Professor Fired from Atlanta Seminary Over Evangelical Beliefs?

A professor who was fired in July by theInterdenominational Theological Centersays the Atlanta consortium of black seminaries discriminated against his conservative Christian views.

The Rev. Jamal-Dominique Hopkins, an African-American expert on the Dead Sea Scrolls, filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in July. He accused ITC administrators of harassment that included "disagreeing with my conservative religious ideals, intimidating me, slandering my character, giving me poor evaluations, and changing student grades from failing to passing with no merit.''

Hopkins, 42, told Religion News Service that tensions arose after a speaker fromInterVarsity Christian Fellowshipaddressed an informal session he organized in February. During the session, attendees were offered a book that declared homosexuality was a sin.

He said his department chair, the Rev. Margaret Aymer, questioned the distribution of the book and threatened his job.

"It was primarily the book that created an issue," said Hopkins, a former associate professor of New Testament.

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Biola, Grace File Federal Suit Over Abortion Pill Mandate

In the ongoing backlash against Obamacare, two evangelical Christian colleges—Grace College and Seminary in Indiana and Biola University in California—have filed a federal lawsuit against the administration.
The lawsuit is the latest to challenge the Obama administration’s unconstitutional mandate that faith-based employers provide insurance coverage for abortion-inducing drugs at no cost to employees regardless of religious or moral objections.
“Christian colleges should remain free to operate according to their deeply held beliefs. Punishing religious people and organizations for freely exercising their faith is an assault on our most fundamental American freedoms,” says Gregory S. Baylor, Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) senior counsel.
As Baylor sees it, the mandate leaves religious employers with no real choice: You must either comply and abandon your religious freedom and conscience, or resist and be taxed for your faith. He says every American should know that a government with the power to do this to anyone can do this—and worse—to everyone.
“The Obama administration’s mandate forces us to act against our own doctrinal statement, which upholds the sanctity of human life,” says Biola University President Barry H. Corey. “It unjustly intrudes on our religious liberty as protected under the U.S. Constitution and makes a mockery of our attempts to live our lives according to our faith convictions, time-honored and long protected.”

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Wasserman Schultz Refuses to Acknowledge She’s Misquoting the LA Times After Baffled Cooper Calls Her Out

Attorney of Former Marine Detained for Facebook Posts Tells Beck: Psychiatrist Threatened to ‘Brainwash’ My Client With Meds

Earlier today, 26-year-old former U.S. Marine Brandon Raub was released from a psychiatric facility via a judge’s order, who ruled that the government had no legal grounds to hold him.
Tonight on Glenn Beck’s show on GBTV, soon-to-become TheBlazeTV, John Whitehead, Raub’s lead attorney and president of the Rutherford Institute, gave his first interview following his client’s release to discuss the case.
Whitehead told Beck that he and his organization are planning to sue over a provision in Virginia state law that allows authorities to place a person in emergency custody and hold them for four hours unless a magistrate enters a temporary detention order (TDO). Raub was held under this law, specifically Va. Code § 37.2-808, for days.
“We are getting ready to file a civil lawsuit…because [Raub] has been put through hell for a week,” said Whitehead. But, he explained, “Under the civil commitment law in Virginia, the police can do this.”

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Marine Sent to Psych Ward Over Facebook Posts Now Released… But Who Could Be Next?

Well, according to Whitehead, more than 20,000 people are “committed” under similar circumstances each year — in Virginia alone. “That means a lot of people are disappearing,” accused of having a so-called mental illness.
“I’m friends with the local police; I could call them right now and probably get you committed if you were in Virginia,” Whitehead added. “They can arrive at your door based on somebody’s testimony or your Facebook page and take you away to a mental hospital… There’s a system here that is corrupt. And this guy is caught in it.”
In his defense motion, Raub’s lawyers argued that the initial detention orders did not follow Virginia state law that the Chesterfield Police Department cited, making Raub’s indefinite detention illegal.
Chesterfield police claimed they “took Raub into custody for evaluation in accordance with Virginia State Code § 37.2-808 Emergency custody.”
But as Business Insider points out, “Va. Code § 37.2-808 states that a person in emergency custody may only be held for four hours unless a magistrate enters a temporary detention order (TDO).” Raub was held for days.

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