Religious Liberty – Page 76

Bishop Taylor on Living According to the Dictates of Conscience

Jul 1, 2014JerryReligious FreedomHHS Mandate, Religious Freedom, Religious Liberty

In light of yesterday’s landmark Supreme Court ruling in the Hobby Lobby case, here is a video from a couple of years ago of Bishop Anthony Taylor of the Catholic Diocese of Little Rock discussing religious liberty and the Department of Health and Human Services’ contraceptive mandate.

“The issue is whether the government should force us to pay for these immoral practices and thereby make us participants in actions that violate our religious beliefs.”

-Bishop Taylor

Watch the video below.

Supreme Court Sides with Religious Liberty

Jun 30, 2014JerryAbortion, Religious FreedomReligion, Religious Freedom, Religious Liberty

Today the U.S. Supreme Court issued a good ruling upholding Americans’ religious liberties.

As we have written before, the federal Department of Health and Human Services promulgated rules under Obamacare requiring businesses to pay for sterilization, contraceptives, and abortion-inducing drugs¹. The problem is many Americans–and American business owners–have strong, religious objections to paying for these services.

The issue has never been whether or not an employer can bar an employee from using contraceptives or abortion-inducing drugs, but whether or not the federal government can force an employer to pay for those drugs. For instance, Hobby Lobby–one of the plaintiffs in today’s ruling–does not, to our knowledge, fire employees for using contraceptives or abortifacients; the owners simply do not want to be required to pay for these drugs, because doing so violates their deeply-held religious convictions.

The Supreme Court ruled, today, that Hobby Lobby, Conestoga, Mardel, and other “closely held, for-profit corporations” can and do have religious liberties under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. This ruling makes sense for the following reasons: (more…)

The State House Needs God, Too!

Jun 26, 2014JerryReligionCitizenship, Religion, Religious Freedom, Religious Liberty

The following blog post is by Family Council staff member Luke McCoy.

Proverbs 29:2 (NASB) reads, “When the righteous increase, the people rejoice, but when a wicked man rules, people groan.”

If a world were described in which controversial, political topics that had religious basis were no longer a threat to people of faith, would you consider that a work of God’s people or Jesus’ second coming? For many centuries we have seen that when good people do nothing, evil prevails. It could also be said that when good men do nothing, very little good—if any—gets done.

So, why do so many Christians excuse themselves from influencing their local, state, and federal government?

(more…)