When Shrugging is Not an Option
- May/June 2025
- April 30, 2025
This article is the first in a series tracing and explaining the battle for church and state in the United States. It highlights, in broad pen strokes, the key events, legal aspects, organizations, and societal movements that demonstrate how drastically the concept of church and state has changed in America within a lifetime. The series
READ MOREA Canadian perspective The outrage over Chinese action to reduce the freedoms of people in Hong Kong has overshadowed the genocide against the Uyghurs, who live in the Xinjiang territory, which inhabitants are apt to call East Turkestan. The causes of the repression may be traced back to incidents in 2009, such as riots in
READ MOREGovernment accommodation of religious practices has been an enduring pillar of American liberty. In Hobbie v. Unemployment Appeals Commission of Florida (1987), the U.S. Supreme Court (8-1) said that: “This Court has long recognized that the government may (and sometimes must) accommodate religious practices and that it may do so without violating the establishment clause.”
READ MOREThe President Trump era was a bountiful period for the political fortunes of Evangelical Christians in America. That is because the forty-fifth president of the United States checked off virtually every box on the Evangelical wish list. Trump gave Evangelicals everything they could have wished for. He relocated the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem. He advocated
READ MOREDominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World by Tom Holland, Basic Books, 2019. 624 Pages. A #1 Christian church history book on Amazon. The only recorded encounter of Jesus with Greeks was shortly before His crucifixion. As John 12:20, 21 tells us, some Greeks asked through Philip to see Jesus. We are not told why
READ MOREFrom their earliest years Seventh-day Adventists, today a worldwide movement with more than 21 million members, have been interested in religious liberty issues. This interest stems from the importance of the topic in general, and from two other reasons in particular. First, as their name suggests, they keep the seventh-day Sabbath, Saturday, a practice that
READ MOREAs I write this in September 2020, a trial is underway in France for 14 people charged in connection with acts of Islamic terrorism in January 2015. At the offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, Saïd Kouachi and his brother Chérif killed 12 people in a hail of bullets; cartoonists, editors, police, a janitor, a
READ MOREEditorials published way back before the election in Christianity Today (“Trump Should Be Removed From Office”) and the Los Angeles Times (“An Evangelical Resurrection”) argued that Donald Trump, impeached and shamed, should leave office. The first piece was authored by Christianity Today’s retiring editor, Mark Galli. The second piece in the Los Angeles Times was
READ MOREWhen California governor Gavin Newsom first ordered churches closed down to “flatten the curve” and prevent the spread of COVID-19, Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, California, initially volunteered to abide by the order and only hold virtual services. The church wanted to live at peace with government authorities. Its pastor even cited the apostle
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