Ask the Lord for His will and his way to be clear as it relates to all of the healthcare in America, and that this would be clear to the justices, their clerks, the lawyers, and the providers, and legislators in how they should respond. Ask for God’s justice in America’s legal system and healthcare system.

In just over a month, the Supreme Court is scheduled to hear oral arguments over the 2010 healthcare law commonly referred to as Obamacare. The headliner is the individual mandate. There is also the employer mandate. Conscience rights could come up as well. With the argument just weeks away, briefs are being written and filed with the Supreme Court, and preparations are well under way for this historic week of arguments.

Pray that the Lord will place in our national leaders' hearts a deep understanding of the preciousness of the freedoms that our U.S. Constitution grants to all of its citizens. May this current administration's action with their healthcare legislation continue to stir outrage in all Americans who cherish the blessings of freedom and liberty that are granted to us by our Constitution. Pray that the Church will awaken to take a stand and begin to reverse the nationwide effort to silence God's people!

The State of Religious Freedom in America

The state of religious freedom is at the forefront of national conversation as people across America attempt to process the stunning actions recently taken by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) that pit religious freedom against compliance with a federal healthcare mandate, forcing people of faith to make a decision that infringes upon the religious freedom that our Founding Fathers robustly protected from our very beginning. Unfortunately, the HHS mandate is not an isolated incident; it is more of the same. Members of the Congressional Prayer Caucus, a bipartisan group of 103 Members of the House of Representatives dedicated to preserving religious freedom in America, will continue standing up against burdens on these inherent freedoms.

In August 2011, HHS issued a mandate requiring that all health plans cover abortion-inducing drugs, contraceptives, and sterilization at no cost to the patient, despite the fact that scores of people have religious and moral objections to these services. The mandate included an extremely narrow exemption for churches, but offered no protection to religious hospitals, schools, and charities, with the reason being that these entities often serve and employ individuals that do not share the groups' religious beliefs. "A long time ago, the Catholic Church received a mandate from a higher authority . . . It is the mandate of Jesus Christ. . . . Catholic ministries for the needy are as blind to race, creed, class, and gender as Jesus Christ, their founder.  That any one of them, much less all of them, should be forced to choose between the Gospel mandate and the U.S. government's healthcare mandate strikes at the very heart of the right to religious liberty on which our country was founded.”
The Jesus mandate vs. Obama’s mandate (http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/guest-voices/post/the-jesus-mandate-vs-obamas-mandate/2012/01/27/gIQAJ5jpVQ_blog.html) Washington Post, January 27, 2012.

More of the Same: Hostility Towards People of Faith and Religious Institutions

In recent years, there have been numerous examples of a recurring hostility towards people wishing to exercise their constitutionally-protected religious freedoms. The HHS mandate is not an isolated incident; it is more of the same. The very existence of these occurrences, regardless of whether they are successfully reversed, shows a troubling pattern that has a chilling effect on people of faith, leaving them uncertain about exercising their religious freedoms.