The State of Religious Liberty

Date:  January 10, 2023
Host: Jim Schneider
​Guest: Mat Staver
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Founding father and former president John Adams said, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people.  It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”  Adams and the other founders not only recognized the importance of being a moral and religious people, but they also recognized the importance or the safeguarding of religious liberty in America.

It may seem hard to believe, but today our religious liberty is constantly under attack.  It’s happening in our schools, in local and state government, as well as in the federal government.

A staunch advocate of religious liberty returned to Crosstalk and his name is Mat Staver.  Mat is the founder & chairman of Liberty Counsel.  He is a constitutional attorney with three landmark cases before the U.S. Supreme Court.  Mat is an author and the host of the radio broadcasts Faith & Freedom and Freedom’s Call.

In the year we just closed out, as it relates to court victories, Mat says there was significant success.  In fact, as far as religious liberty and free speech, Mat views 2022 as one of the most significant years in our lifetime, particularly at the Supreme Court level.

There was the May 9-0 win in a Christian flag case (Shurtleff v. City of Boston) as well as the Kennedy v. Bremerton case that involved Coach Kennedy praying on the football field after games.  Then there was the Maine voucher case where schools were discriminating against religious schools.

The 9-0 win in Shurtleff set the stage to overthrow the 51 year old “Lemon test” from the Lemon v. Kurtzman case.  It had been used to censor the Christian flag in Boston where you could fly the flag as long as you didn’t think it was Christian.  However, if you thought it was Christian, it was impermissible.  In other words, the flag itself wasn’t the problem, it was your viewpoint regarding the flag.  It meant you could kneel on a football field if you had secular thoughts, but if you had religious thoughts, the Lemon Test was used for censorship.  It affected nativity scenes, “In God We Trust,” “One Nation Under God,” symbols, words, speech, etc.

There were also great victories regarding the Biden administration’s vaccine mandates.  There are class action injunctions in place on behalf of the Navy, Air Force, Space Force, the Marines, and some members of the U.S. Army.    

This is just a small sample looking back at what was won.  What lies ahead?  For example, how will the new Congress look?  What’s the latest concerning the World Health Organization?  What’s on the horizon concerning religious liberty?  Get the answers from Mat, on this edition of Crosstalk.

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