Richard Thompson

Richard Thompson of the Thomas More Law Center today visited WallBuilders Live with David Barton and Rick Green to publicize his group’s anti-Muslim activism and to lavish praise on Barton’s group for “giving the kind of information that people have to have to understand that is going on,” including Barton’s debunked memo calling Obama “America’s Most Biblically-Hostile U. S. President.” He said that the left’s alleged attempts to “attack faithful Christians” and support of the “homosexual agenda” are part of a “war against Christianity.” If successful, Thompson warn, “America will disintegrate”:

Just recently I recall that Dave put out a list of all the anti-Christian statements made by President Obama, I think one of the reasons for this is that we are in a culture war and the left, the far left views Christianity as the major hurdle that they have to overcome to get their agenda passed. So they do everything they can to attack faithful Christians.

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It is clear that there is this culture war going on. We are at the tipping point now, we are seeing an attack on the Judeo-Christian principles, whether it’s the homosexual agenda that’s coming down, where they just eliminated the whole Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy that prevented open homosexuality in the military, whether there’s now attack [sic] on pro-life organizations because they are supporting pro-life stands and they are not going to get any funding from the government on certain social things that these organizations do like adoptions, like assisting women who have been abused. So you see this full court press against Christianity and its time for Christians to stands up and speak out. Even though a vast majority of Americans are Christen it is the people who hold the strings of power, whether it’s the mainstream media, or whether it’s the cultural elite, or whether its academia, they are waging a war against Christianity and Christians can’t stand by and be silent. We have to speak out.

I know you praise the Thomas More Law Center but I want to turn around and praise WallBuilders because you are giving the kind of information that people have to have to understand what is going on, to understand the history of our nation. They’re not teaching history anymore to show American exceptionalism, and I believe in American exceptionalism, we are the shining city on the hill, and if we don’t keep faith with our Founding Fathers, faith with the Judeo-Christian heritage and moral values that we have, America will disintegrate like every other huge power that existed in history.

Last year, I wrote a post about Gerald Marszalek, a high school wrestling coach in Dearborn, Michigan who was let go due to concerns that he had been allowing an assistant coach, a local clergyman, to try to convert Muslim students to Christianity.  In that post I excerpted an article from the Detroit Free Press which is no longer available on-line: 

According to Marszalek, parents and community leaders, [Principal Imad] Fadlallah and other parents have long been concerned about contacts between the wrestling team and a local clergyman, the Rev. Trey Hancock of the Dearborn Assembly of God.

Hancock, who helped Marszalek with the team for 10 years, and whose son, Paul, is now a member, confirmed that he attempts to convert Muslim youths to Christianity and that he baptized a 15-year-old Muslim student in Port Huron a few years ago.

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Hancock insisted that he never attempted a conversion as part of his work with the wrestling team, or on school grounds. But when asked if he understood the concerns of Muslim parents, he said, "I consider it my work to pastor to anyone who is within my reach. So I can imagine they would be concerned. But is the Dearborn Public Schools going to be dictating what every pastor can or cannot do within his congregation?"

As I said at the time, the problem was not what Hancock was doing “within his congregation” but rather what he was doing in his capacity as a coach. If the roles here had been reversed and a Muslim coach had been trying to convert Christian students, you can rest assured that the Right would have gone absolutely ballistic.

That was the last we had heard of it, until today when we learned that Marszalek is now suing to get his job back:

Marszalek's attorney, Brandon Bolling, said his client coached at the school for 35 years and wants his job back.

"He was going to complete one last season to try to get to 500 wins," Bolling said.

For the record, Bolling just so happens to be an attorney for the Thomas Moore Law Center, which is a right-wing legal organization "dedicated to the defense and promotion of the religious freedom of Christians ... [by] providing legal representation without charge to defend and protect Christians and their religious beliefs in the public square."

In the organization's press release announcing the suit, they say that the case is not about a coach using his position to proselytize and convert Muslim students but rather about what happens when Muslims get all uppity:

Richard Thompson, President and Chief Counsel of the Thomas More Law Center commented, “We are getting a glimpse of what happens when Muslims who refuse to accept American values and principles gain political power in an American community. Failure to renew coach Marszalek’s contract had nothing to do with wrestling and everything to do with religion.”

The release also claims that "Principal Fadlallah was so upset by the conversion that he punched the student and informed him he had disgraced his family."  I have been unable to find any articles that independently verify this allegation and frankly find it a little hard to believe that Fadlallah would still be Principal if he had punched a student.