Governor Reverses Policy and Says Troopers Can Pray In Jesus Name

click to read original Article From
World Net Daily

© 2010 WorldNetDaily

Gov. Robert McDonnell

State trooper chaplains in Virginia are being told they can pray "in Jesus name" again just two years after then-Democratic Gov. Tim Kaine affirmed a measure ordering them use only "nonsectarian" prayers or quit.

According to Chaplain Gordon Klingenschmitt of the "Pray in Jesus Name" organization, the new governor, Republican Bob McDonnell, has restored the rights of six state police chaplains "to pray publicly 'in Jesus name.'"

"This victory comes after our two-year campaign for Jesus name," Klingenschmitt said.

He led a 1,000-person rally outside the governor's mansion in 2008, then submitted some 15,000 petitions to reinstate the chaplains' jobs and free speech.

"We faxed voter guides to 2300-plus Virginia pastors last summer, comparing Bob McDonnell, who campaigned for chaplains' rights to pray in Jesus name, to his opponent Creigh Deeds, who voted against Jesus prayers in the Senate. Those pastors helped us move the polls from 47-44 percent before our faxes, to the 59-41 percent victory for McDonnell on election day, because of this issue," Klingenschmitt said.

He said now that McDonnell has lifted the ban, the six chaplains who turned in their badges rather than exclude Jesus from their prayers, including Rex Carter and Mike Honaker, will be invited back to their positions.

According to a political blog at the Washington Post, McDonnell dispatched the state police superintendent, Col. W. Steven Flaherty, to announce the policy change.

"The governor does not believe the state should tell chaplains of any faith how to pray,'' Tucker Marin, a McDonnell spokesman, told the blog. "Religious officials of all faiths should be allowed to pray according to the dictates of their own conscience, and in accordance with their faith traditions, while being respectful of the faith traditions of others."

It also had been Flaherty who announced earlier that chaplains would be allowed to offer only prayers that did not reference Jesus.

The issue arose following a lawsuit against the city of Fredericksburg for banning a councilman from concluding his routine council prayers – offered on a rotating basis among members – "in Jesus' name."

Former Supreme Court Justice Sandra O'Connor concluded in an intermediary court opinion that Rev. Hashmel Turner's prayers were "government speech" and therefore subject to censorship by the city. .

When the rule change was imposed, six of the chaplains resigned their responsibilities rather than be forced to pray without mentioning Jesus. At the time, Kaine said he didn't need the name of Jesus in his prayers.

"It doesn't diminish my ability to worship my God, to pray to the Father or the Lord without mentioning Jesus Christ," he said.

Then a coalition of pastors wrote to Kaine seeking a change in the policy.

"Six chaplains lost their jobs as chaplains, having effectively 'turned in their chaplain badge' in protest over the governor's 'non-sectarian' prayer policy," Klingenschmitt reported at the time. "They are no longer permitted to perform chaplain duties, until they comply with the prayer policy and get reinstated."

Klingenschmitt said the chaplains "were given direct verbal orders to stop praying 'in Jesus name' … [and] faced with a choice between disobeying orders and violating their conscience by publicly denying the name of Jesus Christ, they resigned."

That's exactly what persecution is, he insisted.

Klingenschmitt, whose battle with the military over his use of the phrase remains in court where he's seeking reinstatement, said he "cannot believe we live in a society where government officials literally dictate the content of a chaplain's prayers and dare to punish or exclude chaplains who pray 'in Jesus name.'"

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JMC Ministries Response

We agree with the last statement made by Klingenschmitt saying he “cannot believe we live in a society where government officials literally dictate the content of a chaplains prayers and dare to punish or exclude chaplains who pray ‘in Jesus name’”

What has happened to freedom of Religion and freedom of Speech?

It is frightening how many stories we are hearing this year about these kind of things going on in  supposedly the Freest country in the entire world.

We can only thank This Governor who reinstate these Chaplains and give them back their freedom to pray in Jesus Name. As long as these freedoms are still written in our U.S Constitution we need to continue to fight to have them in the face of persecution and those who seek to take all our freedoms away whether you are Christian or any other Faith. 

Archeologists Say New Noah’s Ark Find is FAKE!

By Joe Kovacs
© 2010 WorldNetDaily

Has the real Noah's Ark spoken of in the Bible truly been found?

At least two seasoned archaeologists who have made numerous expeditions to Mount Ararat in search of Noah's Ark are throwing cold water on this week's claim the Old Testament vessel has finally been discovered, saying it's a hoax involving wood hauled in from the Black Sea region.

"To make a long story short: this is all reported to be a fake," said Randall Price, director of Judaic Studies at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Va.

"This is not Noah's Ark," adds Bob Cornuke of the Bible Archaeology Search and Exploration Institute. "This is a fake. It's a fraud and it's of the highest caliber according to what I can assess from the evidence and talking to eyewitnesses and people from Turkey."

WND reported yesterday that Chinese and Turkish explorers with Noah's Ark Ministries International said they were "99.9 percent sure" they found the remnants of the legendary biblical vessel high up on Mount Ararat in eastern Turkey.

The 15-member team claims it recovered wooden specimens from a structure at an altitude of 13,000 feet and that carbon dating suggested it was 4,800 years old

Several compartments, some with wooden beams, are said to be inside and could have been used to house animals, the group indicated.

"The search team has made the greatest discovery in history," declared Prof. Oktay Belli, an archaeologist at Istanbul University. "This finding is very important and the greatest up to now."

But Dr. Price, who is spearheading efforts to explore two competing locations for Noah's Ark, sent an e-mail dispatch to supporters with his personal take on the alleged find, asserting the structure is a hoax perpetrated by a Kurdish guide and his partners to extort money from Chinese evangelical Christians.

Click to read full story from World Net Daily

U.S Supreme Court Supports WWI Cross Memorial in Mojave California

Click to read original article from Fox News

AP

The Supreme Court said a federal court went too far in ordering the removal of a memorial known as the 'Mojave Cross,' on an outcrop in the Mojave National Preserve, in Calif.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court said Wednesday that a lower court went too far in ordering the removal of a congressionally endorsed war memorial cross from its longtime home atop a remote outcropping in California.

Signaling support for keeping the cross, the justices ordered the federal court in California to look again at Congress' plan to transfer a patch of federal land beneath it into private hands.

The lower court had barred the land transfer as insufficient to eliminate concern about a religious symbol on public land — in this case, the Mojave National Preserve.

The ruling was 5-4, with the court's conservatives in the majority.

The VFW erected the large cross in the federal preserve more than 75 years ago.

It has been covered with plywood for the past several years following the court rulings. Court papers describe the cross as 5 feet to 8 feet tall.

"Here one Latin cross in the desert evokes far more than religion. It evokes thousands of small crosses in foreign fields marking the graves of Americans who fell in battles, battles whose tragedies are compounded if the fallen are forgotten," Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote.

In dissent, Justice John Paul Stevens agreed that soldiers who died in battle deserve a memorial to their service. But the government "cannot lawfully do so by continued endorsement of a starkly sectarian message," Stevens said.

Six justices wrote separate opinions and none spoke for a majority of the court. The holding itself was narrow, ordering lower courts to look again at the transfer of land from the government to private control.

Lower federal courts previously ruled that the cross' location on public land violated the Constitution and that the land transfer was, in effect, an end run around the constitutional problem.

Kennedy, who usually is in the court's center on church-state issues, suggested there may have been no problem in the first place.

"The goal of avoiding governmental endorsement does not require eradication of all religious symbols in the public realm," Kennedy said.

Justices Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas would have gone further than Kennedy and Chief Justice John Roberts, who joined Kennedy's opinion.

Alito said he would allow the land transfer, barred until now, to take effect. Scalia and Thomas said they would not even have allowed the former National Park Service employee who complained about the cross to bring his objection to the transfer into court.

Roberts took a decidedly commonsensical approach to the matter. At the argument in October, a lawyer argued there probably would be no objection if the government took down the cross, sold the land to the VFW, and gave the VFW the cross to immediately erect again.

"I do not see how it can make a difference for the government to skip that empty ritual and do what Congress told it to do — sell the land with the cross on it," Roberts said.

Justices Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor also dissented.

Evangelists Claim They Have Found Noah’s Ark

By Joe Kovacs
© 2010 WorldNetDaily

A new claim is being made for the discovery of Noah's Ark, as the French news agency reports evangelical explorers from China and Turkey believe they may have found the remnants of the legendary biblical vessel.

"It's not 100 percent that it is Noah's Ark but we think it is 99.9 percent that this is it," Yeung Wing-cheung, a Hong Kong documentary filmmaker and member of the 15-strong team from Noah's Ark Ministries International told Agence France-Presse.

According to the report which provided no photos and few details, the team says it recovered wooden specimens from a structure on Mount Ararat in eastern Turkey at an altitude of 13,000 feet, and that carbon dating suggested it was 4,800 years old.

Yeung indicated there were several compartments inside, some with wooden beams, that could have housed animals.

Click to read full article from World Net Daily

Franklin Graham Speaks to CNN about being Disinvited to Pentagon For The National Day of Prayer

California Senator Pushes Bill to Prevent Children From buying Violent Video Games

Homeless Man Stabbed After Saving A Woman from Being Mugged

JMC Ministries Response

To watch this video is so disturbing to see how people just pay no attention to a dying man on the side walk and even take pictures with their cell phones.

What have we become as a society here in The U.S when a man dies needlessly because all those people didn’t take the time to use those cell phones they took the pictures of him to call for help or stop and say this isn’t right a man lying on a side walk looking like he may be dead or injured.

Where is the compassion?! Where is the empathy?! For your fellow human man?!

The United States is known for being the first ones to help other Countries when they are attacked or have some terrible disaster happen.  But what about our own People?! How can we help people in other countries when we can’t even help our own people here who are lying on side walks dying because they saved someone's life?

Federal Judge Blasts Arizona City ban on Sound of Church Bells

Click to read full article from World Net Daily

By Bob Unruh
© 2010 WorldNetDaily

Bishop Rick Painter, sentenced for allowing church bells to ring

A federal judge in Arizona has struck down a Phoenix noise ordinance against  sounds generated by religious worship – settling one part of a dispute that erupted when city officials convicted a bishop and sentenced him to a suspended jail sentence and several years of probation because someone complained about the ringing of his church bells.
"Churches shouldn't be targeted and punished for ringing their bells as a public expression of faith that's been done for centuries," said Erik Stanley, senior legal counsel for the Alliance Defense Fund, which worked on the case.
"The federal court has made the right decision by declaring that the city's noise ordinance violates the First and Fourteenth Amendments," he said.
The federal judge, Susan R. Bolton, ruled that the city's ordinance was being used to prohibit "sound generated in the course of religious expression," even while it contained an exemption for ice-cream trucks to blare their promotions.

The case had been brought by St. Mark Roman Catholic Parish, Christ the King Liturgical Charismatic Church and First Christian Church. The court earlier issued a temporary order and today made that permanent.
"It is ordered granting plaintiffs' request for a permanent injunction, and permanently enjoining Defendant City of Phoenix from enforcing the Noise Ordinance … against any sound generated in the course of religious expression," the order said.
"It is further ordered granting plaintiffs' request for a declaratory judgment, declaring that the Noise Ordinance … when enforced against any sound generated in the course of religious expression, violates the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution."
The dispute heated up when Bishop Rick Painter of Christ the King was sentenced to jail and probation in June 2009 for violating the ordinance by ringing his church's bells.
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JMC Ministries Response

A Few years ago we heard the story of a pastor who was told not to ring the church bell to let people know that Church was starting. And that if he did he would be fined every time.  

Even being threatened with being fined hundreds of dollars each time he would ring the church bell. The pastor did it every Sunday.  He rang that bell and every time he received a fine for hundreds of dollars in the mail. He some how got the money to pay the fines and still every Sunday he would ring that Bell.

We see more and more Courts and even Govt officials starting to stand up and say this is wrong.  This judge ruled that they violated this churches rights to ring the church bell in this article and in our previous post we shared how our U.S Govt is filing an appeal against the Federal Judge's ruling that the National Day of Prayer is Unconstitutional.  

When our own Govt is seeing that this is wrong and taking a stand against it. Obviously it has gone too far the persecution against Christians and anyone who is religious.

U.S Govt to appeal ruling against National Day Of Prayer

Click to read full article from The Associated Press

By RYAN J. FOLEY (AP) – 20 hours ago

MADISON, Wis. — The Obama administration said Thursday it will appeal a court decision that found the National Day of Prayer unconstitutional.
U.S. District Judge Barbara Crabb in Madison ruled last week the National Day of Prayer that Congress established 58 years ago amounts to a call for religious action.
In a notice filed Thursday, the Justice Department said it will challenge the decision in the U.S. 7th Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago. The notice came after about two dozen members of Congress condemned the ruling and pressed for an appeal.
The case was brought by the Freedom From Religion Foundation, a Madison-based group of atheists and agnostics who argue the National Day of Prayer violates the separation of church and state. Its co-president Annie Laurie Gaylor, said she was disappointed in the decision to appeal.
"I would have expected something better from a legal scholar," she said, referring to President Barack Obama's background as a law professor.
Her group planned to launch an online petition Thursday praising Crabb's decision and asking Obama, the principal defendant in the lawsuit, to "leave days of prayer to individuals, private groups and churches, synagogues, mosques and temples."
Crabb ruled the government could not use its authority to try to influence when and whether individuals pray, writing: "In this instance, the government has taken sides on a matter that must be left to individual conscience." She put enforcement of her ruling on hold until all appeals are exhausted.
The administration had argued the law simply acknowledges the role of religion in the United States.
Congress established the day in 1952 and in 1988 set the first Thursday in May as the day for presidents to issue proclamations asking Americans to pray. An Obama spokesman has said the president plans to issue a proclamation for the upcoming prayer day, May 6. Many other state and local officials typically follow suit.
The Justice Department signaled it would appeal not only Crabb's decision on the merits of the case but also her ruling last month that the defendants had the standing to bring the lawsuit in the first place.

Franklin Graham Disinvited by Army to Speak At National Day of Prayer

Click to read full article from World Net Daily
 

By Jeff Schogol, Stars and Stripes
Online Edition, Thursday, April 22, 2010

ARLINGTON, Va. — The Army has disinvited Franklin Graham to speak at the Pentagon on National Prayer Day after a military advocacy group objected because Graham has reportedly described Islam as “evil” and “wicked.”
“I regret that the Army felt it was necessary to rescind their invitation to the National Day of Prayer Task Force to participate in the Pentagon’s special prayer service,” Graham said in a statement on Thursday.
I want to express my strong support for the United States military and all our troops. I will continue to pray that God will give them guidance, wisdom and protection as they serve this great country.”
Graham was expected to speak at the Pentagon on May 6, drawing the ire of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, a watchdog group focused on religious favoritism in the military.
The group had been prepared to seek a temporary restraining order against National Prayer Day if it were “polluted by someone as hideously Islamophobic as Franklin Graham,” said Mikey Weinstein, head of the group.
In a 2001 op-ed piece, Graham wrote that he does not believe Muslims are evil, but he objects to the treatment of women in Muslim countries and Islam’s historic “persecution or elimination” of other religions.
On Thursday, Graham told Fox News that while he loves Muslims, “I speak out for people that live under Islam, that are enslaved by Islam and I want them to know they can be free through faith in Jesus Christ and Christ alone.”Council on American Islamic Relations spokesman Ibrahim Hooper said it is “completely inappropriate” for Graham to speak in front of a military audience.
“These are individuals who are potentially going to be stationed in Muslim majority nations, and they don’t need to hear from someone spreading hatred of Islam and Muslims,” Hooper said.
“What does that say to those who are going to be asked to serve in these regions and how is that going to affect their interaction with the local population?” Graham is honorary chairman of the National Day of Prayer Task Force, a group that organizes Christian events that was invited to participate in National Day of Prayer by the Pentagon chaplain’s office.
An Army spokesman told the Associated Press the Pentagon’s relationship with the Christian group does not violate Defense Department rules.