Category Archives: Freedom

Here we go again. For the fourth time since 2014, Maryland lawmakers have tried to use legislative action to hinder the growing boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement for Palestinian rights. This year, theyve introduced a bill (SB739/HB949) that would prohibit individuals or corporations that support BDS from contracting with the state, which plainly violates the First Amendment. This bill is an obvious attempt to stymie political dissent, and it is a waste of time at the taxpayers' expense in an already pressed three-month legislative session.

Boycott is a commonly-employed, peaceful tool for change to address injustice, long recognized as protected First Amendment expression. For decades, Israel advocates exclaimed that there was no Palestinian Gandhi and if only the Palestinians would embrace non-violence, their grievances would be heard. Now that a non-violent Palestinian-led movement has emerged, calling upon the world community to boycott entities that profit from Israel's ongoing violations of Palestinian human rights, these same critics are trying to suppress it through legislation.

For the past three years, Israel lobbyists and lawmakers in state legislatures around the country have introduced bills to stifle the BDS movement's hopeful message of freedom, justice and equality. In 2014, the Maryland civil rights community pushed back when Del. Ben Kramer introduced an unconstitutional bill that would have defunded Maryland's public universities for facilitating professors' participation in academic association meetings perceived to favor BDS. After this bill fizzled, toothless compromise language condemning BDS was added to the budget bill at the last minute when no lawmaker could easily oppose it. In 2016, anti-BDS advocates trumpeted their plans for a new bill in the press, but after strong opposition, the legislative session ended without a bill having been introduced.

Sixteen states have passed these unconstitutional bills. While many of the bills that have passed are resolutions that symbolically condemn BDS, they create a favorable climate for the government to suppress political dissent. This should worry all of us.

In New York State, after two anti-BDS bills stalled out in the state legislature over constitutional concerns, Gov. Andrew Cuomo issued an executive order barring a list of companies that support BDS from doing business with the state. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled it unconstitutional to discriminate in public benefits based on a political viewpoint, but this didn't deter a politician intent on scoring political points. And none of the companies on Mr. Cuomo's list do business with New York state anyway, making clear the improper purpose of this legislation.

But in spite of this, the BDS movement for Palestinian rights is stronger and more organized than ever. Jewish Voice for Peace, the largest Jewish group supporting BDS, has been recognized as a growing force in the American Jewish community, impossible to ignore. In the past three years, their membership has tripled, and it now boasts more than 60 chapters in 30 states throughout the country, including chapters in Baltimore and D.C. According to a recent poll released by the Brookings Institution, 60 percent of Democrats and 46 percent of all Americans support sanctions or stronger action against Israel because of settlement construction. Nearly half of all Americans and 60 percent of Democrats support a form of BDS. In cities around this country, protesters now chant for Palestinian rights alongside the range of progressive issues potentially impacted by the new administration's agenda.

In Maryland, opponents of anti-BDS legislation include Muslim, Jewish and Christian advocacy organizations working together to promote a better future for all in the Middle East. Civil rights giants like the ACLU and the Center for Constitutional Rights have also weighed in against the bills.

At a time when the new president has declared war on civil liberties, legislative maneuvers like this harm our democracy. We need and deserve a robust, open conversation about our foreign policy more than we ever have. And most importantly, legislation cannot stop the momentum of the movement for Palestinian freedom and equality. At this vulnerable time for our society, we must not enable legislators to suppress viewpoints they don't like. Instead, we should insist they preserve and respect the rights of all to speak.

Rachel Roberts is an attorney and activist who lives in Montgomery County. Twitter: @rachelhinda; blog: notesfromexile.com.

Editor's note: This op-ed was updated to reflect the correct number of legislative actions taken in Maryland.

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Md. Anti-BDS bill stifles freedom - Baltimore Sun

WASHINGTON, D.C. The U.S. has made significant strides in promoting religious freedom abroad in the last two years, says the outgoing U.S. religious freedom ambassador.

One success of his tenure at the State Department was the work that were quietly doing day in and day out on behalf of prisoners of conscience, the former Ambassador at-Large for International Religious Freedom Rabbi David Saperstein insisted at a panel discussion on religious freedom, held Thursday in Washington, D.C., hosted by the Religion News Foundation.

These prisoners of conscience might be religious leaders, political dissidents or human rights activists jailed because of their public beliefs and advocacy. The State Department helps obtain security or legal support for these people, or helps them leave their country, Saperstein said.

Their lawyers and defendants have credited the United States advocacy with the release of their clients from prison, he noted.

Rabbi Saperstein, who led the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism before his time at State, was confirmed by the Senate as the State Departments Ambassador at-Large for International Religious Freedom in December of 2014, filling a 14 month-long vacancy in the position.

The ambassador is charged with promoting religious freedom as part of U.S. foreign policy, reporting on human rights abuses, and holding foreign actors accountable for how they treat religious minorities.

The office was created by the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998, which also mandated the State Department publish an annual global report on religious freedom.

In March of 2016, during Rabbi Sapersteins tenure as ambassador, Secretary of State John Kerry declared that the Islamic State also known as Daesh, ISIS, and ISIL was committing genocide against Christians, Yazidis, and Shia Muslims in Iraq and Syria.

The genocide declaration was hailed as a key act in the resettlement of the persecuted minorities in the region, one that could help them obtain needed humanitarian aid, priority resettlement status, and a safe return home if they chose to do so. It came almost two years after ISIS swept across Northern Iraq, killing and displacing hundreds of thousands of ethnic and religious minorities that inhabited the region.

Advocates had insisted for months that the U.S. declare genocide had taken place. According to reports, the agency originally planned to declare that only Yazidis in Northern Iraq were genocide victims, based off of a Holocaust Museum fact-finding mission in the region that focused only on atrocities committed on the Nineveh Plain during the summer of 2014.

However, after a request by Ambassador Saperstein, the Knights of Columbus and the advocacy group In Defense of Christians published an almost 300-page report from a fact-finding mission to Iraq, documenting atrocities committed by ISIS against Christians and other minorities, and featuring interviews with genocide survivors and legal documents,Secretary Kerry issued the genocide declaration. In an interview with CNA, Saperstein revealed that the declaration came about at Kerrys insistence.

That genocide finding took place because the Secretary wanted it, Saperstein said. He demanded far more information than had been available when he began this process, when there clearly wasnt enough information available to make a finding.

Saperstein noted that the situation in Iraq and Syria differed from previous instances where the U.S. declared genocide, like in Darfur, Rwanda, Cambodia, and Bosnia.

Here, most people fled before ISIL came in and the ones left under ISIL control were not available to people. Just now in Mosul, were just learning about the extent of the brutality of what was going on under ISILs control, he explained. So we didnt have the same information available.

Former Secretary Kerry really deserves the credit for this finding, he continued, noting that the U.S. had already been acting as if there was such a finding by intervening to send supplies to Yazidis cut off from food and water on Mt. Sinjar in August of 2014, and establishing a military coalition to counter the Islamic State.

The global state of religious freedom is still dire, he insisted, noting that three-fourths of the worlds population still lives in countries like China, India, and Pakistan where freedom of religion is significantly restricted.

In these countries religious communities, particularly religious minorities, still face significant threats from social hostilities, from other religious groups, or repressive actions of the government in controlling what they can say or how they can worship or what they can do as part of their religious communities, he said, giving examples of anti-blasphemy laws, onerous registration requirements for minority religions, and laws prohibiting conversion.

An increase in its budget and staff has boosted the offices efforts, Saperstein noted. In his two years as ambassador, he said the offices budget doubled, its programmatic money quintupled, and its staff doubled in size.

The Office on Religion and Global Affairs also has done key work in studying the role of religion in all areas of life from public policy to economics to conflict resolution, he said.

You ended up with a situation at the end of this administration where there were some 50 people working day in and day out on nothing other than religious issues in the United States government, he said. Its probably more dedicated staff just to that issue than all the governments of the world put together on international religious freedom.

Thats quite a vote of confidence as to the importance of religious issues in the United States, he added, noting that across the globemany of the cardinals and bishops that I met with were very encouraged by this.

And the State Department has crafted an international coalition to help genocide victims resettle in their homes, stay where they currently are like in Iraqi Kurdistan, or move elsewhere, he said. The UN is playing a key role in achieving that with significant American support.

The coalition is dealing with issues like security measures for genocide victims to live peacefully, economic development in the region, empowering them to have a role in rebuilding Iraq, preserving their cultures, and punishing the perpetrators of genocide.

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Outgoing ambassador sees major strides in religious freedom - Crux: Covering all things Catholic

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"There's no reason we shouldn't be able to pass this ASAP -- there's also no reason we should send anything less to President Trump's desk than we did Obama's," one GOP source familiar with the vote told CNN. "No need to reinvent the wheel."

The vote by Freedom Caucus members Monday night, confirmed to CNN by an aide, to press ahead on the repeal plan crystalized the frustration building up among conservative lawmakers unhappy with the delay in repealing Obamacare.

The development also sets up a potential political clash between the conservative wing of the party and its more moderate members, who are wary of the backlash that could come from swift and wholesale repeal of the health care law.

Since President Donald Trump's inauguration, many congressional Republicans have asked party leaders to slow down the repeal efforts to ensure that a consensus is reached on an Obamacare alternative.

Republicans have previously used the budget reconciliation process to repeal major portions of Obamacare (in 2015, it was vetoed by President Barack Obama).

Conservative House Republicans have become more vocal in recent days in pressing GOP leaders to move that same 2015 repeal bill rather than taking more time to craft a new version.

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House Freedom Caucus seeks swift Obamacare repeal - CNN

Health insurance and career opportunity are impossible to separate for Erin Hoover.

Hoover is a 37-year-old Florida State University student who will graduate with a doctorate in English literature this spring. She is also eight months pregnant.

Until recently, Hoover had a clear plan. She would have her baby in March, graduate in May, and begin adjunct work to build up her resume. She felt like she was on a good path; one of her poems was recently selected for the Best American Poetry anthology of 2016.

Adjunct positions typically dont offer health insurance, but that seemed fine. Hoover expected she and her baby would continue to get coverage through the Affordable Care Act, which she has relied on since 2014.

But the presidential election changed all that. Republicans have promised to repeal the health law, but havent yet shown what their replacement plan looks like. Hoover doesnt know if the programs she relies on now will be available. And she thinks that might reshape her impending job search. She is now considering going back to a career in public relations because it would offer benefits.

She is not thrilled at the idea.

I just spent five years getting this degree, she says. I was hoping to utilize it in a new job rather than the old job that I used to work in years ago.

I spend a lot of time talking to Obamacare enrollees like Hoover: people who struck out on their own left a job, started a business, went back to school after Obamacare. They felt empowered to do this because in the reformed individual market, insurers had to offer everyone coverage and couldnt charge sick people more.

And now, many of them are already beginning to rearrange their lives around the laws uncertain future.

There were 1.4 million self-employed people who relied on the marketplaces for coverage in 2014, recent research from the Treasury Department shows. That works out to one-fifth of all marketplace enrollees being people who work for themselves.

Vox has spoken to about a dozen of them, mostly members of a Facebook group we run for Obamacare enrollees. For them, the Affordable Care Act was an opening of opportunity: the possibility to try a new career path knowing that they didnt have to worry about where theyd get coverage. The possibility of repeal, they say, feels like a narrowing of choice.

Here, they describe the choices they were able to make because of Obamacare and how they are changing their lives now that the laws future is in jeopardy.

Some of the people we spoke with said theyd like to figure out a way to continue their careers, despite the uncertainty repeal brings. Theyre hoping that a Republican replacement plan might offer certain features they like about the Affordable Care Act, such as the requirement to cover everyone regardless of preexisting conditions.

But most, like Erin Hoover, were just worried.

I may have felt comfortable going without insurance myself, but I wont let my daughter go without care, she says. I am now being forced to choose between taking care of my family and following my professional ambition.

Are you an Obamacare enrollee? Help our reporting by telling us how the Affordable Care Act has changed your life, and join our Facebook community for conversation and updates.

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For so many Americans, Obamacare offered career freedom. A repeal could take that away. - Vox

TechCrunch

Game developers show political solidarity with Humble Freedom Bundle TechCrunch The Humble Bundle is a reliable source of good deals on games, usually organized around some theme or another. This week's bundle, however, is not only one of the best gaming deals of all time, but all proceeds are going to support charities that work ... New 'Humble Freedom Bundle' Donates Money To Civil Rights Groups, For Obvious ReasonsKotaku The Humble Freedom Bundle will get you 40 games for the price of only oneTechRadar Humble Freedom Bundle Offers Great Games With All Proceeds Pledged to CharitiesNDTV SlashGear -PCWorld -Wired.co.uk -Humble Bundle all 61 news articles »

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Game developers show political solidarity with Humble Freedom Bundle - TechCrunch

Commercial broadcaster MTV's Chief Editor Merja Yl-Anttila Image: Jyrki Valkama / Yle

The representative organisation of editors-in-chief in Finland, PTY, published a statement on Tuesday in response to public discourse that started in November about the responsibilities of a chief editors and their position in terms of freedom of speech.

PTY says in the statement that chief editors employ freedom of speech in their respective media, while journalists use their employers freedom of speech in their work. They are not entitled, however, to use the media channel for personal freedom of speech, the group says.

"I think its good to shed some light on certain gaps in the current discussion. Not everyone has an idea about what kinds of tasks a chief editor is charged with and which of these is linked to laws about freedom of expression," said Merja Yl-Anttila, first deputy of PTY and chief editor for the commercial news broadcaster MTV.

PTY maintains that decisions that a chief editor makes about news items do not limit journalists freedom of speech. Journalist employees publishing whatever they like under the name of the media company they are employed for is a different matter, however.

Yl-Anttila said the PTY statement is not intended to take a stand on any individual cases, and there's no specific reason the missive is being released just now.

"It is not aimed against or in defence of anyone," she said.

Chief editors want to remind people that they are responsible for the content their media channels produce, and this task cannot be relinquished to anyone outside the editorial team.

The PTY says editors-in-chief must also ensure that their units have conditions that are conducive to work by fighting off both external and internal pressure.

"When the report concerns a big, influential topic in terms of general society, there are many interested parties that might try to influence things, from various quarters. At this point, the chief editor is the last sea wall that provides wind protection for the staff to work in peace on difficult high-stress stories," says Yl-Anttila.

PTY points out that even the chief editors' employers cannot interfere in their work in any other way than by appointing or removing them from the post.

The organisation said that a responsible editor-in-chief encourages an open atmosphere in the newsroom, one in which criticism about the journalistic decisions of the management is permitted to be aired.

"The media team should be able to talk about these things. Trust is very important," says the MTV chief editor.

PTY calls on editors everywhere to be more transparent. Audiences should be better informed about how decision-making in news making works, and under what grounds the media produces the content that it does.

Opening the processes up will also help the audience to distinguish reliable news sources from fake news and other traffickers in 'alternative facts'.

"This is the kind of thing that should make all news teams take a hard look in the mirror. It would also enhance the credibility and reliability of what we do. Consider this a kind of friendly push in that direction," says Yl-Anttila.

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Chief editors: Media not a channel for personal freedom of speech - YLE News

Attorneys representing the administration ofPresident Donald Trump already have their hands fullespecially after the Ninth Circuit on Thursday unanimously rejectedthe Justice Departments request to reinstate the Muslim Ban. But that isnt the only legal challenge looming for DOJ attorneys tasked with defending the presidents sweeping order.

The American Civil Liberties Unionon Tuesday filed a federal lawsuit contending that the presidents executive order violates the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) and the First Amendments prohibition of a government establishment of religion.RDspoke with ACLU senior staff attorney Heather Weaver to better understandwhat makes this lawsuit different from the others already challenging the policy.

Weaver says the executive orders targeting of Muslims is so blatant that its nearly unprecedented. While the textneitherincludes Trumps pet phrase, radical Islamic terrorism, northe words Islam or Muslim, it doesnt have to. The administration constructed the terms of the executive order to disproportionately impact Muslim immigrants and refugees, Weaver explains.

The executive order is religiously gerrymandered to target Muslims, shesays. It most directly harms Muslim-Americans who were born or have family in any of the seven nations from which U.S. entry is now prohibited under the presidents order. Most of theindividual plaintiffs fall into this category, while others are naturalized American citizens or permanent residents who had permission to travel or approved family visas from one of the seven countries targeted. The actual harm facing these plaintiffs is particularly acute,the ACLUs suit contends.

In policy and practice,the executive order essentially conditions immigration decisions and benefits on an immigrants faith, Weaver explains.Its limiting [rights available to Muslim Americans and immigrants]because of their faith, and we would say that that is a burden on their faith, she says. Because essentially what it boils down to is: its pressuring them to abandon their faith so that they may obtain the benefits that theyre seeking.

Whether its refugee status, or a green card, or some sort of other adjustment to their status, the order limits the relief an individual or family can access based on their religion, Weaver says. Thats what the burden is here, and of course under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, if youre going to impose that type of burden on somebodys religious exercise, you have to have a compelling reason to do it, and it has to bethe least restrictive means. Thats a very high standard for the government to meet, as weve seen in some cases. And I think the government hasnt met that standard here, and I dont think they can meet that standard.

The ACLUs complaint methodically documents the historical context leading up to the orders implementation, including the numerous times then-candidate Trump stated his desireto ban Muslims from entering the U.S., and his recent on-camera admission that the order was intended to privilege Christians.

The federal government is essentially sending a message, not only that Islam and Muslims are disfavored, but its suggesting that theyre evil, or wish to do others harm, says Weaver.So whatever the message that the executive order conveys is, that is informed by everything that has led up to that executive order.

But thats not the only religious freedom complaint advanced in the suit, filed February 7th in U.S. District Courtof Maryland. Among the plaintiffs aretwo faith-based organizations that work to resettle and supportrefugees, allowing these plaintiffs toclaim a unique injury: that the order substantially burdens the free religious exercise of these U.S.-based nonprofits, which consider the work they do an extension of their sincerely held religious beliefs. The International Refugee Assistance Project (IRAP) and Jewish international refugee resettlement organization (HIAS) both contend that the executive order prevents them from living out their faith on several frontsa pointed, if indirect, rebuke to the administrations purported advocacy of religious freedom for all.

The order betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of the concept of religious freedom as it functions in American society, Weaver says. She points to the multilayered irony that during the campaign Vice President Mike Pence condemned Trumps proposed ban on Muslims, and has his own reputation of using religious freedomas an excusefor state-sanctioned anti-LGBT discrimination.

According tothe ACLU, religious freedom does not include the ability to harm others, says Weaver.And thats an important line to draw in this sand, and I think that thats a boundary thats been missing from Vice President Pences understanding of religious liberty. Its religious freedom for me but not for thee.'

Weaver says this fundamentalmisunderstanding appears to begenuine, but that doesnt absolve the nations most powerful politicians from being held responsible for the harm done by this limited perspective.

When thats your understanding of religious freedom, you dont necessarily see it as hypocritical to be voted into office on that platform, and then one of your first acts is to target a religious minority, says Weaver. It is hypocriticalbut I dont that they think its hypocritical, to be clear.

Continued here:

ACLU's Religious Freedom Suit Against Trump Order: Gerrymandered to Target Muslims - Religion Dispatches

Courtesy of the Minnesota Historical Society

The Minnesota Freedom Riders on July 26, 1961, after their return to Minnesota. Pictured are (left to right) Marvin Davidov, Zev Aelony, David Morton, Eugene Uphoff (with guitar), Claire O'Connor, and Robert Baum. Photographed by the St. Paul Pioneer Press.

The Freedom Rides of 1961 began with thirteen riders traveling on two buses through the South. Their goal was to end race segregation in interstate bus travel. The Rides grew to over fifty journeys and other actions, and attracted 436 Riders; six of them were from Minnesota.

On June 11, 1961, six young Minnesotans took a Greyhound bus from Memphis to Jackson, Mississippi. All were white, but at the Jackson bus terminal they went straight to the waiting room marked colored. Police arrested them at the lunch counter inside on a charge of breach of peace. After staying in jail overnight, they were tried, convicted, fined, and sentenced to four months in jail.

They were Freedom Riders, part of the project led by the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), to take nonviolent action against racial segregation in the South. The Freedom Rides had their origin in the Journey of Reconciliation led by CORE and Bayard Rustin in 1947. Rustin and company took a bus journey through the Upper South, disobeying Jim Crow laws and customs.

Then cameBrown v. Board of Education(1954), the Montgomery bus boycott (1956), the Greensboro lunch counter sit-in (1960), and many similar events. In 1961, CORE, now led by James Farmer, decided to try again.

They started with an experiment: thirteen people traveling by bus from Washington, D.C. to New Orleans, May 417. In Alabama, that journey exploded, with the bus set afire, riders beaten, and mobs abetted by the local police. The violence did not produce the desired effect; instead, the Freedom Rides multiplied.

The Minnesota Freedom Riders were part of a second, expanded stage of the effort. Four were students at the University of Minnesota: Zev Aelony (the organizer and the one most deeply read in the theory and practice of non-violence), Claire OConnor, Robert Baum, and Eugene Uphoff. Marvin Davidov, twenty-nine, was beginning a long career as an activist. The sixth Minnesotan was David Morton, whom Aelony called the universitys resident beatnik.

CORE had made Jackson, a crucial Southern state capital, a special target. Fourteen groups of Freedom Riders had preceded the Minnesotans to Jacksonnine by bus, five more by air and rail. All 104 of those Riders had been arrested. They were foot soldiers in a battle of attrition between Freedom Ride leadership and the State of Mississippi. The organizers hoped to overwhelm local law enforcement with numbers. In this case, the authorities answered not with violence but with process: trials, maximum sentences, jail terms, appeals bonds, and court dates.

After a few days in jail, the Minnesota men were transferred to the state penitentiary at Parchman, a prison famous for its harshness. They were held at first in maximum security, two to a six-by-nine cell, with no exercise, no visitors, and only Bibles to read. When it was hot, there was no ventilation; on cool nights the guards chilled them with fans. When they sang, the wardens took away their mattresses. Later, as more Riders were arrested, prison authorities moved them to dormitories.

OConnor spent about two weeks in jail. She was then transferred to Parchmans womens section, where she endured verbal abuse and a body-cavity search. She was released on July 3, the Minnesota men on July 24. All appealed their convictions and posted appeal bonds to pursue the strategy of stressing the Mississippi justice system. To stress them back, the court in Jackson required all Riders (by now 186) to return for new trialstwo a day, starting August 15. A long standoff seemed likely.

For the organizers, salvation of a sort came on September 21, 1961, when the Interstate Commerce Commission issued an order forbidding race discrimination on interstate buses and supporting facilities. This was victory; but it came from Washington, not Jackson. The Freedom Rides shifted focus to North Carolina (where Baum and Morton participated briefly) and ended in early December.

The Minnesotans got on with their lives and educations. Uphoff eventually became a physician, OConnor a community organizer, Aelony a businessman, and Baum a University of Minnesota bus driver. Davidov continued working as a political activist. Morton, according to Davidov, became Minnesotas first hippie.

For more information on this topic, check outthe original entry on MNopedia.

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Remembering Minnesota's Freedom Riders - MinnPost

A survey of evangelical leaders showed the most important public policy issues that evangelicals should focus on in 2017 are religious freedom and immigration/refugees.

The findings are from the year-end Evangelical Leaders Survey, a monthly poll of the board of directors of the National Association of Evangelicals.

"If the first weeks under the new administration are any indication, evangelical leaders accurately identified key policy issues and pressure points for the year," said Leith Anderson, NAE president.

"We have a great opportunity to stand for religious freedom for all, and on behalf of refugees and immigrants in our communities," he said.

Specifically, the survey showed 63 percent considered religious freedom the most important public policy issue for evangelicals to address this year.

"Evangelicals have been pushed back on our heels by accusations of hatred and bigotry," said Randall Bach, president of Open Bible Churches. "We cannot submit to such intimidation but should lovingly and assertively work toward policies and implementation of policies that respect and protect, rather than deteriorate First Amendment protections."

Recently, in the last week alone, more than 100,000 people signed an American Family Association petition, calling on President Donald Trump to make religious freedom a top priority by signing an executive order to protect that liberty.

"Religious freedom continues to be of paramount importance to many Americans," said AFA President Tim Wildmon. "With evangelical Christians being so instrumental in the election of Donald Trump, many have been buoyed by the great strides he has made so far, just weeks after the inauguration."

"AFA wants to ensure that the president and his administration will keep this crucial issue front and center, especially as many Americans have paid a hefty price for fighting for their religious liberties, such as losing their businesses, savings and more," he continued.

"Now, we urge President Trump to keep his momentum and his promise to protect people of faith from religious discrimination," Wildmon said.

Luke Goodrich, deputy general counsel for Becket, a non-profit law firm dedicated to defending religious freedom, said regardless of who's in power, that freedom is always at risk.

"The government is always tempted to trample on religious freedom, and not just at the federal level, but also at the state and local level," he told CBN News.

"And it's... critically important to remain vigilant, defending not just religious freedom for evangelicals and other Christians, but defending religious freedom for all because if one group doesn't have religious freedom, then nobody has religious freedom," he continued.

Goodrich said one very important religious freedom case before the U.S. Supreme Court that evangelicals need to follow is Trinity Lutheran Church v. Pauley. The church sued the state of Missouri, accusing it of discrimination related to a state grant program.

Another religious freedom case that he believes should be on the radar of evangelicals is Gaylor v. Lew.

"Freedom from Religion Foundation, an atheist organization, has challenged the parsonage allowance as unconstitutional," Goodrich explained. "And bottom line -- if their lawsuit succeeds, churches all across the country and ministers all across the country will face over $1 billion in new taxes every year."

Following religious freedom, 46 percent of the year-end Evangelical Leaders Survey respondents pointed to immigration/refugees as the top public policy issue.

Fast forward to now, and thousands of evangelical pastors and leaders have signed a letter asking President Trump to reconsider his controversial executive order on refugees.

Jenny Yang, Vice President of Policy and Advocacy on Refugee Resettlement for World Relief, said the increase in signers "demonstrates how many evangelical churches want to welcome refugees." World Relief works with churches to settle refugees across the country and coordinated the letter.

The executive order bans all persons from seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the U.S. for ninety days and suspends all refugee processing for 120 days. It bars refugees from Syria indefinitely.

"America is pretty much a nation of immigrants and their descendants," Anderson said. "More than any country in the world we should be known for our welcome and treatment of refugees and immigrants in our generation."

Not every Christian leader, though, has been a critic of the president's executive order.

Evangelist Franklin Graham, the son of Billy Graham, told The Huffington Post that it's "not a biblical command for the country to let everyone in who wants to come."

According to CNN, the Rev. Robert Jeffress, pastor of First Baptist Church of Dallas and a member of Trump's evangelical advisory board, said Christians endure more persecution than other faiths, and in line with the president's pledge, should receive preferential treatment.

Russell Moore, president of The Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, advocated for an even-handed approach in a letter he wrote to the president.

"Achieving the right balance between compassion toward refugees one of the most vulnerable groups of people among us and protection of Americans is crucial if the United States is to remain a model for freedom around the world," Moore wrote.

"It is one thing to debate whether the vetting process is adequate. It is quite another to seek to potentially turn our backs on Syrian refugees permanently," he continued.

The Evangelical Leaders Survey also showed that leaders considered poverty, abortion, racial tension, court nominations, marriage/family and health care as other important public policy issues.

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Evangelicals: Religious Freedom and Refugees Top Priorities for This Year - CBN News

When Guadalupe Garca de Rayos was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Mesa, Ariz., after the most recent of her mandated check-ins with the agency, her lawyer, Ray Ybarra Maldonado, was furious. On a conference call, Maldonado said that ICE had lied to him and that he would advise anyone in Rayoss shoes to seek sanctuary in a church instead of turning themselves in.

Rayos considered that option. Understanding that the check-in might pose a new risk during the Trump administration, allies suggestedthat she do so. She declined, opting instead for going to Mass and praying before she went to the ICE office.

She was deported to Mexico, leaving her two children behind.

Seeking sanctuary at a church would not have offered as much shelter as you might assume. Many of us are familiar thanks to The Hunchback of Notre Dame with the concept of taking refuge in a place of worship as a way to avoid civil authorities. While this was a doctrine that existed in some places in the past, it was never instituted by American colonists, and it is not the case now that someone hoping to avoid arrest can be assured of protection in a house of worship. (Nor is it the case that sanctuary cities offer protection from detention by federal immigration authorities, as recent raids have made clear.)

There is, however, a reason that Rayoss attorney recommended seeking refuge in a church. David Leopold, an immigration attorney from Cleveland and former president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, pointed to a 2011 memorandum from then-ICE Director John Morton. It established that ICE would not conduct enforcement actions in enumerated sensitive locations: hospitals, schools, the site of a wedding or funeral, during a demonstration or at a place of worship.

It wasnt impossible to conduct such an action; it was just that any enforcement in one of the places on the list mandated approval from a top ICE official before proceeding (except in the case of an emergency).

What makes places of worship uniquely appealing on that list, of course, is that they alone are part of the long tradition of seeking sanctuary. The concept, established more than 1,700 years ago in the Theodosian Code of A.D. 392, upholds tenets offered in the Bible. Exodus 22:21 part of the delineation of laws following the Ten Commandments implores readers to not mistreat or oppress foreigners. Deuteronomy 27:19 declares that those who deny justice to foreigners, orphans and widows should be cursed.

Churches, in other words, may act to protect immigrants out of a sense of religious obligation. And that is where things might get tricky for the Trump administration.

Last week, a draft executive order that was circulating in the White House was leaked to the media. Titled Establishing a Government-Wide Initiative to Respect Religious Freedom, the draft document sides strongly with recent efforts to support the role of religious beliefs in commercial and legal interactions. The draft order focused on political issues that have been at the heart of that conflict, such as same-sex marriage and contraception. But it was a clear indicator that the administration supported a broad interpretation of religious freedom rights.

The most noteworthy case on this subject was Burwell vs. Hobby Lobby, determined in favor of the retail chain by the Supreme Court in 2014. Five justices agreed that the provisions of the 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Actmeant that Hobby Lobby could not be forced to cover contraception in its health insurance for employees, despite such a mandate in the Affordable Care Act.

Liz Platt is the director of the Public Rights/Private Conscience Project at Columbia Law School. When we spoke by phone Friday, she suggested that the new breadth of accommodation for religious liberties might make the issue of offering sanctuary trickier. She noted that offering sanctuary to immigrants living in the country illegally has been challenged in the courts previously, with the religious motivations behind the effort playing a muted role.

During the 1980s, a number of religious institutions were helping people fleeing violence in Central America to travel illegally through the United States. Some of those participating in the effort were arrested, and, among other things, the question was raised of whether the arrests violated their First Amendment rights to free religious practice. They lost.

The courts did something that would never fly today, Platt said. The courts questioned whether their religious beliefs were really being burdened. They had some clergy members come in and say, Actually, theres no reason why under Christianity you would need to do this.

Under the Supreme Courts decision in Hobby Lobby, by contrast, they were super deferential to the claimants who said that their religious rights had been burdened, she continued. Under this much, much greater deference to the religious objector and much expanded right to a religious accommodation, I think its certainly a possibility that those cases could come out the opposite way today.

The new, much, much broader of right to religious exemption thats provided under RFRA is going to really give them a chance to relitigate the question of sanctuary, Platt said. She noted, too, that religion might not even be the only boundary, if the leaked executive order is any guide. The document contained protections not only for religion, but also for conscience, she said. This raises the prospect of someone harboring an immigrant in their home, challenging prosecution by citing their conscientious decision to do so.

The issue of punishment for those offering sanctuary is key. Since sanctuary isnt a legal doctrine, those who offer it to immigrants in the country illegally are putting themselves at risk under statutes outlawing the harboring of undocumented immigrants. Federal code bars transporting people known to be in the country illegally or concealing, harboring or shielding those known to be undocumented in any place, including any building or any means of transportation. That includes places of worship.

Leopold, the immigration attorney, agreed that there might be a tension in the administrations likely priorities. Theres an inherent conflict between the harboring statutes and religious freedom in this country, he said. He said he suspects that this could become a significant issue under Trump, thanks in part to his attorney general.

The law is very broad. And thats my fear, Leopold said. My concern is that you have an attorney general in Jeff Sessions who is anti-immigrant. At this point, hes the chief law enforcement officer in the country, and he can use the criminal statutes to prosecute people for harboring.

The penalty for being convicted of harboring someone known to be in the country illegally is five years in federal prison.

The prohibition against raiding places of worship, as outlined in 2011, is a memorandum that could be overturned at any point. Theres another reason that ICE is disinterested in launching raids at places of worship, of course: aesthetics. No head of a government agency wants to have to explain to the public why there were photographs of a priest being lead to a police vehicle in handcuffs.

I think that if Jeff Sessions begins to prosecute people for harboring I think theres going to be hell to pay, Leopold said. I think people are going to recoil at any prosecution of a church or a religious figure or parishioners for doing what they believe is their religious duty.

He compared it to recent protests at airports over Trumps immigration ban. Its the same response that you see when people get off airplanes and are detained at the airport suddenly because they have a passport from a Muslim country, he added. I think youll see the same thing if you see the government going into a place of worship.

Leopold and Platt suggest that the conclusion to any debate over sanctuary might end the same way, in court. If so, the Trump administration may be torn between what it prioritizes more: its ability to deport immigrants in the country illegally or the right of religious Americans to stand in their way.

Continued here:

The looming conflict between Trump's immigration sweeps and ... - Washington Post