Friday, February 24, 2006

British Lord Warns American Christians

Pastor Tom Crouse of the Holland Congregational Church, who put together the "Mr. Hetero" event in Worcester last week, is a guest on the MassResistance radio program this weekend. (WTTT Boston, AM1150, Saturday 9 a.m. and Sunday 7 p.m.) He mentions that the Christian churches have really chickened out on the LGBT issue, and even left him hanging once those activists descended on him (including death threats). His event , essentially a traditional Biblical religious take on homosexuality, needs to be defended by all pro-family religous conservatives, whatever one's denomination.

(What's happened to America's backbone? Whether vis-a-vis Islamic terrorits or "gay" terrorists, we observe a wussiness unmatched in American history. Blame it on the "feminization" of America?)

Apropos, we saw yet another urgent warning to American Christians to show more courage before our freedom of religion disappears. As reported by Agape Press, a member of the British House of Lords spoke at a recent convention of religious broadcasters:

A member of the British House of Lords has told the National Religious Broadcasters (NRB) convention in Dallas that biblical preaching could be outlawed unless Christians become more politically active.

Recently the British Parliament nearly passed legislation that would have amended that nation's Racial and Religious Hatred Bill and outlawed incitement to religious hatred. The measure lost by a single vote -- the vote of Prime Minister Tony Blair, who left early, confident that the bill would pass without him.

John Taylor, a member of the House of Lords, spoke at this week's NRB gathering in Texas. Taylor said passage of the bill could have led to pastors being arrested for so-called "hate speech." Unless Christians take action, says Taylor, clergy in his country -- as well as in the United States -- could fall victim to such statutes, should they be enacted.

"There's an old saying that things won't change until people change," Taylor says. "So we can moan about these [political] institutions and so forth, or we can basically get in there. We are called to be salt and light -- so why don't we take over the Senate and Congress and so forth?"

Our friend John Haskins comments:

We have seen a Swedish pastor arrested and sentenced to four years in prison for preaching from his Bible against homosexuality. We have seen many similar things happen in Britain, elsewhere in Europe, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the United States. We are in the midst of the biggest tidal change in Western Civilization, possibly since Constantine embraced Christianity -- bigger probably than the onset of fascism and communism, and bigger than the Protestant Reformation.

Yet we vastly outnumber the "enemy." All of this is possible only because the Christian Church has been preoccupied with materialism and conformity. We have betrayed the legacy that we were obliged to preserve for our children -- and have done so while using their material prosperity as the excuse. Even most of our church leaders are totally caught up in middle-class lifestyle Christianity. "We have met the enemy, and it is us."