(Tim) Steve Hutchens is a senior editor at Touchstone magazine (join me in subscribing), and I've long had a deep appreciation for his Biblical wisdom. For instance, each time one of our good readers makes a public demonstration of his cluelessness by declaring, "sex has nothing to do with worship," I remember this superb critique of evangelical worship that Hutchens published back in 2004. If you've never read it, you must. Trust me.
Anyhow, earlier this week I was privy to an e-mail exchange between Hutchens and a mutual friend. Steve's graciously allowed me to post his response here.
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There was a time when I would have scoffed at the idea that in the United States one could be hauled up before a judge for expressing a difference in philosophical or religious opinion. But the world is changing, and those who wish to make the expression of Christian opinions a hate crime, or otherwise punishable by law, are gaining the political power to do it...
Of course, this involves a rejection of the common law tradition and the U. S. Constitution, but we are dealing with people here who care nothing for that and will aggressively seize any opportunity they can to redefine and subvert the law as we have known it.
As their power increases we will see more Christians imprisoned, financially ruined, and otherwise punished simply for doing what Christians have always done. (This is one of the reasons why documents like the Manhattan Declaration need to be kept free of the ambiguities of Americanism, for unless something is done about it soon, America will become a monstrosity to which no Christian can pledge allegiance.) Praying for the peace of our nation means praying, as the old toast for the king's health had it, "for the confusion of his enemies." This includes the people who would bring lawsuits against orthodox Christians for the public expression of traditional Christian teachings like “sodomy is sinful,” or “a wife should be obedient to her husband,” or “folly is bound in the heart of a child, but the rod of correction will drive it far from him.” Traditional Jews will be subject to the same penalties, and Muslims as well, if they are not able to achieve their jihad in the West. (I doubt they shall; as they enter the Great Whore they will acquire the same disease that is killing her. The great weakness of any fundamentalism is that it cannot be kept up for long.)
As I have observed elsewhere, it appears that the world is moving backwards, reverting now to the days before the Constantinian age began--an age that lasted from the early fourth century until the present era. We are coming back to a time of worldwide persecutions of various sizes and intensities, to the place where decisive lines must be drawn and decisive battles will be fought as the sight of Christians clears and they are not as easily fooled as they are now--as the unpopularity of Christianity separates the wheat from the tares of the anti-Christian religion that now occupies and weakens the churches in so many places. (I almost said, "as the increasing difficulty of being a Christian moves the lying bastards out of the visible Church.")
There are as yet few places in the West where it is respectable to persecute Christians openly, but we are being set up for it. Which of the canons of secular modernism, including sexual egalitarianism, do Christians not deny and condemn in Christ’s name, and claim besides that those who make opposing claims in the same name do not worship Christ, but an idol of their own making? Make no mistake, our enemies (ultimately, we must remember, not flesh and blood, but deceiving spirits) are having their minions talk more and more about our odium generis humani. They are clearing the squares for the guillotines, and will cheer when we are no longer here to torment them.
