{"id":33811,"date":"2015-10-30T00:30:54","date_gmt":"2015-10-30T03:30:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/?p=33811"},"modified":"2016-11-24T22:32:22","modified_gmt":"2016-11-25T01:32:22","slug":"chaplain-we-must-stand-for-religious-liberty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2015\/10\/30\/chaplain-we-must-stand-for-religious-liberty\/","title":{"rendered":"Chaplain: We Must Stand for Religious Liberty"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Discussing his <a href=\"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/2015\/09\/07\/navy-reverses-rules-for-embattled-chaplain-modder\/\">recent exoneration<\/a> after originally facing discharge from the Navy, Chaplain (LtCmdr) Wes Modder highlighted that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cbn.com\/cbnnews\/us\/2015\/October\/Navy-Chaplain-Best-Thing-for-Church-is-Persecution\/\">the fight for religious liberty is a national issue<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>[Modder] suggested as more and more Christians face similar battles over their beliefs, they have to fight because the cause is crucial.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I think it&#8217;s paramount,&#8221; he said. &#8220;I think the best thing for the Church is persecution. And I know that sounds counterintuitive, but we need to stand for religious liberty.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s not really about bakers. It&#8217;s not really about florists. It&#8217;s about <!--more--><\/p>\n<p>validating something that is national,&#8221; he explained.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>His Liberty Institute attorney Mike Berry called the persecution of Modder &#8212; which came about as a result of intentional targeting by subordinates and a commander hostile to Modder&#8217;s religious beliefs &#8212; &#8220;unAmerican&#8221;:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Berry said he&#8217;s distressed by the un-American nature of this Christian persecution.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It could be people of any other faiths, too, but unfortunately right now the majority of attacks are coming against Christians in this country,&#8221; Berry said. &#8220;That&#8217;s not what our country is about.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Unfortunately, attacks on religious expression &#8212; in particular, on Christians &#8212; are so common and politically correct that many people don&#8217;t even seem to notice.\u00a0 The fact the Navy even <a href=\"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/2015\/09\/30\/us-navy-defends-treatment-of-chaplain-wes-modder\/\">defended how it treated Modder<\/a> was met with a collective yawn.<\/p>\n<p>Berry is right, though. Religious freedom is a human liberty &#8212; and an inherently American value. While it is good that Modder was ultimately exonerated, the utter lack of outrage that a chaplain was punished for his religious views to begin with is shocking.<\/p>\n<p>If a US military chaplain can be persecuted for his faith today, and few even bat an eye, who will they come after tomorrow?<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: xx-small;\">More at <a href=\"http:\/\/dailysignal.com\/2015\/10\/27\/after-being-fired-for-religious-views-on-sexuality-navy-chaplain-gets-his-job-back\/\">The Daily Signal<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"fb-like\" data-share=\"true\" data-show-faces=\"true\" data-size=\"small\" data-action=\"like\" data-layout=\"standard\"><\/div>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: xx-small;\"><strong>ADVERTISEMENT<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><script async src=\"\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/js\/adsbygoogle.js\"><\/script><!-- blogpost --><ins class=\"adsbygoogle\" style=\"display: block;\" data-ad-format=\"auto\" data-ad-slot=\"2728423835\" data-ad-client=\"ca-pub-6450825356098669\"><\/ins><script>\n(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});<\/script><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Discussing his recent exoneration after originally facing discharge from the Navy, Chaplain (LtCmdr) Wes Modder highlighted that the fight for religious liberty is a national issue: [Modder] suggested as more and more Christians face similar battles over their beliefs, they have to fight because the cause is crucial. &#8220;I think it&#8217;s paramount,&#8221; he said. &#8220;I think the best thing for [&#8230;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":33612,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[5284,96,219,442,4415,36,17,10,171,5048],"class_list":["post-33811","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-government-and-religion","tag-chaplain","tag-christian","tag-dadt","tag-homosexual","tag-mike-berry","tag-navy","tag-religious-expression","tag-religion","tag-religious-freedom","tag-wes-modder"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33811","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33811"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33811\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33612"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33811"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33811"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33811"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}