Give Him 15 is joining a 40-day national call to prayer before the 2018 Midterm Elections. Here is today’s Focus:
Day 19 – Pray Our Courts Will Defend Religious Liberty!
“It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.” (Galatians 5:1; KJV)
“Stand and Pray!” (Ephesians 6:13-18; KJV)
A growing anti-religious freedom movement has materialized over the past 60 years. Our First Liberty seems to have been forgotten by too many Americans, among them state and federal government leaders, including the courts. Religious liberty has been under increasing assault from every direction. One gospel coalition analyzes it thus:
- Religion has become personal and private, not public.
- Freedom of religion has been reinterpreted to mean freedom of worship.
- Fewer people claim to be religious today.
- The Sexual Revolution has advanced its own vision of sin and salvation.
Public policy law firms like the ACLU, the Southern Poverty Law Center, and the Freedom from Religion Foundation are leaders in the assault, arguing cases to silence or stifle religious expression or to punish Christians for their adherence to their faith convictions in a modern secular world.
This movement has given rise to a number of valiant public policy law firms that are laboring day and night to defend mostly Christians who have been subjected to harmful discrimination due to their religious convictions, among them the Alliance Defending Liberty (ADF), the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ), Liberty Counsel, First Liberty Institute, The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty and many more. They also defend religious liberty in general along with groups like the Family Research Council, the American Family Association and others who defend the traditional family and promote the sanctity of life, believing that “religious liberty is crucial to a thriving society, even when exercised in ways the broader culture deems unpopular.”
President Donald Trump will repeal executive orders and bureaucratic regulations that are hostile to religious liberty, like the measure used to sue the Little Sisters of the Poor who refused to purchase insurance for their employees that included abortifacient contraceptive drugs. But the enemies of Christianity and public expressions of faith will continue to use the Courts so long as there are sympathetic justices and judges who do not value religious freedom.
For some of the Federal Courts, many far-left judges will have to retire to make way for God-fearing pro-liberty judges before Christians will be safe to practice their faith without threat from employers, and local and state sexual orientation, gender identity (SOGI) and other laws that prohibit Christian businesses, employers, Christian 501(c)(3) organizations, and even churches, from practicing their faith cross current to the LGBT agenda.
Prayer Points:
- Thank the Lord for stirring Americans and especially Christians to push back in November’s Election against the tide of anti-faith government discrimination.
- Pray for President Trump and his advisors and appointees, that they will work with Congress to pass laws that stop anti-religious discrimination caused by the previous administration, state and local laws, and ordinances.
- Pray that the American people will be delivered from their biases favoring sexual activism over religious liberty and that anti-religious secularism will cease to be advanced in our public schools and colleges.
- Ask God to spur activist judges to retire. May He guide the Trump Team to weigh Religious Liberty heavily in choosing every future SCOTUS Justice and federal judge. In Jesus’ Name!
By Pierre Bynum
Family Research Council
See First Freedom Institute’s Undeniable: The Survey of Hostility to Religion in America
See FRC’s Issue Analysis: “Filling Justice Scalia’s Seat and Beyond.”
http://www.frc.org/scotusnominations