Author: Religious News

A group of Colorado voters claimed that Trump violated the amendment with his actions on Jan. 6, 2021. The Colorado Supreme Court sided with the voters, and Trump’s legal team appealed the case to the U.S. Supreme Court.

“Because the Constitution makes Congress, rather than the States, responsible for enforcing Section 3 against federal officeholders and candidates, we reverse,” the court ruled in its 9-0 decision, which was not signed. (Four justices issued concurring opinions).

The decision was not a surprise. During oral arguments, a majority of the justices expressed skepticism about the Colorado high court’s decision. The case was brought by four Republican voters and two unaffiliated voters in Colorado.

The Supreme Court’s ruling pointed to Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment, which states: “The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.”

“This case raises the question whether the States, in addition to Congress, may also enforce Section 3,” the court ruled. “We conclude that States may disqualify persons holding or attempting to hold state office. But States have no power under the Constitution to enforce Section 3 with respect to federal offices, especially the Presidency.” 

The decision cited a senator from the 1800s saying that Section 5 “casts upon Congress the r

“The Drip Cafe is basically an idea from our project where we’re helping homeless people get out of homelessness, to break the chains that are holding them down with homelessness,” he told CBN News in a recent interview. “One of those important areas is to have a real job, to build a resume, to get work experience, to get used to socializing in a normal setting.”

The coffee shop carries out its mission to help the homeless through the affiliated Project Revive. Sanchez also shared that Drip Cafe gathers with community members for prayer and encouragement.

However, the cafe has faced protests from LGBTQ and communist protestors who want to shut it down. As reported by Faithwire, an online statement on biblical sexuality reportedly was a catalyst for the protests.

“Homosexuality: This organization is opposed to homosexuality as an alternative lifestyle. Additionally, this organization holds that a homosexual lifestyle is contrary to God’s Word and purpose for humanity (1 Timothy 1: 10). The Bible instructs that it is a sin that leads to death,” the statement reads.

“Moreover, this organization is instructed to love those living such lifestyles, while abhorring their sin.  1 Cor. 6:9 says the following: ‘Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders.’ Members of the church are forbidden to practice such sin. Any member found to be in such sin and unrepentant shall be subject to dismissal.”

Sanchez also shared that he reworded the original statement to make it more straightforward. According to Faithwire, the Denver Communists Facebook page includes posts calling for protests against The Drip Cafe. At the same time, however, Sanchez noted that the demonstrations now take place once a month when they used to take place on a weekly basis.

“It’s a spiritual warfare going on,” he said. “By now, they should realize they’re not affecting us the way that they thought they would. Their goal is very clear; it’s on their

D.W. stepped into the bathroom to call her mom, who was on the trip but was not serving as a chaperone. Eventually, the school staff agreed to move D.W. to another room.

D.W. attends school within the Jefferson County Public School District. 

D.W.’s parents, Joe and Serena Wailes, should have been notified of the arrangement before the trip. Alliance Defending Freedom is representing them. 

Under the current school policy, according to ADF, students who are transgender are “assigned to share overnight accommodations with other students that share the student’s gender identity consistently asserted at school.”

“The policy says nothing about a girl being required to share a bed with a boy who identifies as transgender,” ADF said in a letter to the school. “This policy and practice violates the sincerely held religious beliefs of our clients and their children, their parental rights and the parental rights of other parents in your district, and the privacy rights of all students.”

ADF said that D.W. should not have been placed in the same bed or room.

“If a young girl like D.W. is uncomfortable sharing a bed with a male who identifies as a girl, she is likely also to be uncomforta

“I am prompted by the Colorado Supreme Court’s recent ruling that former President Donald Trump is ineligible to appear on the state’s ballot as a Presidential Candidate due to his role in inciting an insurrection in the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021,” Kounalakis said in her letter. “This decision is about honoring the rule of law in our country and protecting the fundamental pillars of our democracy,” she claimed while urging California’s Secretary of State to prohibit the Golden State’s voters from voting for the candidate of their choosing, an outrageously un-democratic move. 

“California must stand on the right side of history,” Kounalakis’s letter added. “California is obligated to determine if Trump is ineligible for the California ballot for the same reasons described in Anderson,” the case decided by Colorado’s high court on Tuesday evening. “The Colorado decision can be the basis for a similar decision here in our state,” Kounalakis insisted. 

“The constitution is clear: you must be 40 years old and not be an insurrectionist,” she said, even though the U.S. Constitution states that the minimum age to run for president is 35.

Some Republicans and political insiders, however, contend that the Colorado Supreme Court ruling would only increase support for Trump as he seeks to win the Republican nomination in 2024. 

“They’re doing all this stuff to basically solidify support in the primary for him, get him into the general, and the whole general election’s going to be all this legal stuff,” Florida Gov. DeSantis and fellow challenger to the GOP nomination said in response to a voter’s question in Urbandale, Iowa, Wednesday morning.

“It’s unfair. They’re abusing power, 100%,” DeSantis said. “But the question is, is that going to work? I think they have a playbook that unfortunately will work, and it will give [President Joe] Biden or the Democrat, whoever, the ability to skate through this thing.”

“They’re pissed,” one source familiar with discussions involving senior White House and Biden campaign officials said, adding that the ruling makes it look “like Colorado is attempting election interference through non-elected Democratic-appointed justices with funding from ‘shady left-wing donors.”

“We all hope Biden wakes up on Christmas morning to an A3 story in the Delaware News Journal saying that the Supreme Court ruled 9-0 in favor of Trump,” the person added. 

House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., who endorsed Trump last month, called the decision “a thinly veiled partisan attack” on Trump.

“Regardless of political affiliation, every citizen

DENVER (RNS) — In 2021, Andrew Wommack told his followers to “take over” Woodland Park, a mountain town of 8,000 near Colorado Springs. The televangelist and Charis Bible College founder had been saying for years that “the time has come” for Christians to stop focusing only on their faith and start working to gain political influence.

“We have enough people here in this school we could elect anybody we want,” he said at a meeting of the Citizen’s Academy, an event held at Charis by the Truth & Liberty Coalition, a nonprofit organization also founded by Wommack. “This county ought to be totally dominated by believers.”

In recent months, Wommack has been making the same argument to Christians across Colorado. He’s also provided candidates who fit the bill. When voters in 30 school districts go to the polls Tuesday (Nov. 7), they will find ballots primed with candidates recruited and trained by Transform Colorado, a movement, launched by Truth & Liberty, “that unites Christian leaders to restore biblical values in the public square,” according to its website.

The group is promoting its picks in local churches and through voter guides that include candidate answers to five questions about hot-button topics common to conservative Christian campaigns nationally: transgenderism, “boys in girls’ sports,” sex education, parental rights, and social studies and history curriculums.

The effort spans from Colorado Springs, the state’s second largest city, to remote rural districts such as Holyoke, on the border with Nebraska, and Burlington, both of which have seen spikes in the number of candidates this year.

As in Woodland Park, where Wommack succeeded in getting his chosen candidates elected to City Council and gaining a majority on the school board, the goal, in the words of one victor, is to oppose “the teachers’ union and their psycho agenda.”

Wommack, who was mentored by the prosperity gospel preacher Kenneth Copeland, did not attend college himself, nor seminary, and is not formally ordained. After launching a small Texas radio ministry in 1976, he took to television and moved his headquarters to Colorado in the 1990s, making steady appeals for donations to fund his rise. He is briefly featured in “American Gospel: Christ Alone,” a documentary claiming the prosperity gospel movement distorts Christ’s gospel in the U.S. and around the world.

In 2019, the last year it released financial information, Andrew Wommack Ministries had revenue of $68 million. Its CEO, Billy Epperhart, told the Colorado Springs Gazette in 2021 that revenue had since topped $100 million.

Truth & Liberty, founded in 2019, has its own livestreamed programs featuring guests such as Christian nationalist author David Barton, who is also a board member. It took in $1.2 million in 2020. Spokesman Michael Perini declined to provide any information for this article.

In September of last year, the organization held a weekend-long conference where the speakers included U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., and Pastor Lance Wallnau, another board member, who promoted his Seven Mountain Mandate, a vision for Christian dominion in seven key areas of national life, including education.

Truth & Liberty has lately served as Wommack’s main tool in reversing Colorado’s shift from red to blue, a tragedy he blames on “demonic” liberals. As proof, Wommack has claimed his “spies” in the local school system had found hundreds of obscene books. He warned that public schools taught fourth graders how to have anal sex and that they placed litter boxes in classrooms for students who identified as dogs or cats.

Wommack is harsh in his opposition to LGBTQ rights. The day after five people were killed and 18 injured in a Nov. 19, 2022, shooting at Club Q in Colorado Springs, Wommack said he was “not endorsing” violence against LGBTQ people but complained they received too much sympathy, calling homosexuality “one of the major threats of the devil.”

Critics complain that his efforts to protect public education are political stunts that transform normally quiet local elections into hyperpartisan battles funded by outside groups and money.

In Woodland Park, Carol Greenstreet, a former school board president, said the district already reflected the town’s largely conservative and Christian values long before Wommack began his campaign.

Wommack and his followers have “created a war that didn’t have a reason to be fought,” said Greenstreet, whose husband, Kirk, is senior pastor of the evangelical Woodland Park Community Church.

But once elected, Woodland Park’s new conservative majority worked quickly — sometimes meeting in private, she alleged, in violation of state law — to turn the district upside down.

The district became the first and, so far, only locality in the U.S. to adopt the controversial American Birthright social studies curriculum, which has been rejected by Colorado’s State Board of Education. Since it was adopted, some students have been required to perform make-up work to qualify for college admission.

(The Civics Alliance, the group behind American Birthright, did not respond to a request for comment.)

The district let go of its men

“This is a blessing. Everybody, Buff Nation who supported us and all the hood that had my back. I thank y’all. God this is good,” he continued.

As reported by The Christian Post, Saturday’s game was the first for the Horned Frogs since making their College Football Playoff National Championship game appearance earlier this year. Meanwhile, the Colorado Buffaloes had only won one game last season and had not previously scored a top 20 win since 2002.

During the interview, Sanders noted that multiple sports journalists questioned his decision to bring in 86 players to reform the team after he was fired as head coach.

Sanders also pointed out that he was asked as to why his son, Shedeur Sanders, was given the starting quarterback position after transferring from the historically black Jackson State University.

“Shedeur Sanders? From the HBCU?” he asked one journalist. “The one that played at Jackson last year? The one that you asked me why I’d give him the starting job? Wasn’t that you?”

“You were supposed to be on the other side interviewing them [TCU]. Now what?” Sanders asked. “We had some guys that singled themselves out with their play — a lot of guys you doubted, one of them from an HBCU. I think he had 510 yards passing in a Power 5 football game and he happens to be my son.”

Additionally, the hall of famer made reference to this “other son,” wide receiver Travis Hunter, who also transferred from Jackson State Univer

“Thank you Jesus. I’m so thankful right now,” Sanders said during a nationally televised postgame interview, fighting back tears. He thanked Colorado Athletic Director Rick George for hiring him out of Jackson State, an HBCU school. 

“This is a blessing,” Sanders added. 

Sanders, 56, was named head coach at Colorado in December after leading Jackson State (Miss.) to records of 11-2 and 12-0 in his last two seasons. Prior to that, he worked as a football analyst on television. Sanders played college football and baseball at Florida State University and then in the National Football League and in Major League Baseball. 

He is one of the more outspoken Christians in sports.

D

She lost at the district court and appeals court levels. But on Friday, in a 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court reversed those earlier decisions and sided with Smith.

“In this case, Colorado seeks to force an individual to speak in ways that align with its views but defy her conscience about a matter of major significance,” Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote for the majority. “… The First Amendment envisions the United States as a rich and complex place where all persons are free to think and speak as they wish, not as the government demands.”

Gorsuch emphasized that “tolerance, not coercion,” should be the nation’s goal.

Smith says she serves all customers, including gay and lesbian customers, but does not want to be compelled to promote messages that conflict with her beliefs.

“The First Amendment protects an individual’s right to speak his mind regardless of whether the government considers his speech sensible and well-intentioned or deeply ‘misguided,’” Gorsuch wrote. “… A hundred years ago, Ms. Smith might have furnished her services using pen and paper. Those services are no less protected speech today because they are conveyed with a ‘voice that resonates farther than it could from any soapbox.’”

Under Colorado’s logic, Gorsuch asserted, the government “may compel anyone who speaks for pay on a given topic” to promote messages that oppose. Under that logic, Gorsuch argued, the government could require “an unwilling Muslim movie director to make a film with a Zionist message” or “an atheist muralist to accept a commission celebrating Evangelical zeal.”

“Equally, the government could force a male website designer married to another man to design websites for an organization that advocates

“Scardina testified she requested a custom pink and blue cake with no message or other design elements. The trial court found that Debra agreed to make that cake but then retracted the commitment once Scardina told her what the cake was for,” Judge Timothy Schutz wrote in the panel’s decision.

“It was only after Scardina disclosed that she was transgender and intended to use the cake to celebrate both her birthday and her transition that Masterpiece and Phillips refused to provide the cake. Thus, it was Scardina’s transgender status, and her desire to use the cake in celebration of that status, that caused Masterpiece and Phillips to refuse to provide the cake.”

According to The Christian Post, the appeals court contended that Phillips was not being forced to present a message that contradicts his faith because the cake “expressed no message.” The court also asserted that “not all conduct constitutes speech.”

Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative Christian legal advocacy group, criticized the appeals court’s decision and plans to appeal it.

“Over a decade ago, Colorado officials began targeting Jack, misusing state law to force him to say things he does not believe. Then an activist attorney continued