Christian organizations are demanding the Internal Revenue Service release the details of a deal they made with the anti-Christian Freedom From Religion Foundation to target churches and their tax-exempt status.
The agreement between the IRS and the anti-Christianists was part of a hearing in federal court on July 17th to settle a lawsuit brought in 2012.
The virulent anti-Christian Freedom From Religion Foundation said that churches were illegally influencing the outcome of elections by talking to congregants about political issues from the pulpit during services.
The Faith and Freedom Coalition says that the IRS has a history of harassment of conservative and Christian groups, making this secret deal with those aiming to destroy Christians dangerous for all Americans.
“Given the history of the IRS in harassing, persecuting and infringing on the First Amendment rights of Christians and other people of faith, this is a deeply disturbing development,” said Ralph Reed, chairman of Faith & Freedom Coalition. “For the Christian community to be targeted for increased enforcement power and the threat of loss of tax-exempt status by this scandal-plagued agency defies logic, common sense, and any sound legal basis.”
The group is not the only ones looking into the secret deal. Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt has sent letters to the IRS and Department of Justice demanding to see all communications between the government and the anti-Christianists.
The U.S. Navy has issued a directive ordering the removal of all Bibles from lodges and hotels run on U.S. Navy bases after complaints from an vehemently anti-Christian organization.
“The current direction is to remove all religious material from Navy Lodge guest rooms,” read an email to a Navy chaplain from The Navy Exchange Service Command (NEXCOM). “For those Navy Lodges with religious materials currently in guest rooms, the Navy Lodge General Manager will contact the Installation Chaplain’s office who will provide guidance on the removal procedure disposition of these materials.”
The American Family Association who received a separate copy of the e-mail directive confirmed the e-mail’s contents.
The violently anti-Christian Freedom From Religion Foundation has filed a complaint with the military claiming the existence of the Bibles in the hotel room meant the government was automatically endorsing the text.
Kathleen Martin, a spokesman for NEXCOM, avoided giving a direct answer to the issue when confronted by FoxNews reporter Todd Starnes.
“We looked at our policy — and realized there wasn’t a consistent policy regarding Navy Lodges,” she told Starnes. “We decided we needed to have some consistency and be consistent with the Navy.”
The Bibles were placed free by the Gideons.
The vehement anti-Christian Freedom From Religion Foundation has coerced an Indiana school district to ban staff from leading prayer.
The group said an anonymous person contacted them about a teacher leading prayer at a school-sponsored event. Teacher Jeffrey Burress confirmed he lead a prayer at Sarah Scott Middle School at an awards ceremony.
“The district should make certain that teachers in its schools are not unlawfully and inappropriately indoctrinating students in religious matters by encouraging them to engage in prayer,” the anti-Christian group wrote in a letter to the school.
School superintendent Daniel Tanoos said that he disagreed with the actions of the group but that the school’s lawyer said the move had to be done. Tanoos said he would allow students to lead prayer at events if they choose to do so because that is constitutional.
The FFRF has been targeting Christians around the nation that lead or participate in prayers in public schools.
A federal judge threw out a lawsuit this week from an atheist group angered over not being able to give uncensored pornographic material to students when Bibles were given out without censorship.
Senior Judge Kendall Sharpe said he threw out the lawsuit because of a change in school policy that allowed the atheists to eventually distribute their book “An X-Rated Sex Book: Sex & Obscenity In The Bible.”
The school had been permitting World Changers of Florida to deliver Bibles to students without interference or censorship when the atheists discovered the program and launched a series of complaints. The radically hostile anti-Christian group Freedom From Religion Foundation backed the atheist group.
The Central Florida Freethought Community says they plan to flood schools with more anti-Christian publications as a result of the court ruling.
The anti-Christian groups said despite the dismissal, the situation was a win for advancing the cause of removing Christians from society.
The New York Times is being accused of showing their anti-Christian bias by accepting an ad that bashes Christians on the Supreme Court while they have rejected ads that were critical of Islam.
In 2012, a group of anti-Muslim activists had tried to place an ad in the Times critical of Islam and its stances on non-Muslims and treatment of women. The newspaper said they would not run the advertisement because they didn’t want to “inflame” Muslims with an ad critical of their faith.
Then Thursday, the virulent anti-Christian group Freedom From Religion Foundation was permitted to place an ad in the New York Times that personally disparaged the five justices on the Court who voted to uphold religious freedom by condemning them as “all being Roman Catholic.”
Matthew Balan, a news analyst for the Media Research Center, says while Times has every right to decide what ads to run in their newspaper, the fact they would allow a bigoted attack on Christians in an advertisement while denying an ad critical of Islam in any way shows their bias.
Catholic League statement Bill Donohue said that there were multiple examples of bigotry toward Catholics in the media following the ruling. He cited the Boston Herald that headlined a story “Court’s Catholic Justices Attack Women’s Rights.”
Christian teachers now have fewer rights to express their faith after a ruling form a New York judge.
Joelle Silver, a teacher who had displayed Bible verses in her classroom on motivational posters, a painting that included three crosses on a hill and a prayer box on her desk placed by the school’s Bible Study Club, has been told all of those items must be removed from the classroom.
Judge Leslie G. Foschio ruled that she could not proceed in her lawsuit against the Cheektowaga Central School District that her rights were being violated. The judge did, however, leave open the possibility she could move forward in her suit on the basis of equal protection discrimination because only Christian items were forced to be removed.
The removal of her items came when the virulent anti-Christian group Freedom From Religion Foundation sent a letter to the school complaining about the Christian teacher.
The developers of a Bible-themed park in Sioux City, Iowa have announced they rejected a $140,000 grant from the state after the anti-Christian Freedom From Religion Foundation made harassing complaints.
Vision Iowa, a group aimed at renovating and rehabilitating green spaces within the state, had offered a $140,000 grant to the park’s designers for trees, plants and other non-religious parts of the park. That wasn’t good enough for the anti-Christian group FFRF, who said that any funding given to a public park that might have a religious element is a violation of church and state.
The board of the Shepherd’s Garden told the Des Moines Register they just want to build the park and not be in the middle of frivolous lawsuits.
The FFRF celebrated the decision to harm the Christian park by having the funds withdrawn, claiming it was a “victory for the separation of church and state.”
The good news in the story is that after the word of the anti-Christianists actions hit the news, private donors provided a significant increase in funding that should allow for completion of the park in September.
An anti-Christian group is demanding that the state of Iowa rescind funding for a park in Sioux City that would have a Christian theme.
The virulently anti-Christian Freedom From Religion Foundation has sent a letter demanding the state’s Vision Iowa Board rescind a $140,000 grant awarded to The Shepherd’s Garden. The park with a Christian theme is due to be completed in the downtown Sioux City area by the end of the September.
The park, which will have a stone path with Bible Verses and prayer stations available to visitors, will also have a significant amount of green space, trees and flowers. Vision Iowa authorities say the funding is going to develop the green space and agricultural aspects of the park, not the religious aspect.
Tina Hoffman, the Communications Director for the Iowa Economic Development Authority, which oversees Vision Iowa, said that the contract for the grant has not been drafted but will be written to explicitly prohibit government funds from paying for any of the religious elements of the park.
A group of cheerleaders at a school in Kountze, Texas were told by a court they can continue to display Bible verses at football games, but their attorney may still appeal the decision.
Attorney Hiram Sasser says the ruling doesn’t clearly protect the rights of the students to continue using the verses in the future.
“I don’t think it provides any protection for the religious liberties of Kountze cheerleaders in the future,” Sasser said.
The court dismissed the suit saying it was now moot because the school district had changed their policies and because the ban was repealed the cheerleaders no longer had standing to advance their case.
The suit began in 2012 when the anti-Christian Freedom From Religion Foundation threatening the school because cheerleaders would hold up banners for the football team to run through that contained Bible verses.
The virulent anti-Christian Freedom From Religion Foundation is attacking the 2013 National Baseball Coach of the Year because he would lead his team in a prayer before they took the field.
Larry Turner of Owasso High School teaches his baseball players to do more than just play the game. The team also visits war veterans in hospitals and teaches the sport to children who want to compete in the Special Olympics.
Now, the aggressive anti-Christian FFRF says a “concerned citizen” filed a complaint with them over the coach leading the team in prayer. The Freedom From Religion Foundation routinely files complaints all over the country where it is not located on behalf of anonymous people they do not provide evidence of truly existing.
The group did say in their letter they have no actual evidence of the coach leading the prayers, just the allegations of an unnamed source.
The anti-Christian group has been focusing this year on high school coaches who may lead or participate in prayers with their teams before games.
The school has not yet responded to the demands of the FFRF.