Religious News From Around the Web December 7, 2020

Religious Liberty Protest in Oregon, Secular PAC Pushes Federal Anti-Religious Agenda, Supreme Court Sets Aside California Ban on Religious Gatherings, Supreme court to Determine Fate of Religious Schools? Indian State Restricts Religious Conversion, Expose Chinese Religious Persecution, You’ve Divulged State Secrets

Another Protest in Oregon – But This One’s for Religious Liberty

Following Oregon Gov. Kate Brown’s 25 percent capacity limit on church attendance, protesters gathered in Salem to protest. “We will not surrender one more centimeter of religious freedom to any government,” said Father Theodore Lange, chaplain of the Oregon Knights of Columbus. “We are here today to speak in one voice: Stop the religious repression,” said Young Tran, a refugee from Vietnam and a member of Our Lady of La Vang Parish in Happy Valley, Oregon. “It happened in our former country, a communist and a socialist country, and it’s starting to happen here now.”

Secular PAC Pushes Federal Anti-Religious Agenda
The Secular Democrats of America have proposed sweeping reforms to the Biden administration, designed to stop the advance of what they call “Christian Nationalism.” Among their targets: Federal funds given to any organization that “discriminates based on religion,” repeal of religious exemptions from mandatory vaccinations for school attendance, repeal of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1992, and replacing “In God We Trust,” with “E Pluribus Unum.”

Supreme Court Sets Aside California Ban on Religious Gatherings

Harvest Rock’s 162 member churches sued California in July, arguing Gov. Newsom’s executive order treated houses of worship unfairly. The district court ruled against the churches, but in a short, unsigned order the Supreme Court vacated the decision and instructed the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to send the case back to the district court for reconsideration in light of its Nov. 25 decision that blocked New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s COVID-19 restrictions on places of worship.

Supreme court to Determine Fate of Religious Schools?
Under Governor Beshear’s orders, Kentuckians can catch a matinee at the movie theater, tour a distillery, work out at the gym, bet at a gambling parlor or go shopping, but they are not free to send their students to a religious school. Kentucky parents with a 4-year old and a 6-year old can send their younger child to preschool or daycare for eight or more hours every day, but the older child must stay home.

Indian State Restricts Religious Conversion
Despite the fact that the right to choose a partner irrespective of caste, creed or religion is part of the Constitution of India, Uttar Pradish, an Indian state has banned religious conversions entered solely for the purpose of marriage, based on a conspiracy theory that Muslim men are attempting to surreptitiously shift India’s demographic balance by converting Hindu women to Islam through marriage.

Expose Chinese Religious Persecution, You’ve Divulged State Secrets
In 2018, China arrested dozens of reporters for exposing a document called “Plan for the Special Campaign on Legal Investigation and Prosecution of South Korean Christian Infiltrations,” which outlined how the state would carry out crackdowns against churches in China that were established by Christian groups from South Korea. The publication of the document reportedly affected China and South Korea relations.