Perhaps the most startling quality of world leaders today is that they do not believe in much beyond their own wants and needs. Many will feign a belief in God for the sake of appearances, but true believers are hard to find. In the West, where Christianity has shaped society for two thousand years, it is more common to find governments punishing Christians for their faith than to see biblical doctrine defended.
Finnish Member of Parliament Päivi Räsänen, a rare Christian politician in our overwhelmingly secular times, has spent the last several years defending herself against criminal “hate speech” charges for quoting the Bible. Prosecutors claim that her religious convictions concerning marriage and morality are “insulting” and “degrading” and violate “sexual rights.” Furthermore, her accusers insist that the State “can limit freedom of expression in the outward expression of religion.”
Such despotic statements amount to nothing less than full-throated attacks against religious freedom. Faithful Christians are not Christian for merely an hour or two during church service each week. They do not slip in and out of their Christian identity as a worker might put on overalls and gloves. Believers walk the walk in everything they do. For Finnish authorities to demand that Räsänen hide her faith is to demand that she no longer be a practicing Christian. Only a government that believes in nothing beyond its own power would command a citizen to obey the State by disobeying God.
Finland is far from the only Western nation putting God on trial. During the “Reign of CV Terror,” New Zealand, Australia, Canada, the United States, and most of Europe waged a perverse kind of spiritual war against churches and congregations. Priests, pastors, and rabbis were threatened with criminal charges for opening their doors to a suffering public, and government agents tracked mobile phones and recorded license plate numbers of faithful parishioners who attended religious services.
Amid a horrendous global effort to prevent people from praying together, Canada’s Justin Trudeau distinguished himself as a tyrant par excellence by sanctioning the repeated arrest of Polish-Canadian Pastor Artur Pawlowski. His “crime”? He continued to hold church services for those seeking salvation in defiance of Canadian officials’ attempts to shut him down.
Video of Pastor Pawlowski throwing armed police out of his church during an Easter service back in 2021 remains one of the most inspiring examples of regular citizens rejecting State tyranny. Comparing Canada’s militant authoritarianism to what he witnessed growing up “under a communist dictatorship behind the Iron Curtain, under the boots of the Soviets,” Pawlowski repeatedly implored Westerners: “We as lions should never bow before the hyenas.” Because the good pastor possesses moral courage, Trudeau and his government of Cheka thugs have done their best to ruin him
Abusing Christians has become an obsession for American leftists. Catholic-in-name-only Joe Biden and Attorney General Merrick Garland’s Department of Religious Persecution have spent the last three years targeting pro-life Americans who pray near abortion clinics. Heavily armed agents of the Gestapo FBI have executed pre-dawn raids against Christians with no criminal records because they offend the pro-abortion sensibilities of the State. While federal authorities do next to nothing to investigate attacks on churches and pro-life organizations, they throw grandparents in prison to serve multi-year sentences for the “crime” of having peacefully protested outside of notorious abortion businesses.
Similar arrests and prosecutions of pro-life Christians regularly take place in the United Kingdom, too, where police officers have been filmed asking citizens whether or not they are silently praying on public sidewalks. If so, it’s off to the hoosegow! Praying outside is now forbidden! The UK government has been shamefully clear that God is permitted only in certain designated areas where He may be best hidden from the public. He is unwelcome everywhere else.
Unfortunately, that is also the case in France, Germany, and much of Europe, where Christians are regularly demonized as being “fascist” or “far-right.” The continent that is home to the Vatican and the birthplace of the Protestant Reformation has become hostile to biblical teachings and discriminatory against all those who belong to a Christian church. As Douglas Murray has pointed out in his insightful book, The Strange Death of Europe, European nations seem determined to destroy their shared civilization. In abandoning God and criminalizing Christians, they will surely succeed.
Nowhere are leftists more committed to burying Christianity than in the United States. Why is that? For the same reason that the Chinese Communist Party tortures, enslaves, and murders Christians living within its domain: Christians understand that God’s authority supersedes that of the State. China must prevent Christianity from growing within its borders because a population faithfully obedient to God will not remain mindlessly obedient to a communist dictatorship. Likewise, American Marxists must first dismantle American Christians’ spiritual faith before they can cultivate a widespread dependence upon and deification of D.C.’s Deep State.
In 1954, Congress approved an amendment by Sen. Lyndon Johnson to prohibit 501(c)(3) organizations, which includes charities and churches, from engaging in any political campaign activity. To the extent Congress has revisited the ban over the years, it has in fact strengthened the ban. The GOP who held majorities in both houses of Congress and a Republican in the WH allowed this to occur without any discussion or debate. I wonder if this autocratic piece of legislation spawned three devastating hurricanes...Carol. Edna and Hazel.
ReplyDeleteTo follow this up - The amendment was proposed by Senator Lyndon B. Johnson on July 2, 1954. One year later on July 2, 1955 LBJ suffered a near fatal heart attack. A coincidence? I don't think so.
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