Other Columns by Kevin Fobbs
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There is a values war raging in the Heartland of America, and from sea to shining sea, every weekend as we visit either our church, synagogue or mosque. Our shepherds of the faith have been living under an almost absolute bar of their right to practice and enjoy their constitutional right to freedom of speech.

For over fifty years, a law that was designed by then Congressman Lyndon Baines Johnson, the future President of the United States, has shackled countless hundreds of thousands of religious leaders and their brothers and sisters in the faith. This one act of political hubris has literally paralyzed ministers, under threat of possibly losing their church if they spoke out from their pulpit about touchy political issues, hot social issues, volatile moral issues of the day.

Mind you, this was a right ministers had enjoyed since before the formation of our nation. It was one of the primary reasons for our faith leaders fleeing England to pursue their God-given right to worship, to speak the gospel and to preach on any and all issues of the day.

Now fifty years after the legacy of Lyndon Baines Johnson has chilled free speech from the pulpit, Congressman Walter Jones of North Carolina is saying in his recently introduced "The Houses of Worship Free Speech Restoration Act" bill, what God had to have been thinking and the framers of our Constitution would have said as well."Let My Preachers Go".

My minister, your minister, or your rabbi or your priest or your imam should have your First Amendment rights restored. That should be a no-brainer.

For over fifty years, ministers have had to carefully craft their remarks so as to not step over the line that restricted them from saying what their spirit was telling them. For over fifty years a minister who wanted to speak out on Sunday morning against the issues of the day, be it a political figure who has abandoned the faith in pursuit of political gain, the advent of the abortion movement in the late 1960s ... the 1954 law was looking over their shoulder.

For over fifty years as hundreds of thousands of pastors, rabbis and priests prayed with us every Saturday or Sunday, somewhere in the back of their mind, many had to be feeling the cloaked tug of the government ... the ever present silent editor of their sermons...the red ink specialist with the invisible pen, that would erase whole passages ... for fear.

Yes fear of daring to speak and preach and teach and empower the flock freely has stymied them. This is a freedom you or I could exercise freely from within the walls of the house of worship or outside in the public square.

A House of Worship should be a protected place. It should be a safe haven as free from the reach of government as the very sanctity of our Constitution was crafted to ensure at the founding moment of our nation.

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