In 2015 religion in America suffered 1285 attacks a 100 percent increase from only four years ago. The 2016 edition of First Liberty Institutes
Undeniable: The Survey of Hostility to Religion in America reveals an increasingly perilous atmosphere for Christians and those of other faiths to practice their religion. But although
attacks on religious liberty are dramatically increasing in the United States both in the frequency and in the severity of the attacks this survey also shows that those persons and organizations who stand up for religious liberty win when they fight.
First Liberty Institute (formerly known as Liberty Institute) describes
itself as a nonprofit legal firm with the sole mission of protecting religious liberty for all Americans." It aims to reestablish religious liberty in accordance with the principles of our nations Founders who believed that religious liberty was the first liberty the freedom upon which all others are grounded." Its president is constitutional scholar Kelly Shackelford.
Expanding Attacks
In an exclusive interview with
The Stream Justin Butterfield editor of the report and one of the groups senior counsel relayed how the attacks have expanded. Four years ago the idea that a military chaplain would be investigated for simply providing pastoral counseling according to his religious beliefs (as happened with
Chaplain Modder) would have been unthinkable." He went on: We have also seen the administration argue that the First Amendment protects only religious belief and we have seen churches have to fight for their very existence. In Houston First Liberty for the first time had to defend a church from being taken by eminent domain."
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