Religion & Liberty Online Archives

Religious Liberty

August 27, 2013

Christians in Syria Fear ‘Ethnic Cleansing’

As the civil war in Syrian continues to escalate, Christians are increasingly becoming the target of violent attacks. Catholic and Orthodox groups in Syria say the anti-government rebels have committed “awful acts” against Christians, including beheadings, rapes and murders of pregnant women. Continue Reading...
August 20, 2013

Links: Egypt in Flames

Egypt: Coptic church cancels Sunday mass for 1st time in 1,600 years “We did not hold prayers in the monastery on Sunday for the first time in 1,600 years,” Priest Selwanes Lotfy of the Virgin Mary and Priest Ibram Monastery in Degla, just south of Minya, told the al-Masry al-Youm daily. Continue Reading...
August 16, 2013

Video: Coptic Orthodox Bishop Pleads for Peace and Reconciliation in Egypt

Sky News talks with Bishop Angaelos, the General Bishop of Coptic Orthodox Church in the United Kingdom, about the ongoing bloodshed in Egypt. (HT: Byzantine, TX) Bishop Angaelos also issued this statement through The Coptic Orthodox Church UK media office today: Comment on the on-going situation in Egypt by His Grace Bishop Angaelos, General Bishop of The Coptic Orthodox Church in the United Kingdom – 16 August 2013 As a clergyman for over twenty years, and a Christian for the whole of my life, one thing I recognise as un-debateable is the value and sanctity of human life. Continue Reading...
August 12, 2013

New Book Looks at the Coptic Exodus from Egypt

In The Wall Street Journal, Michael J. Totten reviews Motherland Lost: The Egyptian and Coptic Quest for Modernity (Hoover Institution, 236 pages, $19.95) by Samuel Tadros. Totten says the book offers a scholarly account of the ongoing exodus of Christians from Egypt, where the “most dramatic” decline of Christianity in the Middle East is now occuring. Continue Reading...
August 07, 2013

For America’s Elites, Religious Freedom is a Non-Issue

America’s Founding Fathers considered religious liberty to be our “first freedom.” But as Ken Blackwell notes, that view is no longer shared by our media and foreign policy elites: All such understandings of the religious freedom foundation of American civil liberty and foreign policy seem long forgotten by the elites of today. Continue Reading...
August 05, 2013

Europe’s Curious Conception of Religious Freedom

By failing to recognize the importance of religion and its relationship to human rights, says Roger Trigg, European courts are progressively eroding religious liberty: [T]he Council of Europe affirmed in 2007 that “states must require religious leaders to take an unambiguous stand in favour of the precedence of human rights, as set forth in the European Convention of Human Rights, over any religious principle.” Continue Reading...