A review of Persecution. By David Limbaugh.
Regnery, 2003.
How can someone possibly manage to fill a 400-page book with example after example of Christians being persecuted in the United States? Only if there happens to be a whole lot of cases of Christian persecution. And that is just what Limbaugh demonstrates in this frightening but much-needed book.
He makes it quite clear that Christians are regularly being vilified, abused, threatened, maligned and discriminated against, especially by the ruling elites. Thus our media, our schools, our courts, our governments and our entertainers seem to have declared open season on the followers of Jesus.
Ironically, most of the persecution is coming from those who shout the loudest about toleration and acceptance. The various radical activists and trendy lobby groups are keen on acceptance – when it comes to their causes – but are quite happy to shout down, oppose and vilify anyone who opposes their agenda. Thus some of the main persecutors of Christians have been the homosexual activists, the PC brigade, and the radical feminists, along with their institutional supporters.
This harassment and persecution amounts to an undeclared war on Christianity. While we expect this sort of activity in atheistic nations and former communist regimes, it is remarkable to find it happening on such a large scale in America. Yet as the subtitle of this book explains, liberals are waging war against Christianity.
And as Limbaugh points out, this is even more ironic given the nation’s founding. America was largely established on Judeo-Christian principles and beliefs, and its basic strengths and liberties spring forth from this soil. As a result, many of the freedoms and blessings enjoyed by Americans are being whittled away as the attack on Christianity extends throughout the nation.
The classroom is a classic case in point. The public school system has simply become a hotbed of secular humanism and anti-Christian bigotry. Limbaugh provides chilling examples of how our educational system is purging schools of any trace of faith.
Indeed, the examples are so numerous and so alarming that it is hard to know where to begin. Consider just a few scenarios. In 1995 a US District judge in Texas said that any student saying the word “Jesus” would be arrested and spend 6 months in jail. A Vermont kindergarten student was expressly forbidden to say “God is not dead” to his classmates.
A teacher was rebuked for leaving religious literature in a New Jersey school faculty lounge, while literature trashing the ‘religious right’ was plentiful and fully allowed. After the 1999 Columbine High School massacre, students painted tiles and placed them above their lockers to help in the grieving process. Around 90 of them were removed however because they contained inflammatory rhetoric such as “God is love.”
Prayer of course has been banned, and textbooks even mentioning biblical characters are considered offensive and therefore must be removed. Choirs are banned from performing at school functions. And in the place of religion, we have a tidal wave of pro-homosexual activism, sex education, death education, values clarification and the like being foisted upon our hapless students. The examples are as numerous as they are mind-boggling.
Limbaugh rightly asks, what is happening to a nation that sees faith as an enemy and every sordid vice as a virtue?
Much of the suppression and hostility to the expression of Christianity comes from a faulty understanding of the so-called separation of church and state doctrine. Limbaugh examines this closely and shows that the founding fathers had no intention of eliminating religion from public life. The idea was merely to prevent one religion from becoming the state religion.
But the original intent of the founding fathers has been remarkably transmogrified by the secularists. Public education today simply bears no resemblance to how it first appeared. Indeed, Limbaugh reminds us that almost all of our earliest colleges were founded by Christians to train men and women in the ministry. Harvard, Princetown and Yale, for example, began as Christian training centres. Things have obviously changed markedly since then.
The courts, the media, the workplace, and the political realm also are full of anti-Christian bigotry. Limbaugh shows with countless examples that a once great nation based on Judeo-Christian principles is being shorn of any vestige of religion – much to our great peril.
Indeed, Limbaugh finishes his book with a review of the Christian heritage that helped to make America a free and prosperous nation. It was the Christian roots that gave rise to a great republic. But much of that is being undone by the secularisation process marching through the land.
Limbaugh reminds us that religious freedom is too important to give up without a fight, and that our Judeo-Christian heritage has served us well. The secularists may think their cause is progressive, but as this book shows, it is instead regressive, causing untold damage and destruction.
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I am currently reading “Persecution, How Liberals are Waging War Against Christianity” and would not just recommend this book, I would URGE everyone to read it. Whether you are Christian or not, this is a must read because an attack on any religious group is an attack on America which was founded and built on freedom, most notably Freedom of Religion and Freedom of Speech.
Dorcas Holbrook