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.
New details are emerging in the case of an Egyptian Coptic Christian who has been sentenced to six years in prison for an online posting deemed offensive to Islam.
Initial reports said that Kerolos Attallah, 29, had posted a photo on Facebook that several people considered insulting to Islam. Those who were offended reported the posting to authorities who arrested Attallah near his home in a village near Luxor.
Now, information has come out that Attallah did not post the picture, he only clicked the “like” button for a page where someone else had posted the picture. Attallah did not post the picture himself, did not “like” the actual picture and even removed his “like” of the page when he discovered some Islamic friends were offended.
Safwat Samaan, chairman of Egyptian human rights group Nation Without Borders, said that Attallah had not even posted a single comment on the disputed page.
“The sentence today was a shock not just to Kerolos but to everyone who uses Facebook in Egypt,” Samaan said. “Any person who uses Facebook in Egypt and presses ‘Like’ on any page … can be put into prison for six years.”
The page was called “Knights of the Cross” and is written in Arabic for Christians who convert from Islam. The page provides encouragement, prayer and Bible Scriptures.
Sudanese authorities reportedly stopped Meriam Ibrahim because she used her “Christian name” on her passport and visa to leave for the United States rather than her “birth Islamic name.”
“The State Department has been informed by the Sudanese Government that the family was temporarily detained at the airport for several hours by the government for questioning over issues related to their travel and I think travel documents. They have not been arrested. The government has assured us of their safety,” said State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf.
“The Embassy has been and will remain highly involved in working with the family and the government,” Harf continued. “We are engaging directly with Sudanese officials to secure their safe and swift departure from Sudan, and of course, we’ll provide more information as we get it.”
Ibrahim is reportedly at a friend’s home after bail was posted for her. However, Ibrahim’s attorneys say that if she leaves the country, the government will penalize the person who posted bail.
Tina Ramirez, the founder of the electronic activist group Hardwired, said that the United States is responsible for the problems because they did not coordinate Ibrahim’s departure from the country with the Sudanese government.
A Coptic Christian in Egypt has seen sentenced to six years in prison after being convicted on charges of blasphemy and contempt of religion.
Kerolos Ghattas, 30, was arrested earlier this month after he posted pictures on a Facebook page that some Islamists said defamed the religion. Ghattas’ legal team will appeal the verdict of the court.
Local authorities increased their presence in Ghattas’ home village out of fears of sectarian violence. When he was arrested, Islamists hurled Molotov cocktails into shops that were owned by Christians.
Ghattas was not the only Christian to be sentenced to prison on Tuesday. A Christian journalist was given six years in prison for reporting on sectarian strife and highlighting the abuses of Christians by Egyptian Islamists.
Christians have been the subject of abuse due to their support of new President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi and the movement that overthrew the Muslim Brotherhood. Christians are hoping to get protection to worship freely under the new government.
A day after being released from prison because her death sentence for apostasy was thrown out by an appeals court, Meriam Ibrahim was arrested at the airport in Khartoum as she was preparing to leave the country with her family.
Elshareef Ali Mohammed, the lawyer representing Ibrahim, said he was at the airport with the family when 50 security force personnel hostilely confronted her and her family. He said the security forces would not give a reason for why they were arresting Ibrahim. He said they knew she had been cleared by the court but arrested her anyway.
She was taken to a detention center with her two children and her American husband Daniel Wani.
A Sudanese court initially convicted Ibrahim for apostasy because her father was a Muslim. The court said it did not matter that she was raised a Christian and had always been a Christian.
Brothers David and Jason Benham, who lost their HGTV show when anti-Christianists launched a campaign against them for their Christian beliefs, told a Washington, D.C. conference that Christians can speak boldly if they’re willing to lose it all.
“Freedom isn’t the ability to do get what you want, it’s the willingness to let go of what you have,” Jason Benham said. “When you are willing to release that back to God, what God has so graciously given to you, and you give it back to Him, then you have been set free. And on the foundation of freedom, you can be as bold as a lion.”
The brothers own a real estate company and were filming episodes for their reality show in May when HGTV announced the cancellation. The cancellation was attributed to anti-Christian activists that protested the brother’s traditional Christian views on issues such as abortion.
The brothers told the Christian Post that they don’t regret anything that has happened including the cancellation of the TV show because it allowed them to proclaim Christ to a wide audience in national media that reported on the cancellation.
The talk at the Faith & Freedom Coalition’s Road to Majority conference came as the brothers were given an award for their public stand for faith and Jesus.
David Benham told the Christian Post that unless Christians speak up and assert their rights in the public arena, more incidents like what happened to them with HGTV will take place in America.
A high school student was researching gun control for a debate in his law class and discovered that his school was blocking conservative and Christian websites.
Andrew Lampart, 18, who attended Nonnewaug High School in Woodbury, Connecticut was using the school’s internet service because he wanted facts on both sides of the issue. Then something happened when he tried to access the National Rifle Association website.
“Their website was blocked,” Lampart told Fox News.
Lampart when on to find other sites for pro-second amendment blocked. Then while Democratic party sites were permitted, Republican ones were blocked. Then the real shocker arrived for Lampart.
Christian websites were blocked. The lockdown of websites that showed the gospel of Christ was so complete that even websites connected to the Vatican were shut down. Even the official website of Pope Francis was blocked by the school. However, websites linked to radical Muslim extremism were permitted as well as other religions.
When the student gathered his evidence and contacted the school, nothing was done by school administrators. He had to approach the School Board who said they were surprised by the problem.
The school’s superintendent told FoxNews that there appeared to be a problem with Dell SonicWall, the filtering service used by the school. She claimed that the school district did not filter individual websites but categories of websites.
As of this article, the Christian websites are still blocked by the school.
One of the opening speakers at the 42nd PCA General Assembly told those in attendance that America is rapidly progressing to the point where declaring Jesus the only way to eternal life will be considered spreading hate.
“It will be difficult to say in this culture ‘Jesus is the only way’,” Pastor Bryan Chapell warned. “That will be interpreted as hate speech.”
Chapell said that sticking to truth will be a point of contention with the world.
“If you continue to stand ‘for Christ alone’ in a culture that calls that bigotry,” he said, “that will be the issue that presses us in the future.”
Chapell, the former chancellor of the Covenant Theological Seminary, said that pluralism is becoming a major enemy of God’s church and that people of faith need to join together on issues so they can fight that enemy together.
Ron Taylor, the stated clerk of the PCA GA, agreed with Chapell’s assessment. He said we cannot forget the true enemies of the church are the world, the flesh and the devil.
A petition calling for the White House to act in the case of Meriam Ibrahim, the Sudanese woman sentenced to death for her faith in Christ, has stalled at just over 50,000 signatures.
The petition needs to reach 100,000 signatures by June 27th to be guaranteed an official response by the Obama administration.
The petition to the White House says in part “We strongly urge the administration to take action in the case of Dr. Meriam Ibrahim, the Sudanese mother who with her toddler and newborn baby (who pending the proper documentation are American citizens), is languishing inside a prison in Khartoum.”
Over 40 Christian groups calling on the Obama administration to stand up for Ibrahim and to finally stand up for religious freedom in general held a rally outside the White House.
Republican Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, who attended the rally, said that Ibrahim represents a major need for the U.S. to stand for religious freedom around the world. He said that the administration has been especially lax when it comes to American Christians who are being persecuted.
If you wish to sign the petition, visit the White House petition site:
https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/act-case-meriam-ibrahim-sudan-and-her-baby-and-toddler-prison/D1x1q4VG
A group of Middle Eastern activists is speaking out about girls in Egypt being forced into marriage with Islamic men and ordered to convert from Christianity.
The group is pointing out while the world is enraged over 270 Christian girls kidnapped by the Islamic terrorist group Boko Haram in Nigeria, over 550 Christian girls in Egypt have been kidnapped or forced into marriages with Islamic men over the last three years.
The Association of Victims of Abduction and Forced Disappearance reported that in addition to the marriages, the girls who are Coptic Christians have crosses tattooed on their body burned off with acid.
“Before the revolution there would be five or six girls disappear each month,” AVAFD founder Ebram Louis told the Christian Post. “Now the average is 15 [each month].”
The AVAFD says that the Islamists in government and on police forces are complicit in the kidnapping, rape and forced conversions of the girls. They cite the case of Nadia Makram, kidnapped at age 14 in 2011. Her parents knew the 48-year-old Muslim man who took their daughter and went to police who said they wouldn’t do anything to rescue the kidnapped girl.
AVAFD says if police do get involved, they meet with the girls when they are surrounded by the Muslims who kidnapped her and tell her what to say to the police.
