16 For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes, for the Jew first and also for the Greek.
17 For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, "The just shall live by faith."
18 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness,
19 because what may be known of God is manifest in them, for God has shown it to them.
From there, Paul writes about expressions and actions that do not line up with the gospel - what can be termed "unrighteousness." But, there has been a tendency, even within the Church, to mix the truth of Scripture with the toleration of unrighteous acts, ideas, and behavior. We have to be careful to hold on to the pure teachings of the Word of God, to base our lives on its principles, and to live holy lives, as the Most Holy One has called us to do.
We can be thankful that we live in a country where religious freedom is a cornerstone principle, a concept that has been upheld recently in multiple Supreme Court decisions. 1st Peter 2 states:
15 For this is the will of God, that by doing good you may put to silence the ignorance of foolish men--
16 as free, yet not using liberty as a cloak for vice, but as bondservants of God.
17 Honor all people. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honor the king.
In sports such as hockey or soccer, if a team or individual scores three goals, it has performed what is called a "hat trick." In the most recent term of the U.S. Supreme Court, there was a "hat trick" that occurred in the arena of religious freedom.
In one case, Shurtleff v. Boston, the right of a Christian group to have a Christian flag flown in a special celebration at City Hall in Boston was upheld. Numerous other requests had been granted, but the Christian request was not. A key element of the case was that apparently, the flag request was denied simply because the group wishing to fly it had stated it would be a Christian flag.
Another case, Carson v. Makin, restored the rights of parents to send their children to religious schools in a special program in the state of Maine allowing parents to choose other high schools in rural areas where it was impractical to place a high school. Religious schools were omitted by the state because, well, they were religious. Another foul.
Then, there was the case of Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, in which the Court ruled that a football coach who had walked to midfield to pray following games and had been terminated was within his Constitutional rights to participate in that free exercise of religion.
Three cases, three examples of threats to religious freedom averted. In the Kennedy case, an old standard that had been used to decide religious liberty cases was finally put to rest. A Real Clear Religion article noted two important aspects of the ruling; stating:
First, the Court ruled that Coach Kennedy had a constitutional right to publicly recite a quiet prayer, and in doing so, protected that right for all religious public school employees. Second, in a decision likely to have even broader impact, the Court took the important step of clearly overturning Lemon v. Kurtzman, a 1971 case that has served as a continuing source of harm for religious Americans.
The article went on to note:
The Supreme Court found that the school violated the coach's right to freely exercise his religion. The Court explained that "respect for religious expressions is indispensable to life in a free and diverse Republic—whether those expressions take place in a sanctuary or on a field, and whether they manifest through the spoken word or a bowed head." The school's attempt to "punish an individual for engaging in a brief, quiet, personal religious observance" was unconstitutional.
And, the afore-mentioned Lemon test has turned out to be quite the Lemon, indeed. The Real Clear Religion article notes:
In Lemon v. Kurtzman, the Supreme Court created a highly subjective test that "called for an examination of a law's purposes, effects, and potential for entanglement with religion" in order to determine whether it created an unconstitutional "establishment" of religion. If you find that difficult to understand, you are not alone. No one has ever been able to figure out what the Court actually meant.
The author contended that the Lemon test had been harmful in those three decisions on religious liberty this term, and wrote:
The Court adopted a new test "in place of Lemon" whereby "the Establishment Clause must be interpreted by reference to historical practices and understandings." While applying this test will require historical research and intellectual rigor, it is far less malleable than the Lemon test. It is safe to say that some of the most anti-religious understandings of Lemon are no longer tenable.This example is given: "a public school does not violate the Establishment Clause by merely failing to censor private religious speech. The Court went further and explained that under this test, it is clear that that the Establishment Clause does not 'compel the government to purge from the public sphere anything an objective observer could reasonably infer endorses religion.'"
...could allow for religious displays in front of public buildings, a common occurrence until liberal justices stated that a courthouse in Pittsburgh could no longer erect a Nativity scene and Chanukah menorah during the holiday season in 1989. The liberal justices’ opinion in County of Allegheney v. ACLU cited the now-abandoned Lemon test in its first sentence.Attorney Ken Klukowski said, "If you could have a nativity display in a courthouse in 1791, then you can have a nativity display..." in the present time. The article goes on to note:
The same logic applies to posting the Ten Commandments in schools or other public places, as well. “It was in Stone v. Graham in 1980 that the Supreme Court struck down Ten Commandments displays in schoolhouses under the Lemon test,” Klukowski continued. Justices said it violated the first prong, that “there’s not a secular purpose to have the Ten Commandments” in the classroom. “Here again, that litmus test is now gone.”And, here's a stunning tidbit: "Lemon v. Kurtzman has been cited by 2,283 court decisions at all levels of the judiciary, according to a count from CaseText.com." Real Clear Religion says:
Before Lemon, the Supreme Court had never once found that a person's public display of religion violated the constitution. As Justice Gorsuch noted, "after Lemon, cases challenging public displays under the Establishment Clause came fast and furious."
So, perhaps we are entering a brave new world regarding religious expression without government interference. But, keep in mind, our right to participate in religious activity is not extended to us by government, but by God. So, you could contend that it is not a right that can be removed by the heavy hand of government.
Writing at the New York Post, a writer named Sophia Nelson shared about her experience as a Christian who is a woman of color. She stated:
When I was the scholar-in-residence at Christopher Newport University in Newport News, Va., I proudly and openly identified as a Christian woman of color. In October 2021, I criticized DC Comics for making Superman’s son bisexual, saying in a tweet, “I don’t get why this is necessary. I don’t! What if Christian parents of children reading comic books don’t want their kids exposed to bi-sexual characters? This is being pushed on kids.”You can probably guess what happened next...she writes, "Straight away, my private tweet was brought into my public university workplace, and my Christian faith was attacked as a 'cover for my homophobic views.'" She said she was "sidelined" for the rest of her tenure because of her Christian views.
The thing that bothers me most about how people of faith, like Kennedy and myself, are treated is that we are just cut off. Thrown out. Removed. As if we are these hateful, bigoted religious cultists who just want to push our faith on others. That is simply not true. We have a viewpoint. We have a faith that informs how we live and think. A lens through which we process, just as I also have a specific perspective as a black female in America. I do not want to tell others how they should live and think. I simply want to be heard as every American should be.And, as Nelson contends, in the Kennedy decision, the Supreme Court "seems to agree..." What is notable here is that, in examining one of her social media feeds, the writer could be characterized as being more progressive, yet she felt the heat when she took a stand against the grooming of children through comic books.
The most significant is the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade and end the constitutional right to an abortion — on top of its recent series of decisions allowing for a larger role of religion in public life, such as school prayer and funding for religious education. States have also been taking action; many have instituted abortion bans. A Florida law prohibits classroom instruction about sexual orientation and gender identity in early elementary school, and Texas has issued an order to investigate parents with transgender children for possible child abuse.
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