacks.

“After the attacks, the Administration perpetuated a deliberately misleading and incomplete narrative that the violence grew out of a demonstration caused by a YouTube video,” says the report. “The Administration consciously decided not to discuss extremist involvement or previous attacks against Western interests in Benghazi.”

“To protect the State Department, the Administration deliberately removed references to al Qaeda-linked groups and previous attacks in Benghazi in the talking points used by Ambassador Rice, thereby perpetuating the deliberately misleading and incomplete narrative that the attacks evolved from a demonstration caused by a YouTube video,” says the report.

The reports criticizes the administration for responding to the attack as a criminal event requiring an FBI investigation rather than as an act of terrorism against the United States requiring a military response.

Investors Business Daily is flat out saying that Hillary Clinton lied to cover up the Benghazi attack. (H/T Doug Ross)

The Obama administration ignored warnings from Russia

A third point to consider is this article from the Boston Globe. (H/T Hot Air)

Excerpt:

Russian authorities contacted the US government with concerns about Tamerlan Tsarnaev not once but “multiple’’ times, including an alert it sent after he was first investigated by FBI agents in Boston, raising new questions about whether the FBI should have paid more attention to the suspected Boston Marathon bomber, US senators briefed on the inves­tigation said Tuesday.

The FBI has previously said it interviewed Tsarnaev in early 2011 after it was initially contacted by the ­Russians. In their review, completed in summer 2011, the bureau found no ­evidence that Tsarnaev was a threat. “The FBI requested but did not receive more specific or additional information from” Russia, the agency said last week.

Following a closed briefing of the Senate Intelligence Committee Tuesday, Senator Richard Burr, a North Carolina Republican, said he believed that Russia alerted the United States about Tsarnaev in “multiple contacts,” including at least once since October 2011.

So, in view of these three points, why do you think it is that the Obama administration cannot keep us safe from attacks in the way that Bush could? Well, the first reason is that Bush was willing to go to war with states that harbored terrorists in order to deter future attacks. Obama pulls out of the places that are known to train and harbor terrorists. Terrorists interpret Obama’s retreats as weakness, and that’s why terrorist-sponsoring states feel confident about not cracking down within their own borders. Terrorists feared that Bush would do nasty things to them – like sanction strikes by Israel, or invading Syria, or blockading Iran – if they did not crack down on terrorism themselves and give up their WMDs (as Libya did).

The second reason is because Democrats can’t believe in their heart of hearts that evil could be caused by anyone other than America and conservative Americans. I’ve written before about how the Obama administration considers their political enemies to be the real terrorists. People who are pro-life, or want smaller government. That’s who this administration is focused on. So, we should not be surprised that the real terrorists are slipping by. Heck, we are even supplying terrorists with welfare to fund their attacks on us. Why shouldn’t we expect attacks to increase? We elected people who aren’t serious about dealing with our real enemies.