Putting Faith Under House Arrest

Putting Faith Under House Arrest
By Gary McCaleb
4/24/2012

For decades, atheist groups have strategically involved themselves in questions of religious freedom, and they have done so chiefly by fighting to have all Christian symbols and texts removed from public view. But in recent years, as this fight has continued, it’s become evident that it’s not just symbols and texts they want removed from public view, rather, it’s Christians themselves.

In truth, it now seems that their end game is to put Christians into such a small corner that the only place left for open faith is behind the closed doors of your home.

This is explicitly seen in what one group of homosexual activists, One Colorado, is pushing via their effort to alter the Colorado Constitution to limit, for all intents and purposes, the exercise of religious liberty to one’s home or one’s church.

They propose to change Section 4, Article II of the state constitution to read:

In assessing whether government has burdened freedom of religion, a person’s or a religious organization’s right to act in a manner motivated by a sincerely held religious belief is the ability to engage in religious practices in the privacy of a person’s home or in the privacy of a religious organization’s established place of worship.

One doesn’t have to be a constitutional scholar to understand that these changes basically say that citizens cannot complain that their religious freedoms have been violated so long as they can worship freely in their homes or in their churches.

This is a not-so-clever attempt at making sure that the Christian message never makes it out of private homes and churches. And it would be an astounding constitutional revision—one that puts faith under house arrest. But perhaps it is not so astounding, when one considers how our American president has been busy pushing the novel idea of “freedom of worship” to replace our inalienable right to freedom of religion. This sleight of hand starkly demonstrates what “freedom of worship” really means.

The attempt to remove Christianity from the public arena can be seen implicitly in the way groups like the Military Association of Atheists and Freethinkers are pressuring the Air Force to remove Bibles from on-base lodging rooms. Under the guise of fighting against “a special privilege for Christianity,” atheists are seeking to have Gideon Bibles removed from the rooms by equating the placement of those Bibles with “insensitive practices that illegally promote religion over non-religion or unethically discriminate against religions or differing beliefs.”

At the same time, such atheists and freethinkers give lip service to the First Amendment, but their actions show that they’ll only be happy when the First Amendment extends no further than our front door. (Remember, in pushing to change the Colorado Constitution, they were careful to say “in” your private house or private church.)

Under these terms, it seems fair to wonder if the choir loft must now be soundproofed, lest stray strains of “Amazing Grace” slip beyond the church doors and out into the forbidden zone.

The bottom line is that your choice as to whether you can worship God and live out your faith as a free citizen is, at this very moment, being shaped by the demands of leftists and proponents of the homosexual agenda who have sworn fealty to the force of law rather than theology. These groups, whether One Colorado or the Military Association of Atheists and Freethinkers, ultimately believe your right to practice religion according to the dictates of your conscience has to align perfectly with the dictates of theirs.