ChronWatch – October 13, 2010
Christians in Captivity
By Lee Duigon

According to a recent editorial in The Denver Post, “artists do have a right to offend people of faith.”

This was in reference to an exhibit at the Loveland Museum. As usual, the “art” was paid for with the tax dollars of Christians. As usual, the “artist” abused and demeaned Our Lord Jesus Christ – in what way, we prefer not to mention.

Notice how carefully the editorial writer chose his words: “a right to offend people of faith.” Yes, Madison, Adams, and all the rest of those guys who drew up the Constitution, that’s exactly what they meant by the First Amendment: absolute protection for blasphemy.

So you can freely offend “people of faith” – but only people of faith. Offending anybody else is hate speech. No art gallery would dare display a painting of the current occupant of the White House engaged in an unnatural act with a senator. Or abortionists writhing in hellfire. Or illegal aliens cashing welfare checks in a casino. Anything like that would get you onto the Homeland Security watch list, toot-sweet.

To illustrate: New York gubernatorial candidate Carl Palladino recently touched off a firestorm by saying he wouldn’t take children to a “gay pride” parade. It has become controversial not to expose children to a lot of semi-nude men simulating sex acts with each other. Since when did that become standard entertainment fare for six-year-olds? But the thought police declared the remarks “controversial” and “hateful,” and Palladino immediately backed off. No medal of courage for him!

You have a right to offend “people of faith” with the most graphic blasphemy, but no right to offend practitioners of sodomy.

Actually, the expression “people of faith” is not quite honest. If your “art” abused Buddha, or the Hindu pantheon, or Cthulhu, you would be smeared all over the country as a “hater” – not that any museum or gallery would ever agree to display your painting in the first place. If you abused Jews, the Anti-Defamation League would shut you down. And if your art defamed Muhammad – well, just try getting a life insurance policy, after that.

No, the only “people of faith” you have a right to offend are Christians; and the government will make Christians subsidize your doing it. In a country in which the great majority of citizens identify themselves as Christians, and pay the lion’s share of taxes, Christian persons and beliefs are the only fair game for the artistic bigot.

The Loveland story does have an unusual wrinkle to it. A long-distance trucker, a Christian woman, went after the anti-Christ display with a crowbar and destroyed it – an act which no one in the media portrayed as an impromptu bit of performance art. Nor do they acknowledge any right she may have had to offend Christ-haters.

Instead, they’re very much put out by the trucker’s individual exercise of higher criticism. What kind of desperately horrible country will we have, they wail, without taxpayer-funded Christian-baiting? What ever happened to “I blaspheme, therefore I am”?

By some strange process that occurred right in front of us without our seeing it, Christian America handed over all its institutions to persons who hate Christians and despise their beliefs. Our civil government, courts, media, schools and universities, and major corporations – we surrendered them all to the enemies of Christ our King.

Unlike Israel and Judah in the Old Testament, the Christians of America have gone into captivity in their own country. The Jews were marched off to Assyria and Babylon; but for us, captivity has made a house call.

How long it will endure, and under what circumstances it will end, we cannot know. We only know that it will not begin to end until we turn our hearts to God.

Lee Duigon is a Christian freelance writer whose work can be seen at: www.chalcedon.edu.

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