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Christians Are Not the Enemy

In Nashville this week, six pro-life activists were convicted in federal court of conspiracy to violate the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act when they peacefully prayed and sang at the entrance to an abortion clinic in Mt. Juliet, Tennessee, in March 2021. Those convicted now face a possible prison sentence of 10 and 1/2 years and up to $250,000 in fines.

The Biden administration’s Justice Department, which is remarkably blase about prosecuting those responsible for the 2020 riots or investigating dozens of violent attacks against pro-life crisis pregnancy centers, seems to view some Christians — specifically as a subset of conservative Americans generally — as a threat to the peace and security of the United States.

This time last year, FBI whistleblower Kyle Seraphin leaked an intelligence memorandum that originated within the Richmond, Virginia Field Office of the FBI. The memorandum purported to address concerns about “extremism” within segments of the Roman Catholic Church in America. Its title is a mouthful and reveals much: “Interest of Racially or Ethnically Motivated Violent Extremists in Radical-Traditionalist Catholic Ideology Almost Certainly Presents New Mitigation Opportunities.”

Those “opportunities” to “mitigate” violent extremism included recruiting spies or having federal agents “infiltrate” certain churches to provide intelligence about potential domestic terrorism. According to the memo, “Radical Traditionalist” (or “Rad-Trad”) Catholics — defined as those who attend the Latin Mass, oppose abortion, express dissatisfaction with the papacy of Pope Francis and dislike the modernizing reforms produced by the Second Vatican Council — are secretly “white supremacists” who are plotting violence against Jews and members of other faiths, Blacks and other minorities, and gay people.

The memo appeared to rely on definitions and other information about “hate groups” provided by the Southern Poverty Law Center, a leftist organization notorious for its sloppy and baseless accusations of racism and smears against conservative groups and individuals.

Embarrassed, the FBI subsequently disavowed the document as not meeting their “exacting standards,” and removed it from their systems. But one cannot help but wonder what the FBI would have done had the memorandum not been made public.

It isn’t just the federal government.

A family in Montana lost custody of their 14-year-old daughter last fall after being told that gender transition was the appropriate treatment for the child’s mental and emotional disorders. The family objected, telling government officials and health care workers that “transitioning” their daughter to a boy violated their “values, morals and our religious beliefs.” Their daughter was taken from them and placed in the custody of Child and Family Services.

Christian baker Jack Phillips continues to be harassed in the state of Colorado. Phillips won a Supreme Court case in 2018 after he refused to make a wedding cake for a gay couple, arguing that it violated his religious beliefs. He is being sued again — this time because he has refused (also on religious grounds) to make a cake celebrating an individual’s gender transition.

The media loves to inflame this narrative as well. After Donald Trump won the recent Iowa caucus by a record-breaking margin, MSNBC co-host Joy Reid argued that the result was explicable because the state is “overrepresented by white Christians” who want people of color to “bow down” to them.

The primary reasons Christians are under attack are 1) because they refuse to bend the knee to a culture that exalts sex as the apex of all human activity, and 2) because they insist that there is a higher authority than government. Those two positions place Christians (as well as members of some other religious faiths) at odds with contemporary American culture.

The founding documents of this country make the underlying philosophy of our government clear. The Declaration of Independence, for example, states explicitly that all men are “endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights.” While it does not specify who or what that “Creator” might be, it is very specific that our rights come from that Creator, and not from the government.

Government in the United States today, however, will not tolerate the notion that anything — or anyone — limits its powers. That is, frankly, the source of much of the conflict behind the current push for “transgender” policies; nothing — not parental rights, not the needs of young people with mental illness, not fairness to biological women in sports, not even chromosomal biology — trumps the power of the government to declare that a man can become a woman and vice versa.

In other words, even the truth is whatever they say it is. Anyone who claims otherwise is an extremist, a “Christian nationalist,” a “white supremacist” or a threat.

One need not be a Christian — or Jew or Muslim or Hindu or Buddhist — or indeed, a member of any organized religion to understand the wisdom of the principles enshrined in the Declaration of Independence, and the corresponding limits placed on government in our Constitution. Millions of Americans who do not see themselves as religious nevertheless hold those principles near and dear to their hearts.

They should nevertheless be just as concerned about the government’s attacks on Christians and other religious believers. Faithful Christians are not the enemies of Americans. But they are increasingly viewed as the enemies of government with an authoritarian bent that recognizes few limits to its power. The government’s attacks on freedom may be starting with Christians, but if not reined in quickly, they will not stop there.

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Laura Hollis

Laura Hirschfeld Hollis is a native of Champaign, Illinois. She received her undergraduate degree in English and her law degree from the University of Notre Dame. Hollis' career as an attorney has spanned 28 years, the past 23 of which have been in higher education. She has taught law at the graduate and undergraduate levels, and has nearly 15 years' experience in the development and delivery of entrepreneurship courses, seminars and workshops for multiple audiences. Her scholarly interests include entrepreneurship and public policy, economic development, technology commercialization and general business law. In addition to her legal publications, Hollis has been a freelance political writer since 1993, writing for The Detroit News, HOUR Detroit magazine, Townhall.com and the Christian Post, on matters of politics and culture. She is a frequent public speaker. Hollis has received numerous awards for her teaching, research, community service and contributions to entrepreneurship education. She is married to Jess Hollis, a musician, voiceover artist and audio engineer, and they live in Indiana with their two children, Alistair and Celeste.

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One Comment

  1. Outstanding column. But the progressives/leftists and marxists have been at war with Christianity and trying to turn our nation into a “secular” state for sixty years. Our population is increasingly agnostic and/or atheist. Our founding fathers (Christians all) are attacked and defamed and the left even invented the mantra of “separation of church and state” to further dismantle our Christian heritage. The first Amendment says only “Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof”. That only means there can be no state mandated religion and freedom of all religions is sacrosanct. Christianity is purposefully embedded in all our historical documents, our currency and in our judicial system where the “truth” has been sworn on the bible for our entire history.
    Worse, many traditional churches, to try and boost attendance, are becoming a “tool of the state” by becoming “woke” or otherwise bowing to the outrage mobs. For example, many support the openly anti-Christian, anti-family, Marxist race baiters of BLM. They perform homosexual marriages, support sanctuary cities, and a host of other leftist agendas that are antithetical to true Christian principles. Even at the highest levels of the Catholic church, they refuse to condemn politicians (like Biden and Pelosi) who claim to be Catholics but are completely pro abortion and also witness the current massive divide in the Methodist church.

    The government is blatantly anti-Christian; attacking and arresting people of faith for legally protesting abortion, ignoring vandalism and fires set at churches and even ignoring genocide against Christians around the world; IE in Iraq, in Iran, in Pakistan and in Nigeria where 40,000 Christian have been slaughtered by the muslim group, Boko Haram, in the last 10 years; always excusing Islam and constantly calling it “the religion of peace”.
    Finally, the left and most of our youth believe in “moral relativism” which denies the existence of good and evil that we have witnessed for the entirety of human history. Without a “moral compass” they bow to the false dogmas of “climate change”, “transgenderism”, CRT and DEI. This absence of Christian morals allows them to accept such insanity as abortion up until the moment of birth, chemical or physical mutilation of children, the denying of biology and all the other inane and perverse ideas that we are witnessing. Unless we can return to a faith and family based society (I am doubtful) we will continue our march toward a secular Socialist totalitarian state.

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