Who are the Freedom Fighters?

In a Christianity Today online piece entitled "Freedom Fighters" were told a bit about the new "First Freedoms" initiative of the scandal plagued and increasingly politicized Bush Justice Department. CT seems to laud the efforts of the Justice Department that has sought to protect our religious rights.
The initiative will include the Religious Freedom Task Force, chaired by [Asst. AG Wan] Kim, which will employ various divisions of the DOJ to review discrimination complaints. The new firstfreedom.gov website touts previous successes, educates Americans about their rights, and provides a channel for filing complaints online. The department also will hold a series of regional training seminars. Events have been scheduled for Tampa on April 25 and Seattle on May 10.

Even before the First Freedom Project, the DOJ's stepped-up efforts have generated greater religious freedom, according to the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty. Government lawyers convinced a federal court last year that a New Jersey school had unconstitutionally censored a Christian song from a talent show. The DOJ compelled the Los Angeles Metropolitan transportation Authority in 2005 to accommodate religious beliefs, even if it meant bus drivers wouldn't work certain days.
Now some have questioned the intents and purposes of this effort which was first announced at a meeting of Southern Baptists. Mainstream Baptist wonders outloud as to the intentions of the effort and decry's the movement of Baptists away from their once strong support for religious freedom.
The Southern Baptists who continue to honor the Baptist legacy of church-state separation left the SBC in the early 1990's when Southern Baptists defunded the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty. Representatives of all the Baptist Conventions in North America who genuinely honor the Baptist legacy in regard to religious liberty will be converging at a meeting called by Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton to form a New Baptist Covenant. That meeting will be in Atlanta, GA from January to Feb. 1, 2008. Encourage all your Baptist friends to go to that meeting.
Somehow thinking that the Bush Administration would be good protectors of any one's civil rights is a bit like putting the fox in charge of the proverbial hen house! Don't you think?
Thanks to Jesus Politics for the links!

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