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‘Eternal vigilance is the price of freedom’

11/3/2009

IF religious liberty is a thing to be cherished, then October 31 is a date to be remembered.

It was on October 31, 1517, that Martin Luther, a Catholic priest, nailed to the door of the castle church in Wittenberg, Germany, his famous 95 theses against the doctrine of Indulgences, and so launched the “Protestant” Reformation.
In turn, it was the Reformation that broke the Papacy’s centuries-old grip on Europe, and ushered in a new day for the practice of religion according to the dictates of conscience.

True, the Reformation did not bring an immediate end to persecution, and it took another two to three centuries before Religious Liberty would become widespread as a principle of government in “Western” countries. But the Reformation forced the door of freedom open, and subsequent generations built on that foundation.

We today are the beneficiaries of those struggles, but we must not be complacent.
We know that outright religious persecution exists in some non-“western” countries; but some forms of intolerance exist in the “West” as well – witness, in some jurisdictions, the illegality of preaching against things like homosexuality, and, locally, annual calls for Government to enforce the sacredness of certain times and seasons. One wrong step could lead to another.
“Eternal vigilance is the price of freedom.”

Oswald W. Newton

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as of close 9/15/2009


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