Feds Fight to Stop Baptisms

by: Onan Coca
Todd Starnes of Fox News online brings us some harrowing stories of government oppression of Christians, here in our own backyards. In a recent article he discussed the problems some churches in Missouri were having with the federal government. Apparently, the Feds don't like watching Christians baptize converts.
The Federal Government continued its fight against Christians recently as they worked to stop Missouri Christians from baptizing in "public" waters. The National Park Service recently began requiring churches to obtain special use permits in order to baptize converts in public waters. The National Park Service (NPS) also began requiring these churches that wanted to baptize to give the NPS notice of their plans forty-eight hours in advance. To make sure that they churches didn’t try and skirt the rules the NPS even brought in boulders and large rocks to place along the path so that the churches couldn’t drive up their elderly congregants to observe the baptisms.

Just a few weeks ago, in the town of Olympia in Washington State, a church was denied a permit to have their baptisms in Heritage parks. What reason could the state have possible given for telling citizens they couldn’t gather in a public area? The Attorney General said that partaking in a religious sacrament on public property was a violation of the state constitution.
The same thing happened to a congregation in Miami, Florida back in 2011, when their baptism service was shut down by lifeguards on a Miami beach.
Meanwhile, all across our nation the federal government is teaming up with smaller public entities to accommodate the views and beliefs of American Muslims. Universities across the country have spent thousands of dollars installing foot baths for Muslim student to use before their daily prayers. The University of Michigan spent $25,000 on it’s own to install these foot baths on their Dearborn, MI campus.
Several airports have used public funds to provide foot washing basins to Islamic taxi drivers, with one airport even providing prayer rugs! In San Francisco’s International Airport officials used hard earned tax dollars to build a place of worship for their Muslim employees.
While the Muslim community in America may get whatever they want from the federal government, local Christian communities have to beg, plead, pray. Fortunately for our brothers and sisters in Missouri their local Congressman, Rep. Jason Smith, stepped in and provided them with the necessary support to get the NPS to back down and rescind their policies. Missouri Christians can once again use the “public waters” freely.
Todd Starnes fittingly reminds us of what John Adams once wrote: “Nothing is more dreaded than the national government meddling with religion.”