“Faith of our fathers, living still
In spite of dungeon, fire and sword…”
Since the Jamestown landing in 1607, it’s taken a bit over 400 years for American Christians to respect one another, but Progressive Democrats, like Nero in 64AD, now blame Christians for every ill in America, and seek to make us “the Other,” a group to be shunned, ostracized, and sliced from the American mainstream. How far will they go?
When Frederick Faber published Faith of Our Fathers in 1849, he was, no doubt, alluding to America’s founding as a refuge for religionists of many stripes. Puritan Protestants in New England, Catholics to Lord Baltimore’s Maryland, and Presbyterians and Episcopalians, throughout the South. Jews came here as well, and fought in the Revolution alongside the new revolutionists. Freedom of religion was a principle engraved in their minds as a right long before the break with King George, long before the Constitution.
Today, more than ever, Christians and Jews must put aside our differences to make common cause against those who would marginalize the principled faithful. Like many predators, Progressives are attacking our largest segment, Catholics in America, because if they can be taken down…
“Our fathers, chained in prisons dark,
Were still in heart and conscience free;
And blest would be their children’s fate,
If they, like them should die for thee.”
Why are Christians being attacked? Simple: We are in their way.
This is a very incomplete catalogue of the Left’s recent attacks:
· Little Sisters of the Poor Home for the Aged v. Burwell (May 2016) was a direct shot at fundamental Catholic teaching about contraception, but more importantly, it was an attempt to make the church submit to government control.
· David French tied the attack on Covington Catholic students to Justice Kavanaugh’s treatment at the hands of Senate Democrats. Dirt-digging activists, he said, “send a clear message to their opponents: They will destroy you if they can. That’s the message that sent a shudder up the spine of husbands and wives during the Kavanaugh hearings, (and)…as we watch men and women ruin the Covington Catholic kids. … When we see the hate, some of us see our sons, and we know that in America today, their futures, their reputations, and – given the prevalence of death threats – perhaps even their very lives are in the hands of an angry mob.”
· Then there’s the vitriol splashed on Mrs. Karen Pence. She’s been chastised for working at a school espousing Christian principles on marriage and sexuality. French said, “Silence and compliance only embolden those who seek to sideline Christian thought and belief. Those who seek to censor and exclude have no reluctance to express their loathing for traditional Christianity. Christians must be equally willing to speak the truth and defend their faith. Otherwise, fear and shame will do what censorship cannot — drive the Christian faith from America’s public square.”
· To a federal district court nominee, Senator Kamala Harris, a presidential candidate now, recently directed these written questions : “In 2016, Carl Anderson, leader of the Knights of Columbus, described abortion as “a legal regime that has resulted in more than 40 million deaths.” Mr. Anderson went on to say that “abortion is the killing of the innocent on a massive scale.” Were you aware that the Knights of Columbus opposed a woman’s right to choose when you joined the organization?”
She wasn’t finished. “Were you aware that the Knights of Columbus opposed marriage equality when you joined the organization?”
· Her fellow Californian, Senator Feinstein, set the example a few months earlier. In another hearing for a judicial nominee, “The thrust of Feinstein’s questioning was that, as a believing Catholic, Barrett couldn’t be trusted to apply the Constitution and laws objectively should she be confirmed for the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals.”
Noah Feldman, the same Bloomberg writer, nailed it: “What’s going on here politically is that Feinstein and other Democrats want to imply that the presence of Catholic justices is a threat to the landmark abortion decision Roe v. Wade.”
“And through the truth that comes from God
Mankind shall then indeed be free.”
The Progressive agenda becomes clear. In his piece on New York’s law sanctifying its infant killing fields Paul Kengor reminds us “We should have seen it coming. We got a sour taste of the bitter fruit to come five years ago, when Andrew Cuomo denounced pro-lifers in his state as ‘extreme conservatives.’ He said these extremists had ‘no place in the state of New York.’ … Pope Francis, who Cuomo likes to invoke when convenient to his liberal agenda, equates abortion to ‘Nazis with white gloves.’”
But Lefties are against the death penalty for serial killers?
We might have expected Cuomo’s pandering to the far Left with state-sanctioned infanticide, but when a so-called moderate governor in Virginia pimps for a bill, just as extreme, in a state with far more sensible views about life and death, those who hold Christian principles dear have reason to fear
Benjamin Franklin said the Founders gave us “a Republic, if you can keep it.” Can we?
Pastor Martin Niemoller began his famous poem, ironically, with, “First they came for the socialists, but I did not speak out because I was not a socialist…then they came for the Jews…” Are they now coming for Christians?
Faber’s hymn was a look back at what women and men endured to live free worshipping God as they saw fit. What he didn’t know was that not 170 years later, his words may prove, in fact, a prediction:
“Faith of our fathers! holy faith!
We will be true to thee till death!”
Will we?