Welcome to a breakpoint, a daily look at an ever-changing culture through the lens of

unchanging truth.

The Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street.

At the heart of so many culture war issues is a question of whether or not religious organizations and individuals have the right to order their public lives around their deeply held beliefs.

While most Americans will grant that we all have a right to believe whatever we want,

the First Amendment guarantees what's called the free exercise of religion.

And it's essential to understand exactly what that entails.

Over the last 15 years or so the constitutional guarantee of

free exercise has been tested again and again. Most often by a new set of so-called

rights that are associated with abortion, homosexuality, and

transgenderism rights written into both state and federal law in various ways.

And so, as a result, a group of nuns have been forced to go to court so they would not have to provide insurance coverage for birth control.

Pro-life pregnancy care centers have been forced to argue that they should not be forced to advertise abortion services.

Religious organizations, ministries, and student groups have been forced repeatedly to defend why they

shouldn't be required to hire people who do not hold their beliefs.

When taken together, there's been a concerted push to make

progressive views on sex and gender mandatory for everyone else. And if successful, this would

effectively abolish what's known as America's first freedom,

or at least as the American founders conceived of it.

The good news, recently, one such conflict in Virginia was settled in the right direction.

Last week, a group of churches, Christian schools in the Care Net Pregnancy Center network

reached a settlement with Virginia, specifically the Virginia Attorney General

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