The only extremists. . .

Apparently the only people the government is concerned about, has labeled subversive, and are surveilling are conservative groups.  What kind of people are they?  Parents concerned about what is being taught in their children's schools and people who are concerned about constitutional rights being restricted or more narrowly defined or political folks who espouse views that diverge from the main stream of liberalism and progressivism or religious groups whose doctrine and practice conflicts with modern day thinking and values.  As it stands now, they are the only ones the government is concerned about as extreme.  In other words, those who insist that gender has nothing to do with genes and DNA and biology are not at all extreme.  Those who insist that sexual identity and sexual justice are the most central causes in which the battle for freedom is being fought.  Those who believe that man (excuse me, people) is an intruder and interloper on the pristine ground of nature. Those who believe that racism is not only endemic but inherent in every white person (of privilege).  None of those folks are extreme.  They are normal but those who would question or oppose them, well, that is another story.

The Church needs to beware.  These issues and causes will and are now being applied against religious organizations which refuse to parrot the liberal line.  Not quite an attack on the churches directly, this is an attack on parachurch organizations, agencies, and schools operating by churches.  It will not be long before we may have no church but to reject the government's dime if it comes with government interference into a realm supposedly guaranteed by the Constitution and Bill of Rights.  To be sure, this is a concern which only a generation or two ago would have been unthinkable but now is ordinary and even routine.  How we respond as Christian people and their churches will have great impact on the shape of and the pace toward a future in which divergence from the party line of liberalism will no longer be tolerated.  Our Christian response is not to develop a Christian nation but to exert our every resource to make sure that government control, revision, and censorship of religious freedoms does not make it impossible to preach and teach the Word of God faithfully.

Every generation of youth raised to acknowledge and cooperate with these liberal and progressive views will mean it will be harder and harder for orthodox Christianity to live in the public square and outside the purview of government censorship or restriction.   This is why it is so important that Christians develop and mantain a Christian worldview shaped by Scripture and its facts and truth instead of individual opinion or preference and the whims of sentiment and feeling.  But as so many have observed, each year is a beachhead for the assault on religious liberty and time to note the advance of the irreligious upon the family and the individual.  According to the wisdom of the age, extremism exists only on the right, only among conservatives, and only among those who have the gall to challenge the status quo as decided by the liberal and progressive forces of education and religion in America.