A New Perspective on Constantine

(Worthy News) – The Trump administration has ended the surge of Muslim refugees into the United States during the Obama era, significantly boosting the percentage of Christians accepted into the country.

At the end of the Obama administration, not only were more refugees being let into the country, but the levels of Muslims and Christians were nearly level, 43% Muslim, 47% Christian. The year before, 44% were Christian to 46% Muslim.

In the last year, according to State and Homeland Security data analyzed by the Migration Policy Institute, 16% were Muslim and 80% were Christian. [ Source: Washington Examiner (Read More…) ]

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(Worthy News) – Russia on Tuesday said Israel was behind a series of airstrikes on targets in Syria on Monday morning, adding that those attacks threatened to destabilize the region.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said six Israeli fighter jets operating inside Lebanese airspace conducted the predawn raid, which reportedly targeted Iranian and pro-Iranian positions in the country, specifically those tied to the transfer of weapons to Hezbollah and other Shiite terror groups in the region.

The airstrikes reportedly targeted at least a dozen sites in Syria, outside the cities of Damascus and Homs, in the largest attack of its kind since last May, when Israel squared off against Syria and Iran in a massive nighttime battle in response to a rocket attack by Iranian troops on Israeli military positions on the Golan Heights. [ Source: Times of Israel (Read More…) ]

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(Worthy News) – A mass wave of immigrants to Israel is a very real possibility because of worsening anti-Semitism around the world, a Jerusalem-based think tank said in a new report on Sunday.

The “2019 Annual Assessment of the Situation and Dynamics of the Jewish People Today” was presented by the Jewish People Policy Institute (JPPI) and released this week.

“Some Jews are considering immigration to Israel or elsewhere, while others may give up their Jewish identity,” the scholars said. [ Source: Israel Hayom (Read More…) ]

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(Worthy News) – Israel is bracing for a possible military confrontation in the Middle East amid tension between the U.S. and Iran.

“It should be taken into account that mistaken calculations by the [Iranian] regime … are liable to bring about a shift from the ‘gray zone’ to the ‘red zone’ — that is, a military conflagration,” Israeli Foreign Minister Yisrael Katz said at an international security forum.

“We must be prepared for this, and thus, the State of Israel continues to devote itself to building up its military might for the event that it will have to respond to escalation scenarios,” he said. [ Source: Washington Examiner (Read More…) ]

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(Worthy News) – The remaining signatories to the 2015 international pact to restrain Iran’s nuclear weapons development all voiced concern Tuesday that Tehran had exceeded the limit of how much low-enriched uranium it could stockpile.

Britain, France, Germany and the European Union said in a joint statement they had been “consistent and clear that our commitment to the nuclear deal depends on full compliance by Iran” and urged the Islamic Republic “to refrain from further measures that undermine” the accord.

The three countries and the EU said they “are urgently considering next steps” after Iran announced Monday that it had gone above the 300-kilogram limit on its stockpile of uranium enriched up to 3.67%, a claim later confirmed by the United Nations atomic watchdog agency. [ Source: Voice of America (Read More…) ]

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by Jordan Hilger, Worthy News Correspondent

(Worthy News) – Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promised Monday to disclose more information culled from Iran nuclear facilities by Mossad operatives in 2018, saying the evidence will “be more proof that Iran has lied all the time” about its nuclear program.

Speaking at a ceremony honoring IDF reserve soldiers at Beit Hanassi, the Israeli presidential residence, Netanyahu elaborated that the 2015 nuclear agreement finally fractured by Iran on the same day was fatally flawed from the beginning, based as it was on a lack of understanding regarding the scope of Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

“We proved that the entire nuclear agreement with Iran is based on one big lie. Now even Iran admits it,” Netanyahu said, underlining the Iranian decision to exceed its 661-pound uranium stockpile limit as reported by the UN International Atomic Energy Agency on Monday, which he said constituted a “significant step” towards the attainment of a nuclear weapon.

Reports of the February 2018 Mossad raid on a warehouse in Tehran, in which six Israeli operatives stole a representative swatch of Iran’s nuclear blueprint, reached the ears of the White House in April of last year, prompting Trump to withdraw from the 2015 nuclear accord that had been premised on the assumption Iran had no existing viable path to a nuclear weapon.

The White House echoed Netanyahu’s assessment in a statement from the Press Secretary Monday, which suggestively read that “there is little doubt that even before the deal’s existence, Iran was violating its terms.”

Netanyahu and Trump both expressed the absolute determination of the US and Israel to prevent Iran from attaining a nuclear weapon as the terms of the deal fell apart this week, with Iran set to breach its uranium enrichment quote of 3.76% on July 7th.

The post Netanyahu: New Evidence of Iran's Secret Nuclear Program to be Revealed 'Soon' appeared first on Worthy Christian News.

by Jordan Hilger, Worthy News Correspondent

(Worthy News) – The case of a cross-shaped war memorial in Pensacola, Florida, will undergo review in the U.S. 11th Circuit Court of Appeals following the Supreme Court’s decision to endow with a “presumption of constitutionally” any religious monument deemed to have longstanding civic value.

On Friday the highest court overturned a December 2017 ruling in a lower court against the cross, which sits amidst Bayview Park in memory of fallen World War II soldiers, and originally came under scrutiny in 2016 from the American Humanist Association and Freedom From Religion Foundation when they claimed four Pensacola residents had complained about it and filed a lawsuit.

In the Supreme Court’s 7-2 decision in favor of Hyattsville, Maryland’s Bladensburg Cross, also a recent target of the American Humanist Association, last week, Justice Samuel Alito concluded “a government that roams the land, tearing down monuments with religious symbolism and scrubbing away any reference to the divine will strike many as aggressively hostile to religion,” and is clearly breaching the constitutional right to freedom of religion.

The decision set somewhat of a precedent, prompting legal reconsiderations of several like cases, with Luke Goodrich, senior counsel for The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty representing the city of Pensacola in the case, explaining that “the Supreme Court’s order is an encouraging sign that the Bayview Cross can stay in Pensacola just like the Peace Cross can stay in Maryland.”

“We fully expect the lower court to follow the Supreme Court’s lead,” he told the Pensacola News Journal.

The impetus behind both thwarted cross removals was legal activism from the Freedom from Religion Foundation and the American Humanist Association, who claim religious monuments on public property constitute an abrogation of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, which states that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.”

Proponents say the existence of crosses in public space is quite different from theocratic lawmaking.

The post Pensacola Cross Saved For Now, Following Supreme Court Decision on Bladensburg Cross appeared first on Worthy Christian News.

by Jordan Hilger, Worthy News Correspondent

(Worthy News) – A sign declaring “Jesus Welcomes You to Hawkins” alongside Interstate 80 in Hawkins, Texas, has been taken down after a four-year legal battle between the city and the Jesus Christ Open Altar Church.

The sign, which stood on property purchased by the church from two funeral homes, came under fire when the city announced its intention to use the plot of land for a construction project connecting two highways, arguing that the city had always been the rightful owner of the property.

“The city was warned (Thursday) by our attorneys not to touch it and not to bother it. There’s been closed meetings, closed records (and) a lot of things wrong,” said church trustee Mark McDonald, who, along with other members, have been employed in protecting the cross in shifts, according to the Longview News-Journal.

“The city employees destroyed our church property, pulled up crosses, and destroyed everything,” he said Friday after the cross was removed clandestinely overnight.

City officials argue the sign constitutes a hazard to drivers on the nearby highway, but Mike Berry, chief of staff to First Liberty Institute, noted that a complaint from the Freedom from Religion Foundation had been mixed up in the equation, and may have influenced the decision by city officials to finally go through with the long-disputed removal.

“FFRF has made its living roaming around the country trying to bully government officials into purging religious symbols from the public square—exactly what the US Supreme Court said should not be done,” said Berry, referring to a decision made two weeks ago by the land’s highest court that a presumption of constitutionality ought to be afforded longstanding religious monuments.

McDonald said he and the church plan to file a federal lawsuit to fight the city’s decision.

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by Jordan Hilger, Worthy News Correspondent

(Worthy News) – A plaque of the ten commandments bequeathed to an Ohio Middle school in 1926 and on display since then has been removed after the school received complaints from the Freedom of Religion Foundation, who said the plaque violated the First Amendment separation of church and state.

Joseph Welty Middle School in New Philadelphia, Ohio, drew the ire of the FFRF in April when a concerned parent allegedly tipped off the Wisconsin-based non-theist group to the existence of the plaque, which representative Christopher Line said unfairly marginalized non-believing students.

“The district’s promotion of the Judeo-Christian bible and religion over nonreligion impermissibly turns any non-Christian or non-believing student into an outsider,” he wrote in the group’s April letter to the school.

In June, the Supreme Court voted 7-2 to keep a 40-foot cross memorializing World War I soldiers standing on public property, with Justice Samuel Alito, representing the majority opinion, saying a “presumption of constitutionality for longstanding monuments, symbols, and practices” ought to be afforded the Bladensburg cross and other civic memorials like it.

New Philadelphia schools superintendent David Brand cited this factor when he disagreed with the decision, saying “with over 90 years on display, the plaque is recognized as part of the tradition and history of New Philadelphia City Schools,” according to the Times Reporter newspaper.

The Establishment Clause of the First Amendment states that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” and has become an oft-cited reason for the removal of religious monuments by atheist groups.

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