Dr Paul Allen

GetEqual ENDA Protest (Photo credit: mattymatt ) The ACLU and other groups supporting gay rights have announced that they are withdrawing their support for the Employment Non-discrimination Act of 2013 (ENDA) . ENDA is a controversial measure because the bill would make it illegal for employers to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation or sexual identity. Why would the ACLU and gay rights groups remove their support for such a measure? Because the current form of the bill provides an exemption for religious employers. The ACLU et al. have decided that the Supreme Court’s Hobby Lobbydecision gives too much ground to religious liberty . To curtail that trend, these groups will not support the bill as long as it offers broad exemptions to religious employers. What does that mean? Until the Hobby Lobby decision, these groups were fine with religious exemptions. In fact, ENDA’s exemptions are based in part on the 1964 Civil Rights Act . But now, that has changed. Christian ...

What right should students have to talk about God in homework, assemblies, club meetings, and graduation speeches? This is the question at stake in a new law in Tennessee and other states across the country. On Thursday, Governor Bill Haslam signed the Religious Viewpoints Anti-Discrimination Act, which affirms that religious students should have the same free-speech rights as secular ones. At first, this might seem uncontroversial; religious expression has always been protected by the First Amendment. So why did two Republican state legislators feel the need to write the bill? "Christian conservative groups have for many years been frustrated by what they see as a hostile environment for religion in public schools," said Charles Haynes, the Director of the Religious Freedom Education Project at the Newseum. "They are convinced—with some justification—that there's a lot more that public schools can be doing to protect religious expression." In Tennessee, le...

Image via Wikipedia "But it came to pass, that when Sanballat heard that we builded the wall, he was wroth, and took great indignation, and mocked the Jews ." ( Nehemiah 4:1 )   The art of mocking God and His people has changed little through the ages. The pagan enemies that surrounded the Jews as they were trying to rebuild Jerusalem 400 years before Christ , tried various means to defeat them--essentially the same devices used by God's enemies today.   They tried political and sociological means, after their efforts at infiltration failed, but these also failed (see  Ezra 5:6 ,  17 ;  6:6-7 ;  9:1 ;  10:11-12 ). Then, when Nehemiah actually began work on the city's wall, they tried discouragement by ridicule ( Nehemiah 2:19 ;  4:1-3 ), by threat of violence ( 4:7-8 ), and by attempted treachery ( 6:2 ).   Likewise, the enemies of God's Word and God's plan today are trying all these devices in a modern format. They use political means, c...