On The Front Lines
Rutherford Institute Calls on Americans to Share Their Views with President Bush on State of the Nation and Religious Freedom
CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. -- As part of its campaign to safeguard faith and freedom, The Rutherford Institute is encouraging concerned Americans to answer President Bush's call to take responsibility for influencing the state of our union by participating in a 2005 State of the Nation Survey about religious freedom in America. The survey also invites participants to share their views on topics ranging from religious freedom and parents' rights to family values and discrimination in the workplace. Results will be shared with President Bush, members of Congress and the national media. An online version of the Institute's survey is available here."Americans must be prepared to hold our nation's leaders accountable for their decisions and actions, from President Bush and members of Congress down to our local school board officials," said John W. Whitehead, president and founder of The Rutherford Institute. "But we must also be prepared to take responsibility for safeguarding our own constitutional freedoms--and that means staying informed about cases and issues impacting our rights and taking a stand for those rights whenever they are threatened."
According to The Rutherford Institute's 2004 Annual Report, this past year highlighted the need for continued vigilance in the fight to safeguard religious liberty. As a result of their steadfast commitment to protecting constitutional freedoms, Institute attorneys secured a landmark victory for religious freedom in the workplace when a federal court ruled in favor of a Denver man who was fired from his job with AT&T Broadband after he refused to sign off on portions of the company's employee handbook that he felt violated his sincerely held religious beliefs about homosexuality. In another legal victory, Judge James C. Cacheris of the U.S. District Court held that a Virginia high school wrongly discriminated against several students and their parents when they removed cross-engraved bricks, purchased by the families, from a school walkway. The ruling, which came in response to a lawsuit filed by attorneys for The Rutherford Institute, required school officials to immediately return the bricks to their former places in the "Walkway of Fame." More recently, Texas officials agreed to modify their regulations regarding the use of the historic Alamo Shrine, grounds and complex buildings to allow for the free exercise of religious expression and prayer on its grounds. Institute attorneys had contacted Alamo officials after they prevented a youth pastor from praying on the grounds with his young adult group.
"In a post-9/11 world, there continues to be much debate about the importance of a free society. At The Rutherford Institute, we believe that in order to build a free country one must first have a strong foundation," said Whitehead. "By including protections for religious freedom in the First Amendment to our nation's Constitution, our Founding Fathers ensured that this nation would stand strong on the solid rock of faith and freedom. The right to worship God freely is the freedom from which all other freedoms flow--which makes it worth fighting for."
The Rutherford Institute is an international, nonprofit civil liberties organization committed to defending constitutional and human rights.
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