Patrick J. Buchanan: Whose Side Is God on Now?

By Patrick J. Buchanan 

In his Kremlin defense of Russia’s annexation of Crimea, Vladimir Putin, even before he began listing the battles where Russian blood had been shed on Crimean soil, spoke of an older deeper bond. 

Crimea, said Putin, “is the location of ancient Khersones, where Prince Vladimir was baptized. His spiritual feat of adopting Orthodoxy predetermined the overall basis of the culture, civilization and human values that unite the peoples of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus.”

Russia is a Christian country, Putin was saying. 

South Carolina Charter School Reverses Ban on Christmas Carols; Alliance Defending Freedom Sends Letter to 13,000 School Districts Explaining "Free Exercise" of Faith is Still Permitted

Letter explains First Amendment protections for Christmas expression, participation

This Rock Hill, South Carolina charter school has reversed a previous ban on Christmas carols.

Alliance Defending Freedom issued a letter Wednesday to more than 13,000 school districts nationwide to explain constitutional protections for religious Christmas carols that some districts have censored due to misinterpretations of the First Amendment. The letter also backs up the legitimacy of schools participating in community service projects sponsored by religious organizations and offers free legal assistance to districts that need help.

“Schools shouldn’t have to think twice about whether they can celebrate Christmas,” said Senior Legal Counsel Jeremy Tedesco. “School districts can and should allow religious Christmas carols to be part of their school productions, and they can lawfully help impoverished children through community service projects such as Operation Christmas Child.”

The letter cites recent examples of school districts in Wisconsin and New Jersey that wrongly censored Christmas carols in school productions and then changed their positions in response to public outcry and letters from Alliance Defending Freedom explaining that the inclusion of religious carols is permissible.

As the letter explains, “every federal court that has examined the issue has determined that including traditional Christmas carols and other religious music in school music programs fully complies with the First Amendment….”

Most recently, a South Carolina charter school reportedly cancelled its participation in Samaritan Purse’s Operation Christmas Child, a toy drive for needy children, after a humanist group threatened the school with legal action.

“Public schools’ confusion about this issue and the legalities of celebrating Christmas in other ways has been largely caused by inaccurate information about the Establishment Clause spread by certain groups opposed to any religious expression occurring in public,” the nationwide letter states. “Alliance Defending Freedom has produced a Christmas Memo and a Christmas and Public Schools Myths/Fact Sheet that dispel these misconceptions….

Providing students an opportunity to put together a box of gifts for impoverished children throughout the world does not become unlawful just because the toy drive is sponsored by a religious organization.”

“The Constitution both allows and protects the celebration of Christmas in public schools,” added Senior Counsel Kevin Theriot. “We hope the materials we are providing to school districts will help clear up the misinformation that groups attempting to cleanse all traces of religion from the public square have spread for far too long.”

A December 2011 Rasmussen poll found that 79 percent of American adults believe public schools should celebrate religious holidays.

South Carolina Charter School Bans Christmas Carols From Concert After Receiving Legal Threat From Secularist Organization

A public charter school was recently warned by an unidentified, anti-religion organization to not perform faith-based Christmas carols during their winter concert and threatened that they would pursue possible litigation if they did not comply.

The band director at York Preparatory Academy in Rock Hill, S.C., decided to exclude "Joy to the World" and "O Come All Ye Faithful," from their Dec. 19 performance after the school received the letter, even though the songs were going to be a part of the program before the communication was sent out by the organization.

Read more at The Christian Post >>

Turbans, Kippas and Crucifixes Could Be Banned in Quebec Public Institutions Under Parti Quebecois Proposal

MONTREAL — Quebec has launched its next debate on minority accommodation — and this one could make the erstwhile soccer-turban ban look like a leisurely stroll on the pitch.

The government is preparing to introduce long-awaited legislation that would restrict religious symbols in numerous places.

A media report Tuesday with leaked details of the Parti Quebecois government’s “Charter of Quebec Values” says the proposed policy will prohibit public employees from donning Sikh, Jewish and Muslim headwear in the workplace.

Read more at National Post >>

Christians Face Judgement Day In Strasbourg 'Right To Wear The Cross' Case

A senior figure in the Church of England has warned that if Christians lose a landmark case in the European Court of Human Rights this week it will amount to “clear discrimination against the Christian faith”. 

Rulings: Lilian Ladele, left, a Christian registrar who declined to conduct civil partnership ceremonies, and Nadia Eweida, who was ordered to remove her cross by BA Photo: JANE MINGAY/HEATHCLIFF O'MALLEY

Judges at Strasbourg will rule on Tuesday whether four Christians were discriminated against at work, including two women who claim they were forced out of their jobs for wearing the cross. 
The British government is fighting the cases, arguing that because crosses are not a “requirement” of the Christian faith, employers can forbid the wearing of such symbols and sack workers who insist on doing so. 

Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali, the former bishop of Rochester, said ministers must move swiftly to clarify the law, as they have promised to do, if the applicants’ case is rejected under the European Convention on Human Rights. 

The four Christians have also secured the backing of Lord Carey, the former archbishop of Canterbury, who said Christians were being “persecuted” by the courts and “driven underground”. 

Lord Carey added: “The secular human rights agenda has gone too far.” 

Read the rest of this entry at The Telegraph >>

A Godless Party Expels the Creator

By Patrick J. Buchanan

 "No platform celebrating homosexual marriage and backing a woman's right to abort her child at any time in her pregnancy can be credibly adopted by a party that also purports to revere the God of our Founding Fathers."

 

The authors of the Democratic platform have inadvertently revealed to the world the sea change that has taken place in that party we once knew.

For the first time -- and in the longest Democratic platform in history, 26,000 words -- there was not a single mention of God, the Creator, whom Thomas Jefferson himself, father of the party, proclaimed to be the author of our right to life and liberty.

The convention had approved the new platform, but when a firestorm erupted, a panicked Barack Obama hastily ordered "God" reinstated.
 

Religion Is Not the Enemy

A remarkable agnostic, Marcello Pera, explains why.

From The American Spectator 

By Philip F. Lawler

Why We Should Call Ourselves Christians: The Religious Roots of Free Societies
By Marcello Pera
(Encounter Books, 224 pages, $23.95)

You were taught that pious platitude that you can't judge a book by its cover. But the truth is that usually you can. This one, for instance, looked easy. You read the title: Why We Should Call Ourselves Christians. You saw that the preface is written by Pope Benedict XVI. You could already guess what you would find on the inside pages. And you would be wrong.

Michael Bloomberg - the Model for a Second Obama Administration

If anyone needs a glimpse of what a second Obama term might look like, they could do no better than to look at Mayor Michael Bloomberg, New York City's despotic enforcer of political correctness and defender of a far-left secularist order.  

Bloomberg's radical promotion of the homosexual agenda has included allowing pornographic parades in front of Saint Patrick's Cathedral, and before the Legislature changed state marriage law, he suggested that anyone could skirt  the law by simply changing their sex on their birth certificate.  He has been insistent on allowing Muslims to build a mosque at Ground Zero, but refused to allow prayers and the participation of Christian and Jewish clergy at the tenth anniversary ceremonies commemorating the 9/11 attack. All the world knows that the New York Fire Department was the first responder that tragic day, with scores heroically giving their lives.  But the statist despot whose peeves and preferences govern New York also announced that there wasn't enough room to include New York firemen at the 9/11 tenth anniversary ceremonies.

He has insisted that the Orthodox Jewish tradition of gender separation is "obviously not permitted," and while he imposes criminal penalties on those not observing speech codes when it comes to the homosexual community, he has publicly complained that his neighbors at the American Irish Historical Society are "people that are totally inebriated and hanging out windows."  

The Mayor demands television and radio air time to tell New York parents how they should dress their children for school, given weather conditions.  He has threatened  a severe limitation on the number of establishments permitted to serve alcohol, and he has mandated salt limits in the recipes of New York City cooks and chefs.  

Throughout the United States many faith communities rent space in public school buildings on weekends or when the facilities are not in use.  Now, Bloomberg has decided that even that association threatens the militant secularism he wants enforced in New York City Public Schools.  While every other civic and non-profit organization will be free to rent space in the schools, faith communities are to be banned.  

Bloomberg is a classic example of a totalitarian statist with a secularist agenda to impose.  His regime offers a frightening glimpse of an America planned by the Obama regime when they are freed of reelection concerns.

From WorldNetDaily

By Bob Unruh
Rental ban called unconstitutional, damaging

A federal judge has suggested that churches in New York have a solid argument under the Free Exercise and Establishment clauses of the United States Constitution to be allowed to rent public school facilities like other organizations, and she has issued a temporary restraining order allowing that to continue for another 10 days.

Air Force Removes ‘God’ From Logo

From WorldNetDaily

A Virginia lawmaker is calling on the Air Force to reverse a decision to remove a Latin reference to “God” from a logo after an atheist group complained.

Rep. Randy Forbes, (R-VA), said the Air Force removed the logo several weeks ago from the Rapid Capabilities Office. The patch included a line written in Latin that read, “Doing God’s Work with Other People’s Money.”

But after the Military Association of Atheists and Freethinkers complained, Forbes said the line was rewritten in Latin to read, “Doing Miracles with Other People’s Money.”

Pope Sees Religious Freedom Eroding in US

From Catholic World News

Pope Benedict XVI issued a solemn warning about the erosion of religious freedom in the United States, in a January 19 address to visiting American bishops.

The Holy Father told the American prelates, who were making their ad limina visits, that “it is imperative that the entire Catholic community in the United States come to realize the grave threats to the Church’s public moral witness presented by a radical secularism which finds increasing expression in the political and cultural spheres.” He added: “The seriousness of these threats needs to be clearly appreciated at every level of ecclesial life.”

Without Return to Christian Culture U.S. Will Face Future as Conglomeration of Enclaves

From Spirit Daily

We have been talking about Bethlehem and the amazing fact that this town so crucial to Christianity is now walled off from Jerusalem and totally Arab in population (although thirty percent of the Arabs are Christian).

Across and throughout the Holy Land are such barriers and enclaves, the fences slashing across desert the Holy Family once traversed. Will there one day be encirclements -- not as extreme, but enclaves -- in the U.S.?

More to the point: will major future events involve Israel? And how -- surrounded by enemies, but also with many Muslim enclaves within its own borders (entire towns), or in the occupied zones -- can the nation possibly survive?

(The number of Christian Arabs diminished greatly after Israel built settlements here.)

One day, there may be division in North America -- the U.S. and Canada -- as there is now in Israel.

England’s Saints Have Been Written Out of History

Our isle was once a land of saints, but now there is a trend to consign all religious people to the dustbin of history

St. Etheldreda at St. Peter and St. Paul Church, Ampton, Suffolk

From The Catholic Herald (UK)

By Fr. Alexander Lucie-Smith

Today, under the old dispensation, which may yet return, would have been Corpus Christi, and at least in the Cathedral town of Arundel, it still is, and thousands of people will be rushing down to West Sussex to see the magnificent carpet of flowers and to take part in the solemn Mass and procession at 5.30pm. I, sadly, cannot be with them, and for those in that position, I offer some consolation in a reflection of today’s very English saint, St Etheldreda.

Etheldreda (630-679), sometimes called Audrey, was a royal princess, daughter of a king, twice married, second time around to the King of Northumbria; nevertheless she remained a virgin, took religious vows, and founded the Abbey of Ely. The Viking invaders later destroyed her abbey, but it was restored in more peaceful days, only to be suppressed once more in the 16th century by Henry VIII.

The period in which she lived is often called the Dark Ages. We ourselves live in a period of self-proclaimed Enlightenment. But these are broad brush terms, and as Catholics we believe in a hermeneutic of continuity: the past is not to be swept away, but rather should inspire us and provide us with a firm foundation for future progress. So we can learn, even from the Dark Ages. Sadly, St Etheldreda is now an almost forgotten historical figure, remembered in few places. The heroes of our history are those who destroyed her abbey, and who did so much damage to the fabric of our nation.

Top Ten Anti-Christian Events in 2010

Defend Christians.Org, a ministry of the Christian Anti-Defamation Commission, has just released its annual top ten list of anti-Christian acts in America for 2010. The surprising list is selected through an online poll of Christians and people of good will who are part of Defend Christians.Org.

"The poll results demonstrate a double standard is being applied against Christians and their faith, values and liberty," said Dr. Gary Cass, Chairman and CEO. "If these same types of actions were taken against other groups one would call it bigoted. We are exposing the shameful behavior of bashing Christ and biblical values for what it is, "Christophobia;" the irrational fear and hatred of Christ and His Word."

"Every year the list of attacks grows as godless secular values are inflaming the minds of many against Almighty God, Jesus Christ and Christianity. Most of the attacks are merely rhetorical. Increasingly they are becoming codified into policies that encroach on Christian's academic freedom and liberty of conscience. Freedom of speech is denied to Christians while they are slandered by radical organizations. In extreme cases the hatred boils over into violence," says Rev. Cass.

The 2010 Top Ten List include...

1. The Employment Non-Discrimination Act; a proposed federal bill that would force ministries, including churches, to hire people who oppose their beliefs or who live in open defiance of their values.

3. Julea Ward and Jennifer Keeton are two Christian students expelled from their respective Master's programs in counseling at two different universities because they wouldn't deny their faith and affirm the validity of the homosexual lifestyle.

5. Christians are denied their civil rights and falsely arrested for disorderly conduct at an annual Arab festival in Dearborn, Michigan for peacefully sharing the gospel. This happened the previous year, too. The Christians were acquitted both times of all charges.

9. The Southern Poverty Law Center, a liberal ACLU-like organization, has continued to label many mainstream Christian organizations that promote traditional marriage as "hate groups" and "anti-gay" in lists that include violent racists groups.

For the complete list visit www.DefendChristians.org.

EU Abolishes Christmas

From Cranmer

You might think this to be one of the ‘Euromyths’ – right up there with straight bananas, the re-classification of the carrot as a fruit and the EU-wide harmonisation of condom size.

Except that the European Commission really have produced a new religiously-correct daily planner (aimed, naturally, at school children) in which it really is always winter but never Christmas.

Or always Diwali, Hanukkah and Eid but never Christmas, to be precise.

His Grace is loath to exaggerate or distort this story in any way, lest it be classified as just another Euromyth.

These daily planners, of which three million have produced (courtesy of the taxpayer), include the holidays of Jews, Muslims, Sikhs and Hindus, but there is not one mention of Christian holidays.

Despite Christians manifestly constituting the vast majority of the European Union.

You might expect them to omit Ascension Sunday, Lent and the Feast Day of the Blessed John Henry Cardinal Newman.

But Christmas and Easter?

The page for December 25th is completely empty, and at the bottom is the following message:

"A true friend is someone who shares your worries and your joy.”

That’s nice.

And evidence, if any were needed, that Christians have no true friends in the inner sanctuaries of the European Union.

It is even more astonishing that this planner not only includes the holy days of just about every religion except Christianity: it also mentions the secular key dates of significance to the European Union, like ‘Europe Day’.

Johanna Touzel, spokesperson for COMECE (the pathologically-federalist Commission of the Bishops' Conferences of the European Union) found the planner ‘unbelievable’.

It is even more incroyable when you consider that our President is a devout Roman Catholic who sees the EU as a ‘Christian club’.

Doubtless he will gloss over this a typo.

To omit one Christian festival may be regarded as an error; to omit two looks like carelessness.

But to omit all of them looks like conspiracy.

Or at least incontrovertible corroborative evidence that the EU is a God-less, Marxist, secular, religiously and politically-correct, totalitarian, omnipotent beast quite antithetical to Christians, Christianity and the message of Christ

Eastern Michigan University: Change Your Christian Beliefs or Leave Program

Legislators Question Expulsion of Christian Students

Lawmakers in Michigan are preparing to call on the carpet leaders of taxpayer-supported universities across the state after top officials at Eastern Michigan University expelled from a counseling program a Christian student who refused to argue in support of the homosexual lifestyle.

Read the rest of this entry >>

Top Ten Anti-Christian Attacks in 2009

The Christian Anti-Defamation Commission (CADC) has released its list of the top ten incidents of anti-Christian defamation, bigotry and discrimination in the US from last year. The list was selected by the subscribers to CADC's e-mail list and was selected from a list of twenty of CADC's top stories from 2009.

"It is arguable that anti-Christian hatred has spilled over into material forms of persecution in 2009," said Dr. Gary Cass of the Christian Anti-Defamation Commission. "Christians were killed and bullied for their witness, ministers and churches threatened with violence and vandalized for standing for marriage, and Christians were fired for not compromising their faith. If these are not bona fide examples of persecution, than I wonder what more it might take?"

The Top Ten Anti-Christian headlines for 2009 according to CADC subscribers are,

10. Pro-life Pastor Reverend Walter Hoye of Oakland, CA was jailed for exercising peaceful, pro-life speech.

9. Rev. Fred Winters was murdered while preaching in his pulpit in Maryville, Illinois.

8. HBO's program "Curb Your Enthusiasm" aired an episode where the main actor urinates on painting of Jesus. When confronted HBO would not apologize.

7. The overt homosexual participation in Obama's presidential inaugural events by "Bishop" Vickie Eugene Robinson, the Gay Men's Chorus of Washington D. C., and a homosexual marching band.

6. Police called to East Jessamine Middle School in Lexington, Kentucky to stop 8th graders from praying during their lunch break for a student whose mother was tragically killed.

5. Pro-life activist Jim Pullion was murdered in front of his granddaughter's high school for showing the truth about abortion.

4. An activist judge ordered a home school mom in New Hampshire to stop home schooling her daughter because the little girl "reflected too strongly" her mother's Christian faith.

3. The Federal Department of Homeland Security issued a report entitled "Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate" that labeled conservative Christians extremists and potential terrorists.

2. President Obama's appointment of radical anti-Christians like homosexual activist Kevin Jennings as the "safe school czar;" pro-abortion advocate Kathleen Seblius made Secretary of Human and Health Services, and Chai Feldblum, pro-homosexual and anti-religious liberty judge nominated for Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

1. The Federal Hate Crimes Bill that attacks religious liberty and freedom of speech. For the first time in our history ministers are vulnerable to investigation and prosecution for telling the truth about homosexuality.

Root Cause of the War on Christmas

From the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights

Catholic League president Bill Donohue explains why the war on Christmas exists:

“The root cause of the war on Christmas, which is conducted almost exclusively by well-educated white people in the U.S., Canada, Europe and Australia—the very same people who like gay marriage—has almost nothing to do with fidelity to law (the First Amendment in the U.S.): it has to do with ideology.

“The ideology is plainly an expression of left-wing secularism, and it is nothing if not anti-Western and anti-Christian. At its worst, it is driven by hatred; at its best, it is driven by a defensive posture, a deep sense of embarrassment over the legacy of Western civilization. There is no historical or moral justification for either. Moreover, those who are pushing this agenda generally lie about their work.

“When Patricia Short, the principal of Will Rogers Elementary in Ventura County, California, says of the school’s holiday choir that ‘We can’t have anything with a religious reference,’ she is flatly wrong: not only is there no law barring religious songs being sung in the public schools, the courts have affirmed just the opposite (see the 1980 U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision, Florey v. Sioux Falls School District). To show how duplicitous these cultural fascists are, consider that when a Jewish woman from North Carolina failed to get an elementary school to ban ‘Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer,’ she pushed to get a Hanukkah song sung. So it’s not religious songs that bother her, just Christian ones.

“Want proof that hate is driving this assault? The head of the ACLU in New Hampshire, Claire Ebel, advises that if crèches are allowed in parks, it is permissible ‘for a display of satanic ritual.’ And this hatred of Christmas is not exclusive to the U.S. In England, Muslim preacher Anjem Choudary called Christmas ‘evil’ in a recent sermon. No wonder they are banning words like ‘bishop,’ ‘chapel,’ ‘monk’ and ‘nun’ from the Oxford Junior Dictionary. And all of this is being endorsed, if not promoted, by self-hating Christians, as well.”

Cal Thomas on Britain's Loss of Faith

The release of "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows," the final book in the Harry Potter series, has momentarily diverted the public's attention from certain realities: The weather, which normally depresses during winter months when there is less sunlight, has been crying unmercifully on Britain, bringing what the Daily Telegraph calls "chaos and misery" as homes are flooded, flights are canceled or delayed and train and subway service is disrupted.

A government document obtained by the media reveals that Britain has nearly "run out of troops" to defend the country or fight abroad. The Conservative Party, under leader David Cameron, failed to win the first by-election since Gordon Brown assumed the premiership, coming in third. The Tories appear to have gotten the message not to mimic the Labour Party. A Tory supplement recently published in the Daily Telegraph entitled "Breakdown Britain: A Guide to Our Broken Society and How to Fix It" mainly emphasizes those issues -- family breakdown, economic independence, personal responsibility, education choice -- the Tories had downplayed in a failed attempt to cross dress as "compassionate conservatives."

Nowhere does Britain's breakdown and loss of direction appear with greater clarity than in the inconsistent ways the courts are treating faith. A nation that has had its ups and down with religion throughout its long history -- and is now challenged over how to accommodate its growing Muslim population -- appears openly hostile to anything that resembles Christianity and the dwindling number of church-goers who still practice that faith.

Three recent legal cases highlight the British establishment's growing anti-Christian animosity and spiritual confusion.

An employment tribunal ruled that a Church of England bishop, the Rt. Rev. Anthony Priddis, discriminated against a homosexual man who had applied for a position as a youth worker when Priddis questioned him about his sexual practices and a previous same-sex relationship.

The bishop said he asked the man about his lifestyle because it "has the potential to impact on the spiritual, moral and ethical leadership within the diocese." The tribunal ruled the youth worker position falls outside the religious exemptions allowed in the country's Employment Equality (Sexual Orientation) Regulations 2003.

The British media are full of stories about pedophiles, as they have been about Catholic priests, who have preyed upon young boys. In rational times, the sexual behavior of one applying for a youth worker position might seem a plausible line of questioning, but these are not rational times. The court is considering what damages to award the 42-year-old applicant.

Another case that adds to the sense of societal breakdown involves 16-year-old Lydia Playfoot. A court ruled that Playfoot's school is within its rights when it prohibited her from wearing a small "chastity ring" to demonstrate her commitment to remain a virgin until she marries. The court ruled the ring is not a "proper manifestation" of her faith. The Playfoot family must pay $24,699 in court costs for bringing the case against the school. The girl's father, the Rev. Phil Playfoot, said, "This country is tolerant of any views except those of Christians."

A society that forgets what it stands for quickly loses its ability to fight against threats to its existence. The media carry stories about drunkenness, drug use, cohabitation, spousal abuse, rape, child abuse, child abandonment and other threats to societal cohesion.

Britain is broken. The cause runs deeper than the Tories can address, even if they win the next election, which seems unlikely.

Repairing what ails Britain will require a higher power than the fictional Harry Potter, or the high courts, which are quickly removing what remains of this country's religious heritage and traditions and practices, offering nothing but chaos in their place, which will have more long-lasting consequences than July's floods.