{"id":1428,"date":"2013-05-14T19:18:00","date_gmt":"2013-05-14T19:18:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2013\/05\/are-christians-under-attack-in-america.html"},"modified":"2013-05-14T19:18:00","modified_gmt":"2013-05-14T19:18:00","slug":"are-christians-under-attack-in-america","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2013\/05\/are-christians-under-attack-in-america.html","title":{"rendered":"Are Christians Under Attack in America?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

<\/p>\n

Fox News Radio host Todd Starnes is a man on a mission. For the past several years he\u2019s been leading a crusade to prove that Christianity in America is being undermined by a secular, anti-religious agenda at the behest of the libertine big-government of President Barack Obama and his heathen minions.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
Earlier this month, as a guest on\u00a0Hannity<\/em>, Starnes trained his sights on the U.S. armed forces, accusing the President and the Department of Defense of\u00a0a \u201cChristian cleansing\u201d of the military<\/a>. The notoriously fact-challenged pundit appeared to be referencing the DoD\u2019s longstanding prohibition against proselytizing, which is defined as \u201cinducing someone to convert to one\u2019s own religious faith,\u201d among the troops. Basically you\u2019re not supposed to do what Maj. Douglas W. Duerksen, a military chaplain, recommends\u00a0here<\/a>, or what the evangelical group Cadence International describes in detail in its short documentary \u201cMission to the Military<\/a>.\u201d \u00a0If you have any trouble understanding why this kind of behavior is off limits, imagine your eight-year-old daughter sitting through a sermon on Christ\u2019s grace by her second-grade public school teacher, whose salary is paid for with\u00a0your<\/em>\u00a0tax dollars.<\/span><\/div>\n
Starnes is little more than a troll with a megaphone, which makes it tempting to dismiss his rhetoric as the rantings of one more anti-government zealot. But the notion that the freedom of American citizens to practice their faith in earnest is being stifled by the very government pledged to protect it is not limited to the radical fringe. Emboldened by the passage of Obamacare and its focus on promoting female reproductive health\u2014and re-energized by the shifting tides on gay marriage\u2014a handful of conservative intellectuals have added their voice to \u201cWar on Christians\u201d meme.<\/span><\/div>\n
Their faulty logic shares one common distinction: a misunderstanding of what the framers intended when they chose to include a mandate on religious freedom in the Bill of Rights. This error was advanced most recently in the April 2013 edition of Hillsdale College\u2019s\u00a0Imprimis<\/em>newsletter,\u00a0in a cover story penned by Yale-trained theologian R.R. Reno<\/a>. In it, Reno, who edits the journal \u201cFirst Things<\/a>,\u201d which covers religion in civic life, blames the demise of religious dogma in the public sphere on the efforts of a handful of highly placed secularists intent on reshaping civic discourse to favor\u00a0Rawlsian \u201cpublic reason\u201d<\/a>\u00a0over faith-based morality.<\/span><\/div>\n
Read the rest here<\/a><\/span><\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Fox News Radio host Todd Starnes is a man on a mission. For the past several years he\u2019s been leading a crusade to prove that Christianity in America is being undermined by a secular, anti-religious agenda at the behest of the libertine big-government of President Barack Obama and his heathen minions. Earlier this month, as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2251,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1428","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nAre Christians Under Attack in America?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Fox News Radio host Todd Starnes is a man on a mission. 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