Franke: Christian Persecution Hits Home
by Mark Franke
“Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account.” (Matthew 5:11 ESV)
He did warn us.
Christians have been persecuted throughout history but always elsewhere. So why here? And why now? This is America, a nation founded on unalienable rights being granted by a Creator most everyone in 1776 assumed was the Christian God.
Growing up in the 1950s, everyone I knew went to church on Sunday. Well, almost everyone. Even those who didn’t attend church recognized the importance of Christianity as the basis for American society.
Even public schools had prayers, as I found out as I attended my first public school in grade nine after eight years in a Lutheran school. Nobody complained when our home room teacher opened each day with a prayer.
Witnesses in court ended their oath with “so help me God.” Legislatures opened their sessions with prayer as did many other civic organizations. The American Legion, of which I am a Son because of my father’s World War II and Korean War service, still has regular prayers even though the organization is technically “non-sectarian.” “God and country” are the watchwords for these veterans.
But this is not my father’s America. The news over the past several years is replete with stories of business leaders, public servants and others being “canceled” for stating they are practicing Christians. The Mozilla Foundation president and the Atlanta fire chief are just two highly publicized examples of this intolerance, each having lost his job and income in outbursts of woke prejudice.
Western civilization is built on Christianity or the Judeo-Christian ethic if you will. Yet we have always been a religiously tolerant nation, thanks to Thomas Jefferson, George Mason and James Madison among others of our Founding Fathers. Note these words from the First Amendment:
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;”
This liberty is first to be listed in an amendment that also guarantees free speech, free assembly and a free press. The concept of separation of church and state is not required in this amendment, certainly not to the extent of prohibiting religion’s “free exercise” or giving sanction to those who are determined to drive it out of the public square.
My parents, God rest their souls, would be appalled at what is happening now. The persecution is real but cloaked in a “bodyguard of lies” to steal a phrase from Winston Churchill. It is not even subtle now if one lives elsewhere from flyover country. We Hoosiers tend to be ten to twenty years behind the coasts, so surely it is headed here. And my grandchildren will have to survive the onslaught.
Do you think I am crying wolf? Then consider these two prosecutions in the ostensibly Christian West.
Justin Trudeau’s Canada has just promulgated a law that makes it a criminal offense to engage what is called “conversion therapy.” This apparently applies to anyone promoting heterosexuality. The fear is that it will be used against Christian churches and pastors. Canada’s track record of targeting churches during Covid lends credibility to this fear. Time will tell.
More worrisome is a current trial in Finland, where the government is prosecuting the bishop of the Lutheran Finnish Church and a member of Parliament for doing the unthinkable: quoting Holy Scripture on current issues. The Bible has now become a book of “hate speech” according to these woke governmental officials. Note that about two-thirds of Finns hold membership in Bishop Juhana Pohjola’s church and that the Finnish constitution protects free speech and the free exercise of religion. Be that as it may, using the word “sin” can be “harmful” according to the prosecution.
Even more ludicrous, ludicrous that is if it weren’t so chilling, is the assertion that the Bible cannot overrule Finnish law even within a person’s conscience. In other words a simple act of the Finnish parliament can invalidate all or part of Holy Scripture. It is one thing to choose to disbelieve what the Bible teaches and an entirely different thing to make it illegal for others to believe it.
If it is happening in Finland and in Canada, how long before the same thing happens in America? Was the hostile state authoritarianism Christian churches suffered during Covid merely the first salvo in a war to eradicate religious freedom and conscience?
Still, I take comfort in these words of St. Paul: “Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap.” (Galatians 6:7 ESV)
And it is strength that I take from these words of St. Peter during his trial nearly 2,000 years ago: “We must obey God rather than men.” (Acts 5:29 ESV)
Mark Franke, M.B.A., an adjunct scholar of the Indiana Policy Review and its book reviewer, is formerly an associate vice-chancellor at Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne.
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