RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/06/08/should-christians-declare-a-state-of-emergency-too/

“Just to be clear, we’re not advocating that Christians declare a state of emergency. Declaring something a “state of emergency” is little more than an attempt to cut off debate and characterize the other side of an issue as an enemy.”

Less than six months after President Joe Biden signed the Respect for Marriage Act, which codified gay marriages, the Human Rights Campaign declared its first-ever “state of emergency” for “LGBTQ+ people.”

Why? Because of a supposed spike in “legislative assaults sweeping state houses this year.”

“More than 75 anti-LGBTQ+ bills have been signed into law this year alone, more than doubling last year’s number, which was previously the worst year on record,” the HRC says.

But look closely. Almost every single bill on the “assault” list is legislation designed to protect children from the omnipresent and increasingly aggressive “transgender” community.

The list includes things such as bans on doctors performing sterilization procedures or prescribing dangerous puberty-blocking drugs to minors. It includes Florida’s ban on public schools teaching children under age 9 about gay sex, and removing books from elementary school libraries that are too pornographic to show on local news programs. It includes protections for girls who don’t want to share lockers with boys (who claim to be girls) or be forced to unfairly compete in sports with physically dominant males. The list includes laws that prevent schools from “transitioning” children behind their parents’ backs.

It’s our guess that most people would view these sorts of measures as reasonable safeguards, not worthy of a “state of emergency” declaration.

Still, if we’re going to throw around such declarations willy-nilly, why shouldn’t Christians declare a state of emergency? After all, their case is probably as strong, if not stronger, than the Human Rights Campaign’s.

Across the country, Christianity is under assault, physically, emotionally and legally, with attacks often coming from the highest levels of government.

Here are just a few recent examples.

• In Reading, Pennsylvania, across the street from a gay pride event, Damon Atkins was interrupted by local police while reading a verse from 1 Corinthians 14:33 — “For God is not a God of disorder but of peace — as in all the congregations of the Lord’s people” — and then he was arrested when asserting his free speech rights. The event was caught on video and shared on Twitter.
• In Baltimore, two elderly pro-life protestors were brutally beaten for praying outside a Planned Parenthood clinic.
• In just the first three months of this year, there were 69 attacks on churches, including shootings, arson, vandalism, and bomb threats, according to the Family Research Council.
• The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops reports 260 attacks on Catholic churches since 2020.
• After pro-Christian ads ran during the Super Bowl, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez (who is routinely touted as a future presidential candidate) tweeted, “Something tells me Jesus would not spend millions of dollars on Super Bowl ads to make fascism look benign.”
• Boston, San Francisco, the District of Columbia, and the state of Illinois revoked licenses or ended government contracts for adoption services because they would place children only with married heterosexual couples.
• The University of California Hastings College of Law denied student organization status to only one group, the Christian Legal Society.
• The Health and Human Services Department threatened to strip St. Francis Health System — a Catholic hospital system in Oklahoma — of its federal funding for refusing to blow out a sanctuary candle in its hospital chapel. It backed down after howls of protest.
• The Los Angeles Dodgers awarded the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence — an overtly anti-Catholic drag-queen group — their Community Hero Award.
• The Education Department released a “guidance” document about prayer in schools that suggests “schools must rid religious messages from any student speech if the public school deems it to be coercive toward other students,” according to the Heritage Foundation’s Sarah Parshall Parry.
• A leaked document showed that the FBI had been targeting Catholics who attended Latin masses as potential terrorist threats.
• The Homeland Security Department awarded a “Targeted Violence and Terrorism Prevention” grant to a group that linked the Christian Broadcasting Network and Turning Point USA, among other groups, with militant neo-Nazis. The Media Research Center, which uncovered this document, described it as “weaponizing a government-funded anti-terrorism grant program in an effort to destroy conservatives, Christians, and the Republican Party.”
• The Southern Poverty Law Center, which brands several mainstream conservative and Christian organizations as “hate groups,” recently added parents’ rights groups, many of them Christian-oriented, to its list.

Christians could also argue that these assaults are all having their intended effect.

While the number of young people who identify as “trans” has more than doubled in the past five years, the number who identify as Christian has steadily declined.

Gallup found that church membership fell below 50% in 2020. And a  Pew Research Center report from last fall said that, based on current trends, those who merely identify as “Christians could make up less than half of the U.S. population within a few decades,” while those affiliated with other religions, or none at all, climb.

Just to be clear, we’re not advocating that Christians declare a state of emergency. Declaring something a “state of emergency” is little more than an attempt to cut off debate and characterize the other side of an issue as an enemy.