At midnight every January 6^th, Christmas Eve Mass ends and the early hours of Christmas Day begin for the Coptic Church in Egypt. As Orthodox Christians, descendants of Egypt’s ancient Christianity that far outdates Islam, the Copts have to wait longer for Christmas festivities than those who celebrate on December 25. Perhaps to emphasize that the long-anticipated day has arrived, the Mass celebrating Christ’s birth ends with the joyous ringing of bells as Egyptian Christians, dressed in their finest clothes, head home to continue their Christmas celebrations.

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Here’s the State Board of Education, then, considering how hard it might press publishers to emphasize the nation’s Christian origins — suggesting, according to Shorto’s summation, “that the United States was founded by devout Christians and according to Biblical precepts.” If you don’t at least suspect the reaction of New York Times readers to such an affirmation, you don’t know the first thing about New York Times readers. The nearly-unanimous reaction, in reader replies to the magazine piece: : Yowwwwwwwwwwwwwww! — a collective shriek of injury and indignation.

A few excerpts before I move on to the substance of the matter:

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Advice to Tiger stirs up Big Media’s anti-religious bigotry

If there were doubt that much of the media is hostile to traditional faith, especially traditional Christianity, that doubt has been drowned in the wake of a vicious verbal assault on Fox News analyst Brit Hume. Histrionic fulminations against Mr. Hume’s inoffensive expression of faith expose an ugly strain of anti-religious bigotry that is spreading inside this country’s liberal establishment.

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Florida school teachers say they are being forced to hide in closets to pray after a controversial court ruling.

Under an order crafted by the ACLU, school employees in Santa Rosa School District must act in an “official capacity” whenever they are at a “school event” – including breaks, after-school events on or off campus and private events held on campus.

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For centuries, Muslims committed genocide against Hindus in India and what is now Pakistan. Today, in Sudan, Somalia, Nigeria, Kenya, Turkey, Pakistan, Gaza, and Iran, it’s open season on Christians.

Lubna Hussein, the Sudanese journalist who is facing 40 lashes for “indecency” because she wore trousers—has just been barred from leaving Sudan.

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The communist country, the world’s most closed society, views religion as a major threat.

Only the founder of the country, Kim Il-sung, and his son, Kim Jong-il, may be worshipped, in mass public displays of fervour.

Despite the persecutions, it is thought up to 30,000 North Koreans may practise Christianity secretly in their homes.

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(NOTE FROM JAN: I have taken this older article because “hate crime” legislation recently passed. Thus, the 2007 date is really not outdated.)

This legislation may be the most ominous attack on “free speech” and Christianity since the founding of our nation. Yet, the silence of the mainstream media is disturbing. It suggests that many of our most powerful leaders want these bills passed behind closed doors, freed from any public accountability. Even so, the public is awakening to the facts.

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On Sunday, July 12, Aziz Rozko Hanna, an Iraqi Christian who was serving as director of the Department of Financial Control of the city of Kirkuk, was driving with his daughter in Dumiz, a Christian neighborhood in Kirkuk, when he was stopped, pulled from his car, and shot dead in front of his daughter.

On the same day, five churches in Baghdad were bombed, wounding eight civilians. And all this has come after persecution and harassment that has led over half of the Christians in Iraq to leave the country in the last few years. The situation has gotten so bad that the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Baghdad, Jean Benjamin Sleiman, said in May: “I fear the extinction of Christianity in Iraq and the Middle East.”

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Pakistani police reportedly found the body of Tariq “Litto” Mashi Ghauri — a 28-year-old university student in Sargodha, Pakistan — lying dead in a canal outside a rural village in Punjab Province on May 15. He had been raped and stabbed at least five times.

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America, it’s time to fight for religious freedom.

Recently, a California pastor and his wife were required by San Diego County officials to obtain a permit to hold a Bible study in their home.

“What?! Is this a joke?” I wondered as I heard the news for the first time. It was no joke. Rather it’s a First Amendment nightmare and possibly a precedent of what’s to come.

Are you prepared for a future in which you might someday hear the question, “Got your permit to study the Bible?”

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