From John Kirkwood at BarbWire.com:
On September 11th, 1933, a group of 61 German pastors gathered to form The Pfarrernotbund – The Pastor’s Emergency League. Outraged by Nazi incursion into Church affairs and disappointed by the silent pulpits of their peers, men like Martin Niemoller and Dietrich Bonhoeffer forged this covenant so that the light of the Christian gospel in Germany would neither be stamped out by Jack-boots nor trimmed by black robes.
Is America entering into a post-Christian era? Are we repeating the tragedy of pre-war Germany? As an American Air Force general once said, “History may not repeat itself but it sure as Hell paraphrases.”
The current administration has tried to dictate who Lutherans can hire and fire, they’ve told Catholics to pay for contraceptives and are in the midst of forcing every American to subsidize the holocaust in the womb. The Obama administration has declared that bakers, photographers, bed and breakfast owners, and even farmers must accommodate sexual anarchy or risk annihilation by litigation.
The speed in which our culture and political institutions have turned against Biblical Christianity has been as swift and sweeping as a tsunami. A Christian nation with a secular government has turned into an anti-Christian nation with a hostile government.
We cannot expect God’s blessing for the future in a nation whose leaders are summoning the demons of the past.I believe it was Warren Wiersbe who said that modern Christianity has abandoned the battle ground for the playground. And I would only add that when Christians go AWOL, the wicked overrun the hallowed ground.
As our own government targets people of faith, Biblical marriage, and the child in the womb, politicians and pulpits have largely remained silent. And while Christians slumber, the forces of darkness wage a blitzkrieg against all things sacred.
Bonhoeffer wrote that the church is to act as “the conscience of the state,” so if the state becomes unconscionable, the pulpit is responsible. “We are not to simply bandage the wounds of victims beneath the wheels of injustice,” wrote Bonhoeffer, “We are to drive a spoke into the wheel itself.”
When the enemies of faith, family, and freedom approach the gates, it is our duty, as watchman on the wall, to sound the shofar. And when that enemy is our own government, we must be the spoke in the wheel. It’s time for American pastors to rise in defense of the gospel. For this purpose, a group of pastors have formed the Christian Emergency League.
Calvin Lindstrom, the group’s executive director, writes, “While individual Christians must speak to the issues of today, how much better to join voices rather than to sing solo. As an organization led by a core group of pastors, we will encourage other pastors, leaders, and parishioners not to remain silent in the face of evil, calling to account both the pulpit and the politician.”
Read more: BarbWire.com
