Greetings,
 Religious Liberty weekend was a huge success across the country as churches held special services to commemorate and celebrate freedom of conscience. Thanks to all of you who gave us information about where your presentations were going to be held so we could add them to our calendar. Consider it a resource and marketing tool as your reach out into your local communities to teach people what religious liberty is all about. I’m looking forward to meeting many of you at the Corona Seventh-day Adventist Church this Saturday morning at 11:00 ... where I am going to be speaking on "The Rock v. The Gates and the Role of the Remnant." So if you're anywhere near Loma Linda, Riverside, Corona, etc., please feel free to drop by! I’m going to be staying around afterwards for a while to chat about ideas and I'm looking forward to meeting you. If you would like to plan a religious liberty weekend at your church or community group sometime this year and need a speaker, please let us know.
What are the characteristics of a Christian nation? I asked the question on our Facebook page as well as on the Free Republic website. Lots of different answers, most have to do with history and law, but some dig deeper – Christians in a “Christian nation” would need to have Christlike qualities and do things such as love their neighbors as themselves, turn the other cheek, and not push to be at the front of the line. Visit Facebook and Free Republic to share your thoughts on this subject.
Lots of people think that the restrictions on political campaigning from the pulpit are an unconstitutional restraint. But aside from alienating congregants who disagree with the pastor as to whether to vote for Newt, Romney, Gingrich, Paul, or Obama, there are some very good restrictions why this makes good sense. Find out why at the Liberty Magazine Round Table where four of us attorney-types duke i...
If you’re wondering why we support Liberty Magazine so much, it is because it is simply the best print publication out there with the broadest reach possible. The Seventh-day Adventist Church, which publishes the magazine as an integral part of its overall ministry in North America is unique in that, as a corporate body, it has a long-standing commitment to the principles of religious freedom – including the right to be theologically “wrong” – and will defend all peaceful people of faith, while it maintains a focus on solid doctrine among its own members. This emphasis on both civil freedom and religious orthodoxy has proven itself time and time again. Why not take a moment and send a donation to Liberty? And at only $7.95 a year, it is a bargain. http://www.libertymagazine.org/index.php?id=47
Some people have asked me what I thought of the recent Supreme Court decision upholding the ministerial exception. In my humble opinion, the Court made the right decision. If the Court had ruled the opposite way, you’d soon have government workers with clipboards standing around church offices trying to figure out if people were really “ministerial employees” and whether the reason for adverse personnel actions were really “doctrinal” or just a pretext. That kind of intrusion from the government to the church would be uncalled for, and violate the Establishment Clause and Free Exercise Clause. It doesn’t mean that churches can get away with everything – in fact it would probably be more comfortable to face the EEOC than Judgment Day when every decision will be reviewed by a Higher Power. Click here to read my analysis.
Cullen Murphy, the editor at large of Vanity Fair, recently wrote a book called, “The Inquisition and the Making of the Modern World.” He describes what the world was like when the clergy were given the power of the state to reach their goals of conversion. In 1252 the pope gave clerics the authority to use torture. They had special manuals with instructions. There were a bunch of tricks that they used. For instance, when people were being interrogated, the inquisitors would have a huge stack of documents in front of them. As the person was answering questions, the interrogator would flip through the documents as if they had more information than the person could dream of. And then they would shake their head as if they didn’t believe what the person was saying. This is almost word-for-word what is in the modern handbooks.
And if they needed a confession, they could include torture as part of the interrogations.
During the Spanish Inquisition, which was supposed to bring backslidden Jewish converts back into the fold of Christianity, interrogators used things like the rack, the pulley, and water boarding. It is really not that new. Even though the government has recently claimed water boarding not torture, in the Inquisition documents, which were meticulously kept, water boarding was clearly defined as torture.
Murphy said, “There isn’t a trick that is used nowadays that wasn’t in use by the Inquisition. The psychology of interrogation, the ruses that people would use when you’re questioning, there’s nothing new under the sun when it comes to interrogation.”
There are several key ingredients for a modern day inquisition to exist today:
1. An individual or group of people who believe they are in the right and want everyone else to toe the line.
2. A bureaucracy and methods of surveillance to sustain the persecution.
In short, when moral certainty meets monitoring, the tools of repression can be activated. This is why we are vigilant today when we have both of these elements in spades.
There is a strong sense of moral certainty among some in culture today, and since everything is tracked – if these tools fell into the hands of the wrong people repression could be activated.
An excerpt of Murphy’s book was published in the January/February 2... Must reading for politicians, theologians, and citizens who want to avoid a worst case scenario in the modern world. The lesson for the Christian world is this: Bad things can happen in the name of God when the government is put in the position of doing His work. That’s why the Church should do the good work of God, regardless of what the rest of the world does. We cannot “outsource” the Great Commission to the President or Congress, or the local public schools, no matter how easy it would seem to be.
What the church should be really talking about is the character of God, and showing that He is a God of love and compassion. A God of both justice and mercy. The church doesn't need the state's help to do a better job. Ronald Reagan's words seem to apply here "The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, 'I'm fr..."
“The time has come for us to assert the rights of others to believe as they please, and to assert it at all times and places. If you or I sit idly down and see another’s rights invaded and taken away, and do nothing, because it does not harm us we will have no right to complain when ours are invaded. … The question is not who is right, but what are the individual rights.” A.T. Jones – Adventist Campmeeting 1889.
Thanks for reading!
Michael Peabody,
Editor
ReligiousLiberty.TV
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