Religious Freedom: The Four-Part Series

March 26, 2016

WRITER

Freedom of religion is the first right mentioned in the Bill of Rights. The Founders knew how integral this would be to the United States of America. Without religious freedom, we cease to be free. Religion and the free exercise thereof is slipping through our fingers little by little, every day. But most people don't even even notice it, and they also don't understand why it's important.

In this four-part series, Glenn examines our religious rights as Americans --- where they come from, why they're essential and how the progressive left has slowly eroded them away.

The four-part series is compiled below for your convenience.

Part I: The Beginning

In 2009, the president of the United States made this announcement at a press conference in Turkey:

“One of the great strengths of the United States is — although as I mentioned — you know, we have a very large Christian population. We do not consider ourselves a Christian nation or a Jewish nation or a Muslim nation. We consider ourselves a nation of citizens,” President Obama said.

That statement would no doubt come as quite a surprise to Founders like John Adams who declared the general principles on which the Fathers achieved independence were the general principles of Christianity.

James Madison, author of the Constitution, said, “religion is the basis and foundation of government.” Author and world-renowned historian David Barton concurs.

“George Washington, in his Farewell Address, said that religion and morality were our indispensable political supports, and that he would not allow anyone to call himself a patriot if he tried to exclude religion from public political life,” Barton said.

These founding principles were stated over and over again by most of America’s founders and reaffirmed in 1854 by Congress. From the Journal of the House of Representatives: “The great, vital, and conservative element in our system is the belief of our people in the pure doctrines and the define truths of the gospel of Jesus Christ.”

Progressives have worked hard over the past century to secularize America and turn the country toward a European style of government. But even Woodrow Wilson, father of the progressive movement, said America was ‘Born a Christian Nation.’

Part II: War on Christianity

America was founded in large part because of the desire for religious freedom. But it’s been 225 years since ratification of the United States Constitution, and now, with the passage of centuries, Americans sometimes take the freedoms they’ve enjoyed for granted.

Most of the world, however, can only dream of being able to take such a right for granted. Communism, for example, has never been friendly to religion, especially Christianity.

The communist purge of Christianity began almost immediately with the Bolshevik Revolution of 1918. The once thriving Catholic church in Russia was all but annihilated after the communist takeover, and atheism became the official state religion. Catholic institutions were dissolved, and its property confiscated under Lenin. Things got worse under Stalin, with millions of people carted away to the dreaded gulag camps. Between the Soviet Union and the Communist Revolution in China, Christianity was all but wiped off the Asian continent.

It may surprise some that, from the beginning of their movement, German Nazis planned to eliminate Christianity, just as they did Jews and Judaism. The Nazi leader of the German Youth Corps, which would literally be known as the Hitler Youth, said, “The destruction of Christianity was explicitly recognized as a purpose of the national socialist movement from the beginning.”

Many people don’t think that type of persecution exists today, except perhaps in the Middle East. However, in communist North Korea, a nation of 26 million people, there are only 300,000 Christians. Some 50,000 to 70,000 North Korean Christians are now suffering torture and horrific living conditions every day in North Korean labor camps.

Right now, the biggest threat to Christianity comes from ISIS. In Iraq, where in 2003 there were some 2 million Christians, there are now only an estimated 180,000. Over 90 percent of the entire Christian population gone. In the city of Mosul, 100,000 Christians fled their homes in one night.

With so much going wrong that needs to be righted, with Christians being displaced by the millions, murdered by the thousands, abused, crucified and used as sex slaves, what has the president of the United States said?

“Unless we get on our high horse and think this is unique to some other place, remember that during the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ. In our home country, slavery and Jim Crow all too often was justified in the name of Christ,” Obama chastised at the National Prayer Breakfast in 2015.

Clearly, based on the president’s comments, the war on Christianity is alive and well in the United States.

Part III: Today’s Battles

Since the ratification of its founding document, Americans have always been able to count on their number one God-given freedom. It is the first of all rights, spelled out at the very beginning of the United States Constitution:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.

It is positioned at the beginning of the First Amendment for a reason: It is the most important. It is sacrosanct. Until recently.

In 1962, the Supreme Court ruled that praying in school was unconstitutional, setting the stage that began the assault on America’s religious freedom.

Interestingly, children saying prayers in school does not and cannot qualify as Congress making a law to establish religion. But it certainly could be interpreted as prohibiting the free exercise thereof. Yet, that somehow was not the determination made by the Earl Warren-led Supreme Court. For religious freedom in America, the ruling was a significant turning point.

Another blow came in 2008 with the presidential election of Barack Obama. He brought a new attitude to the executive branch of the government in the United States.

Whatever we once were, we are no longer a Christian nation.

It was an attitude that stunned many Americans who knew that America, in fact, was founded on Christian-Judeo principles. His understanding or lack thereof concerning the scriptural passages, context, culture and frame of reference also shocked many believers.

Passages of Scripture should guide our public policy. Should we go with Leviticus, which suggests slavery is okay and that eating shellfish is an abomination? Or he could go with Deuteronomy, which suggests stoning your child if he strays from the faith? Or should we just stick to the Sermon on the Mount, a passage that is so radical that it’s doubtful that our own Defense Department would survive its application?

No American president had ever been so brazen in his disdain for the Bible. And he was just getting started.

Part IV: The Easter Story

They say time itself does not exist as we know and understand it. Time is a way for us to find out where we have been, where we are now and where we are headed. Today, we’re going on a journey, back in time to the most important moment in human history.

We travel back to a time before radio and TV, back past the signing of the Declaration of Independence, past the Age of Enlightenment, before Martin Luther hung his protests on the church doors, before Columbus rediscovered the fact that the world was round, we go past Newton, Galileo, the Dark Ages, the Crusades, back to a time before books, when most of the world couldn’t read or write and history was oral.

We leave this world for a seemingly simple one, yet brutal beyond our understanding. It’s approximately 29 of the common era, and we stop at a small walled city in the Middle East, just a few of days before Passover.

While eleven of his disciples slept, Jesus couldn’t, for he knew. He was in a garden in prayer, praying so hard about what he knew was about to come, praying so hard that blood actually dripped from his pores in place of sweat. Returning to his disciples, Jesus found the twelfth one had betrayed him — and his path toward the Crucifixion was laid out.

On that fateful day, despite having been found guiltless by the Governor of the land, the people shouted for his crucifixion. Mocking the Son of God, Roman soldiers placed a crown of thorns on the King of the Jews and whipped and scourged him, tearing his flesh, trying to break his spirit.

While criminals hung by his side, bound by rope, Jesus was nailed to his cross – through the hands, the wrists and feet. One criminal demanded Jesus free them, if indeed he truly was the Son of God. In a moment of humanity, Christ called out in agony.

“My Father, my Father, why have you forsaken me?”

The sky grew dark. It was approaching 3 o’clock on a Friday afternoon, when Jesus, the carpenter from Nazareth, spoke once more, saying his last words, “It is finished.”

Today, people all over the world thank that lone carpenter for dying, dying on that Friday afternoon so we all may live again.

Listen to the Full Series on Religious Freedom

Part I: The Beginning

Part II: War on Christianity

Part III: Today's Battles

Part IV: The Easter Story

How private stewardship could REVIVE America’s wild

Jonathan Newton / Contributor | Getty Images

The left’s idea of stewardship involves bulldozing bison and barring access. Lee’s vision puts conservation back in the hands of the people.

The media wants you to believe that Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) is trying to bulldoze Yellowstone and turn national parks into strip malls — that he’s calling for a reckless fire sale of America’s natural beauty to line developers’ pockets. That narrative is dishonest. It’s fearmongering, and, by the way, it’s wrong.

Here’s what’s really happening.

Private stewardship works. It’s local. It’s accountable. It’s incentivized.

The federal government currently owns 640 million acres of land — nearly 28% of all land in the United States. To put that into perspective, that’s more territory than France, Germany, Poland, and the United Kingdom combined.

Most of this land is west of the Mississippi River. That’s not a coincidence. In the American West, federal ownership isn’t just a bureaucratic technicality — it’s a stranglehold. States are suffocated. Locals are treated as tenants. Opportunities are choked off.

Meanwhile, people living east of the Mississippi — in places like Kentucky, Georgia, or Pennsylvania — might not even realize how little land their own states truly control. But the same policies that are plaguing the West could come for them next.

Lee isn’t proposing to auction off Yellowstone or pave over Yosemite. He’s talking about 3 million acres — that’s less than half of 1% of the federal estate. And this land isn’t your family’s favorite hiking trail. It’s remote, hard to access, and often mismanaged.

Failed management

Why was it mismanaged in the first place? Because the federal government is a terrible landlord.

Consider Yellowstone again. It’s home to the last remaining herd of genetically pure American bison — animals that haven’t been crossbred with cattle. Ranchers, myself included, would love the chance to help restore these majestic creatures on private land. But the federal government won’t allow it.

So what do they do when the herd gets too big?

They kill them. Bulldoze them into mass graves. That’s not conservation. That’s bureaucratic malpractice.

And don’t even get me started on bald eagles — majestic symbols of American freedom and a federally protected endangered species, now regularly slaughtered by wind turbines. I have pictures of piles of dead bald eagles. Where’s the outrage?

Biden’s federal land-grab

Some argue that states can’t afford to manage this land themselves. But if the states can’t afford it, how can Washington? We’re $35 trillion in debt. Entitlements are strained, infrastructure is crumbling, and the Bureau of Land Management, Forest Service, and National Park Service are billions of dollars behind in basic maintenance. Roads, firebreaks, and trails are falling apart.

The Biden administration quietly embraced something called the “30 by 30” initiative, a plan to lock up 30% of all U.S. land and water under federal “conservation” by 2030. The real goal is 50% by 2050.

That entails half of the country being taken away from you, controlled not by the people who live there but by technocrats in D.C.

You think that won’t affect your ability to hunt, fish, graze cattle, or cut timber? Think again. It won’t be conservatives who stop you from building a cabin, raising cattle, or teaching your grandkids how to shoot a rifle. It’ll be the same radical environmentalists who treat land as sacred — unless it’s your truck, your deer stand, or your back yard.

Land as collateral

Moreover, the U.S. Treasury is considering putting federally owned land on the national balance sheet, listing your parks, forests, and hunting grounds as collateral.

What happens if America defaults on its debt?

David McNew / Stringer | Getty Images

Do you think our creditors won’t come calling? Imagine explaining to your kids that the lake you used to fish in is now under foreign ownership, that the forest you hunted in belongs to China.

This is not hypothetical. This is the logical conclusion of treating land like a piggy bank.

The American way

There’s a better way — and it’s the American way.

Let the people who live near the land steward it. Let ranchers, farmers, sportsmen, and local conservationists do what they’ve done for generations.

Did you know that 75% of America’s wetlands are on private land? Or that the most successful wildlife recoveries — whitetail deer, ducks, wild turkeys — didn’t come from Washington but from partnerships between private landowners and groups like Ducks Unlimited?

Private stewardship works. It’s local. It’s accountable. It’s incentivized. When you break it, you fix it. When you profit from the land, you protect it.

This is not about selling out. It’s about buying in — to freedom, to responsibility, to the principle of constitutional self-governance.

So when you hear the pundits cry foul over 3 million acres of federal land, remember: We don’t need Washington to protect our land. We need Washington to get out of the way.

Because this isn’t just about land. It’s about liberty. And once liberty is lost, it doesn’t come back easily.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

EXPOSED: Why the left’s trans agenda just CRASHED at SCOTUS

Anna Moneymaker / Staff | Getty Images

You never know what you’re going to get with the U.S. Supreme Court these days.

For all of the Left’s insane panic over having six supposedly conservative justices on the court, the decisions have been much more of a mixed bag. But thank God – sincerely – there was a seismic win for common sense at the Supreme Court on Wednesday. It’s a win for American children, parents, and for truth itself.

In a 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court upheld Tennessee’s state ban on irreversible transgender procedures for minors.

The mostly conservative justices stood tall in this case, while Sotomayor, Kagan, and Jackson predictably dissented. This isn’t just Tennessee’s victory – 20 other red states that have similar bans can now breathe easier, knowing they can protect vulnerable children from these sick, experimental, life-altering procedures.

Anna Moneymaker / Staff | Getty Images

Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the majority opinion, saying Tennessee’s law does not violate the Equal Protection Clause. It’s rooted in a very simple truth that common sense Americans get: kids cannot consent to permanent damage. The science backs this up – Norway, Finland, and the UK have all sounded alarms about the lack of evidence for so-called “gender-affirming care.” The Trump administration’s recent HHS report shredded the activist claims that these treatments help kids’ mental health. Nothing about this is “healthcare.” It is absolute harm.

The Left, the ACLU, and the Biden DOJ screamed “discrimination” and tried to twist the Constitution to force this radical ideology on our kids.

Fortunately, the Supreme Court saw through it this time. In her concurring opinion, Justice Amy Coney Barrett nailed it: gender identity is not some fixed, immutable trait like race or sex. Detransitioners are speaking out, regretting the surgeries and hormones they were rushed into as teens. WPATH – the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, the supposed experts on this, knew that kids cannot fully grasp this decision, and their own leaked documents prove that they knew it. But they pushed operations and treatments on kids anyway.

This decision is about protecting the innocent from a dangerous ideology that denies biology and reality. Tennessee’s Attorney General calls this a “landmark victory in defense of America’s children.” He’s right. This time at least, the Supreme Court refused to let judicial activism steal our kids’ futures. Now every state needs to follow Tennessee’s lead on this, and maybe the tide will continue to turn.

Insider alert: Glenn’s audience EXPOSES the riots’ dark truth

Barbara Davidson / Contributor | Getty Images

Glenn asked for YOUR take on the Los Angeles anti-ICE riots, and YOU responded with a thunderous verdict. Your answers to our recent Glennbeck.com poll cut through the establishment’s haze, revealing a profound skepticism of their narrative.

The results are undeniable: 98% of you believe taxpayer-funded NGOs are bankrolling these riots, a bold rejection of the claim that these are grassroots protests. Meanwhile, 99% dismiss the mainstream media’s coverage as woefully inadequate—can the official story survive such resounding doubt? And 99% of you view the involvement of socialist and Islamist groups as a growing threat to national security, signaling alarm at what Glenn calls a coordinated “Color Revolution” lurking beneath the surface.

You also stand firmly with decisive action: 99% support President Trump’s deployment of the National Guard to quell the chaos. These numbers defy the elite’s tired excuses and reflect a demand for truth and accountability. Are your tax dollars being weaponized to destabilize America? You’ve answered with conviction.

Your voice sends a powerful message to those who dismiss the unrest as mere “protests.” You spoke, and Glenn listened. Keep shaping the conversation at Glennbeck.com.

Want to make your voice heard? Check out more polls HERE.

EXPOSED: Your tax dollars FUND Marxist riots in LA

Anadolu / Contributor | Getty Images

Protesters wore Che shirts, waved foreign flags, and chanted Marxist slogans — but corporate media still peddles the ‘spontaneous outrage’ narrative.

I sat in front of the television this weekend, watching the glittering spectacle of corporate media do what it does best: tell me not to believe my lying eyes.

According to the polished news anchors, what I was witnessing in Los Angeles was “mostly peaceful protests.” They said it with all the earnest gravitas of someone reading a bedtime story, while behind them the streets looked like a deleted scene from “Mad Max.” Federal agents dodged concrete slabs as if it were an Olympic sport. A man in a Che Guevara crop top tried to set a police car on fire. Dumpster fires lit the night sky like some sort of postapocalyptic luau.

If you suggest that violent criminals should be deported or imprisoned, you’re painted as the extremist.

But sure, it was peaceful. Tear gas clouds and Molotov cocktails are apparently the incense and candles of this new civic religion.

The media expects us to play along — to nod solemnly while cities burn and to call it “activism.”

Let’s call this what it is: delusion.

Another ‘peaceful’ riot

If the Titanic “mostly floated” and the Hindenburg “mostly flew,” then yes, the latest L.A. riots are “mostly peaceful.” But history tends to care about those tiny details at the end — like icebergs and explosions.

The coverage was full of phrases like “spontaneous,” “grassroots,” and “organic,” as if these protests materialized from thin air. But many of the signs and banners looked like they’d been run off at ComradesKinkos.com — crisp print jobs with slogans promoting socialism, communism, and various anti-American regimes. Palestinian flags waved beside banners from Mexico, Venezuela, Cuba, and El Salvador. It was like someone looted a United Nations souvenir shop and turned it into a revolution starter pack.

And guess who funded it? You did.

According to at least one report, much of this so-called spontaneous rage fest was paid for with your tax dollars. Tens of millions of dollars from the Biden administration ensured your paycheck funded Trotsky cosplayers chucking firebombs at local coffee shops.

The same aging radicals from the 1970s — now armed with tenure, pensions, and book deals — are cheering from the sidelines, waxing poetic about how burning a squad car is “liberation.” These are the same folks who once wore tie-dye and flew to help guerrilla fighters and now applaud chaos under the banner of “progress.”

This is not progress. It is not protest. It’s certainly not justice or peace.

It’s an attempt to dismantle the American system — and if you dare say that out loud, you’re labeled a bigot, a fascist, or, worst of all, someone who notices reality.

And what sparked this taxpayer-funded riot? Enforcement against illegal immigrants — many of whom, according to official arrest records, are repeat violent offenders. These are not the “dreamers” or the huddled masses yearning to breathe free. These are criminals with long, violent rap sheets — allowed to remain free by a broken system that prioritizes ideology over public safety.

Photo by Kyle Grillot/Bloomberg | Getty Images

This is what people are rioting over — not the mistreatment of the innocent, but the arrest of the guilty. And in California, that’s apparently a cause for outrage.

The average American, according to Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, is supposed to worry they’ll be next. But unless you’re in the habit of assaulting people, smuggling, or firing guns into people’s homes, you probably don’t have much to fear.

Still, if you suggest that violent criminals should be deported or imprisoned, you’re painted as the extremist.

The left has lost it

This is what happens when a culture loses its grip on reality. We begin to call arson “art,” lawlessness “liberation,” and criminals “community members.” We burn the good and excuse the evil — all while the media insists it’s just “vibes.”

But it’s not just vibes. It’s violence, paid for by you, endorsed by your elected officials, and whitewashed by newsrooms with more concern for hair and lighting than for truth.

This isn’t activism. This is anarchism. And Democratic politicians are fueling the flame.