Chairman’s Report — January 31, 2014

Celebrating Religious Freedom

William Murray lays wreath at memorial during celebration of religious freedom, as honor guard from the Knights Templar and Knights of Columbus salute.

Just about every year I speak at some event on Religious Freedom Day. National Religious Freedom Day commemorates the Virginia General Assembly’s adoption of Thomas Jefferson’slandmark Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom on January 16, 1786. This is the first known document in the world to guarantee religious freedom and thus freedom of expression.

What is not widely known is that the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom was drafted by Thomas Jefferson and a committee he was working with in Fredericksburg, Virginia in 1777. This year I spoke in Fredericksburg at the site of the monument dedicated to this document and its adoption by the Assembly. A Catholic organization, the Knights of Columbus, has been entrusted with the memorial event for more than sixty years. Many denominations participated in the memorial event, and the Knights Templar, the Christian organization within the Masons, supplied an honor guard as did the Knights of Columbus.

For the last two years, atheist groups have demanded a role in the celebration which includes a parade from downtown Fredericksburg to the site of the memorial. This year the local atheist group, which has no physical address or phone number, demanded that the “Rev.” Barry Lynn be a rebuttal speaker to me.

The Knights of Columbus organizers refused the atheist group’s ridiculous request. The event every year is 90% ceremonial, with much of it being a parade. The mayor of the city of Fredericksburg was given two minutes to read a proclamation in commemoration of the day. Congressman Rob Wittman, who was present, was not given time to speak. I was the key note speaker and had only 20 minutes to deliver a major address on religious freedom.

Because the atheists were not permitted to change the format and add a second speaker, they told the media that they are not allowed to participate. Then they joined the parade with their banners, proving they lied to the media about being restricted from the event. They were not told they could not participate; they were told they could not dictate changes to the event.

Only two organizations in the parade had banners promoting themselves — the atheists and the Muslims. These are the very groups who believe religious freedom is only for themselves and should be denied to anyone who does not believe as they do. The Muslim group had the largest banner, on which their address and phone number were prominently displayed. Both the atheists and the Muslims pushed to the front in hopes the media would print photos of them at the event, which is of course exactly what happened

William Murray speaking at the site of the drafting of the Virginia Act Establishing Religious Freedom in 1777.

Later that day, the atheist group held a meeting attended by less than twenty people, during which they heard “Rev.” Barry Lynn state that Christians are the biggest danger to religious freedom, and that Muslims are persecuted in the United States. Barry Lynn heads Americans United for Separation of Church and State, a group whose goal is to restrict any public expression of the Gospel.

The one line most of the media picked up from my speech was one that surprised me because it is the core of the argument against political correctness. I said: “If I am not allowed to offend someone today then I must not have freedom of speech.” In context I was saying that the politically correct view that people can be stopped from offending others is contrary to the concept of freedom of speech. These are my remarks in context:

“The Supreme Court and its inferior courts have created new “rights” in the past few decades which they believe overrule those established by God and guaranteed by the Founders.

One of these supposed new rights is the right of an individual not to be offended by another individual. Praying in public, wearing religious clothing or quoting the Bible is now deemed unfit for elected public officials.

Pardon me, but freedom is about offending others. If I am not allowed to offend someone today, then I must not have freedom of speech.

No one can have an opinion without offending others. I am sure my words today would offend the religious fascists who operate the Saudi Islamic Academy in northern Virginia or some group of radical secularists who would ban all religious speech in public places.

It is this new “freedom” not to be offended that the courts would use to strip away the words “under God” from the Pledge of Allegiance to our flag. It is this new freedom that the courts would use to prohibit pastors from teaching that marriage between one man and one woman is God given.”

In many Western nations which we refer to as “democratic,” it is against the law to offend a long list of groups. In the United Kingdom, a man was sentenced to one year in jail for putting signs in his apartment window that “offended” Muslims. The “offending” signs said such things as “No Sharia Law in the UK.” In France, aging French actress Brigitte Bardot was fined 15,000 euros ($20,000) for “inciting racial hatred” against Muslims because she stated that they were “destroying our country by imposing their ways.” It was the fifth time she was arrested and fined for stating her belief that Muslims were adversely changing the French society.

In the preamble to the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, Thomas Jefferson wrote:

“well aware that almighty God hath created the mind free; that all attempts to influence it by temporal punishments or burdens, or by civil incapacitations, tend only to beget habits of hypocrisy and meanness, and are a departure from the plan of the Holy Author of our religion…”

Atheists claim Jefferson as one of their own and liberals refer to him as a deist at best, in matters of religion. However in Article 16 of the act Jefferson wrote: “that religion, or the duty which we owe to our creator, and the manner of discharging it, can be directed only by reason and conviction, not by force or violence; and therefore all men are equally entitled to the free exercise of religion, according to the dictates of conscience; and that it is the mutual duty of all to practice Christian forbearance, love and charity toward each other.”(Emphasis mine)

Patrick Henry affirmed these rights for all based upon Christian values when he wrote in March 1775: “it cannot be emphasized too strongly or too often that this great nation was founded, not by religionists, but by Christians; not on religions, but on the Gospel of Jesus Christ. For this very reason peoples of other faiths have been afforded asylum, prosperity, and freedom of worship here.”

We must note that Patrick Henry said that we afforded “freedom of worship” to those of other faiths. He did not say nor did he intend to say that newly formed minority groups, such as the atheist group in Fredericksburg, were to be given universal veto authority over the practices of Christians in public places.

Our freedom in this nation is a gift from God and the core of that freedom is religious liberty. As religious liberty fades, so does every freedom we enjoy. Without religious freedom there is not freedom of speech, as can be seen in other nations. If a government can restrain us from speaking of our faith it can restrain us in any regard.

We must do more than cherish our freedoms; we must defend them or lose them, and first among those liberties is religious freedom.

This is our American heritage, a Judeo-Christian heritage of our nation that our children have a right to hear in our classrooms rather than a revisionism the likes of which would make Joseph Stalin pale. The truth of that heritage must prevail.

We must not retreat to where most Europeans find themselves today, fearful of publicly holding an opinion which the government finds offensive to some group or the other.

American men and women of faith must have the right to protect their children from both the nonsense of the anarchist and the mind control of the secularist. We must not retreat; we must not surrender religious liberty or our religious heritage, not today, not ever.

If we do surrender and accept that government is the new god and that legislators and judges are the new priests, it is not just Americans who will lose that first and most basic right of freedom of religion; it will be all of humanity.

On Capitol Hill

The truth about Islam: The second week of January my good friend Reverend Dr. Mark Durie visited Washington, DC from Australia where he is pastor of St Mary’s Anglican Church in Caulfield, Victoria. He is a true scholar, holding one Ph.D. in linguistics and currently working on his second Ph.D.

He is fluent in several languages and reads Arabic for the purpose of studying the Koran. He is the author of The Third Choice, a book about the forced dhimmitude of Christians and Jews in Islamic societies. It is always an honor and pleasure to escort such a learned scholar on Capitol Hill to brief congressmen and Senators.

A speaking engagement was arranged for Dr. Durie at the Hudson Institute where he spoke on the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC). This is the group of 57 nations formed with the goal of proliferating Islam in the world. It controls a huge voting bloc in the United Nations. At the lecture Durie highlighted the OIC’s desire to pass what would basically be an international blasphemy law, making it illegal to say anything critical of Islam, Islamic nations or individual Muslims.

During his talk at the Hudson Institute and in meetings I had arranged for him with congressmen, Durie mentioned that the secularists in control of Western nations have a religious illiteracy He pointed to former president Bill Clinton and his wife Hillary who consistently blame “poverty” for the murderous attacks by the Boko Haram in Nigeria, because they simply do not understand that religion can be a motivating factor in anyone’s life. As an example he described Hillary Clinton’s expressed definition of extremists as “people who believe that their beliefs are correct,” thereby equating Osama bin Laden with Mother Theresa.

William Murray and Congressman Paul Broun discuss pending legislation (2014)

At every one of the appointments I arranged with congressmen, the time allotted by their staff was thirty minutes. Yet in every office the meetings lasted at least an hour. Congressman Trent Franks, who chairs the International Religious Freedom Caucus, gave up his lunch hour and spent well over an hour with us. The same occurred in the office of Congressman Paul Broun who is currently running for Senate in Georgia. Broun, who is a medical doctor, insisted on praying with us before we left his office. During that prayer he asked the Lord to stand with and protect Mark Durie and myself as we take the truth of the Gospel message to others.

There are some wonderfully godly men and women serving on Capitol Hill, and all believing Christians should be in prayer for them as they share their testimony of faith with others in Congress, and do the best they can to preserve our heritage and family values.

William J. Murray, Chairman

Religious Freedom Coalition, 601 Pennsylvania Ave. NW #900, Washington, DC 20004 * (202) 742-8990