Albert Mohler takes a hard-hitting look at Nicholas Kristof’s cavalier dismissal of religious liberty in the wake of the new healthcare mandate. Mohler’s critique is important because Kristof’s column is emblematic of a sentiment that has become quite common among the American left. For them, religious liberty is no longer an inalienable right, but something that can be abridged when it comes into conflict with the secular state. Neither Kristof nor any other American liberal I know of supports throwing Christians to the lions (yet), but they are laying the intellectual and legal ground for it whether they realize it or not. That is why the President’s healthcare mandate deserves…

Albert Mohler has a must-read article on the unacceptability of President Obama’s so-called “compromise.” He concludes: Only an accounting maneuver hides the fact that we will all be paying for chemical abortions under the President’s prized Affordable Care Act. Added to this is coverage for sterilizations… Anyone who celebrates this “compromise” as a victory is hiding behind an accounting trick. That accounting trick cannot hide the great moral tragedy at the heart of the President’s policy — a policy that leaves religious liberty in peril and Planned Parenthood smiling. This is an important explanation of what happened today, and you need to read the whole thing.

O. S. Hawkins, the President of GuideStone Financial Resources, says that President Obama’s statement on the new healthcare law excludes the Southern Baptist Convention. The Southern Baptist Convention is the largest Protestant denomination in the United States, and its financial arm provides health insurance to about 60,000 people, including pastors and missionaries (source). Here’s the statement from GuideStone:

Even though the media are trying to sell the new healthcare law as a Catholic issue, it is not. The new law requires all employers to pay for birth control methods that include surgical sterilization and abortion inducing drugs. The only groups who get an exemption are churches. Every other employer must provide this coverage. So this is more than a Catholic issue, it is a Protestant issue, a Jewish issue, an Orthodox issue, and an issue for every other religious group you can think of. But there is one facet of this dispute that has been largely overlooked. This is not just a religious liberty issue for groups, but…

Ann Taylor Fleming contemplates what’s at the heart of the recent uptick in the culture war over abortion. She writes: Compared with all the hard issues at the heart of this political year, nothing has come close in terms of the vigor and anger generated by matters relating to the reproductive health of women. That’s where the long-simmering culture wars have come to rest: atop the female body. Fleming believes recent dust-up is surrounding the new health care law is about people who want to deny women their sexual freedom by limiting their access to abortions. It is the standard logic of feminism and the sexual revolution. It’s all about…

Chuck Colson joins a Roman Catholic and a Jew to protest the new healthcare rule requiring religious groups to fund contraceptives, surgical sterilization, and abortion. Their article appears in The Wall Street Journal, and they write: Instead of encouraging the different faith communities to continue their vital work for the good of all, the Obama administration is forcing them to make a choice: serving God and their neighbors according to the dictates of their respective faiths—or bending the knee to the dictates of the state… At this critical moment, Americans of every faith, as guardians of their own freedom, must, in the words of the First Amendment, “petition the government…

From The Hill: Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) wasted no time in blocking Republicans’ first attempt at offering legislation in the Senate to repeal the Health and Human Services (HHS) rule that would require employers to provide health insurance that includes contraceptives even if they are morally opposed to it… Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), however, accompanied the amendment to the floor and decried the “odious” outcome of the president’s decision… “Republicans are trying to reaffirm that basic right [of freedom of religion],” said McConnell… “Frankly, I never thought I’d see the day,” concluded McConnell. “[I] never thought I’d see the day when the elected representatives of the…