"Welcome to the criminalization of Christianity." These were the words of Janet L. Folger, author of a similarly titled book, as she lamented the conviction of United States Navy Chaplain Lt. Gordon James Klingenschmitt.
Klingenshmitt's crime was nothing more than closing a prayer with the words "in the name of Jesus." For this horrific act, he was court-martialed, fined, and for all practical purposes had his Navy career ended. The incomprehensibility of the so-called logic used in his conviction makes grabbing exposed high voltage wiring to test for a current, look like genius.
Folger, who is also president of Faith2Action, was present at the trial. To her astonishment and others,' she noted that Judge Lewis T. Booker, "ruled that the right to 'public worship' doesn't include 'worshiping in public.'" Apparently, in the Navy, the right to preside as a judge doesn't necessarily include making any sense.
The same brilliant logic is being applied at UW-Superior regarding the status of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. Despite running a chapter on the Superior campus for nearly 40 years, the Fellowship was denied recognition last year as a student organization. The reason for the denial is InterVarsity's supposed discriminatory practice of insisting that the leadership of the group be made up of professing Christians.
Imagine the audacity; a Christian organization wanting to be run by Christians. Why the next thing will be NOW wanting a woman to be its president. What then? Before you know it the Sierra Club will want an environmentalist at its head. Can you imagine telling the DFL it could not nominate Paul Wellstone as its candidate because he was a Democrat?
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But this is precisely the sort of thing the liberal elites, who regularly go to court to force their worldview down everyone else's throats, want to disallow conservatives -- and particularly conservative Christians -- to practice. The magnitude of the self-righteous hypocrisy of the left is sickening to behold. They preach tolerance, but practice blatant discrimination against any who do not agree with them. They say they want to protect the Constitution, and the freedom of speech, but look to gag immediately anyone who says they are wrong. They want only their arguments to be heard, because they will not otherwise bear up to scrutiny. These are harsh words, but the evidence of all their actions, no matter what their words, demonstrates these charges to be true.
Christian philosopher Ravi Zacharias has profoundly noted that "Argumentation can only refute lies; it is experience that reinforces truth." When the words of judges like Lewis Booker, and the rulers of universities, like UW, are played out, we can see this to be true.
Even when liberals manage to manufacture coherent sounding arguments, the results, borne out from them, prove them to be illogical and self-defeating if equally applied to all parties. Try as they might, they cannot logically argue for disallowing a chaplain from praying in Jesus' name, or preventing a Christian organization from maintaining its core identity.
The proof is in the two examples now before us. The judge and the university think they are being wise in applying their versions of truth. But when their thinking is followed to its logical conclusion, their logic is amply demonstrated to be lacking in wisdom. Instead, such logic is seen to be a farcical denial of common sense.
The only ones laughing, however, are those who stand to gain by such injustice. Note that it is not the Christians.
Russ Young, Christian, free-lance writer and a former pastor, may be reached at RussYoung@thelifeline.net .
