Religious Intolerance...In America?

We of the stars and stripes variety of Christian have been very blessed by enjoying tremendous religious freedoms.  Our founding fathers, while arguably not evangelical believers as we would recognize them today, were at the very least Deists.  They believed in one God who created the universe and whose written word was law.  But they and/or their progenitors had come from a European heritage of tremendous religious intolerance.

There was no separation of church and state in the Europe of that day.  The lines were blurred beyond recognition due to a muddy history of politics and power struggles stretching all the way back to the formation of the Papal States and the later crowning of Charlemagne as Holy Roman Emperor by Pope Leo III in the 7th and 8th centuries AD.  So by the time we reach the 16th and 17th centuries the government and the church, in the form of Roman Catholicism (or the Church of England in the case of Great Britain), worked hand in glove to ensure that their subjects could only legally practice the religion officially chosen for them.

This was the environment from which the men who formed our country came.  Thus they created our constitution specifically to prevent the government of the United States from ever interfering with a citizens right to worship in whatever way he or she saw fit as long as it did not impugn the same freedoms afforded to the citizens around them.

But today as we march merrily onward further into the 21st century there are subtle hints of intolerance toward Christianity all around us.  We see it in Chik-Fil-A being attacked because their CEO happened to mention his convictions about same sex marriage.  We see it in Obamacare attempting to force companies such as Hobby Lobby to provide their employees with controversial forms of contraceptives through their insurance policies.  We see it in the decades long slide of liberal media further and further from the biblical standards upon which this country was founded and toward a post-modern world-view which denies the existence of absolute truth.

And today I saw it in the following image of the web page I was greeted with when I attempted to visit www.bible.org while at work.  Please note the bolded words which indicate the reason why my company is blocking my access from this web site.  If you can't make them out just click on the image to enlarge it.

I have to admit that I was initially startled and then shocked by this.  And for the record, my company's code of conduct expressly permits us to surf the Internet while on breaks and/or lunches.

Don't think religious persecution in America is on the horizon?

Wake up...


Soli Deo Gloria