The Christian Anti-Defamation Commission (CADC) published a list of what it views as the 10 worst “anti-Christian acts” of 2009, including the murder of a pro-life protester, expansion of federal hate-crimes laws, and controversial presidential appointments.

The list, culled from a poll taken by subscribers to the CADC’s Web site and listeners on its radio programs, chronicles what the group’s members think were the most anti-Christian stories from the previous year.

CADC President Dr. Gary Cass told CNSNews.com that the list reflects the frustrations Christians feel with their society and their government. That the expansion of federal hate crimes laws was the top vote-getter on the list, for example, reflected the fear Christians have that they might be targeted for teaching their faith’s traditional opposition to homosexual behavior, which Christianity holds to be sinful.

“This is their perspective on the most anti-Christian acts of 2009, in the U.S.,” Cass said. “Why the federal hate crimes law? I believe what they’re expressing is just a general sense of frustration with the federal government, especially the Obama administration, and for the first time in our history now, [Christian] ministers are subject to being investigated, perhaps even convicted, simply for exercising their First Amendment religious liberties and free speech.”

Cass explained that if a pastor or priest were to say something considered to have incited a hate crime, that pastor or priest might be subject to investigation or prosecution. Cass noted that while no ministers have yet been prosecuted or investigated under the newly enacted law, the mere possibility could be enough to silence preaching on this hot-button topic.

“If they say something that can be considered to be inflammatory or inciting of a hate crime – let’s say that a minister preaches a sermon and some unstable person misunderstands and goes out and creates or perpetrates a hate crime – not only the person who commits the act but the minister who ‘incited’ him would be equally culpable for the act,” said Cass.


Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius (AP Photo)

“Here’s the net effect of this kind of a law,” he said. “If you are prone to want to be careful … why even risk saying anything for fear of being misunderstood, even if you’re never convicted of a crime?”

President Obama’s selection of three people the CADC viewed as anti-Christian was ranked number two on the list. Those appointees – safe schools czar Kevin Jennings, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, and Equal Opportunity Commission member Chai Feldblum – showed that Obama had “gone out of his way” to find people with anti-Christian values, Cass said.

“The reason our subscribers voted the way they did, I think – [on] that particular matter of the appointments of Obama – it seems as if he went out of his way to find the most radical, anti-Christian appointees that he could,” said Cass, “in the sense that these people either are personally anti-Christian in their sentiments but they certainly are in their value systems.”

Cass said that Jennings’ various stances on sexuality, Sebelius’s support for abortion, and Feldblum’s comments on reconciling gay rights with religious liberty all contributed to Christians feeling that Obama might be anti-Christian.


Kevin Jennings, assistant deputy for the Office of Safe and Drug-Free Schools, U.S. Department of Education. (AP Photo)

“You have, again, Kathleen Sebelius, the most radical pro-abortion governor from Kansas who’s awash in George Tiller’s abortion money – that’s how she built her political career and that’s a documented fact,” said Cass. “He [Obama] appoints her Health and Human Services [Secretary] -- that’s very terrifying in that this whole health care bill could come under her jurisdiction. That’s very terrifying.”

“Secondly you’ve got Kevin Jennings, the so-called safe schools czar, the most radical homosexual activist from Massachusetts that you could find, who has decades of phenomenally controversial and perverted things that are attributable to him,” said Cass.
“Yet, in Obama’s mind, apparently he’s mainstream.”

Cass continued: “And then you’ve got Chai Feldblum who said, when asked if there’s ever a situation where homosexual rights and religious liberty conflict, do you foresee any time when religious liberty might trump homosexuals rights, and she said, ‘no, it’s simply, gays win, Christians lose.’”


Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano (AP Photo)

The Department of Homeland Security’s controversial definition of “right-wing extremist” earned the nod as the number three most anti-Christian act of the year, Cass said, because it demonstrated a “new level of anti-Christian hostility” by equating positions held by many conservative Christians with the motivations of violent racist groups such as the Aryan Nations.

“That is indicative of, I think, a new level of anti-Christian hostility,” Cass said. “Because now it seems that the federal government is beginning to bring into its policies and its institutions a very negative stereotypical approach. So that if you are a Christian who happens to believe your Bible – and God forbid you are a veteran who owned a gun and a Christian who believes your Bible – you’re a walking time bomb, you’re a terrorist ready to go off.”

“But last time I checked it wasn’t Bible-believing Christians who were trying to light their underwear on fire on airplanes.” Cass said.

Source: CNS news.com, January 14, 2010
By: Matt Cover and Pete Winn