By Norm Miller, LC News
PINEVILLE – Louisiana College’s second annual Values and Ethics Series addresses “Religious Liberty: A National Treasure” and features four significant keynoters.
The event includes Warren Cole Smith, vice president, Colson Center for Christian Worldview; Gregory S. Baylor, Senior Counsel, Director of Center for Religious Schools at the Alliance Defending Freedom; Louisiana Senator Gerald R. Long, District 31; and Becket Gremmels, System Director of Ethics for St. Francis CHRISTUS Cabrini Health System.
The Oct. 9 session begins at 6 p.m. in LC’s Martin Performing Arts Center, and is sponsored by St. Francis CHRISTUS Cabrini Health System.
“Louisiana College joins the Church community in engaging the cultural issues of our day, and I am grateful for such evangelical leaders who will inform and inspire us just as we were last year at our conference that drew more than 300 people,” said LC President Rick Brewer.
Brewer noted his “deep appreciation” for the sponsorship by the St. Francis CHRISTUS Cabrini Health System. “For two years running, Cabrini has been a strategic partner, tangibly supporting our mutual concerns and convictions about issues affecting our society.”
Commenting on the importance of religious liberty, Baylor said, “In the not-so-distant past, religious freedom enjoyed greater support across the political, ideological, and religious spectrums. But changing societal attitudes about marriage, sexual morality, and gender have translated in efforts to coerce dissenters from the new orthodoxy to violate their consciences.
“These conflicts have diminished the religious liberty ‘brand’ in many sectors of society,” he added.
Though the event’s title notes religious liberty as a “national treasure,” Smith states: “Christians should also be concerned about religious liberty around the world.
“Religious liberty is not just for Americans. The Declaration of Independence says plainly that some rights are not granted by government, but by God,” Baylor continued. “The government has no authority to grant or withhold that right, but it does have the duty to secure and protect that right.”
Brewer urges all who are concerned about the future of religious liberty to attend the conference because “all other freedoms we enjoy rest upon religious freedom. Without religious liberty, no other forms of liberty are possible.”
