Posted by
Tom "Papa" Bryant on Tuesday, November 07, 2006 10:55:51 AM
The headline, quite frankly, scared the Hell out of me. The story by Jonathan Wynne-Jones, scared me worse.
I was asked recently why, in the face of the elections yesterday, I have devoted so much time in the weeks preceeding the election to public religious issues.
Well, in part its because that's what interests me. I am, after all, studying for a ministry calling in apologetics. Another reason is because Katie and Josue have had the election angle covered pretty darn well.
But there is another reason.
I see some disturbing trends in the world around us, and the ones that stand out the most are the religious trends. They are like traffic accidents to me, and I cannot help but watch them and stare. My history background allows me to see parallels that most people might miss otherwise. That's not bragging but a curse - in many ways I'd rather not know. Ignorance is bliss, and all that.
The UK story is a parallel. In my post "Daddy, Who's Your Hero?" I said one of my heroes was Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German theologian and pacifist who later came to realize that pacifism in the face of unrepentant evil was complicity with evil by default, and joined the Abwehr assassination plot of Hitler as a liason between the Abwehr and Allied Millitary Intelligence. His story was the story of hundreds of other Protestant and Catholic ministers just like him in Germany that the Nazis wanted to regulate.
The ability to preach from an open pulpit was one of the first things the Nazis sought to control. The pressure to conform to Nazi standards of religious expression was tremendous, and some otherwise decent men, like Paul Althaus, tried to reconcile Naziism and Christianity. Still others saw the problems but were unsure of their actions and failed to stand together, and as a result died or were muted.
Laws like the ones mentioned in the UK discrimination story, where it is concidered a hate crime to denounce social trends, movements, and lifestyle choices, even if they are against your own religious beliefs, are simular to the ones the Nazis used to control the pulpit for their aims. And it seems that just like in Nazi Germany, Catholics and Protestants are slow to see the danger and band together. (See my post Insufficient Postage: "Letter to a Christian Nation", the Deutsche Christen Movement and This Election for a full description of the religious and social parallels as I see them.)
I could get really theological right now and claim that I'm just watching the "signs of the times". But truthfully, no one knows for certain if any eschatological ramifications are on the horizon. I believe they are, and I trust God that he will fulfill what he's said. But that doesn't mean I'm right. After all, British preachers in the 1600's screamed that "Jesus was coming soon" because the right of a father to kill his son if he became unruly was taken away by law. "How will a man keep order in his house!?! THIS is proof of the soon return of the Lord!" And Jesus didn't return. They were wrong. Granted, Israel had not been reformed as it is now, but the point is that, as the Bible says, no one know when the Lord returns but God the Father.
But lets avoid the direct preaching for the moment.
We have just had an election in which the party that represents those whom seem to exhibit the greater totalitarian traits has won control of the government. For the next few months conservative pundits will lament and the MSM and Democrats will push their agenda. Among all the impeachment proceedings, tax cut repeals, and Gramsciite social engineering efforts, there will be quiet debates on laws limitting what can be said from the pulpit about the world in which we live.
Call it a prophesy, if you will.