Post by Patriot Academy alumnus Caleb Casto
Around Christmastime of 2002, the Parliament of the United Kingdom was working on passing a ban on Fox hunting. For those who don’t know, Fox hunting in Britain is a major pastime and a highly popular activity with the people living in the English countryside. Naturally, the English people who hunted foxes would not put up with the government suppressing their right to hunt, so they stormed into London in protest. My dad, being a missionary to Europe, happened to be doing an outreach in London at the time of the protests, and unknowingly walked into the tens of thousands of protesters’ and their vehement march on London. He described the protesters as an army marching onto Parliament. The streets were filled with civil unrest. It seemed like a war was about to erupt. Police helicopters flew above the chaos below. Police cars were everywhere, and mounted policeman even barricaded the streets. However, the enraged protestors managed to break through their barricades and continue their march into the heart of London. It’s hard for one to imagine that all of this was over a ban on fox hunting! However, this is not the amazing thing.
A couple years later, Parliament began to pass “hate-crime” laws. These laws restricted speech that could be perceived as “harmful” to people such as gays and minorities. Pastors would be limited on what they could say from the pulpit. This caused a stir in the Christian community, for it was ultimately a restriction on their freedom of speech. Given my last paragraph, it would be easy to assume that the Christians held their own protests that garnered the attention of Parliament towards their legitimate claim, but that was not so. They did protest, but instead of showing up in crowds of 15,000 to 20,000 like the fox hunt protesters, only about 1500 Christians showed up to protest. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to notice that something is wrong here. When the government placed a ban on fox hunting, the protestors poured into London to voice their dissent, but when the Christian’s freedom of speech was being taken away from them, they did practically nothing. Take note: I am not at all glad of how the fox hunters acted, violent protests are not the answer. I am showing these scenarios to beg the question: Where were the Christians?
Even today I am asking the same question: Where are the Christians? It seems even at church being a Christian teenage conservative who is politically active is becoming dangerously rare nowadays. The problem is that many Christians don’t seem to care about politics and our nation. Wake up, people! We are on the verge of losing America, and if we stay silent like the people in England did, she will be gone. Charles Finney stated the importance of the Church in our nation by stating, “Brethren, our preaching will bear its legitimate fruits. If immorality prevails in the land, the fault is ours in a great degree….If Satan rules in our halls of legislation, the pulpit is responsible for it. If our politics become so corrupt that the very foundations of our government are ready to fall away, the pulpit is responsible for it. Let us not ignore this fact, my dear brethren; but let us lay it to heart, and be thoroughly awake to our responsibility in respect to the morals of this nation.” I am not going to end this article on a happy note, for if we as Christians do not wake up to the realization that we are the ones responsible for saving this nation and bringing it back to God, the history of this nation will not end on a happy note either.
As evil rears its head in America, I ask you this: Where are the Christians?
