Articles tagged: faith
Posted by: Albert Mohler on July 13, 2004 Classics •
With the 2004 presidential election looming before us, the secular media are sure to begin issuing ominous warnings about the influence of the so-called “Religious Right.” Every four years or so — roughly following the pattern of presidential elections—the media rediscover conservative Christians and set out to warn the rest of the population of the supposed threat posed by evangelicals active in the political sphere.
The Religious Right emerged on the national political scene in a big way in the 1980 presidential election, when Ronald Reagan was elected President with the overwhelming support of evangelical Christians. The evangelical support for Ronald Reagan — who, after all, defeated a “born again” Southern Baptist president—caught the national media by surprise and led to an avalanche of analysis. What would this new evangelical involvement in politics mean for the country? Were the evangelicals here to stay?
This election year promises to be no different, at least in terms of media scrutiny. With issues like same-sex marriage on the national agenda, the values-centered voting patterns of conservative Christians will play a big part in the presidential election. A fascinating look at the Religious Right and its critics is offered by Christian Networks Journal in its Winter 2004 issue, “Religious Right or Wrong?” The issue features an exchange of articles between Rev. Matt Fitzgerald, pastor of Epiphany Church in Chicago, Illinois, and Dr. Ronald H. Nash, professor of Christian Philosophy at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Fitzgerald, representing the religious left, and Nash, a prominent conservative philosopher, present a lively exchange focused on the influence of the Religious Right.
In, “Why the Religious Right is Wrong,” Fitzgerald aims a broadside attack on the political involvement of conservative Christians. Fitzgerald, we might note, does not mince words. He identifies all evangelicals as fundamentalists, and charges that “belief in the inerrancy of Scripture saps God of majesty and mystery.” Fitzgerald claims that his church takes the Bible “too seriously to read it literally,” and argues that though “the Christian story speaks God’s truth,” this story is not to be limited to the Holy Scriptures. As he argues, “the doctrine of Biblical infallibility wants to trap the Divine inside texts that God’s power ultimately transcends.” This misrepresentation of the doctrine of biblical inerrancy is eccentric, to say the least. Doctrines do not have “wants” and are incapable of “trapping” the Divine.
Though Fitzgerald is predictably opposed to evangelicals on the basis of political judgment, he is remarkably candid in addressing his critique to the Gospel as preached and taught in evangelical churches. As he explains, “Conservative churchgoers are taught to believe that they deserve judgment, but that Jesus comes rushing in to save them.” Evangelicals, Fitzgerald asserts, believe that humanity is “doomed” by its sinfulness and must be rescued from without, by the intervention of God in the person of Jesus Christ. According to Fitzgerald, conservative churches grow because conservative Christians “flock” to churches which tell the story of redemption and rescue. According to his analysis, “the threat of judgment plays a necessary role in the story that shapes their lives.”
Amazingly enough, Fitzgerald is bold to announce that liberal churches no longer believe in the threat of divine judgment and thus no longer look to rescue by a divine Savior. Even as evangelical Christians experience the radical transformation that comes by faith in Jesus Christ, “few people in the mainline church experience this sort of transformation.”
Fitzgerald explains that the liberal churches embraced a protest against “rigid and controlling religious orthodoxy and political tyranny.” Attempting to keep one foot in the modern world and the other in the Christian tradition, the mainline churches have accommodated themselves to a modernist perspective—a position Fitzgerald describes as “a very honest stance.”
What about the threat of divine judgment? “As people who believe that humanity has the answer to its own problems we no longer believe we’re doomed,” he explains. As Fitzgerald parodies the evangelical understanding of the Gospel, he accuses us of forcing a “rescue” on persons who are only standing in knee-deep water, and thus in need of no rescue at all. Liberal churches see the situation otherwise: “We think we’re splashing around in the shallow end of some motel pool, but Christian songs, scripture and stories treat us as if we are drowning in a storm-tossed sea. Because its liberal Protestant listeners no longer subscribe to the notion that humanity is in grave danger, the message of salvation is rendered nonsensical. Jesus has become the answer to a question we are no longer asking.”
Fitzgerald is not at all pleased that conservative Christians are now politically organized and involved in the political sphere. He declares that his church welcomes people “of all sexual orientations.” He identifies his vision of Christianity with the political left and charges the Religious Right with an “arrogant conflation of God’s will with American military might.”
Dr. Ronald Nash doesn’t beat around the bush in his response to Fitzgerald’s critique. One of America’s most prominent Christian apologists, Nash accuses Fitzgerald of demonstrating “either a defective grasp of American church history over the past fifty years and/or an emotional problem that makes one wonder if he knows what he’s talking about.” Take that, Mister “I take the Bible too seriously to read it literally.”
Turning the question on Fitzgerald himself, Nash accuses the Chicago pastor of harboring ill will towards evangelicals, who are simply following the example set by religious liberals in organizing themselves politically and seeking to influence public policy. At the same time, Nash understands that Fitzgerald’s agenda goes beyond politics.
“Suddenly the shoe is on the other foot,” Nash observes. “Religious conservatives have discovered the social dimension of the Gospel—although some never really lost sight of it. Now the liberals like Rev. Fitzgerald wish conservatives would go back into their churches and forget the political arena. Well, perhaps that sentence is too simplistic. Rev. Fitzgerald, it appears, would also prefer that they stop preaching their Gospel.”
Religious liberals conveniently force all evangelicals into their concept of fundamentalism, and then warn the nation of a horde of unwashed conservatives seeking to force an extreme vision on the nation. The scare tactics aren’t working.
Nash knows an evangelical when he sees one, and he defines an evangelical as “a Christian believer whose theology is traditional or orthodox, who takes the Bible as his ultimate authority in matters of faith and practice, who has had a religious conversion, and who is interested in helping others have a similar conversion experience.”
As Nash explains, evangelicals are deeply concerned about the nation’s moral crisis, the state of public schools, the mounting death toll of abortion, as well as a host of other issues including racial and social justice, poverty, and the environment. He points to evangelical ministries directed toward the alleviation of poverty and human suffering around the world. A published author and expert in the Christian analysis of economics, Nash also asserts that evangelicals generally oppose liberal social programs “because they are often counter-productive and they hurt the poor.” With wit sustained by wisdom, Nash observes: “With friends like the religious left, America’s poor and disadvantaged do not need any enemies.”
Finally, Nash accuses Fitzgerald and fellow leaders of the religious left of harboring a deep and dishonest hostility toward Christian conservatives, treating them as “bare-footed Neanderthals living in the fever swamps of Tennessee.” As Nash laments, “I think we have a right to expect a minister to be trained in the church history of the past fifty years and speak the truth.” According to Nash, “Fitzgerald owes an apology to the millions of faithful Christians he has maligned in his article.”
I wouldn’t wait long for that apology, for Fitzgerald and his fellow religious liberals see the Religious Right as a formidable threat and one they cannot dare to take seriously in terms of an intellectual argument. Liberalism’s arguments are now threadbare and worn, and conservatives have been offering the most compelling policy proposals put forward in the public square over the last several years. Political liberalism is on the retreat, even as lifestyle liberalism is now on the ascent in America and in other advanced nations.
Nevertheless, Fitzgerald’s acid attack is useful in helping evangelicals to see how the “other side” sees us. Nash’s article should remind evangelicals that this fight is not going to be won with pithy platitudes and public politeness. Here’s hoping that Professor Nash is right when he argues that religious conservatives are not about to turn on their heels and retreat from the political arena. The next few months should show us where we stand.
Sources: See Christian Networks Journal
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Posted by: Dwayne Hastings on July 15, 2004 Classics •
By the time the polls closed on Election Day 2000, 56 million American adults with the right to vote had not. Over half of those individuals (37.3 million) hadn’t even bothered to register to vote.
Those numbers concerned Richard Land and were the impetus behind the development of iVoteValues.com, an initiative to register and educate voters launched by the SBC’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission. Land is president of the ERLC.
The goal of the “grassroots voter mobilization and education effort” is to register two million previously unregistered but qualified Americans for the 2008 election cycle. The initiative also will work to promote an awareness of the immediate and long-term importance of “values-based voting.” The effort’s linchpin: iVoteValues.com
While voter turnout among registered voters in 2000 bounced back from a modern-day low of 82 percent in the presidential contest between Clinton and Dole in 1996 (86 percent of registered voters cast a ballot in 2000), just over 66 percent of Americans who were actually eligible to vote voted in the last presidential election.
Land also is convinced many voters who are voting don’t consider scriptural precepts when they vote. And a survey of American voters proves his point. Just over a third of Americans say their faith guides their voting decisions, according to a recent study by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.
Another study confirmed that most Americans leave their faith out of their voting decisions. Only 39 percent of adults surveyed by the Gallup organization in November 2003 said their personal religious beliefs were very or extremely important in making choices in the polling booth. A similar study by the Pew Forum discovered 38 percent of respondents considered their faith having an impact on how they vote.
Interestingly, the Pew Forum survey found four out of ten Americans (41 percent) believe there has been too little reference to religion by politicians. Twenty-one percent of people said there had been too much reference to religious faith by politicians. Just under a third of those surveyed said there was the “right amount” of expressions of faith and prayer by political leaders.
The biblical footing for iVoteValues.com’s call to civic engagement by Christians is solid, according to Land, noting Jesus urges His followers to be “salt” and “light” in the culture. Land says participation in the electoral process should be an important element of every believer’s life.
Looking to Scripture, Land is confident God expects Christians to register to vote and vote for the candidates whose positions most closely square with His values. That is the intent of the iVoteValues.com resources, he says, particularly the effort’s Web site that allows citizens to begin the voter registration process, details elements of the two major party’s platforms, and delineates the Bible’s position on many critical issues.
Yet he knows it is an uphill battle to engage that segment of the U.S. adult population that declines to take part in the country’s electoral process.
This section of the American public came under scrutiny in the “Vanishing Voter Project” of Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, where the “public’s waning interest in political campaigns” has been examined at length.
The project discovered that in 1960, 60 percent of the nation’s televisions tuned in to the October debates between Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy; in 2000, fewer than 30 percent watched the debates between Gore and Bush.
Why the drop-off in interest and the resultant tendency to leave one’s faith at home when going into the voting booth? More media alternatives (cable channels); increasingly bitter and longer campaigns; media saturation (24/7 news and analysis on TV and the Internet); diminishing party loyalties; and an increased number of so-call “independent” voters, reports the Harvard-based project.
In a June 2000 Pew Research Center for the People and the Press poll of Americans who acknowledged they don’t usually vote, 44 percent said it wouldn’t make much of a difference whether George W. Bush or Al Gore was elected president.
A Census Bureau study after the 1996 election, which saw turnout at record lows, determined the primary reason registered voters didn’t vote was because they couldn’t take time off from work or were simply too busy.
But Land believes this apathetic behavior is fueled by something other than people having too much to do on Election Day. He says too many people—voters and nonvoters alike—lack appreciation for the fact that one’s faith-based values should be impacting their decisions in the voting booth.
Once Americans understand that the Bible has something to say about contemporary issues, and by extension the positions of the candidates, Land believes more Americans will register and vote and those who already are voting will consider more carefully the policy positions of the candidates.
This is at the core of the iVoteValues.com effort, he insists. It is why well-known figures such as Jay Sekulow of the American Center for Law and Justice and Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council are slated to join Land on visits to key cities for iVoteValues.com rallies this summer. The initiative will be well represented by a specially outfitted iVote.Values.com 18-wheel tractor-trailer that will be touring the country to aid in voter awareness and voter registration efforts.
The effort also calls for churches to observe two National Voter Registration Days: Sunday, July 4, and Sunday, September 26 (the final Sunday before the voter registration deadline in most states). iVoteValues.com will provide churches with non-partisan voter registration and voter awareness resources that are well within the Internal Tax code restrictions for 501©(3) organizations, explains Land, saying once individuals are registered to vote, statistics show they normally make it to the polls on Election Day.
“Most people who are registered to vote actually vote,” agrees Amie Jamieson in a U.S. Census Bureau release. “Historically, the likelihood of actually voting, once registered, has remained high, with the peak at 91 percent in 1968.”
If Richard Land has his way, the 2004 elections will go down in history with the highest voter participation ever and more Americans of faith than ever will understand the Bible does have something to say about their voting decisions. “How America votes has a tremendous impact on the future of the nation and its citizens,” Land concludes.
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Posted by: Albert Mohler on September 3, 2004 Classics •
Over the last 20 years, evangelical Christians have been politically mobilized in an outpouring of moral concern and political engagement unprecedented since the crusade against slavery in the 19th century. Is this a good development? With the 2004 presidential campaign now under way, the issue of political involvement emerges anew with urgency.
To what extent should Christians be involved in the political process?
This question has troubled the Christian conscience for centuries. The emergence of the modern evangelical movement in the post World War II era brought a renewed concern for engagement with the culture and the political process. The late Carl F. H. Henry addressed evangelicals with a manifesto for Christian engagement in his landmark book The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism. As Dr. Henry eloquently argued, disengagement from the critical issues of the day is not an option.
An evangelical theology for political participation must be grounded in the larger context of cultural engagement. As the Christian worldview makes clear, our ultimate concern must be the glory of God. Building from that, we understand that when we are instructed by Scripture to love God and then to love our neighbor as ourselves, we are given a clear mandate for the right kind of cultural engagement.
We love our neighbor because we first love God. In His sovereignty, our Creator has put us within this cultural context in order that we may display His glory by preaching the gospel, confronting persons with God’s truth, and serving as agents of salt and light in a dark and fallen world. In other words, love of God leads us to love our neighbor—and love of neighbor requires our participation in the culture and in the political process.
Writing even as the Romans Empire fell, Augustine, the great bishop and theologian of the early church, made this case in his monumental work, The City of God. As Augustine explained, humanity is confronted by two cities—the City of God and the City of Man. The City of God is eternal, and takes as its sole concern the greater glory of God. In the City of God, all things are ruled by God’s Word, and the perfect rule of God is the passion of all its citizens.
In the City of Man, however, the reality is very different. This city is filled with mixed passions, mixed allegiances, and compromised principles. Though the City of God is marked by unconditional obedience to the command of God, citizens of the City of Man demonstrate deadly patterns of disobedience, even as they celebrate and claim their moral autonomy, and then revolt against the Creator.
Of course, we know that the City of God is eternal, even as the City of Man is passing. But this does not mean that the City of Man is ultimately unimportant, and it does not allow the church to forfeit its responsibility to love its citizens. Love of neighbor – grounded in our love for God – requires us to work for good in the City of Man, even as we set as our first priority the preaching of the gospel—the only means of bringing citizens of the City of Man into citizenship in the City of God.
Thus, Christians bear important responsibilities in both cities. Even as we know that our ultimate citizenship is in heaven, and even as we set our sights on the glory of the City of God, we must work for good, justice, and righteousness in the City of Man. We do so, not merely because we are commanded to love its citizens, but because we know that they are loved by the very God we serve.
From generation to generation, Christians often swing between two extremes, either ignoring the City of Man or considering it to be our main concern. A biblical balance establishes the fact that the City of Man is indeed passing, and chastens us from believing that the City of Man and its realities can ever be of ultimate importance. Yet, we also know that each of us is, by God’s own design, a citizen – though temporarily – of the City of Man. When Jesus instructed that we are to love our neighbor as ourselves, He pointed His followers to the City of Man and gave us a clear assignment. The only alternatives that remain are obedience and disobedience to this call.
Love of neighbor for the sake of loving God is a profound political philosophy that strikes a balance between the disobedience of political disengagement and the idolatry of politics as our main priority. As evangelical Christians, we must engage in political action, not because we believe the conceit that politics is ultimate, but because we must obey our Redeemer when He commanded that we must love our neighbor.
We are concerned for the culture not because we believe that the culture is ultimate, but because we know that our neighbors must hear the gospel, even as we hope and strive for their good, peace, security, and well-being.
The Kingdom of God is not up for vote in the 2004 elections, and there are no polling places in the City of God. Nevertheless, it is by God’s sovereignty that we are now confronted with these times, our current crucial issues of debate, and the political decisions that will be answered in the electoral process.
This is no time for silence, and no time for shirking our responsibilities as Christian citizens. Ominous signs of moral collapse and cultural decay now appear on our contemporary horizon. A society ready to put the institution of marriage up for demolition and transformation is a society losing its most basic moral sense. A culture ready to treat human embryos as material for medical experimentation is a society turning its back on human dignity and the sacredness of human life.
Trouble in the City of Man is a call to action for citizens of the City of God, and that call to action must involve political involvement as well. Christians may well be the last citizens who know the difference between the eternal and the temporal, the ultimate and the urgent. God’s truth is eternal and Christian convictions must be commitments of permanence. Political alliances and arrangements are, by definition, temporary and conditional. This is no time for America’s Christians to confuse the City of Man with the City of God. At the same time, we can never be counted faithful in the City of God if we neglect our duty in the City of Man. That’s a good principle to remember as America gears up for a political season.
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R. Albert Mohler, Jr. is president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky. For more articles and resources by Dr. Mohler, and for information on The Albert Mohler Program, a daily national radio program broadcast on the Salem Radio Network, go to http://www.albertmohler.com. For information on The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, go to http://www.sbts.edu. Send feedback to mail@albertmohler.com.
R. Albert Mohler, Jr. is president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky. For more articles and resources by Dr. Mohler, and for information on The Albert Mohler Program, a daily national radio program broadcast on the Salem Radio Network, go to www.albertmohler.com. For information on The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, go to www.sbts.edu. Send feedback to mail@albertmohler.com.
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Posted by: Richard Land on January 21, 2008 Featured Article •
Article VI of the U.S. Constitution says, “The Senators and Representatives before mentioned and the members of the several state legislatures, and all executive and judicial officers, both of the United States and of the several states, shall be bound by oath or affirmation to support this constitution, but no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States” (emphasis added).
Our Founding Fathers prohibited that a person be a person of any particular faith or of no faith to hold public office or public trust in the United States. Instead, we are to select public officials based upon their character, their public policy record, their policy positions and their vision for our country.
In the famous speech delivered almost 50 years ago regarding his religious faith and his run for the White House, John F. Kennedy noted that while it was a Catholic who was the victim of suspicion in 1960, in other years it may be a Jew or a Quaker or a Unitarian or a Baptist who is targeted because of their faith.
Indeed, as Kennedy reminded the nation, it was the persecution of Baptists in 18th-century Virginia that inspired Thomas Jefferson and James Madison to pass the Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom. In other words, discrimination against a person of any faith opens the door to discrimination against people of all faiths.
While Gov. Mitt Romney has been criticized for his Mormon faith for some time, Gov. Mike Huckabee is the latest target. Huckabee has been criticized by feminist groups because while serving as governor of Arkansas, he and his wife endorsed statements, which appeared in USA Today and World magazine, affirming the Southern Baptist Convention’s confessional stance on the family.
In 1998, the Southern Baptist Convention added an article to its Baptist Faith and Message, the denomination’s confession of faith, addressing the family and marriage. At the time, the priests and priestesses of political correctness, those gurus who take it upon themselves to police what may and may not be said in American society, had a collective fit because the Southern Baptist Convention dared to say that a husband “is to love his wife as Christ loved the church” and a wife “is to submit herself graciously to the servant leadership of her husband, even as the church willingly submits to the headship of Christ.”
You may recall that most newspaper and news magazine editorialists were in a dither as well, printing cartoons portraying Southern Baptists as modern-day Neanderthals, with their knuckles dragging the ground, outfitted in animal skins, and with clubs clutched in their hirsute hands.
I have a somewhat unique perspective on this because I was a member of the committee asked to draft the article on the family for the convention’s consideration and approval in 1998. It is a very clear statement concerning what the Bible teaches about the family. The convention’s elected messengers, from their local churches all across the nation, meeting that year, interestingly enough, in Salt Lake City, overwhelmingly adopted the article on “The Family” as Article XVIII of its confessional statement.
In support, numerous prominent evangelical leaders from across the country endorsed a joint statement that asserted: “Southern Baptists, you are right. At a time when divorce is destroying the fabric of our society, you have taken a bold stand for the biblical principles for marriage and family life.” Now, several years later, these feminists are attacking Mike Huckabee, labeling him as anti-feminist and anti-woman because he signed this statement in support of the Baptist Faith and Message article on the family.
In his Dec. 6, 2007, speech (which Time magazine suggested may be “Romney’s Kennedy moment"), Governor Romney told the assembled crowd at the George H. W. Bush Presidential Library, “A person who is running for political office should not be the chief spokesperson for his faith or his denomination in public life.”
If I had been advising Governor Romney, I would have told him to say, “Look, if you want to know what the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints believes, call Salt Lake City. If you want to know what my values are, what my beliefs are, and how they influence my life, my character, my public service, my policies and my vision for America, call my office or go to my campaign’s Web site.”
If I were Mike Huckabee, I would say, “Listen, we don’t have a religious test for office. I am a Southern Baptist and I subscribe to the Southern Baptist Convention’s confession of faith. If you want to know what Southern Baptists believe, call a local Southern Baptist pastor or read the Baptist Faith and Message. If you want to know what my policy positions are, call my office or go to my website.”
Then I would challenge my feminist critics by saying, “You have no right to accuse me of being anti-woman, for exercising my constitutionally protected right to free expression of my faith in stating what I believe about God’s plan for the family. Unless you can find evidence of anti-woman bias in my public policy statements or my record as governor of Arkansas (and you will not find such evidence), then you are engaging in anti-religious bigotry by attacking me for expressing my beliefs about how husbands and wives ought to fulfill their roles in the voluntary relationship called marriage by some and holy matrimony by me.”
Just as then-Sen. Kennedy spent virtually no time defending Catholicism, but rather the right of a Catholic to run for the presidency, Gov. Huckabee and Gov. Romney should not spend time defending the religious beliefs of their respective faiths. Instead, as Kennedy did before them, they should affirm their right to run and to be judged on their records and their vision for the country’s future.
To ask Gov. Huckabee or Gov. Romney to explain and to defend the details of their personal faith IS a de facto religious test for office, and that is unconstitutional—and un-American. Mike Huckabee has said that he is a person of faith, that his faith defines him. That means his faith impacts his life, shapes his character, and guides him as he faces the crises and issues of life.
How his faith has molded his character, life and vision is fair game in political debate. The precise theological affirmations of his personal faith, however, are not proper subjects for debate, analysis or scrutiny as a candidate in a presidential campaign.
We have no religious test for office in this country. We don’t judge candidates on their faith or their lack of faith; we judge them on how their faith or their lack of faith impacts their lives, character, conscience, public policy positions and their vision for the country’s future.
While discussing this subject, a reporter asked me a provocative question: “Would you apply similar tests to the candidacy of a radical Islamist?”
“Yes, I would,” I responded. “I would not reject someone who was a follower of radical Islam because they were a follower of radical Islam; I would reject that person as a candidate for office because his radical Islamic faith impacts his character by telling him it is all right to kill people who disagree with him under certain circumstances. I would reject him because his faith gives him a vision for America as an Islamic republic that would stifle dissent, deny religious freedom, and make everyone who is not a Muslim a second-class citizen. So I wouldn’t be rejecting a Muslim based upon his radical Islamic faith, I would be rejecting him because of how his faith impacts his character, conscience, life and public policy positions.”
That is the way our Founding Fathers envisioned it to be, and that is the way it should be.
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Posted by: Brent James on January 23, 2008 Biblical Values •
Growing up, I believed that if an adult was on television, especially a polished news anchor, he was perfectly truthful. After all, he was telling us the news. What would he be lying about? Honestly, that is what I thought and I doubt you could’ve convinced me otherwise. My parents didn’t lie to me and I trusted them, so by extension, I afforded their broadcasting counterparts the same allegiance. As Wally Cleaver used to say, “Gee! What a goof!”
Today we call it ‘spinning’ because it gives us all an equal chance of adding our particular ‘slant’ without having to feel that we’ve done anything wrong. But, as believers, we know that some things are wrong even if they are not specifically referred to as such. We call it an ‘absolute’ or ‘law.’ But what happens when, by the whim of some official say, a law (or the enforcement of it) is temporarily suspended? The history of the Israelites is replete with such consequences. Lawlessness abounds.
Matthew 24:12 states, “Because lawlessness is increased, most people’s love will grow cold.” I don’t know about you, but that is not the society I want for my kids or me. Despite my wishes, it is already apparent in our nation.
When cities such as San Francisco or Boston host homosexual pride marches, their mayors waive enforcement of indecency laws and the participants joyfully violate them at will. How can law enforcement NOT enforce laws of that nature? I can understand suspending a handful of traffic laws to ease congestion, but nudity, public urination and lewdness? Would you vote for someone running for office that told you he would not enforce laws he did not like? How about someone believing that public indecency is sometimes acceptable?
Then there’s the police SWAT team in western Colorado that invaded a family’s home with guns drawn, demanding that the 11-year-old son, who had had an accidental fall, accompany them to the hospital. Talk about officials running amok with their authority.
In Wichita, Kansas, pastor Mark Holick was arrested for showing up at a homosexual festival to share Christ with the attendees. His church has also been threatened by the Internal Revenue Service for posting messages on its marquee dealing with the value of human life, based on dozens of Bible references.
Who starts this stuff anyway? Public officials that we elect to serve us, that’s who. This abuse comes from the top, down. If we are going to have a meaningful impact on this blatant disregard for the law then we must start at the ballot box.
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