America No Longer Supports Religious Freedom Around The World

Yesterday Investors.com posted an article stating that the United States State Department is no longer including religious freedom in its annual Human Rights Report. The stated reason for this change is that they want to avoid duplicating another document, the annual Report on International Religious Freedom.

The article points out:

The Pew Research Center has produced two studies showing that 70% of the world’s population lives in countries where religious freedom is severely restricted, either by governments or by hostile groups allowed to run amok by indifferent or hostile leaders.

Religious liberty was considered so important by our Founders that it was written into the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in a country populated by those fleeing the religious oppression of governments.

We considered religious liberty a bedrock of freedom and democracy and, as stated in our Declaration of Independence, we believed we were endowed with Unalienable rights by our Creator, not by men or governments.

The U.S. in recent years has grown increasingly indifferent to the lack of religious tolerance around the world as it has taken an increasingly violent turn.

America used to be the lighthouse of the world. I am afraid that lighthouse has gone dark.

The article concludes:

Here at home we find a different kind of war on religious liberty, not violent but insidious, conducted by a government intent on imposing its beliefs regarding access to contraceptives and mandating that religious institutions violate their beliefs and consciences in the name of government health care edicts.

Here we see an unprecedented attempt by the Obama administration through ObamaCare to define what a church and religious institution is — the notion that you’re a church if the government, in Soviet-style fashion, says you’re a church.

Religious institutions see the universities, hospitals, charities and other social services they perform as part and extensions of their faith.

The government believes they are impediments to its growing power over every facet of our lives. As a result, these religious institutions and the freedom on which they are founded, are in serious jeopardy.

We need to keep the focus on religious persecution — both abroad and here at home.