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Editor’s Note: With its plans to execute Christian pastor Youcef Nadarkhani, Iran’s Shi’ite Muslim government is violating not only international treaties, but the very teachings of the Prophet Mohammed, says an American Muslim leader, Harris Zafar of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community USA. As with Christianity, Islam has “denominations,” such as the Wahhabis, the Suffis and the Shi’ites,…

Hundreds of preachers across America were politically disobedient Sunday, following in the footsteps of Mahatma Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as they publicly defied a 1954 law that gags them from preaching about politics. The law was authored by then-Senator Lyndon B. Johnson, angry that he had been denounced from the pulpit of two…

As his family prayed that a miracle will spare the life of Christian pastor Youcef Nadarkhani, the Iranian state-controlled media has announced that he isn’t scheduled for execution for apostasy after all. “His crime is not, as some claim, converting others to Christianity,” the deputy governor of the Gilan province, Gholomali Rezvani, told Fars, the…

If there’s any hope for America, radio talk show host Dr. Laurie Roth is having trouble seeing it. Rick Warren praying at Obama’s inauguration “Everywhere we look today politicians, media and global elite are severing the traditional and important boundaries of religion, sovereignty, laws and freedoms fought for,” she writes on the news site NewsWithViews:   We…

An atheist group is gloating on its website over the revenge it has taken on Christ Cathedral in Columbus, Ohio. The church, which owns a billboard leased to Clear Channel Outdoor advertising, discovered that an atheist advertisement had been placed on their sign by the Freedom From Religion Foundation. They had it removed as offensive. The…

A 10-year-old Christian girl, Faryal Bhatti, has had to go into hiding with her single mother after she misplaced a dot on her Urdu-language spelling test. Faryal was a fifth grader at Sir Syed Girls High School at the Pakistan Ordinance Factory Colony in Havelian. She is now accused of blasphemy under Pakistan’s religious laws…

U.S. military chaplains asked to perform weddings will not be forced to violate their consciences nor the doctrines of their faith — and may decline to officiate nuptials for homosexual couples. The ruling came in a memo from Clifford Stanley, undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness. The same memo says chaplains are permitted to…

More than 2 million students nationwide prayed in in front of their schools Wednesday for the annual “See You at the Pole” observance, now in its 21st year. Coordinated by the National Network of Youth Ministries in San Diego, the event is youth-led by design and takes place each year before the school day begins. Local youth ministers…

Long antagonistic to a wide spectrum of religious faiths, the former Soviet republic of Kazakhstan passed new regulations that critics are calling a blow to religious freedom. The Kazakh house of parliament approved the bill Thursday. Backers say it will help combat religious extremism. A day earlier, Kazakhstan’s lower house of parliament had also voted in favor of the…

Does a church have the right to hire or fire the preacher without worrying about government interference? If a Catholic priest decides he doesn’t accept the authority of the Pope, can the diocese recall him without worrying about the National Labor Relations Board? Can the local Baptist church fire a youth minister who announces he speaks in tongues…
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