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<p style="margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px;">An untapped resource to turn America around is found in the tens of thousands of churches in America. Many Christians don’t vote and their pastors encourage them to avoid politics. Then there are other churches where pastors are fearful of government reprisals, mostly from the IRS at the prompting of groups like the ACLU.</p>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px;">Keeping Christians from being involved beyond the church building and Sunday worship hour is becoming more common. But ever since Christians become politically active in the mid 1970s, secularists have gotten more vocal and strident. “That [Christians] may rant and rave against humanism and feminism and any other ‘ism’ on Sunday, but come Monday the children belong in school.”[<a id="identifier_0_2953" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" href="#footnote_0_2953" title="Rheta Grimsley Johnson, “‘People’ vs. fundamentalists,” The Marietta Daily Journal (September 2, 1986), 4A." style="color: #000000;"><span style="text-decoration: underline;">1</span></a>]</p>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px;">Tyrannical regimes are most fearful of organizations that don’t easily acquiesce to authority. We’re seeing this take place in<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://www.chinaaid.org/2012/01/nearly-50-shouwang-house-church-members.html" style="color: #000000;"><span style="text-decoration: underline;">China</span></a>. “On the first Sunday of 2012, nearly 50 members of Shouwang Church in Beijing were detained following the church’s decision to continue its outdoor worship services that began in April, ChinaAid has learned.”</p>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px;">The latest attempt in the United States at intimidation is<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="2944/christian-applicant-denied-charter-school-because-of-faith/" style="color: #000000;"><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Pastor Charles Patrick</span></a><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>of the Sunago Christian Fellowship Church who applied for the right to open a charter school. The application was denied because the applicant was a pastor.</p>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px;">It wasn’t that long ago in a nation not that far away that Christianity was seen as a threat to the governing authorities. Over time, churches in Nazi German were “confined as far as possible to the performance of narrowly religious functions, and even within this narrow sphere were subjected to as many hindrances as the Nazis dared to impose.” This is the evaluation of a 1945 report published by the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the precursor to the CIA. It was called<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em style="font-style: italic;">The Nazi Master Plan: The Persecution of the Christian Churches</em><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>and was prepared for the War Crimes Staff. It offered the following summary: “This study describes, with illustrative factual evidence, Nazi purposes, policies and methods of persecuting the Christian Churches in Germany and occupied Europe.”</p>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px;"><span><br />Read more:<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://godfatherpolitics.com/2953/why-are-pastors-afraid-to-speak-about-politics/#ixzz1iSAzlHc3" style="color: #003399;"><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Why are Pastors Afraid to Speak about Politics? | Godfather Politics</span></a><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://godfatherpolitics.com/2953/why-are-pastors-afraid-to-speak-about-politics/#ixzz1iSAzlHc3" style="color: #003399;"><span style="text-decoration: underline;">http://godfatherpolitics.com/2953/why-are-pastors-afraid-to-speak-about-politics/#ixzz1iSAzlHc3</span></a></span></p>
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