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Letter from AmericaAn evangelical civil disobedienceIt’s been coming for some time. But now it’s here (or thereabouts). Yes, you’ve heard right: in Pennsylvania (a state in America; not China, or North Korea, note!) 75-year-old Arlene Elshinnawy and 70-year-old Lynda Beckman were arrested for sharing their faith on the public sidewalk. They faced 47 years in jail for spreading the gospel because of a Pennsylvania ‘hate crimes’ law. This law is, I’m told, nearly identical to HR 254, the ‘hate crimes’ bill reintroduced in Con-gress and apparently on the ‘fast track’ in the House Judiciary Committee. Yeah, that’s right — here’s what a free and tolerant society does: lock up your granny for telling someone about Jesus. Radical intoleranceFor some years now, evangelical leaders have periodically been warning that the new tolerance will lead to radical intolerance of traditional Christians who happen to believe that Acts 4.12 is right (‘Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved’). Sometimes masquerading as accusations of homophobia, sometimes as allegations of hate crime by speaking out against Islam, sometimes as finger pointing at those who protest abortion, coming to a city near you soon: pastors jailed for preaching the gospel. Think I joke? Pastor Ake Green of Sweden faced jail time for the content of his sermon — he read from Romans 1. Or consider the case of Pastor Mark Harding, an evangelical Protestant, who protested a local Canadian school’s apparent support for Islam, and has been handed two years’ probation and 340 hours of community service by a court at the Islamic Society of North America in Mississauga, Ontario. When he went to court for his trial he was met by a crowd of Muslims chanting: ‘Infidels, you will burn in hell’. I don’t think any of them were arrested for ‘hate crimes’. Analysis and action?Space does not permit me to analyse here what is going on, though that task is essential if we are to engage responsibly with secular society on this issue. I preached about it recently and you can find the link to the audio file on Acts 4.1-31 at www.trinity-baptist.org. But the even more burning question, of course, is what to do about it? And, I’m afraid, perhaps too afraid as a confession before my brothers and sisters, that the answer is the same as ever. Preach the gospel in season and out, with love and truth, and realise that it is ever true that the blood of the martyrs is the seedbed of the church. Perhaps the revival that we have all so long been praying for in the Western world will come down that age-old route? Perhaps some of us will be writing ‘Letters from Bimingham Jail’ like Dr. King, but this time it won’t be race at stake, it will be the core faith of the gospel. Are you ready? Josh Moody,
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