Navy Chaplain Censored: ‘Don’t pray in the name of Jesus’

Lt. Cmdr. Wes Modder (Courtesy Liberty Institute)

By Todd Starnes

(Fox News) A Navy chaplain who faces the end of a stellar 19-year career because of his faith-based views on marriage and human sexuality was told by a base commander to refrain from offering a prayer in the name of Jesus, according to attorneys representing the chaplain.

That allegation was tucked away in an 18-page letter written to the commander of Navy Region Southeast by Liberty Institute attorneys representing Chaplain Wesley Modder. Liberty Institute is a law firm that specializes in religious liberty cases.

Liberty Institute asserts that Chaplain Modder’s fate could have a significant impact on every Christian military chaplain.

The letter included the results of Liberty Institute’s investigation of allegations levied against the chaplain by Captain John Fahs.

I’ll tackle that newest allegation later – but first here’s a recap of what I believe to be the LGBT-inspired witch hunt against Chaplain Modder:

Last December, an openly gay officer at the Naval Nuclear Power Training Command in South Carolina, took offense at Modder’s take on homosexuality. The chaplain, who is endorsed by the Assemblies of God, was accused of discrimination and failing to show tolerance and respect – among other things.

Just a few months earlier, Modder’s commander had called him the “best of the best” and a consummate professional leader.” But now he’s on the verge of being kicked out of the military.
“After our investigation, it is clear that the facts and law are on Chaplain Modder’s side,” Liberty Institute attorney Michael Berry said. “He has done nothing more than provide ministerial services in accordance with the precepts of his faith – which is completely consistent with Navy rules and federal law.”

Their letter is a point by point repudiation of the allegations against the highly respected chaplain – a man who once led chaplains who ministered to Navy SEALs.

“We believe the Navy will exonerate Chaplain Modder and restore him to continue his true calling of ministering to sailors and Marines as he has done for the past 15 years,” Berry said.

Liberty Institute maintains that Modder’s private counseling on issues involving human sexuality and same-sex marriage were consistent with the beliefs of his endorsing agency – the Assemblies of God.

“As a result of honoring the tenets of his endorsing denomination, he now faces the loss of his employment and removal from the Navy,” Liberty Institute wrote.

While Chaplain Modder specifically denies accusations that he used inappropriate language or gestures, he does admit to providing answers to questions from a Biblical world view.

“On occasion and only when asked, he expressed his sincerely held religious belief that sexual acts outside of marriage are contrary to biblical teaching; homosexual conduct is contrary to biblical teaching and homosexual orientation or temptation as distinct from conduct is not a sin,” Liberty Institute wrote.

They also reminded the Navy that Department of Defense regulations allow Chaplain Modder to hold religious beliefs.

“Navy chaplains are never required to compromise the standards of their religious organization, but are required to perform in a pluralistic environment,” they wrote.

That brings me back to the moment when Chaplain Modder was told he could not pray in the name of Jesus Christ.

Liberty Institute alleges it happened shortly after Modder assumed chaplaincy responsibilities at the training command. He was asked to deliver an invocation at a ceremony.

As he was walking to the lectern, Fahs is alleged to have told him to deep-six the Jesus talk – “counsel that Chaplain Modder accepted and with which he complied.”

Chaplain Modder’s fate could have a significant impact on every Christian military chaplain, asserts Liberty Institute.

Taking action, they argue, “Would send a dangerous message that other chaplains who share his beliefs – the vast majority of military chaplains – may also suffer adverse personnel actions and would have a profound chilling effect on any chaplain who seeks to provide biblical care.”

And if the Navy silences chaplains – they could certainly silence sailors.

“If the Navy can remove a chaplain who expresses his religious beliefs, then service members who share those beliefs will believe that they, too, are unwelcome in the Navy,” Liberty Institute wrote.

Link:

• Navy Chaplain Censored: ‘Don’t pray in the name of Jesus’

Gene Simmons Defends Tim Tebow - "He’s Proud to be a Christian, What’s Wrong with That?"

 

 (AFP/Getty Images)

(CBS/Radio.com) Has polarizing football player Tim Tebow gotten a raw deal in the press because of his religious beliefs? And would he be treated more respectfully if he were not Christian, and specifically, Muslim? Gene Simmons thinks so.

“He’s got a religious passion, as well he should, we’re in America,” the KISS frontman told Radio.com earlier this week. ”He’s proud to be a Christian, what’s wrong with that? And yet, with sports media and pop culture media, they make fun of his religion. Really? In America? If he was wearing a burqa, they wouldn’t dare say anything [editor's note: only Muslim women wear burqas].

But if you’re a Christian, you get to be picked on? What the hell? The guy’s got family values. I never saw the media picking on Michael Vick for torturing dogs. Or this other football player, who’s alleged to have killed, committed murder.  That’s ‘cool.’ But a guy who’s religious and has got family values isn’t ‘cool?’ He’s cool to me...”  (continued)

Link:

• Interview: Gene Simmons Defends Tim Tebow, Wants Football To Be More Like KISS

Obama’s Communist Mentor on the Catholic Church

By Paul Kengor

(Crisis Magazine) He blasted big business, Wall Street, big oil, General Motors, “excess profits,” “millionaires” and the “wealthy.” He called out the “corporation executive” for not paying his “fair” share.

He attacked “GOP” tax cuts that “spare the rich” and “benefit millionaires.”

He advocated wealth redistribution from greedy “corporations” to “health insurance” and “public works projects.”

He described himself as “progressive,” while his detractors accused him of being a communist.

He adopted slogans like “Forward” and “Change.” He wanted to transform America through what he called “fundamental change.”

He was skeptical of preachers and their effect on God-and-gun clinging Americans, and saw the Catholic Church as an obstacle to his vision for the state. He argued that Christians should support his ideas and enthusiastically sought the support of the “social justice” Religious Left. Moreover, many people were unclear about his personal religious beliefs, including whether he was a Christian.

Who is this man?

If you answered “Barack Obama,” you’re only half right. The answer is Frank Marshall Davis, Hawaii mentor to a young Barack Obama, and Communist Party member 47544.

Davis was introduced to a nine-year-old Obama in the fall of 1970 by Obama’s grandfather, Stanley Dunham, who was seeking a black-male role model or father figure to mentor his grandson. He and the young Obama met many times throughout the 1970s, often for hours at a time late into evenings. Obama refers to Davis literally dozens of times in every part of his bestselling memoirs, Dreams from My Father.

Long ignored, Davis is the subject of my new book—and Catholics should pay attention, given that Davis had some choice words for them and their church. Not unlike the young man he mentored, Barack Obama, Davis saw the Catholic Church as an obstacle to his vision for the state.

Frank Marshall Davis’s vision was a very far-left one. He pushed the federal government to adopt socialist policies, with more and more power concentrated in Washington. He wanted the United States to go the direction of the Soviet Union. And Davis understood that the one institution standing in the way most vehemently was the Roman Catholic Church. “The Catholic hierarchy,” he sneered, had launched a “holy war against communism.”

Indeed it had—and deservedly so. Nothing anywhere in the world persecuted the religious—and people generally—quite like communism. The Church correctly saw Soviet communism as truly, genuinely evil. But Frank Marshall Davis fully disagreed, and he would target the Church as an obstacle to his plans to fundamentally change America.

And so, Davis targeted the Church in commentaries he wrote for the Chicago Star, the Communist Party publication of which he was the founding editor-in-chief from 1946-48.

In one commentary, a July 20, 1946 piece titled, “A-Bombs for Russia,” Davis began by expressing his admiration for Stalin’s Russia: “I salute the Soviet Union,” stated Davis. “I admire Russia for wiping out an economic system which permitted a handful of rich to exploit and beat gold from the millions of plain people…. As one who believes in freedom and democracy for all, I honor the Red nation.”

Yet, as Davis hailed Joe Stalin’s state for its alleged freedom and democracy, there was something else he didn’t admire: It was the “Big Money Boys” and so-called “prostitute press [that] brazenly solicits public hate for [the Soviet Union].” Among those that Davis listed as “hate evangelists” was Cardinal Francis Spellman, who, by Davis’s estimation, longed to “knock out Russia” by bombing it to the Stone Age.

Said Davis: “We’ve got to make the plain people realize that those hate evangelists preaching war against Russia are their enemies, and that peace, freedom and democracy can come only from forcing official America to work in harmony with the Soviet Union.”

Yes, that is, Stalin’s Soviet Union—which, according to Frank Marshall Davis, wanted peace.

Who was obstructing that peace? Davis blamed Harry Truman, the Marshall Plan, Wall Street, big business, capitalism, the press, and the likes of Cardinal Spellman and the Catholic Church. Not only were these sources “hate evangelists,” according to Frank Marshall Davis, but they were the new “Pontius Pilates.”

Davis portrayed communism and the Soviet Union as friendly to Christianity; thus, those opposing Soviet communism were, in the words of Frank Marshall Davis, modern-day “Pontius Pilates.”

A painful illustration of this thinking was a September 29, 1949 column that Davis wrote for the Honolulu Record, the Communist Party publication for Hawaii, which he wrote for from 1949-57. Titled, “Challenge to the Church,” Davis imagined Judgment Day, where anti-communist Christians would be called to account for their transgressions: “On your Judgment Day, when the Lord will ask you for an account of your stewardship, will … your answer be, ‘Lord I was too busy Redbaiting?”

And the Catholic Church especially deserved a good scourging. “The Christian churches, and the Catholic church in particular,” preached Barack Obama’s mentor, “are making a grievous error in their shortsighted belief that the major enemy of Christianity is Communism.”

Not a communist in Moscow would have agreed with Frank Marshall Davis, and the late Lenin would have laughed him out of the country—or thanked him for his efforts.

Not only was Soviet Russia not anti-religious, said Davis, but it had saved the world from Hitler’s “anti-Christian paganism.” Really, Christians worldwide should pay homage to Stalin. Instead, they were blinded by their anti-communist bigotry.

Here, as in so many of these cases, Davis, not unlike Barack Obama, was a man of the far left making appeals to the “social justice” Religious Left for support, especially liberal Protestants.

And when the Catholic Church did not accommodate his plans and policies for the state, Frank Marshall Davis, like Barack Obama, simply told the Church that it was wrong and didn’t bend. Imagine that... (continued)

Read More Here

Florida Democrat Resigns After Anti-Christian Comment Goes Viral

A Florida Democrat has resigned from his county chairmanship after anti-Christian comments he made at the Democratic National Convention spread through an online video.

By Breitbart News

Mark Siegel resigned Friday from his post in the Palm Beach County Democratic Party, according to the communications director of the state's Democratic Party, Brannon Jordan.

Siegel, speaking to a conservative journalist in Charlotte, NC, said he wasn't a fan of Christianity because "the Christians just want [Jews] to be there so we can be slaughtered and converted and bring on the second coming of Jesus Christ."



Terrie Rizzo, the county's vice chairman, has replaced Siegel as chairman. Siegel's resignation reverses his actions on Thursday, one day after the comments first went public -- where he publicly apologized but stated he would hold on to his job.

Link:

• Fla. Pol Resigns After Anti-Christian Comment Goes Viral

Catholics Decry Anti-Christianity in Israel

Protest "Horrible Offenses" on TV

JERUSALEM, FEB. 19, 2009 (Zenit.org).- Leaders of the Catholic Church in the Holy Land are condemning the "revolting attacks" against Jesus Christ and the Virgin Mary, broadcast by Israel's Channel 10 television.

A joint communiqué issued Wednesday explains, "In these days, during a night show on Channel 10, a series of horrible offenses were launched against our faith and consequently against us, Christians."

The communiqué was signed by the Latin patriarch of Jerusalem and the Franciscan custos of the Holy Land, among others.

"The show directed its attacks to the holiest figures of our Christian belief in an attempt, as the director of the show himself specifically declared, to destroy Christianism," the communiqué stated.

"Channel 10 was used to desecrate the holiest figures of Christianism offending hundreds of thousands of Christian Israeli citizens and of many millions of Christians all over the world as well," the Catholic leaders lamented.

Channel 10 began its activities in 2002.

The Catholic leaders contended that the program was "a symptom of greater problems disturbing the society, such as intolerance, refusal to accept and respect the other and inherent hatred."

And they said that the program comes in a series of attacks on Christians in Israel over the years. They cited an occurrence from a few months ago, when "copies of the New Testament were publicly burned in the yard of a synagogue in Or Yehuda."

The statement expressed appreciation for the many Christians, Muslims and Jews who "were themselves shocked and appalled, and expressed their dismay and protest at this fact."

The leaders contended that "such programs have nothing to do with freedom of expression, art and entertainment. They can only work against national integration and harmony in our society."

• Link