Penna Dexter is a radio commentator and columnist for various Christian conservative outlets. She is a frequent commentator and guest host for Point of View Radio Talk Show with Kerby Anderson. Her weekly commentaries air on the Moody Broadcasting Network and the Bott Radio Network. Penna’s columns appear at Baptist Press and the Christian Post blog page. Penna is an executive at Todd Dexter & Associates, the integrated marketing consulting company founded by her husband, Todd Dexter.

For eight years she served as Marlin Maddoux’s co-host on Point of View and for two years she co-hosted a daily drive time live broadcast on the Dallas-based Criswell Radio Network.

Penna’s interest in conservative politics and the issues that affect the family began when she was a child working on political campaigns with her parents. She graduated from the University of Southern California with a degree in International Relations. She spent 8 years in the banking industry. She and her husband Todd have three children who are in their twenties. They are members of Trinity Presbyterian Church.

Penna recently served a term on the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention. She served on the Southern Baptist Convention’s Resolutions Committee in 2003, 2004, and 2005. She served for three years as a Texas Area Director for Concerned Women for America. She serves on the Executive Advisory Board for Golden Corridor Republican Women’s Club in Dallas, Texas.

PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) — Denouncing the deadly attack on a Christmas market in Germany, President-elect Donald Trump renewed his vow to stop radical terror groups and appeared to suggest a willingness to move ahead with his campaign pledge to ban temporarily Muslim immigrants from coming to the United States.

Trump proposed the Muslim ban during the Republican primary campaign, drawing sharp criticism from both parties. During the general election, he shifted his rhetoric to focus on temporarily halting immigration from an unspecified list of countries with ties to terrorism, though he did not disavow the Muslim ban, which is still prominently displayed on his campaign website.

The president-elect, when asked Wednesday if the attack in Berlin would cause him to evaluate the proposed ban or a possible registry of Muslims in the United States, said “You know my plans. All along, I’ve been proven to be right, 100 percent correct.”

“What’s happening is disgraceful,” said Trump, who deemed the violence “an attack on humanity, and it’s got to be stopped.”

Alexia Palma was a health educator in Houston who was fired from her job for her Catholic beliefs.

First Liberty filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) on Palma’s behalf Wednesday against Legacy Community Health (LCH), Palma’s former employer.

“The company gave Alexia an ultimatum — violate your faith or be fired,” said First Liberty Senior Counsel Jeremy Dys. “That’s a violation of federal law and it’s blatant religious discrimination.”

Manger scenes were routinely shown in public places before the anti-Christian crusade that the Supreme Court unleashed, starting in the 1960s and 1970s, with its anti-God-in-public type of decisions.

Subsequently, the Supreme Court ruled in Lynch v. Donnelly (1984) in a case out of Pawtucket, Rhode Island, that if a manger scene was surrounded by enough reindeers and other secular symbols of the season, the government could allow it on public property. Many of these anti-God cases were initiated by the legal group, the ACLU (the American Civil Liberties Union).

The fifth graders at Centerville Elementary School in Lancaster County, Pa., have been performing “A Christmas Carol” for decades. But this year that tradition came to an abrupt end.

Parents told local reporters the play was canceled because two parents complained about a line in the Charles Dickens holiday classic.

Where I live (near Los Angeles) you can drive for blocks without seeing a single home with Christmas lights, let alone a manger scene or some other religious decoration. And you can drive miles and see fewer than a dozen.

I grew up in Brooklyn, New York, in an area where most residents were either Italian or Jewish. So many homes had Christmas decorations that you could almost be sure that if the home wasn’t decorated, a Jewish family lived in it. And while I was — and remain — a committed Jew, I loved — and still love — those decorated homes. It makes December special.

But today, December is not special in large swathes of America. Secularism has taken its toll. And the lack of color this time of the year compared to decades ago perfectly exemplifies some of its consequences.

Secularism literally and figuratively knocks color out of life.