WE ARE BEING FOOLED BY OUR PRESIDENT

President Barack Hussein Obama is fooling the American public. He recently said he believed we have the right to religious worship. Did you get it: religious worship. That is not what our constitution nor our founding fathers intended. Religious freedom is something different. Worship could be confined to our churches whereas freedom means that we have the full right to express anything we wish religiously wherever we want. We are being set up for being prohibited from speaking out about our faith, or about properly criticizing the beliefs of others if we think it is appropriate. Our rights will soon be gone!    What is the story about religious freedom from history? What did the founders say? And what were they fighting for: religious worship or religious freedom?    Only a few times did they mention religious worship though it was understood that that right was included in religious freedom.    An outstanding textbook entitled "American Idealism" gives us the heads up on this discussion (Yale University Press, 1928). The book has an excellent chapter entitled "The Growth of Religious Freedom." The chapter says "The first American colonies established upon a basis of religious freedom was Maryland." "The Quakers made great contributions to the cause of religious freedom." Many of the signers of the Constitution "declared for religious freedom" in the thirteen colonies. They wanted a "guarantee of complete religious freedom ... as a part of the Constitution. That decision was rendered easier, moreover, by the fact that a strenuous battle for religious freedom had just been fought and won in Virginia by the Presbyterians and Baptists."    James Madison fought for the elimination of the misleading word "toleration" and the substitution thereof of the unequivocal phrase: He said "All men are equally entitled to the free exercise of religion according to the dictates of conscience." He also said: "All men are entitled to equal religious freedom, that all religious stand without prejudice before the law of the state."    In 1785, Franklin wrote the Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom which passed six years later. "All men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of religion."    The successive memorials of the Hanover Presbytery, moreover, which were presented before Jefferson drafted his Bill, had stated with remarkable precision and force the principles of religious freedom upon which it was based.    Our President does not know his history, nor does he care what it says in terms of our religious freedoms! –Dr. Mal Couch (9/10)