Since its creation in 1998, the USCIRF has been controversial, both at home and abroad. At home, criticism typically focuses on the charge that the US should be more willing to assist CPC nations to improve their record rather than just putting them on a “blacklist” for the world to see. Abroad, nations have frequently criticized the US for its attitude of “arrogance” in thinking that it is superior to other sovereign nations and entitled to criticize them for religious freedom abuses when the US hardly has a spotless record itself. Nevertheless, after 15 years of activity, there is little doubt that the USCIRF reports have often motivated CPC nations to improve their religious freedom records. USCIRF’s work has also exposed serious religious freedom abuses that should be brought to the world’s attention.

Since abortion is so politically charged, professed people of faith sometimes think the “safest” course is to ignore the issue altogether. But the reality is, regardless of whether you believe the life of an unborn child should be protected, the Gosnell trial still matters because it involves children who were killed after they were born.

“We are deeply concerned about the situation in various parts of the world where individuals, including Ahmadiyya Muslims, Bahá’ís, Chaldean Catholics and Coptic Orthodox, Tibetan Buddhists, Jews and Muslim Rohingyas, among others, experience difficulty in their ability to worship and practice their faith in peace,” Bennett told approximately 150 guests at the annual Liberty Religious Freedom Dinner, co-sponsored by Liberty magazine, the North American Religious Liberty Association and the International Religious Liberty Association.

Apr. 23, 2013 Bucharest, Romania RUC staff/Adventist News Network s Romanian legislators consider changes to the national constitution, the Seventh-day Adventist Church is sponsoring a mass promotion of religious liberty with a marathon of town hall meetings, university lectures and inter-faith consultations. Religious freedom proponents from six faith groups, along [...]

These types of incidents used to be few and far between for us in the United States. (I fully realize that these types of events are a way of life for many people around the world.) To feel for the people suffering in Boston and the people suffering in West was just too much for me, as much as I knew and know that deserve all the sympathy, empathy, love and prayers that I can give. As the time has passed this week my hearts have gone out to them and I wish them a peace and a comfort that I believe only God can give.

Carson warned of “forces in America that want to fundamentally change who we are without discussion. Said Carson, “They co-opt the media and get everybody to shut up so we don’t know what is going on [so they can] change the underpinnings of the nation. We must be smart enough not to fall for it or one day we will wake up and find that we have a different nation.”

In opposition to many of his Calvinist colleagues who believed in predestination, Milton argued, through the unrhymed lines of poetry in Paradise Lost, that the push for more political freedom on earth is an unstoppable tide of progress. That desire for liberty exists only because of the divinely instilled presence of free will given to humanity by the Creator, who, while He may have foreseen the Fall, allowed it to happen in order to give humanity an opportunity to make the greatest decision the universe could ever present.

This week, two members of the North Carolina House of Representatives submitted a resolution which would declare that “the Constitution of the United States of America does not prohibit states or their subsidiaries from making laws respecting an establishment of religion.” In other words, the legislation declared that that the state could make its own laws about religion and the federal government would not be able to stop them. Although the resolution is not likely to be approved, it does deserve some serious examination as it reflects a common argument arising in the religious right that the Establishment Clause does not apply to the states.

As the constant state of conflict in the Middle East demonstrates, violence begets violence. In order to tackle our culture’s problems with violence we need a generational shifting of ideas.

Students at Stanford University School of Law have a unique opportunity to participate in the nation’s only law-school based clinic program that focuses on issues regarding religious freedom and accommodation.