By J.B. Shurk
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 COVID 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.
Unlike every other nation in the world, the United States was founded on the principles that all people possess God-given rights and that legitimate government exists only so long as faithful citizens provide their continuing consent. The Declaration of Independence, the Preamble to the U.S. Constitution, and the Bill of Rights explicitly encourage the American people to construct forms of government that secure their freedoms and God’s blessings. Under such a system, no president, lawmaker, or judge can dismiss another’s natural rights without violating his sworn duty to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution. Faithfully protecting the people’s natural liberties must take precedence over any government official’s wants or needs. It is why Benjamin Franklin suggested that the motto, “Rebellion to Tyrants is obedience to God,” be used for the official Seal of the United States. It is also why Thomas Jefferson chose this same motto for his personal seal. Our Founding Fathers placed God’s will far above their own.
Consequently, Marxist saboteurs inside the United States have understood for well over a century that the only way to deprive Americans of their inalienable liberties is to first separate them from God. Without actively seeking God’s guidance, Americans cannot expect to enjoy God’s blessings. It is a sure-fire and diabolical path toward tyranny.
In pursuit of this wicked agenda, Marxists have used litigation and cultural revolution to attack Christianity and remove it from the public square. They have adopted an apocryphal understanding of the First Amendment’s prohibition against the establishment of a State religion to radically abridge Americans’ First Amendment right to exercise their own religion. Utilizing this false imperative to “separate church from State” as a battering ram to demolish religious conviction, Marxists have steadily undermined Americans’ relationship with God. They have purged religious teachings and moral education from public schools. They have sued towns and local officials for making any gesture that recognizes the truth of a loving God. They have ostracized true believers and made it nearly impossible for them to serve as elected leaders while simultaneously adhering to the principles of their faith.
The consequences have been as monstrous as they were predictable. As Marxists have mocked virtue and glorified sin, they have promoted widespread loneliness and moral decay. They have replaced strong and supportive families with a grab bag of welfare handouts from the State. They have enfeebled young adults to such a degree that most are aimless and psychologically unmoored. They have pushed “transgender” madness and sexual promiscuity at such an early age that adolescents struggle to understand themselves or how to form healthy relationships.
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2024/05/the_west_s_war_on_god.html