Today we witnessed the inauguration of President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence and another peaceful transfer of power in our country. During the inauguration ceremony on the steps of the Capitol, we heard the thoughts and prayers of a number of faith leaders such as Rabbi Marvin Hier, Bishop Wayne Jackson, Rev. Samuel Rodriguez, Cardinal Timothy Dolan and Rev. Franklin Graham.

Despite this well-established tradition of expressions of faith in the civic square, here in Massachusetts we learned that our public schools are teaching students a very different lesson.

This week, the story broke that one Massachusetts high school choir backed out of performing at St. Anthony’s Basilica in Italy for Easter Sunday mass due to a complaint filed with district officials. Anti-religious freedom activists Americans United for Separation of Church and State threatened the student group with the claim that their involvement in any sort of religious service was “unconstitutional.”

As I shared with The Christian Post, “This is another sad example of common sense being sacrificed to a radical agenda of hostility and intolerance toward expressions of faith in the public square.”

If you hear of a religious liberty violation at your child’s school, please let us know by emailing us at info@mafamily.org.  Often times these things can be resolved, if addressed early on, by a clarification of the law.  At MFI, we will continue to stand for the right of every Massachusetts citizen, including students, to openly share, and live according to their faith.

In other news, MFI founder Rob Bradley has an article discussing recent New York Times Besteller Hillbilly Elegy, which once again demonstrates the importance of traditional families and family values for the welfare of our children and our society as a whole. Rob’s article in the NewBostonPost references MFI’s 2014/2015 Report on Fatherlessness.

“The data unfortunately demonstrates that students from fatherless families in Massachusetts have twice the risk of dropping out of high school as students from married-couple households,” Rob shares in the article.

I encourage you to read the full article here.