March 30, 2016 Show with Kerri Kupec on “Christian Universities Fight Against Obama’s Mandate to Insure Abortions” PLUS “A Salafi Muslim’s Conversion to Christianity”

Live from the historic parsonage of 19th century gospel minister George Norcross in downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania. It's Iron Sharpens Iron, a radio platform on which pastors, Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

Proverbs 27 verse 17 tells us, Iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another. Matthew Henry said that in this passage, quote, We are cautioned to take heed whom we converse with and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.

It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next hour, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions. Now here's our host, Chris Arnton.

Good afternoon, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth who are listening via live streaming. This is Chris Arnton, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron, wishing you all a happy Wednesday on this 30th day of March 2016.

Alliance Defending Freedom and the Obamacare Abortion Mandate

There are four Christian universities in Oklahoma that have filed lawsuits against the Obama administration's mandate that forces employees, regardless of their religious or moral convictions, to provide insurance coverage for abortion, including drugs, sterilization, and contraception, under the threat of heavy penalties.

And we are going to be talking about this disturbing mandate by the Obama administration with our guest today, for the very first time on Iron Sharpens Iron, Carrie Cupec, as she is the legal communications director of the Alliance Defending Freedom, otherwise known as ADF, formerly known as the Alliance Defense Fund.

She is going to be our guest for the first hour. The second hour, we have C .L. Edwards as our guest. He is a Salafi Muslim who converted to Christianity. We're going to be hearing more about his conversion in addition to his take on current events involving Islamic terrorism.

But first of all, let me welcome our first guest for the very first time, Carrie Cupec. Welcome to Iron Sharpens Iron.

Great. Thanks so much for having me on.

Oh, thank you for being on, especially with such short notice. And I have to ask you, how do you know my very dear friend of about 30 years, Pastor Bill Shishko?

Well, Pastor Shishko is the headmaster of the Christian school that I attended from 1st through 8th grade. He is the pastor of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church at OPC in Franklin Square, New York, and they had a Christian school.

And I was one of those students, and so I was very good friends with his children. In fact, fun fact, I went with his son to my 11th grade prom. So I know the family very well.

Oh, that's great.

They're great people.

Yes, Pastor Bill is one of the most gracious and ardent supporters of Iron Sharpens Iron. And of me personally, he's been a dear friend of mine, as I said, for about 30 years. I met him very quickly after I became a Christian myself.

He was a guest speaker at the church where I was saved and where I was a member, Calvary Baptist Church of Amityville, Long Island, which became Grace Reform Baptist Church of Merrick, Long Island. And Pastor Bill has been a guest on my program many times and has been, in fact, very recently.

And I didn't even know of the connection until Greg Scott of the Alliance Defending Freedom told me that there was, after he helped me get you as a guest today.

Yeah, in my family, we actually grew up very close. It just goes home. So I was on the bus to school with his kids throughout the years. And we run into Pastor Bill and his wife at local supermarkets.

So a lot of connection there.

Great. Well, he is a dear brother, and I'm looking forward to having him back on the show as soon as I can. Well, first of all, obviously, for those of our listeners who are unaware of Alliance Defending Freedom, formerly known as the Alliance Defense Fund and known as ADF more commonly, I just let them know how I became familiar with Alliance Defending Freedom.

And I don't even know if you're aware of this situation, Carrie, but a number of years ago, I believe it was in the early 2000s, I organized a live public moderated debate on homosexuality featuring Dr. James R. White of Alpha Omega Ministries.

He is a mutual friend of Bill Shishko and mine. And, in fact, they are not only friends, and Bill has had James White fill in the pulpit there at the Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Franklin Square, but they also debated each other on the subject of baptism in a friendly in-house collegiate debate.

But other than that, I arranged a debate at the Central Presbyterian Church in Huntington on is homosexuality compatible with New Testament Christianity? And Barry Lynn, who is the president of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, former ACLU attorney and ordained United Church of Christ minister, he was the opponent to Dr. White defending homosexuality as a valid expression of Christianity or compatible with Christianity.

And when he lost, when Barry Lynn lost that debate miserably bad, he was furious. And when he found out that the videos were being made available of that debate, even though he knew that the debate was being videotaped and he had agreed to it beforehand, he tried to stop Dr. White from making that video public and threatened to sue him.

And so I called the Alliance Defense Fund at the time as it was known, and they agreed to defend Dr. White. And they wound up really not having to do anything because Barry Lynn never showed up at the hearing, nor did his attorney, nor anybody else from his organization.

So the judge just granted the rights to Dr. White to proceed with distributing the video. But anyway, tell our listeners about the Alliance Defending Freedom, those of them who are unfamiliar with it.

Alliance Defending Freedom is a nonprofit legal organization that advocates for the rights of people to freely live out their faith. And we focus on religious freedom and life and marriage. And we have offices throughout the United States.

And we also have a number of offices throughout the world, including Mexico City. We have one in India. We have one in Brussels and Vienna and Strasbourg. And so we do a lot of religious freedom work, like I said, both internationally and domestically.

And it's interesting.

We're busy.

I can tell you that.

That's great. Well, let me also introduce you to my co-host sitting in the studio with me, the Reverend Buzz Taylor.

Hello.

Hello.

Can you hear me okay?

I can.

Because I can't hear myself as well as I usually do.

Well, you're not missing anything.

Gee, thanks. I'm here for the comic relief.

The Supreme Court Fight Over the HHS Mandate

Well, Kerry, I understand that the Southern Nazarene University versus Burwell case is something that we are going to discuss today because of these four Christian universities in Oklahoma that have filed suit against the Obama administration's mandate that forces employees, regardless of their religious or moral convictions, to provide insurance coverage for abortion-inducing drugs, sterilization, and contraception under threat of heavy penalties.

If you could tell us something about these cases.

Sure.

These were cases that were just argued before the Supreme Court last Wednesday on March 23rd. And these are pretty serious. The bottom line is that we all agree that all Americans should be able to peacefully live and operate according to their religious beliefs without threat of government punishment.

But unfortunately, this very American and certainly constitutional principle is being called into serious question with these cases. Now, you may have seen on the news stories about the Little Sisters of the Poor, these nuns who have taken vows of chastity and poverty, and they take care of the elderly in their community.

And you may have seen the media coverage of them before the court, because they are one of the parties before the court. But it's not just them. It's also priests, and it's also, like you mentioned, evangelical Christian schools and colleges.

And Weed Alliance Offending represents five of those. And our schools and our clients object to life-ending drugs and devices. We're talking about the morning-after pill, the week-after pill, and two IUDs that can cause the destruction of an embryo.

Now, obviously, Christianity and the teaching of the church is very clear on the sacredness of life. For these schools to distribute these drugs and devices in their insurance plans, employee insurance plans, would be a complete violation of their conscience and their faith.

But the Obama administration has really doubled down and has gone after these Christian schools and these nuns and priests, demanding that they deliver these drugs and devices against their faith.

Well, what successes have those with biblical moral values had in fighting against such diabolical mandates that are being enforced upon them?

We certainly saw a good decision by the Supreme Court in a similar case, and that was the Hobby Lobby Conestoga Woods Specialties case, and that was a couple of years ago. And there the Supreme Court said, look, a religious family business can operate as a religious family business.

And you had the same issue of having drugs and devices that violated their faith and conscience in their health insurance plans that the government was demanding that they distribute. But what's really, there are a couple of very interesting facts about this particular case that I just want to point out.

The nuns, the priests, the Christian colleges and universities. Two things, for starters, Pepsi, Exxon, Chevron. These are billion-dollar corporations, obviously. They were grandfathered in with respect to the Obamacare mandate at the very beginning.

So this mandate, and it's entirely, does not apply to these big businesses. So big businesses get a free pass. So all of those women who work for those organizations are not getting those drugs and devices that the government demands that they get, unless those corporations decide to make them available in the insurance plans.

So that says a lot right there as far as the government's interest. But the second thing that we need to talk about is the fact that the women who work with Little Sisters of the Poor and these evangelical Christian schools and colleges, they're pro-life.

They know who they're going to work for when they get this job. And so these women themselves don't want these drugs and devices. And yet the government has doubled down. And then the one other point I'd like to make is that if the government wanted to, they could create, in theory, a contraception-only plan available on the state health exchanges that they themselves set up.

That would be a way for the government to deliver these drugs and devices without hijacking the plans of religious institutions. But they haven't done so, even though they still could now. So I think it's pretty obvious that one has to conclude about the government's attitude towards people of faith.

Yeah, let me ask you a question, just out of curiosity. Are you aware of any Islamic organizations and institutions where they are also being forced to provide insurance for abortion and other things like that, that they also would join us on opposing vehemently?

I'm not aware of any, but the same principle, it would apply to them. What the administration is currently attempting to do would apply to those organizations as well. Obviously, if they met certain parameters and numbers of employees and things like that.

Well, I was just curious because it seems that there has been, on occasion, preferences, preferential treatment given to Muslims and so forth. It seems that Christians, and I would include in that category for the purposes of our discussion, Roman Catholics and those with conservative moral values, biblical moral values, Judeo-Christian ethics and morals, as they are commonly called.

They seem to be open season by the leftist administration and other liberals for attack, mock, ridicule, fine, you know. I mean, we seem to be unique in that, but that's one of the reasons I asked the question about Muslim institutions.

And what's really sad about this, if you think about it, and I'm sure we all agree on this, these are the organizations that are doing some of the best in the world, right? So we have the evangelical schools, they're serving the next generation.

And those students who attend those schools are doing phenomenal things in their communities. And what's also interesting about these Christian schools that we represent, a number of them were involved in the abolitionist movement.

In fact, Geneva College was actually part of the Underground Railroad themselves. So the president and the students assisted slaves to freedom. And these are schools that have always been active advocates for human flourishing and freedom.

These schools were among the first in the country to employ women, to put women in positions in faculty and admit them into the full-time academic program. Obviously, the little kids of the poor are taking care of the elderly in their communities.

The priests are alive. So these are organizations that are providing incredible social welfare programs, if you will, at no cost to the taxpayer. Yet the Obama administration is going after them and really going after the very motivation that inspires and drives them to do all the good that they do in the world.

Now, what response do they have when this is being obviously said to them that this is in complete violation, obvious, blatant violation of one's freedom of religion? How can they possibly get around that constitutional freedom?

Here's what the government is saying. The government is arguing. They're saying, oh, look, we're giving you an accommodation. We're letting you exercise your religion still. There is no problem. But there is a problem.

The accommodation is a total sham. It's a joke. Because what the accommodation basically is, it's a permission slip. The government is demanding that these institutions sign that allows the government to hijack these institutions' insurance plans and still deliver the drugs and the devices through that insurance plan.

So if they really were concerned or desired for these organizations to be able to freely and peacefully operate according to their mission and their belief, what they would do is what I said earlier. They would create a plan on the government state health exchanges that women could access and get those drugs and devices directly from the government.

I know this is something that's been argued in the brief, and it was something that came out before the justices last week in oral arguments.

We do have an anonymous listener in Pennsylvania who asks, how does the Alliance Defending Freedom go about choosing who they represent? Do they also represent individuals rather than just large organizations and institutions?

Oh, absolutely. We have a great legal intake team. We have 1 -800-TELL-ADF, and we get calls all the time for people whose religious beliefs are being threatened by the government and local state bodies.

But, yeah, absolutely, we represent individuals. For instance, we are representing a number of creative professionals across the state right now. You may have heard of some of them. Chief Cochran, the former chief of Atlanta, Georgia.

Farinell Stutzman, the grandmother floral designer out of Washington State. Jack Phillips, a baker and a cake designer in Colorado, all whose religious freedom is really being severely threatened right now is simply for holding a belief about biblical marriage that is held by the majority of people in this world, in the big states.

Now, is this a service, the legal services that you provide, always done pro bono for your clients?

We represent all of our clients free of charge.

That's good to know. So, what other similar cases are going on, and what is the progress you're making in defending the rights of those with biblical moral values and beliefs?

We've certainly seen a lot of success with respect to fighting the Obamacare abortion pill mandate. The scorecard right now in the cases that we have with respect to the issue we were just talking about with these religious organizations that don't want to provide life-ending drugs and devices against their conscience, it's something like 72 to 19 were winning those in court, something like that.

And we actually had a very interesting victory. We represented the March for Life, which is the world's largest pro-life gathering. You may have seen footage of that, the largest pro-life gathering in the world every January.

A peaceful gathering of people, hundreds of thousands gather and march for the sanctity of life, and that's our client. And the Obamacare mandate was being implemented against them. This is a pro-life organization from conception to natural death, and yet the Obama administration was demanding that they, too, provide life-ending drugs and devices.

And we were successful there. In fact, our victory there at the federal district court in Washington, D .C., was actually the first victory of its kind in a nation that was won for non-religious reasons, because March for Life is a non-religious organization, and the judge there said, no, that's okay, they can hold beliefs about the sanctity and sacredness of life based on moral philosophy and science.

So we won on those grounds. So we're seeing a lot of good success on these cases. And another area of litigation for us that I just mentioned a little bit ago are conscience clients, because it's evident, even with respect to this abortion pill mandate area, that conscience is really under attack in this country.

People are really losing their understanding of what it means to be an American and being able to freely and peacefully operate according to their beliefs and conscience. So like I said, we represent a number of creative professionals, like material designer Washington State, who she lovingly and carefully served people in her community for decades, owned a floral shop.

She had a man who identified as LGBT come in. His name was Rob. It was her friend for nine or ten years. And she served him. She provided flowers to him. They were friends. And same-sex marriage became the law of the land in Washington State, and Rob came in and asked Baranel if she would design custom floral arrangements for his same-sex wedding.

And Baranel prayed about it and talked to him and said, you know, Rob, because I'm a Christian, because of my faith in Jesus Christ, I just can't use my creative talents to promote this ceremony, because that would violate my faith.

It would violate what the Gospel says about marriage. And that was okay, and Rob went a separate way, and everything seemed to be okay. And the next thing you know, Baranel was being sued and pursued by the Attorney General of Washington State.

She was being sued by this man and his partner, and she's being sued in her personal and professional capacity. So not only is her business being threatened, but her retirement, her home, her life savings, and anything that's in her husband's name as well, because Washington is a community property state, all because she declined one same-sex wedding custom floral arrangement order, and she had referred him to three other floral designers in the area that would do a good job for him.

You know, it seems to me that people are purposely doing these things to get public attention and to have some kind of vindictive or vengeful spirit, because why on earth would you want someone who is opposed to an event you're having, why would you want them to create something like a floral arrangement or a cake or whatever?

Because you really want people doing that to have their heart in it. You want them to be excited and enthusiastic about it. Not only do you not want somebody who's opposed to it, you don't even want somebody who has mixed feelings about it to be involved in that kind of a thing.

What kind of jeopardy are crisis pregnancy centers in in this country? Because I remember a while back when Mayor Bloomberg was in office in New York City, there seemed to be some serious jeopardy at one point that the crisis pregnancy centers were in, those that were convincing women not to have abortions and so on.

I believe that his agenda was to have them find or shut down because they were, in his rhetoric, practicing medicine without a license or something ridiculous. But if you could let us know about the situation with crisis pregnancy centers.

Sure. We represent a number of crisis pregnancy centers in California on the West Coast. This is an ongoing case that we're in the midst of right now. And it's basically what you said. These centers were forced by the California state governor, or the government's attempting to force them anyway, to put up signs at these pregnancy centers that essentially say, we're just a reforce center.

It's really undermining, the language that they wanted them to put in these signs undermines the entire purpose of these centers even being in existence and requiring these centers to essentially refer women coming into these centers to a place where they could get an abortion.

Have you had success with these?

Yes, we have had success with these. And like I said, right now we are in the midst of representing a number of these in California. But the reality is this is a speech issue too. It's not just about abortion, but the fact that the government can tell them that they must say this.

Especially when pregnancy centers offer real help, real hope to women. And they really shouldn't be punished by political allies of the abortion industry. So forcing a pro-life center to promote abortion and recite essentially the government's message is a clear violation of their speech freedom under the First Amendment as well.

Yes.

This is really obviously infuriating for those of us who not only have Bible-believing Christian, Judeo-Christian moral and ethical values, but do you have much support from the community, from even liberals for instance?

I have heard and have met liberals that they may radically oppose our beliefs against homosexuality and other things. But they are liberals in the classic sense of the term in that they don't want government intruding on the rights of people to express their religion and so forth.

There are even liberals who are politically libertarian who want the government to be small and to be out of the way of people just acting upon their own convictions and beliefs and so on. Do you have any either verbal support or support in other ways from the liberal community?

Yes, absolutely. Especially with what you just referred to, the libertarian community especially. You had people who said they were libertarian and said, oh yeah, we're okay, it was same-sex marriage, but this whole idea of forcing artists to promote messages which violate their beliefs and their convictions, that's too far and that's a problem.

And so you say you have a think tank like the Cato Institute, which is a known libertarian organization. You have a number of key people there who, again, were supportive of same-sex marriage, but have written Friends of the Court briefs in support of our creative professional clients, and they've all said this is a blatant violation of their speech freedoms.

The government is forcing them to create a message, speak a message, which they completely disagree with and violates the essence of who they are. And it's interesting, I was just judging a moot court competition in Washington, D .C. about a week or two ago, and the critical case before us that these law students were arguing was exactly about this.

It was about a photographer who did not, it's actually an atheist photographer, this is the fact pattern, who did not want to photograph religious wedding ceremonies. He would do anything else, but he didn't want to do that.

And he was being sued by the local so-called Human Rights Commission for declining to use his creative talents to promote a religious wedding ceremony. So it was interesting to be on the judging side of that.

And one of my co-judges told me that in the last year alone, he had completely flipped on this issue. He said, look, when this first came out, I thought, oh yeah, these people should have to do this, because now I've realized the implications of what this means.

A government that can tell you what you must say is terrifying. And regardless of where anyone stands on, say, the issue of marriage, once the door has been opened for the government to come in and force people to speak messages with which they disagree, the government can, quite frankly, come in and force any one of us to do and speak a message of, you know, who knows what it could be.

And, you know, 20 years from now, when marriage isn't that hot-button issue, it'll be something else. But at that point, the precedent will have been set, and the government will have the scary authority to punish people for not promoting their particular message and perspective.

We have to go to a break right now. If you'd like to join us on the air, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com, C-H-R-I-S-A-R-N-Z-E-N at gmail .com. Please give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside of the USA.

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That email address, again, is chrisarnsen at gmail .com. Don't go away. We're going to be right back after these messages.

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Welcome back. This is Chris Arnsin. And if you just tuned us in, our guest today is Carrie Pupek. Am I pronouncing your name correctly, Carrie?

Yes, yeah, you are.

I'm very glad to hear that. And she is Legal Communications Director of Alliance Defending Freedom, otherwise known as ADL and formerly known as the Alliance Defense Fund. And we are discussing today what services they provide to the Christian community and those with biblical moral values and ethics that are under attack by not only leftist individuals and organizations, but even our own government.

And if you'd like to join us on the air, our email address is chrisarnsin at gmail .com. Chrisarnsin at gmail .com. We do have a couple more listeners waiting to have their questions asked and answered.

But I wanted to have you go through a list of things that you think are important for pastors to know, to know what their rights are in regarding freedom of speech and the way that a church conducts itself in regard to discipline.

I know that our neighbor right to our north, Canada, there are some pretty scary things going on there with ministers being heavily fined for speaking out against homosexuality. From their pulpits in Europe, it's even worse, where I believe there have been men even arrested for such things, arrested and fined for speaking out against Islam and other things.

First of all, how realistic is it that that is going to be happening here in the United States? And perhaps it's already happening and I'm unaware of it. And what are some lists of things that you want pastors to know in regard to our freedom of speech and freedom of religion?

Yeah, well for starters, certainly in the United States of America, a pastor, not the government, determines what is said behind the pulpit. And pastors really need to own that principle. It's constitutional and it's their speech rights as well.

Sometimes there's this idea, and I have no idea where it started quite frankly, the idea that a pastor surrenders his constitutional protections for speech when they become a pastor. Well that's ludicrous.

Can you imagine if when someone decided to become a pastor, they said, okay, now the government says you have to give up your real right against unlawful search and seizures if a police officer stops you.

Well of course not, that's ridiculous. And so pastors really need to remember that they still have, and of course they have, the full protections under the First Amendment that all of their fellow citizens do as well.

That being said, Alliance for Funding Freedom has created a very helpful manual called Protecting Your Ministry. Anyone can go to our website, adslegal .org, and download a copy of this manual. I would highly recommend that every pastor do this because like it or not, it is likely that we're seeing a coming storm, especially with issues related to marriage and sexuality.

And so it's very important that pastors protect their ministry. And there are practical ways they can go about doing that that include looking at the bylaws and the mission statements and certain ways the church operates.

And this manual is very helpful and will walk a pastor through everything that they need to do to make sure that their ministry remains protected.

That's excellent news. And if you could repeat that website for our pastors listening so that they can download that information.

Absolutely. So they would go to adslegal .org, so that's the Alliance for Funding Freedom website, and then look for the Protecting Your Ministry manual. And it's downloadable off our website. Very, very helpful.

It's very practical, step-by-step, everything that a pastor needs to do.

Well, now you mentioned that it's ludicrous how we're losing our rights and things. I find it difficult to believe that we could even win any of these cases because of how liberal the courts have become.

How are we doing?

Really, it's interesting. Like I said, we've seen a lot of success fighting this abortion pill mandate. It's been tricky with some of these creative professionals, even though we have so much support from the American public saying, look, we're really concerned to pay government that could punish people if they don't create custom work or promote a message with which they disagree.

I will tell you that there is an interesting, one of our clients, and we're seeing some success here, with the Atlanta fire chief, Chief Calvin Cochran. Amazing man. In fact, one of the most decorated fire chiefs in this country.

Born in Shreveport, Louisiana. Was born in poverty. Had a single mother who was raising Chief Cochran and his siblings. And when he was five years old, they were literally living in a house that was in an alley in Louisiana, very, very poor.

And one of the neighbor's houses caught fire, and Chief Cochran said that he remembers distinctly as a five-year-old going out there and seeing the members of the fire service put out that fire, and he realized that that's what he wanted to do.

And he had three goals, and one was to be a father and have a family, since he didn't have that himself. And one was to be a member of the fire service, and another was not to be poor. And he was told that if you follow a word and you do right by people, you can have that, you can be successful, and you can have that quote-unquote American dream.

And this is something that he says regularly. So this is what he did. He fought discrimination himself. He's an African-American man, and he fought discrimination in 1970s, 1980s, 1960s Louisiana, rose through the ranks, became chief of the fire department there, went over to Atlanta, became chief there.

President Obama himself recruited him to be the chief fire administrator for the entire United States, but Atlanta missed him so badly that the mayor begged him to come back. He was so good that one of the national fire magazines gave him the award as fire chief of the year for the entire country, and he actually raised fire insurance rates for the entire city of Atlanta because of some of the projects and programs he implemented.

And Chief Cochran's a Christian, and he's very involved in the men's ministry at his church. And so on his own private time, he wrote a men's devotional book that was designed to help men combat self-condemnation and to be everything that the Bible teaches men should be and that Christ wants for them.

So he wrote this book, and in 164 pages, in a couple of paragraphs, he talks about the Bible's plan and design for marriage and essentially just lifts out of the Bible the Bible verses that talk about God's plan for sexuality.

This is a couple of paragraphs in the book. Well, next thing you know, this book and those passages are shown to an openly gay member of the Atlanta City Council who finds that offensive, the Bible's teaching on that.

And Chief Cochran was then suspended without pay for 30 days. An investigation was launched to see if he had ever, quote-unquote, discriminated against anyone because of his Christian belief. The investigation found nothing.

No surprise there. This is one of the most decorated fire chiefs in our country. A great man. A man, by the way, who actually had created policies to combat discrimination because of what he himself had faced when he was rising through the ranks.