In an important ruling for religious freedom, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has ordered the San Jose Unified School District (District) in California to re-instate the Fellowship of Christian Athletes (FCA) as an officially recognized student club.

The case illustrates the increasing tension between Christian beliefs and the LGBT agenda in our nation’s schools, as well as the importance of the First Amendment in protecting our foundational freedoms.

In a majority opinion written by Judge Kenneth K. Lee, an appointee of President Donald Trump, the 9th Circuit reversed a lower court decision from June, ruling that FCA was entitled to an injunction because it was likely to succeed in its legal claims that the District had violated the club’s First Amendment rights.

FCA had been a recognized club in the District for over two decades when, in 2019, a history teacher at one of its high schools named Peter Glasser learned of the club’s Statement of Faith and its requirement that its leaders abide by it, including biblical beliefs about marriage and human sexuality.

According to Judge Lee, here’s what happened next.

The sign of a good speech, book or newspaper column is when the essence of the message continues to rattle around in your mind for months or even years afterward.

It’s been nearly twenty years since the Wall Street Journal’s Peggy Noonan suggested no nation nor party that supports the unfettered killing of innocent children can long endure or even flourish. That observation has stuck with me ever since I read it in January of 2003 – and I believe her insight and analysis continues to be borne out in the decades since she first suggested it.

Now the talk has turned to what constitutes the “soul of the nation” – a familiar phrase that pops up from time to time – and we can’t help but connect Noonan’s analysis with what has truly been the foundation of America and her best ideals.

Christians, of course, are intimately familiar with the “soul” – the mysterious essence that made man a man – that we first read about in Genesis. When God created Adam, we learn that He “breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature” (Genesis 2:7). In Hebrew, “soul” is translated as “to breathe” – so when we talk about the soul of a country, we’re talking about what gives it life.

Dr. Raymond Damadian, the inventor who built the first ever magnetic resonance imaging scanner (MRI), died earlier this month at his home on New York’s Long Island. He was 86.

The idea for Dr. Damadian’s breakthrough invention reportedly came to him back in the 1960s, and he published his first paper on the development in 1971. His theory that it was possible to scan the human body without radiation was initially scoffed at – but he persisted, obtained a patent for the technology in 1972, and then produced the first scan in 1977.

Over 30 million MRIs are performed each year in the United States, making it one of the most effective tools in a doctor’s arsenal for diagnosing and treating a wide range of illnesses and medical conditions. It would be impossible to calculate how many lives the machine has saved and how much suffering the technology has helped lessen or alleviated altogether.

No matter the industry, pioneers and innovators are often ridiculed, criticized and sometimes even dismissed as cranks.  Dr. Damadian is no exception.

But ignored?

Why is it that you’ve likely never heard of him – and why was he passed over for the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine?