Show 1651 Religious Freedom- The Four-Part Series By The Glenn Beck Program Freedom of religion is the first right mentioned in the Bill of Rights. The Founders knew how integral this would be to the United States of America. Without religious freedom, we cease to be free. Religion and the free exercise thereof is slipping through our fingers little by little, every day. But most people don’t even even notice it, and they also don’t understand why it’s important. In this four-part series, Glenn examines our religious rights as Americans — where they come from, why they’re essential and how the progressive left has slowly eroded them away. The four-part series is compiled here for your convenience. Part I: The Beginning In 2009, the president of the United States made this announcement at a press conference in Turkey: “One of the great strengths of the United States is — although as I mentioned — you know, we have a very large Christian population. We do not consider ourselves a Christian nation or a Jewish nation or a Muslim nation. We consider ourselves a nation of citizens,” President Obama said. That statement would no doubt come as quite a surprise to Founders like John Adams who declared the general principles on which the Fathers achieved independence were the general principles of Christianity. James Madison, author of the Constitution, said, “religion is the basis and foundation of government.” Author and world-renowned historian David Barton concurs. “George Washington, in his Farewell Address, said that religion and morality were our indispensable political supports, and that he would not allow anyone to call himself a patriot if he tried to exclude religion from public political life,” Barton said. These founding principles were stated over and over again by most of America’s founders and reaffirmed in 1854 by Congress. From the Journal of the House of Representatives: “The great, vital, and conservative element in our system is the belief of our people in the pure doctrines and the define truths of the gospel of Jesus Christ.” Progressives have worked hard over the past century to secularize America and turn the country toward a European style of government. But even Woodrow Wilson, father of the progressive movement, said America was ‘Born a Christian Nation.’  Part II: War on Christianity America was founded in large part because of the desire for religious freedom. But it’s been 225 years since ratification of the United States Constitution, and now, with the passage of centuries, Americans sometimes take the freedoms they’ve enjoyed for granted. Most of the world, however, can only dream of being able to take such a right for granted. Communism, for example, has never been friendly to religion, especially Christianity. The communist purge of Christianity began almost immediately with the Bolshevik Revolution of 1918. The once thriving Catholic church in Russia was all but annihilated after the communist takeover, and atheism became the official state religion. Catholic institutions were dissolved, and its property confiscated under Lenin. Things got worse under Stalin, with millions of people carted away to the dreaded gulag camps. Between the Soviet Union and the Communist Revolution in China, Christianity was all but wiped off the Asian continent. It may surprise some that, from the beginning of their movement, German Nazis planned to eliminate Christianity, just as they did Jews and Judaism. The Nazi leader of the German Youth Corps, which would literally be known as the Hitler Youth, said, “The destruction of Christianity was explicitly recognized as a purpose of the national socialist movement from the beginning.” Many people don’t think that type of persecution exists today, except perhaps in the Middle East. However, in communist North Korea, a nation of 26 million people, there are only 300,000 Christians. Some 50,000 to 70,000 North Korean Christians are now suffering torture and horrific living condit