{"id":90630,"date":"2021-03-10T06:20:00","date_gmt":"2021-03-10T11:20:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/keriritenour.com\/grace\/is-prison-the-fate-for-christians-deemed-intolerant\/"},"modified":"2023-10-30T01:07:31","modified_gmt":"2023-10-30T05:07:31","slug":"is-prison-the-fate-for-christians-deemed-intolerant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/keriritenour.com\/grace\/is-prison-the-fate-for-christians-deemed-intolerant\/","title":{"rendered":"Is Prison the Fate for Christians Deemed Intolerant"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">Is Prison the Fate for\nChristians Deemed Intolerant? Religious Freedom Champion Frank Wolf Asks\nHarvard Audience<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">By Napp Nazworth&nbsp;\n5\/14\/2015<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">&#8220;When tolerance is demanded, when\northodox Christianity is deemed intolerant and when government and even society\nfails to extend tolerance to people of faith, we are headed down a perilous\npath,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">Wolf,&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.christianpost.com\/news\/religious-freedom-champion-jesus-follower-frank-wolf-retiring-from-congress-111077\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">who retired last year<\/a>&nbsp;after\nserving 34 years in Congress, delivered the May 7 address, &#8220;After Hobby\nLobby: What is Caesar&#8217;s and What is God&#8217;s?&#8221; as part of an event hosted by\nthe Petrie-Flom Center and the Ambassador John L. Loeb Jr. Initiative on\nReligious Freedom and Its Implications at Harvard&#8217;s Center for American\nPolitical Studies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">His main point was that freedom of conscience\nhas long been understood as important for religious freedom, but recently there\nhas been a trend of violating the conscience protections of conservative\nChristians, particularly over the issues of abortion and marriage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">Citing a resolution passed by the Continental\nCongress to protect the conscience rights of pacifists, Wolf argued, &#8220;our\nconscience is not ultimately allegiant to the state, but to something, and for\nmany people, Someone, higher.&#8221; And this is important &#8220;because if our\nconscience belongs to the state, the state can choose to violate it or\ncompromise it at will.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">Recently, however, there has been a\n&#8220;subtle but insidious trend&#8221; in which the government is expanding\ninto areas that are more likely to infringe upon conscience rights. This trend\nwas &#8220;at the heart&#8221; of the recent Supreme Court case&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.christianpost.com\/news\/hobby-lobbys-green-family-stands-strong-back-to-normal-after-supreme-court-victory-139066\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">involving Hobby Lobby<\/a>, a\nChristian-owned craft supply chain, and the Obama administration&#8217;s birth\ncontrol mandate. While the owners of Hobby Lobby, the Green family, are\npro-life, the Obama administration sought to require them to pay for health\ninsurance coverage for contraceptive pills that could cause an abortion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">Citing&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.nationalreview.com\/corner\/416421\/church-left-yuval-levin\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">a Yuval Levin article<\/a>, Wolf\nargued &#8220;we are witnessing the imposition of a new state religion&#8221;\ncalled &#8220;progressive liberalism.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">Wolf also pointed to opposition to Religious\nFreedom Restoration Acts as part of the trend.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">In particular, he pointed out the\ninconsistency of corporation leaders, such as Apple CEO Tim Cook, who opposed\nRFRA, a law to protect conscience rights, while exercising their own conscience\nrights. Apple removed from its products an app by the pro-life and pro-marriage\ngroup The Manhattan Declaration. Plus, Cook opposed Indiana&#8217;s RFRA over\nsupposed &#8220;fairness&#8221; toward gays while doing business with Arab\ncountries where homosexuality is illegal, and China, a nation that &#8220;has\none of the worst overall human rights records.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">&#8220;Freedom of conscience is good for\nall,&#8221; he said. &#8220;If Apple and other companies want to protect their\nown rights, they ought also to protect those of others. If they wish to run\ntheir companies according to their conviction, they ought not deny other\ncompanies the same right.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">Wolf&#8217;s third example of religious conscience\ninfringement was the trend of Christian groups on college campuses being forced\nto choose between leaving or remaining faithful to their beliefs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">&#8220;These legal realities and emerging\npolicy norms, coupled with fears of compromised livelihoods and tarnished\nreputations, risk driving people of faith out of the public square,&#8221; he\nsaid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">Wolf hopes, though, that in the face of these\nreligious freedom infringements, Christians will not &#8220;retreat form the\npublic square&#8221; but &#8220;boldly stay, regardless of the cost.&#8221; He\nthen recalled the &#8220;rich Christian tradition of civil disobedience in the\nface of unjust laws&#8221; exemplified by Dr. Martin Luther King.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">After recalling the many biblical figures who\nwere jailed for remaining faithful to God, and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer,\nwho was imprisoned and put to death for opposing Hitler, Wolf asked, &#8220;Is\nprison the fate of people today who dare to stand up for what their conscience,\ninformed by their faith, dictates?&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">Wolf ended by quoting&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.manhattandeclaration.org\/#0\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">the Manhattan Declaration&#8217;s<\/a>&nbsp;implied\npromise of civil disobedience in the face of religious conscience violations:\n&#8220;I will fully and ungrudgingly render to Caesar what is Caesar&#8217;s. But\nunder no circumstances will I render to Caesar what is God&#8217;s.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">Wolf is currently Distinguished Senior Fellow\nat the&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.21wilberforce.org\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">21st Century Wilberforce Initiative<\/a>, a\nreligious freedom advocacy organization he joined after\nretiring from Congress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">While in Congress, Wolf was one of the most\noutspoken defenders of global religious freedom. He authored the International\nReligious Freedom Act of 1998, which created the U.S. Commission on\nInternational Religious Freedom and the post of Ambassador-at-Large for\nInternational Religious Freedom within the State Department. The act also\nallowed for sanctions to be placed on nations that infringe upon its citizens&#8217;\nreligious freedom.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Is Prison the Fate for Christians Deemed Intolerant? Religious Freedom Champion Frank Wolf Asks Harvard Audience By Napp Nazworth&nbsp; 5\/14\/2015 &#8220;When tolerance is demanded, when orthodox Christianity is deemed intolerant and when government and even society fails to extend tolerance to people of faith, we are headed down a perilous path,&#8221; he said. Wolf,&nbsp;who retired [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[526],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v22.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Is Prison the Fate for Christians Deemed Intolerant - Grace Evangelical Free Church<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"noindex, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Is Prison the Fate for Christians Deemed Intolerant - Grace Evangelical Free Church\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Is Prison the Fate for Christians Deemed Intolerant? Religious Freedom Champion Frank Wolf Asks Harvard Audience By Napp Nazworth&nbsp; 5\/14\/2015 &#8220;When tolerance is demanded, when orthodox Christianity is deemed intolerant and when government and even society fails to extend tolerance to people of faith, we are headed down a perilous path,&#8221; he said. 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