The hour approaches. I make my way to the administrative offices on the fourth floor and am greeted by the receptionist’s cheery smile. I announce that I am here to take my oath and then sit down in trepidation. What to do? I do not want to take this oath. I want to take Jesus at his word when he says, “Do not swear at all, either by heaven…or by the earth…” (Matthew 5:27). At 23 years of age, this is the first time my faith has put me in an uncomfortable situation. And as ridiculous and unnecessary as it may be, compliance with the State amounts to cowardice on my part. And I don’t want to be a coward.

The woman who will administer the oath appears and invites me to join her in a conference room. I’ll call her Amanda for simplicity’s sake. Amanda is clearly a veteran of the oath-administering process, rapidly going through the legal introductory details stream-of-conscious style. But I’m barely listening. I haven’t yet determined if I have the courage to stand up for what I believe. She hands me a copy of the oath and instructs me to read aloud with her, inserting my name at the appropriate intervals (see below). I finally summon the courage to ask, “What if I refuse to take this oath?” My words sound foreign, and I can hardly recognize them as my own. Amanda shoots me a quizzical look, and asks what the problem is. I spare her (and myself) the inevitable awkwardness that would result if I confessed my actual reason: that I believe Jesus said not to. Instead, I nervously declare that I believe in “truth in all speech” and taking oaths violates my claimed probity in language. I’m not sure if I made any sense, because a moment later, I am treated to a wide-eyed, grandiose discourse of our founding father’s vision of government, and that the Constitution they formulated wants to protect people like me, by whom I can only imagine she means subversive lunatics. Amanda then informs me that everyone takes this oath, from the newly elected Congressional representatives to every library employee. Swearing to defend the Constitution means swearing to protect justice, liberty, etc. You know, good things.

Still unconvinced, I ask again what would happen if I refused to take the oath. “Well,” Amanda intones, “you would not be eligible to work for the City of _______.” There it is. My job and my paycheck are on the line. She quickly follows up by mentioning that I have the option of merely affirming the oath in lieu of swearing. I briefly wonder if any difference is merely semantic, but a moment later I am faithfully affirming that I will defend the Constitution against all enemies from my cubicle in the basement.

I, [name], do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.

I try to say “affirm” with radical gusto, but I instead sound awkwardly patriotic. Once finished, I notice that my signature is also required. I sign away my remaining principles, not stopping to think about how a signature is probably just simply swearing on paper. Amanda sweeps up my signature and bids me goodbye. I slink back down to the basement while glumly informing my wife via text message that she married a spineless wuss.

Sure, this was no Jesus vs. Pilate, and although I poke fun, I think about the encounter often. I can’t be sure that if the “affirm” loophole were unavailable to me, I wouldn’t have sworn the oath anyway. It’s likely that when the chips are down, and my financial well-being is at stake, I can’t let Jesus get in the way, whether I am interpreting him correctly or not. Just give me my paycheck. I can only pray for the courage to do otherwise.

Now, this is not to say that Jesus commands us to be anarchists, or that one must choose between God and the Government at every turn. We must remember Romans 13, that government is instituted by God, his servant for our good. But I would hope that we do not confuse “supporting and defending the Constitution” with the proclamation of the Gospel. Oath taking is serious business, and there is no more decisive oath normative for Christian lives than baptism.

After all, the interests of the State and the interests of the Church probably coincide less frequently than either would have us believe. If there are no longer any visible differences between the followers of Caesar and the devotees of Christ, the Church’s capacity to advance the Kingdom of God is severely compromised. It seems to me that oaths of any sort, and to any government, obfuscate the transcendence of the Kingdom. Along with the Church Father Tertullian, we would do well to remember that Christians acknowledge no commonwealth smaller than the entire world.

Dave graduated from college with bachelor’s degrees in English and religion and is now studying theology at the graduate level. In addition to confusing library employees, Dave enjoys college basketball, practicing his imaginary golf swing, and spending time with his wife.

Countless modern lifestyle choices, as well as health practices, are rooted in religious beliefs. Jews don’t eat pork because the Torah strictly forbids it (Leviticus 11:7), Muslims avoid alcohol because of the words of Muhammad found within the Qur’an (Surah 5:90), and according to the Bible, Christians are supposed to shun premarital sex (1^st Corinthians 7:2). Contemporary epidemiologists and public health professionals are beginning to realize this connection between health and faith. The Journal of Religion and Health is a quarterly journal that is solely dedicated to research within this topic. Numerous studies and have been focused on this simple question: does religion affect health?

Increasing evidence is showing that physical, mental and emotional well being are attached to religion. Drs. Christopher G. Ellison and Linda K. George co-wrote a paper entitled, “Religious Involvement, Social Ties, and Social Support in a Southeastern Community.” This study used scientific reasoning to identify empirical evidence regarding customary churchgoers compared with those that don’t attend religious ceremonies regularly. Regular attendees of church reported, “…larger social networks, more contact with network members, more types of social support received, and more favorable perceptions of the quality of their social relationships than did their unchurched counterparts.” Another similar study considered the effects of religion on, “health practices, social support, [and] psychosocial resources such as self-esteem and self-efficacy, and belief structures such as sense of coherence.” The difficulty in isolating confounding statistics and creating a solid scientific experiment to measure the effects of religion on faith is obviously complicated at best. Therefore, continued study is important to help find empirical evidence of a shared relationship between spirituality and physical well-being.

Although it is difficult to pin-point pragmatic data regarding the effects of religion on health, the consensus of many professionals is that a relationship does exist. One study sums up this connection perfectly, “An important empirical question to pursue is whether positive emotions are among the active ingredients that account for the benefits that religious practices have for physical and mental health.” The evidence is so palpable that medical schools around the country have begun requiring students to take courses in spirituality and health. Physicians have until recently separated the scientific world of medicine from the subjective realm of faith, yet more and more doctors are asking patients about their spiritual lives. Pioneering this frontier is the Seventh-day Adventist medical center located in Loma Linda, California. Doctors at this institution regularly ask patients if they would like to pray before surgeries and are very open about melding spiritual communication with medical aid. Seventh-day Adventists, a protestant denomination very mindful of dietary practices, abstain from pork, alcohol, smoking, and focus on healthy lifestyles as part of their Christian journey.

While the full effects of religion on health may not be understood, it is becoming increasingly evident that your sacred community can aid in much more than just an existential spiritual journey. Extremism on either side continues to be dangerous though, whether it’s scientists denying someone’s faith or zealots ignoring logic. Therefore, perhaps we should follow the advice of Siddhartha and continue down the Middle Path.

After living in France and traveling in South America, Europe, and the Middle East, Joshua Crouch graduated from La Sierra University with a B.A. in history and is now a graduate student at Loma Linda University’s School of Public Health in Loma Linda, California.

EXCERPT:

The date was June 5, 1917, the first day of the draft. Sousa’s Band struck up “Stars and Stripes Forever” and the 6,000 in attendance at the American Medical Association Convention in New York City rose to their feet as former president Theodore Roosevelt walked across the stage.

The United States had tried to avoid war, but the German U-boats kept a relentless attack on American interests at sea. In a complicated scenario the British were fearful that the anticolonialist Americans would enter on the side of the Central Powers, and there were rumors that Germany would enlist Mexico to join Japan in fighting the United States in return for Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona.

President Wilson, who won the presidency on the promise of keeping America out of the war, quietly began arming some American merchant ships, and Germany sunk several, an act that former president Roosevelt denounced as piracy. Roosevelt insisted on war, and on April 6, 1917, Congress declared war.

Once at the podium, Roosevelt ripped into those who did not support the draft for moral reasons. “The conscientious objector,” he said, “curtains his cowardice behind the statement that he objects to placing himself in a position where he might take part in killing someone. I’d guard his conscience. I’d send him to the front, but I wouldn’t give him a gun. I’d put him to digging kitchen sinks and trenches so that good men could rest until the time came for them to kill someone. Then I’d watch his conscience to see what it would do.”

Read the Full Article at http://www.libertymagazine.org/index.php?id=1636

Eric Kreye, whose story is told in  the book Under the Blood Banner: The Story of a Hitler Youth talks with Michael Peabody about growing up in Hitler’s Germany.  Born in America but raised in Germany, Eric describes how he was beaten by his teacher when he could not recite Hitler’s life story, how his father helped him avoid many of the Hitler Youth activities, how his family hid a Jewish woman and her daughter from the Gestapo, what it was like when the American military moved into Germany, and how he and his brother came to America.

To read “Under the Blood Banner” online visit: http://www.amazingjoy.com/frame_contents.htm

The book is also available in print from TEACH Services for $12.95.

Listen to the Interview:

EXCERPT:

It was a year and one-half ago we told you that $800 billion in stimulus wasn’t enough. That is now proving to be the case. Get ready for another liquidity barrage, called quantitative easing. It will also mean real interest rates will rise again. The backbone of most all nations of the world is debt not gold, silver or a basket of commodities. Greece is being blamed, but all told, 19 nations are on the edge of bankruptcy. In fact, central banks in these countries are among the biggest speculators. In the euro zone countries cannot print money so they sell bonds in spite of the rules of the bailout. Many are having a hard time selling bonds. Thus other nations are secretly doing so.

There is talk of another Northern European currency backed by gold. If that happens the dollar will fall because it won’t be able to compete. Those in the southern tier will have to return to their own currencies and do as Argentina did ten years ago. Those long dollars do not get too comfortable.

EXCERPT:

The ideas being batted around to save the industry share a common theme: They are designed to empower bureaucrats, not consumers. For instance, one proposal would, “Allow news organizations to agree jointly on a mechanism to require news aggregators and others to pay for the use of online content, perhaps through the use of copyright licenses.”

In other words, government policy would encourage a tax on websites like the Drudge Report, a must-read source for the news links of the day, so that the agency can redistribute the funds collected to various newspapers. Such a tax would hit other news aggregators, such as Digg, Fark and Reddit, which not only gather links, but provide a forum for a lively and entertaining discussion of the issues raised by the stories. Fostering a robust public-policy debate, not saving a particular business model, should be the goal of journalism in the first place.

Just in time for our 2-year Anniversary, ReligiousLiberty.TV is giving one of our fancy new T-shirts to a lucky person who completes our short survey. In turn, we’ll find out how to make it an even better website.

To enter, click this link and get started.  Must provide your name and email address. If you win, we’ll contact you for shipping information.  Drawing to be held on June 1, 2010.    (People from around the world are invited to participate in the survey, but unfortunately we can only ship the shirt to entrants from the United States and Canada.)

Thank you to all who participated. This survey is now closed.

May 5, 2010 – WASHINGTON (RNS) — More than a decade after it was first introduced, an on-again off-again bill to protect employees’ religious expression in the workplace is attracting renewed attention that could lead to action on Capitol Hill in coming weeks.
. . .

“The bill will be introduced to Congress soon in a fashion that will eliminate the concerns some folks had since its inception,” said Richard Foltin, the director of national and legislative affairs for the American Jewish Committee.

Touted in certain circles as the “WRFA god,” Foltin co-chairs an unusually broad coalition of almost 40 religious groups, from Sikhs to Seventh-Day Adventists to Southern Baptists, who support the bill’s religious freedom expansions.

If passed, the now narrowly tailored legislation would require employers to make reasonable accommodation in the three areas where the vast majority of religious accommodation claims fall: religious clothing, grooming, and scheduling of religious holidays.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE: http://www.crosswalk.com/news/religiontoday/11631159/

ReligiousLiberty.TV will continue to track developments of this legislation which is similar to the Workplace Religious Freedom Act passed in Oregon last year.

Related stories:

Oregon Governor Ted Kulongoski signs the Workplace Religious Freedom Act

Breaking News:  We have received word that Oregon Governor Ted Kulongoski has signed the Oregon Workplace Religious Freedom Act (SB 786). SB 786 requires employers to make credible attempts to accommodate religious holy day observance and religious dress. Prior to SB 786, employers in Oregon could make only the bare minimum …

Talking Points SB 786 – Oregon Workplace Religious Freedom Act

GENERAL Talking Points   Federal Religious Accommodation Law   Defining terms: “Undue hardship.” Title VII of the U.S. Civil Rights Act of 1964 as amended in 1972, requires employers to “reasonably” accommodate the religious practices of their employees unless, by so doing, the employer would incur an “undue hardship on the conduct of the …

Workplace Discrimination Claims On the Rise (BeliefNet – RNS)

The Workplace Religious Freedom Act (WRFA) is again being proposed in the United States Congress and a similar bill is being heard at the state legislature in Oregon.    This bill is important to religious people who are currently being forced to choose between their faith and their jobs.  Thanks …

Here is an excerpt:

In reviewing the history of the religion clauses of the Constitution, onecan take two paths. One supports the basic ideal underlying ourconstitutional framework: equality, which is inclusive and is based onrespect for all religious opinions. The other leads to exclusion byadvocating for one or more non-universal religious views. The first reflects the Framers’ goals for guaranteeing liberty to all. The other guarantees liberty only to those who muster the political might to use the state’s machinery to advocate for their religious beliefs. The first exists to protect every individual. The other focuses on the fact that the white, male, property-owning Framers believed in God, and thus concludes thatthe magnificent document they created “permits the disregard” of religious minorities with alternative beliefs.

Why would anyone choose that latter path? Why go out of the way to“permit the disregard” of a minority when such a notion is nowhere to be found within the text of the Constitution, and a historical reading can as readily and more nobly support the equality principle? What sort of American patriot, citizen, or public servant would work towards such an end?”

The entire article, which is well worth reading, is available in PDF format for free download at http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1594374 (Click on “One-Click Download” once you follow this link to download the entire document for free.)

ACADEMIC ABSTRACT:

In June 2005, Justice Antonin Scalia contended that ‘the Establishment Clause…permits the disregard of devout atheists.’ This statement is extraordinary inasmuch as it appears to reverse an inexorable (albeit, at times, wandering) trend toward true equality. Thus, where individuals had previously been treated as less than equal on the basis of race (e.g., Dred Scott v. Sandford), gender (e.g., Bradwell v. State) and national origin (e.g., Korematsu v. United States), those odious decisions are no longer good law. In his McCreary dissent, it seems that Justice Scalia sought motion in the opposite direction: toward overturning equality, in the one constitutional arena where the Supreme Court had not previously proclaimed such a manifest animus toward minorities: religion.
This article takes three approaches in considering the Justice’s argument. First, recognizing that Justice Scalia prides himself on being a ‘textualist,’ it considers the Establishment Clause’s text (‘Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion’). Next, because Justice Scalia, in McCreary, used specific historical events to support his thesis, those events are analyzed to see if they were selected in a fair manner, and if they really stand for the proposition he claims.

Finally, in Part III, Justice Scalia’s brand of analysis is applied to his own Catholicism. It is shown that the United States of America was born of a literal hatred for Catholics, which was pervasive and persistent. One may well conclude, therefore, that under his approach, the Establishment Clause permits the disregard of his own religion.

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1594374 (Click on “One-Click Download” once you follow this link to download the entire document.)

Address by the Keynote Speaker Lázló Andor at the first European Conference for the ‘protection of a work-free Sunday’. The conference was held at the European Parliament in Brussels on Wednesday 24th March 2010.

ARLP has posted a story on their website along with a video of the keynote address.

Here are some of the reasons for the conference:

Purpose of Conference
The promotion of the first European Free Sunday Alliance by way of a five pronged appeal:

i. The establishment of a common weekly rest day for the improvement of social cohesion through the following: protection of workers’ health, the reconciliation of work and family and the preservation of the life of civil society.

ii. To call upon the Heads of State and Government of the 27 EU Member States, to firmly ‘resist the growing economic pressure to liberalise the laws providing for a work-free Sunday and to commit themselves to safeguard and promote a work-free Sunday as a pillar of the European Social Model within the laws of their respective nations.’

iii. To the European Commission to reinforce the European Social Model by harmonising EU legislation and internal market rules to ‘guarantee the central place of a work-free Sunday in the life of workers and of society and to guarantee that no new pressure is placed on the principle of a work-free Sunday’.

iv. To the Members of the ‘European Parliament to ensure that all relevant EU legislation both respects and promotes the protection of Sunday as a weekly day of rest for all EU citizens’.

v. To all ‘European citizens to sign a future Citizens’ Initiative to be expressed in favour of the protection of a work-free Sunday’.

From Protection of a Work-free Sunday: Call for a Work-Free Sunday booklet, pp. 1-2

The official website for the conference is available here.

By the year 2020, there will be 30 million more men than women of marriageable age in this giant empire, so large and so different (its current population is 1,336,410,000) that it often feels more like a separate planet than just another country. Nothing like this has ever happened to any civilisation before.

The nearest we can come to it is the sad shortage of men after the First World War in Britain, France, Russia and Germany, and the many women denied the chance of family life and motherhood as a result.

…

The Chinese state, never having intended this result and increasingly alarmed by it, is now using all its huge propaganda resources to try to stop the slaughter of unborn girls.

But it will be hard to fight against the cold hard prejudice in favour of sons and against daughters, rooted in a prehistoric belief that sons will care for their aged parents while daughters will cost money in dowries, and desert to the families into which they marry.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1265068/China-The-worlds-new-superpower-beginning-century-supremacy-alarming-surplus-males.html#ixzz0kljLVR68

Americans United for Separation of Church and State today praised Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens for his record of support for church-state separation and expressed the hope that his replacement will hold similar views.

Stevens, the oldest member of the court, announced this morning that he will retire at the end of this term. President Barack Obama is expected to soon reveal his choice to replace Stevens.

“Justice Stevens is an icon — a thoughtful, perceptive justice who understands the role of church-state separation in American life,” said the Rev. Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United. “It is vitally important that President Obama choose a high court nominee who understands that government may not meddle in matters of religion.

“The high court is deeply divided on church-state issues,” Lynn continued. “It is imperative that Stevens’ replacement be someone who understands and upholds the constitutional mandate of church-state separation.”

Lynn pointed out that Stevens voted consistently against efforts to interject religion into public schools and to funnel tax aid to sectarian schools. He opposed government display of sectarian symbols on public property. At the same time, he was an ardent supporter of the free exercise of religion.

In 2002, Stevens issued a strong dissent from the high court’s ruling upholding voucher subsidies for private schools in Cleveland, noting that most of the public funds went to religious institutions. (Zelman v. Simmons-Harris)

“Whenever we remove a brick from the wall that was designed to separate religion and government, we increase the risk of religious strife and weaken the foundations of our democracy,” Stevens wrote.

Lynn said Americans United will closely monitor the nomination process to ensure that Stevens’ replacement has the same regard for church-state separation.

Appointed by President Gerald R. Ford, Stevens has served on the Supreme Court since 1975.

Americans United is a religious liberty watchdog group based in Washington, D.C. Founded in 1947, the organization educates Americans about the importance of church-state separation in safeguarding religious freedom.

WASHINGTON (ABP) — With the Supreme Court’s oldest and longest-serving member announcing April 9 his retirement, advocates for strong church-state separation urged that Justice John Paul Stevens’ replacement be as devoted to preventing government establishment of religion as the retiring jurist.

However, some called for a successor who can improve on what they view as Stevens’ mixed record when it comes to enforcing the other half of the First Amendment’s religion clauses — protecting the free exercise of faith.

“Justice Stevens is an icon — a thoughtful, perceptive justice who understands the role of church-state separation in American life,” said Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, in a press release. “It is vitally important that President Obama choose a high-court nominee who understands that government may not meddle in matters of religion.”

Read the full article:  http://www.abpnews.com/content/view/5032/53/

1. By Ellen G. White – The Great Controversy pp. 293-298

By Ellen G. White – The Great Controversy pp. 293-298

——————————————————————–
Eleven years after the planting of the first colony, Roger Williams came to the new World. Like the early Pilgrims, he came to enjoy religious freedom; but unlike them, he saw what so few in his time had yet seen—that this freedom was the inalienable right of all, whatever might be their creed. He was an earnest seeker for truth, with Robinson holding it impossible that all the light from God’s word had yet been received. Williams “was the first person in modern Christendom to establish civil government on the doctrine of the liberty of conscience, the equality of opinions before the law.” He declared it to be the duty of the magistrate to restrain crime, but never to control the conscience. “The public or the magistrates may decide,” he said, “what is due from man to man; but when they attempt to prescribe a man’s duties to God, they are out of place, and there can be no safety; for it is clear that if the magistrate has the power, he may decree one set of opinions or beliefs today and another tomorrow; as had been done in England by different kings and queens, and by different popes and councils in the Roman Church; so that belief would become a heap of confusion.”

Attendance at the services of the established church was required under a penalty of fine or imprisonment. “William’s reprobated the law; the worst statute in the English code was that which did but enforce attendance upon the parish church. To compel men to unite with those of a different creed, he regarded as an open violation of their natural rights; to drag to public worship the irreligious and the unwilling, seemed only like requiring hypocrisy. . . . ‘No one should be bound to worship, or,’ he added, ‘to maintain a worship, against his own consent.’ ‘What!’ exclaimed his antagonists, amazed at his tenets, ‘is not the laborer worthy of his hire?’ ‘Yes,’ replied he, ‘from them that hire him.’”

Roger Williams was respected and beloved as a faithful minister, a man of rare gifts, of unbending integrity and true benevolence; yet his steadfast denial of the right of civil magistrates to authority over the church, and his demand for religious liberty, could not be tolerated. The application of this new doctrine, it was urged, would “subvert the fundamental state and government of the country.” He was sentenced to banishment from the colonies, and finally, to avoid arrest, he was forced to flee, amid the cold and storms of winter, into the unbroken forest.

“For fourteen weeks,” he says, “I was sorely tossed in a bitter season, not knowing what bread or bed did mean.” But “the ravens fed me in the wilderness,” and a hollow tree often served him for a shelter. Thus he continued his painful flight through the snow and the trackless forest, until he found refuge with an Indian tribe whose confidence and affection he had won while endeavoring to teach them the truths of the gospel.

Making his way at last, after months of change and wandering, to the shores of Narragansett Bay, he there laid the foundation of the first state of modern times that in the fullest sense recognized the right of religious freedom. The fundamental principle of Roger Williams’s colony, was “that every man should have liberty to worship God according to the light of his own conscience.” His little state, Rhode Island, became the asylum of the oppressed, and it increased and prospered until its foundation principles—civil and religious liberty—became the cornerstone of the American Republic.

In that grand old document which our forefathers set forth as their bill of rights—the Declaration of Independence—they declared: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” And the Constitution guarantees, in the most explicit terms, the inviolability of conscience: “No religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office of public trust under the United States.” “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”

“The framers of the Constitution recognized the eternal principle that man’s relation with his God is above human legislation, and his rights of conscience inalienable.

“The framers of the Constitution recognized the eternal principle that man’s relation with his God is above human legislation, and his rights of conscience inalienable. Reasoning was not necessary to establish this truth; we are conscious of it in our own bosoms. It is this consciousness which, in defiance of human laws, has sustained so many martyrs in tortures and flames. They felt that their duty to God was superior to human enactments, and that man could exercise no authority over their consciences. It is an inborn principle which nothing can eradicate.”

As the tidings spread through the countries of Europe, of a land where every man might enjoy the fruit of his own labor and obey the convictions of his conscience, thousands flocked to the shores of the New World, Colonies rapidly multiplied. “Massachusetts, by special law, offered free welcome and aid, at the public cost, to Christians of any nationality who might fly beyond the Atlantic ‘to escape from wars or famine, or the oppression of their persecutors.’ Thus the fugitive and the downtrodden were, by statute, made the guests of the commonwealth.” In twenty years from the first landing at Plymouth, as many thousand Pilgrims were settled in New England.

To secure the object which they sought, “they were content to earn a bare subsistence by a life of frugality and toil. They asked nothing from the soil but the reasonable returns of their own labor. No golden vision threw a deceitful halo around their path. . . . They were content with the slow but steady progress of their social polity. They patiently endured the privations of the wilderness, watering the tree of liberty with their tears, and with the sweat of their brow, till it took deep root in the land.”

The Bible was held as the foundation of faith, the source of wisdom, and the charter of liberty. Its principles were diligently taught in the home, in the school, and in the church, and its fruits were manifest in thrift, intelligence, purity, and temperance. One might be for years a dweller in the Puritan settlements, “and not see a drunkard, or hear an oath, or meet a beggar.” It was demonstrated that the principles of the Bible are the surest safeguards of national greatness. The feeble and isolated colonies grew to a confederation of powerful States, and the world marked with wonder the peace and prosperity of “a church without a pope, and a state without a king.”

But continually increasing numbers were attracted to the shores of America, actuated by motives widely different from those of the first Pilgrims. Though the primitive faith and purity exerted a widespread and moulding power, yet its influence became less and less as the numbers increased of those who sought only worldly advantage.

The regulation adopted by the early colonists, of permitting only members of the church to vote or to hold office in the civil government, led to most pernicious results. This measure had been accepted as a means of preserving the purity of the state, but it resulted in the corruption of the church. A profession of religion being the condition of suffrage and office holding, many, actuated solely by motives of worldly policy, united with the church without a change of heart. Thus the churches came to consist, to a considerable extent, of unconverted persons; and even in the ministry were those who not only held errors of doctrine, but who were ignorant of the renewing power of the Holy Spirit. Thus again was demonstrated the evil results, so often witnessed in the history of the church from the days of Constantine to the present, of attempting to build up the church by the aid of the state, of appealing to the secular power in support of the gospel of Him who declared, “My kingdom is not of this world.” The union of the church with the state, be the degree never so slight, while it may appear to bring the world nearer to the church, does in reality but bring the church nearer to the world.

The union of the church with the state, be the degree never so slight, while it may appear to bring the world nearer to the church, does in reality but bring the church nearer to the world.

The great principle so nobly advocated by Robinson and Roger Williams, that truth is progressive, that Christians should stand ready to accept all the light which may shine from God’s holy Word, was lost sight of by their descendants. The Protestant churches of America and those of Europe as well—so highly favored in receiving the blessings of the Reformation, failed to press forward in the path of reform. Though a few faithful men arose, from time to time, to proclaim new truth and expose long cherished error, the majority, like the Jews in Christ’s day or the papists in the time of Luther, were content to believe as their fathers had believed, and to live as they had lived. Therefore religion again degenerated into formalism; and errors and superstitions which would have been cast aside had the church continued to walk in the light of God’s word, were retained and cherished. Thus the spirit inspired by the Reformation gradually died out, until there was almost as great need of reform in the Protestant churches as in the Roman Church in the time of Luther. There was the same worldliness and spiritual stupor, a similar reverence for the opinions of men, and substitution of human theories for the teachings of God’s word.

###

In his testimony on February 10, 2010, Alejandro J. Beutel, Government Liaison Muslim Public Affairs Council in Washington, D.C., wrote, “this bill will move the balance between proper workplace accommodation and the legitimate concerns of businesses in the right direction. It seeks to better fulfill Maryland’s strong commitment to religious liberty without jeopardizing our communities’  economic prosperity – a laudable and achievable goal.”

This bill which focuses on holy day observance  is significantly different from the identically named  federal Workplace Religious Freedom Act that has been proposed throughout the decade and the recently passed Oregon Workplace Religious Freedom Act which addressed both holy day observance and religious dress.  The Maryland bill also indicates that labor union contracts would trump the individual requests of employees for accommodation if there is a conflict.  Also, the bill would provide specific economic relief for the employee in the event that he or she is compelled to work on a holy day in violation of his or her beliefs.

Click here to read the Bill Text in PDF format.

EXCERPT:

The Sunday shopping ban in New Jersey’s largest county — among the nation’s last remaining blue laws — may be lifted to satisfy the state’s hunger for more sales tax revenue. The budget proposed last week by new Republican Gov. Chris Christie assumes $65 million in new sales tax revenue by jettisoning the law starting July 1.

While some people may see Bergen County’s blue law as antiquated, many residents view it as quaint and don’t want to lose it.

“Sundays in this town are wonderful,” said Carl Shaw, a 56-year-old Bergen County native who owns Norton Paints in Paramus, which is closed on Sundays by law. “To the people who say ‘I need it now,’ I say ‘Plan ahead or come Saturday or Monday.’”

The few remaining blue laws are mostly in the South and Midwest and mostly limit liquor or car sales on Sundays, said Jacqueline Byers, research director at the National Association of Counties.

Read the full article at http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_blue_law_nj

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