Christine's blogs

H.R. 1 Would Be A Bigger Test For The Church Than Covid Shutdowns

After a year with many churches engaged in legal battles to re-open after Covid government closures, are we headed for churches willingly closing their doors?

The Democrat-majority House of Representatives recently passed H.R. 1. It is deviously dubbed ‘The Equality Act’ by a Congress that believes if it utilizes nice sounding names for legislation, the American people will approve without question.

Insidiously for the faithful, H.R. 1 is discrimination against them with a version of the ‘Do No Harm Act’ legislation then Senator Kamala Harris introduced multiple times. It would strip religious liberty protections in the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) of 1993. The Act states that government may only substantially burden free exercise of religion of a person or organization if the government a) has compelling interest to do so, and b) uses minimal restrictive means to further that compelling interest. When courts adjudicate these cases, they are to use the strictest of scrutiny.

Of RFRA, Harris said, “the freedom to worship” is a fundamental right, but that the First Amendment shouldn’t be used to “undermine other Americans’ civil rights or subject them to discrimination on the basis of race, gender, sexual orientation or gender identity.”’—World Magazine, 10/10/20 {italics mine}

Whenever there is a but attached to a fundamental right, people should be concerned. Harris and the Democrat Congress are undoubtedly claiming the federal government has a ‘compelling interest’ to grant the federal government the un-Constitutional right to criminalize what is spoken in houses of worship in the name of ‘equality.’ Legislation broad and arbitrary, and if adjudicated by a politicized court system, will further snake its way into private schools, religious camps, crisis pregnancy centers, social media, small businesses and anywhere in the virtual or physical public square.

As if it has not gone far enough. The depravity of Leftist activists killed the Boy Scouts for its tradition of training up exclusively boys, to become men of character. They turned the Girl Scouts into an organization of mini-activists for Planned Parenthood. In New York, the law states that pro-abortion counselors be allowed to volunteer at crisis pregnancy centers. All throughout the country, private schools and universities founded on Judeo-Christian principles with names that reflect denominational roots are caving to the Left. The loud protestations of students, and in many cases parents, that they get up to speed with cultural ‘inclusiveness’ by banning religious speech and statues is met with cowardice by administrators, not courage.

Most notably is the case of a Christian baker asked to design a wedding cake by a lesbian couple in celebration of their upcoming wedding. Rather than use their free-market choice to drive to another bakery that would oblige, a lengthy, costly court battle ensued against a man’s religious freedom to live out his faith and not sear his conscience to promote the homosexual union. It cost him forty-percent of his business, the wrath and condemnation of the radical LBGT+++ community and their supporters, and a trip to the Supreme Court. But his religious liberties prevailed and he won his case. For now. The Left continues to target him.

A win at the highest court in the land will be a by-gone memory if Democrats succeed in their war on the Supreme Court. They plan to add at least four more justices of their own choosing, as radically opposed to Biblical teachings as they are, in order to prevent a victory for the little guy attempting to run his own private business in a God-honoring way. As Christians have watched a barrage of persecution and removal of vestiges of Christianity with a mixture of outrage and grief, but have not stood in unified opposition, the locomotive of anti-Christ Progressivism is speeding its way straight into houses of worship. If religious liberty protections are removed from the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, there will be no such thing as religious freedom. The day will have arrived where the houses of God will no longer be places of respite from the pollution of the world, becoming casualties of identity politics along with compromised religious institutions, schools and organizations. Or, it will be an opportunity for the one, true church to unite boldly as a born-again, Bible-believing people who share the truth in love, not as a ‘religious’ people practicing various denominations of ‘religion’ ascribing to various human constructs of ‘religiosity.’ For, God detests religion. It is a manmade counterfeit...