What Happened to Freedom of Speech and Religion?

There is a great article at the Creation Moments website. Here is a snippet.

To a large extent, Christians are shut out of the pagan academic marketplace. Certainly, creationists are shut out of the public school system. Even Intelligent Design (ID) has been censored from academia. In the spring of this year, Iowa State University denied tenure to an overwhelmingly qualified professor because of his work on a pro-ID book. Professor Guillermo Gonzalez had published 350 percent more peer-reviewed papers than the standard required, and his department had nominated him for an award for outstanding research achievement in early 2004. He was a rising star. But after his ID book came out in late 2004, his 2006 tenure application was denied.

This is one of the things that really chaps my hide. Freedom of religion to me should include everyone. And (since there are certainly some irreligious intelligent design advocates) freedom of speech should include everyone. More and more our culture is not just proclaiming "separation of church and state" (which isn't actually in the constitution). Instead our culture is proclaiming separation of the Judeo-Christian God and anything public. For example, this summer my family and I went to an international day at our local library. Much to my horror it opened with a prayer to a Hawaiian goddess. Not just a mention of this dance was used in prayer to such-and-such Hawaiian goddess. No. It was a full blown statement of this is a prayer we are praying to the goddess in Hawaiian and this is what it means. Now imagine if at the start of the program there had been a prayer in Latin to Jesus that was translated and identified as such. There would have been an uproar of protest. And maybe I should have protested. I was so shocked I didn't know what to do. My husband and I did talk to our kids about it afterward.

I pray that God help me remember to be bold for Him no matter what the culture says. For we are to be set apart.