Close the Churches, Shirk Your Freedoms.
We are witnessing a watershed moment in American history. The land of the free — founded on the precepts of religious liberty — now hosts thousands of boarded up churches and synagogues.
Religion is not essential business, the public health experts tell us. They are wrong. Religion is not only an essential business — it is a quintessential right.
The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution reads “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” Despite the clear articulation of the right to exercise religion in our Nation’s founding document, religious establishments remain closed. By closing our churches, we have shirked our freedom.
Kelly Shackelford, president of First Liberty Institute, explains in his video for PragerU that “there is no example in history of a regime suppressing religious freedom and not suppressing other freedoms.” We are seeing this play out in American life today. As churches lock their doors, we are simultaneously muzzled by mask mandates. Our protests are futile — no mask, no service is the new status quo.
The slippery slope to tyranny is paved with threats to religious freedom. Shackelford points out that “one of the first things the communists did in Russia after the Russian Revolution in 1917 was to close nearly every church and take control of all religious life in the Soviet Union.” The Russian government unilaterally determined what was essential and nonessential business for its citizens. Tragically, religion did not make the cut. If we allow the government to assert control over religious life, it will surely encroach on other liberties — and it is well underway.
In the wake of panic surrounding COVID-19, we enabled unelected bureaucrats and public health experts to usurp the will of the American people. The issue of whether we may gather in church during COVID-19 is not on the ballot. Rather, it is on the bulletin boards of the bureaucratic agenda, far from the influence of popular consensus. In classic totalitarian form, the rights of the American public are determined by the will of a few elites.
Beyond the realm of public health, the mainstream media are engaging in pervasive censorship of election news. On Instagram, recent post hashtags are disabled to “help prevent the spread of possible false information and harmful content related to the election.” Just as big government wants to decide what is essential and nonessential business, big tech wants to decide what is essential and nonessential information.
America has begun the descent into tyranny. The longer religious establishments remain closed, the more power we hand over to a government that does not have our best interests at heart. Alexis de Tocqueville put it best when he said “tyranny may be able to do without faith, but freedom cannot.”
America must choose who she wants to be: the land of the free, or the land under lock and key.
Reference: “You Can’t Be Free Without This.” YouTube, uploaded by PragerU, 23 November 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJ7CCdzCCI0.
