Religious discrimination in the workplace is one of the 'hottest' religious liberty issues coming into our CLA offices this year," writes Attorney David Gibbs, Jr. The Christian Law Association (CLA) specializes in cases dealing with threats to the legal and constitutional rights of believers.

Just as the general culture is becoming more hostile to the Christian message, so is the pressure on Christians on the job. Sunday work requirements pose a problem as more businesses are open 7 days a week. Employees are sometimes expected to use dishonesty to the advantage of the company.

Christian employers are being sued if they try to establish a moral and religious atmosphere in their private businesses. Often this brings the Bible believer in opposition to the drive for special rights by the homosexual campaign.

One group of Christians employed by the Minnesota Department of Corrections was forced to attend a 75-minute "diversity" training program entitled "Gays and Lesbians in the Workplace." They objected that the course was designed to "raise deviant sexual behavior...to a level of acceptance and respectability" and asked to be excused on grounds that the training offended their religious beliefs.

Told they would not be excused, they sat through the session reading their Bibles and copying Scriptures in silent protest. The trainers complained about their behavior and they were reprimanded and denied promotions. Other employees who read magazines or slept through the session were not disciplined.

Beyond the workplace discrimination, Gibbs is concerned that "The desire to keep religion out of the public square is becoming a predominant societal attitude." The courts are continuing to broaden the doctrine of "separation of church and state" developing an attitude in America that "religious activity belongs only behind the walls of private homes and churches out of sight of the prevailing American culture, which must be kept secular and non-religious. "

This is exactly the attitude which prevailed in the former Soviet Union and presently in communist China. Public discussion of religion was out of place and proselytizing (soul winning) strictly prohibited.

Gibbs points out that the basis of America's religious liberty is based on the founding father's declaration that our rights are inalienable only if they are given by the Creator. If our freedoms are granted by the state, then the state may take them away at any time. When we no long recognize the Creator in our public discourse, we have capitulated our rights to the power of the state.

"Negative trends in society are rarely reversed when they begin to roll downhill. America is at a crucial crossroads. We will either continue to stand on the Biblical foundations of liberty that originally established this great nation or, like the revolutions of France and Russia, our freedoms will be reordered to be dispensed from the almighty power of the state rather than from the almight hand of God," writes Gibbs.

Soul winners, we have a lot of work to do. The culture is only changed one soul at a time.