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College in Colorado Denies Donor Request to Include Bible Verse on Plaque

The Colorado School of Mines sought to boost fundraising by offering donors a nameplate with an inscription of their choice, only to reject one donor’s message because it included references to two Bible verses.

The Alliance Defending Freedom announced in a press release Thursday that it has filed a federal lawsuit against the school alleging that its refusal to accept the request was a violation of the donor’s constitutional rights.

As part of a fundraising campaign for the Clear Creek Athletics Complex, CSM offered “naming opportunities” entailing a personalized nameplate on lockers in the facility’s football locker room, upon which donors could place a message or quote up to three lines long.

Michael Lucas, a 2003 CSM graduate who once played for the school’s football team, decided to take the school up on its offer, donating $2,500 and requesting that his quote include references to two Bible verses: Colossians 3:23 and Micah 5:9.

The Colossians verse reads: “Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters.” The Micah verse states: “Your hand will be lifted up against your adversaries, and all your enemies will be cut off.” (Read more from “College in Colorado Denies Donor Request to Include Bible Verse on Plaque” HERE)

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Oklahoma Republicans Offer to House 10 Commandments Monument

The interim chairman of the Oklahoma Republican Party thinks the best place for the Ten Commandments monument is on the grounds of the Capitol.

But, now, that a judge has ordered the monument be removed by Oct. 12, Estela Hernandez feels the area outside her office is the second best location . . .

While it’s not a done deal, Hernandez has thrown the GOP name in the hat for the new home of the controversial monument. She said the words of the scripture are directly in line with the principles of the republican party.

“It’s a reminder that we truly are a people with moral laws, with moral values and, when we start to dismiss the notion that God should not be in our schoolhouse and in our government, that’s when we start to lose or start to see a decline of our culture,” she said. “Those [are] principles that define us as Americans, that define us as to what our framers intended our nation to be. They sought out those Christian values, they sought out God’s wisdom. And, I truly believe Oklahomans share in those values” . . .

The American Civil Liberties Union, which led the fight to remove the monument from the Capitol grounds, said it would have no problem with the republicans housing the monument. Since the statue would stand on private property, Legal Director Brady Henderson said the location is perfectly legal. (Read more from “Oklahoma Republicans Offer to House 10 Commandments Monument” HERE)

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The Postal Service’s War on Religion Continues

458169256-e1441993099600U.S. Postal officials said Friday it was strictly “a business decision” when they opted to offer customers no new religiously themed holiday stamps in 2015, and not part of an effort to reduce religion’s influence in the U.S. Postal Service’s commemorative collection.

Mark Saunders, a spokesman for the U.S. Postal Service issued the comment in a letter to yesterday’s Daily Caller News Foundation report disclosing that the postal service will not be printing new religiously-oriented holiday stamps in 2015. Such stamps have been issued almost every year for more than half a century.

Saunders said in the letter that postal officials decided to end the practice of printing new religious stamps every year for Christmas, Chanukah, the Muslim Ramadan holiday of EID and Kwanzaa. The special stamps will now only be offered every other year.

Saunders did not say when the decision was made of who made it, but decisions about proposed commemorative stamps have been made since 1950s the Postal Service’s Citizens Advisory Stamp Committee.

No evidence was found of any public notice of denoting a change in postal policy, or any attempts to solicit public comment before implementing the new printing schedule. (Read more from “The Postal Service’s War on Religion Continues” HERE)

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Conservative Christian Group Defends US Schools From Atheists Who Want Football Chaplains Abolished

footballThe American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ), a conservative Christian-based organization has jumped into the fray between the atheist group Freedom from Religion Foundation (FFRF) and American colleges and universities.

Recently, the FFRF sent letters to 15 colleges and universities, pressuring the schools to fire the chaplains of their football teams. This is because, according to the FFRF, appointing a football chaplain in a sports team is unconstitutional.

The FFRF claims that schools should abolish their chaplaincy because “Christian coaches and chaplains are converting football fields into mission fields” and that appointing football chaplains is a form of “religious discrimination.”

A report by FFRF goes on to say that schools cannot “use the coercive nature and structure of a public football program to mandate, order, or even suggest that players under their control should worship as the coaches wish.”

The atheist group suggests instead that “it is in the best interest of public universities to adopt policies that protect student athletes from discrimination and unlawful religious coercion.” (Read more from “Conservative Christian Group Defends US Schools From Atheists Who Want Football Chaplains Abolished” HERE)

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Brainy Star of Big Bang Theory Blows the Whistle on Hollywood Liberals

mayim-arianaThe woman who stars in one of television’s most popular sitcoms is a working mom with a Ph.D., and zero respect for Hollywood’s treatment of religious beliefs.

Actress Mayim Bialik — who plays Amy Farrah Fowler on “The Big Bang Theory” and starred as a teenager in the NBC sitcom “Blossom” – told Fox 411 last week that the entertainment business is not so inviting for believers.

Bialik, 39, who is Jewish, said she doesn’t like “the bureaucracy of organized religion,” but she does believe in a “power greater than” herself.

“I have an unwavering faith in a power greater than myself and I don’t think that will change any more than my belief in gravity will change,” she stated. “In terms of observance, my social media shuts down for [the Sabbath] and sometimes we go to synagogue, sometimes we stay at home and we do [Sabbath dinners]…I believe in [Jewish law] but I also believe in the permeability and changeability in the structure of Jewish law and I think Judaism has always adjusted to the times that it lived in and it’s adjusting in the time we are in now.”

”I think in general it’s never going to be trendy to be observant or religious in Hollywood circles,” she said. (Read more from “Brainy Star of Big Bang Theory Blows the Whistle on Hollywood Liberals” HERE)

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Duke Freshmen Refuse to Read Fun Home, Citing Christian Beliefs

BBm3ps9Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home is one of the most acclaimed graphic novels of the decade, so it’s no great surprise that Duke University chose it as one of the summer reading selections for its incoming freshman class. But the selection has also sparked controversy among some students who have refused to read Fun Home, citing personal religious and moral beliefs.

The Duke Chronicle profiled a number of students who objected to being asked to read Fun Home, which depicts Bechdel’s experience coming out as a lesbian, as well as her father’s own closeted homosexuality. “I feel as if I would have to compromise my personal Christian moral beliefs to read it,” wrote freshman Brian Grasso in a much-discussed Facebook post. (Read more from “Duke Freshmen Refuse to Read Fun Home, Citing Christian Beliefs” HERE)

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Famous Rapper Cries out to God in Social Media Post, Says He Is Sick of the Devil ‘Ruining’ His Life

R&B and rap artist Chris Brown recently revealed he “heard God speak for the first time” as controversy continues to swirl around him, and admitted he’s tired of the devil “ruining” his life.

In a lengthy Instagram post shared last week, the 26-year-old Grammy-award winning singer stated that most people would have committed suicide by now if they were forced to endure what he has to deal with every day.

“When u tired of the [expletive] devil ruining your life and u hear God speak for the first time. No one knows what I deal with on a day to day. The average man wouldn’t hesitate to blow his [expletive] brains out …,” wrote Brown in the post which was accompanied with a photo of himself standing in front of a red background.

“Most won’t understand the genius and beauty in change and learning and the people who have devilish intentions will win in the short term. My soul will always be pure of heart. What’s on the surface always looks like one big party but inside there is a little boy looking for help and guidance,” he continued.

Brown also claimed he is desperately looking for “help and guidance” so he can focus on his music career and raising his 13-month old daughter, Royalty. (Read more from “Famous Rapper Cries out to God in Social Media Post, Says He Is Sick of the Devil ‘Ruining’ His Life” HERE)

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Election 2016: The Little Sisters of the Poor vs. The Big Merchants of Baby Parts

Christians are called to live in the real, fallen world, not a wistful fantasyland where everyone tells the truth, secretly means well, and is just a winsome podcast or three-minute hug away from repentance and salvation.

Stuff’s getting real out there. The principalities and powers are waxing cocky. They’ve started to drop their masks and strut their horns and hooves by daylight. Believers can only benefit by calling things as they are. Our thin-skinned friends might wince at first and shun us, but give them a little while, and one after another will call late at night and say, “I thought you were paranoid, but I’m worried you might be right!” I’m getting quite a few such calls. Cold comfort, but I’ll take it.

Politics rarely overlaps directly with spiritual warfare. Most of the time there is plenty of right and wrong on either side. Sometimes there’s mostly wrong on both sides, as when Hitler’s regime invaded Stalin’s. It’s rare that you get a contrast so close to black and white as the RAF defending Britain from Nazi bombers. At such times, the wall between the seen and unseen world seems weak and thin, and you glimpse the hidden stakes of the battle: You are not even fighting these depraved or deluded people. You are wrestling with the spirits who feed them their evil ideas, who seek the destruction of all and the ruin of souls.

That is how clear American politics is becoming. Here’s what the next election should be about, if we do our jobs: The Little Sisters of the Poor vs. The Big Merchants of Baby Parts.

It really is that simple. We must press every politician in America to take a clear, explicit stand on two critical issues which can rouse the right passions of Americans: Religious freedom and abortion profiteering. No Republican who won’t support the First Amendment Defense Act and zero out federal aid to Planned Parenthood is worth even two seconds’ consideration. We should flee them as near occasions of sin.

We will be tempted, so tempted, to sloth and cowardice. But this thought should brace us: If Christians can’t force Republicans in the primaries to oppose the persecuting of religious orders and churches, and to put an end to the selling of baby parts (Is that too much to ask?) then we are worthless hirelings and the lambs whom we guard are doomed.

There’s a lot of junk in the Republican pond, but it still supports life from time to time. The Democratic, by comparison, is a mauve-coated pool of radioactive, flesh-eating bacteria. Their connection with any meaningful concept of the Good has long been tenuous, but now it has snapped. How else to explain apparently sane people who would use police and prisons to punish Christian bakers, but not the merchants of unborn children’s lungs and livers. The Republicans are imperfect but not committed to such monstrosities, showing glimmers of right reason on a list of important issues. Theirs is the only party where at least some leading politicians

Don’t want to actively persecute the church with punitive taxes and lawsuits if we don’t bless acts of sodomy at our altars and teach our kids to approve them in church schools.

Don’t want to send the police to stop nuns from caring for the poor unless they hand out abortion pills.

Don’t want to shovel half a billion dollars every year to the abortionists of racist-founded Planned Parenthood, who appear to be making a tidy profit selling organs from butchered babies.

Aren’t in the pockets of self-serving public employee unions that want to vote themselves the kind of benefits that just bankrupted Greece.

Aren’t so drunk on multiculturalist absinthe that they mix up jihadist thugs with Christian preachers.

Don’t want your taxes to fund sex-change operations for recently amnestied illegal aliens and felony prisoners.

It’s our job to determine which politicians really are against all this, against it passionately, with all the force and fervor that Ronald Reagan hated Communist tyranny, and loved American freedom. We need a pro-life, pro-religious freedom president with fire in his belly, who can stand up to his advisers, his friends from college and even his donor base.

We need someone who won’t be spooked when everyone from the mainstream media and the Ivy League denounces him as a troglodyte, a racist, an unfeeling bigot, an enemy of “love.” We need a candidate who will use such abuse as fuel, who will know that the fight is not against mere deluded flesh and blood opponents, but against powers of spiritual darkness that we must not permit to prevail. (Posted with permission of the author, “Election 2016: The Little Sisters of the Poor vs. The Big Merchants of Baby Parts”, originally appeared HERE)

Here are two recent interviews with the author on The Joe Miller:

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Who’s the “Evil Empire” Now? Russia Says It’s Godless America

At the height of the Cold War, it was common for American conservatives to label the officially atheist Soviet Union a “godless nation.”

More than two decades on, history has come full circle, as the Kremlin and its allies in the Russian Orthodox Church hurl the same allegation at the West.

“Many Euro-Atlantic countries have moved away from their roots, including Christian values,” Russian President Vladimir Putin said in a recent keynote speech. “Policies are being pursued that place on the same level a multi-child family and a same-sex partnership, a faith in God and a belief in Satan. This is the path to degradation.”

In his state of the nation address in mid-December, Mr. Putin also portrayed Russia as a staunch defender of “traditional values” against what he depicted as the morally bankrupt West. Social and religious conservatism, the former KGB officer insisted, is the only way to prevent the world from slipping into “chaotic darkness.”

As part of this defense of “Christian values,” Russia has adopted a law banning “homosexual propaganda” and another that makes it a criminal offense to “insult” the religious sensibilities of believers. (Read more from “Who’s the “Evil Empire” Now? Russia Says It’s Godless America” HERE)

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Americans’ Confidence in Religion Hits a New Low

Americans have less confidence in organized religion today than ever measured before — a sign that the church could be “losing its footing as a pillar of moral leadership in the nation’s culture,” a new Gallup survey finds.

“In the ’80s the church and organized religion were the No. 1″ in Gallup’s annual look at confidence in institutions, said Lydia Saad, author of the report released Wednesday.

Confidence, she said, “is a value judgment on how the institution is perceived, a mark of the amount of respect it is due.” A slight upsurge for Catholic confidence, for example, parallels the 2013 election and immense popularity of Pope Francis.

Overall, church and organized religion is now ranked in fourth place in the Gallup survey — behind the military, small business and the police — while still ahead of the medical system, Congress and the media, among 15 institutions measured . . .

In the mid-’70s, nearly 7 in 10 Americans said they had “a great deal or quite a lot” of confidence in the church or organized religion. That has bobbled downward decade by decade to a new low of just 42%, according to the report. (Read more from “Americans’ Confidence in Religion Hits a New Low” HERE)

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