Her new book explains what's happening to religious liberties in the courts and what the future holds if we don't protect those rights.
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In "The Criminalization of Christianity -- Read This Before It Becomes Illegal!" author and radio host Janet Folger makes a bold prediction: If Christians don't stand up for their First Amendment rights, it won't be long before speaking out becomes a crime.
CitizenLink spoke with the founder and president of Faith2Action about what she sees down the road if the nation's courts are not reined in.
Q. You have pulled together a tremendous amount of information in such a way that shows how out of control our courts have become. What motivates you to spend the time that you do researching these issues?
A. One thing is that I’d like to stay out of jail! A lot of people, when they finish reading this -- one word I hear very often is, ‘Scary. The book is scary.’
Even our pro-family leaders say, 'I thought I was plugged in, I thought I was informed. I read the clips but it's worse than I thought. It's later than I knew.' And I think that’s really the message -- that we don’t have much time to use these freedoms, and we’d better use them now while we still can.
I write in the book that Christians have the right to remain silent, but if we remain silent very much longer those are precisely the words we are going to hear before we see the inside of a prison cell.
You titled the book, "The Criminalization of Christianity." What would become of our nation if it did become illegal to express Christian beliefs?
I think we’re quickly approaching that. We see Jesus being taken out of prayers, we see Christmas being removed from any public celebrations. But when you look at the homosexual agenda in particular, that’s the issue I believe for which Christians are going to be criminalized if they speak out.
For example, when I started this book, I was going to start with a pretty outrageous allegation. I was going to say if things continue as they are, pastors are going to end up going to jail for the content of their own sermons in their own churches. And before I could even finish chapter one, it had already happened.
We know that Christianity is criminalized in Muslim countries all over the globe. And in communist countries, we expect that. In fact, we know that research shows there’s approximately 160,000 Christians that are killed every year for their faith. What you don’t expect is for it to be in free countries. You don’t expect it to be in Europe and in America. But yet it is.
In fact, the pastor who was jailed is pastor Ake Green in Sweden -- a 70-year-old guy facing now between 30 days and six months in jail. When the prosecutor was asked by the reporter, "What about the pastor’s rights?" he was informed, "When he started reading Bible verses about homosexuality, he crossed the line." And that’s the line that really fewer and fewer pastors are willing to cross -- because they’re seeing the ramifications.
For example, we’re looking at people losing their jobs. A guy in Canada was a school counselor and he wrote a letter to the editor. And finds himself without a job because he stood against the homosexual agenda. You say, "Well that’s Canada."
What about Matt Barber? You may have heard about him just recently. He’s the guy that, on his own computer, on his own time, wrote an article about marriage being between -- and here’s the controversy -- between one man and one woman. And he got fired from Allstate Insurance.
This is happening more than we realize.
What can you say to people who are so busy with everyday life they are oblivious to the course our nation is taking?
There are people like Scott Brockie, for example. He says, "You know what? I’m busy. I don’t go hold picket signs, I’m not involved in the culture -- I just want to run a business." Well, he wanted to run a business, but he wanted to run it in his freedom of conscience. When some homosexuals came in and said, "We’d like you to print this homosexual content, this propaganda for our group," he said, "You know what, my buddy across the street or the printer down the block -- they’d be happy to print it for ya . . . I just really can’t in good conscience." He’s now $170,000 in debt for fighting to have the right to say "no" to printing information from the homosexual agenda.
So you may say, "It doesn’t affect me," but I’m going to tell you something . . . as Matt Barber said, "You know, I was at Allstate Insurance and they made me go through the education classes; the sensitivity training. They made me fund domestic partners that I disagreed with. But it wasn’t until they reached into my living room and they silenced me and penalized me for speaking my beliefs, for speaking my own mind on my own time," that’s when he said, "I’ve got to stand up."
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What can we do about it? And what happens if we don't do anything?
There are a lot of people saying, "I’m just going to stay in the closet. I have my separate life. I listen to Christian radio. The kids are in Christian school. I’m from a Christian church," and what I want to tell you is that if you want to stay in that separate subculture, stay in the closet, very much longer, you’re going to wake up and there’s going to be a padlock on the outside of that door.
Because what we’re commanded to do -- and this is really what’s behind writing the book -- we’re commanded to be salt and light in this dark and decaying world -- not to retreat into caves. That’s not the Christian life at all. We’re to occupy until He comes.
I think that we spend far too much of our time reacting, retreating, responding -- and changing the boundary marker on a shrinking piece of real estate. What I want to do is what Reagan did. He didn’t set out to survive the cold war. I want to set to win the culture war in the same way Reagan set out to win the Cold War. We’ve got to change our mindset from victim to victor. And you know what, we not only have a right to speak out, we have a responsibility.
Let’s just take a look, for example, at what’s happening in the schools. Here’s a typical story they might hear in school. It’s called "In Mommy’s High Heels," (a poem by Paul Selig in the book, "Cootie Shots." A little boy says) "Let them say I’m like a girl. What’s wrong with being like a girl? Let them jump and jeer and whirl. They are the swine, I am the pearl. Let them laugh, let them scream. They’ll all be beheaded when I’m queen."
Imagine if we said something like that -- it would be a hate crime. But maybe little Johnny scratches his head and says, "You know, that doesn’t seem right, a man in a skirt; two kings living happily ever after?" Well, in California little Johnny is then singled out to say, "He looks like a troublemaker. He is a suspect of a potential hate crime because he doesn’t go along with the agenda." They then subsequently send him to what the legislature calls appropriate counseling. Without mom and dad ever knowing your children are being re-educated through an intensified homosexual-agenda propaganda session. And they get out of that class only when they comply with that agenda. This is why it matters. Because Jesus said, "It is better to have a millstone around you neck then to cause one of these little ones to stumble." We’re doing more than causing one of these little ones to stumble, we’re actually making sure of it.
What do you see as the top issues facing us today?
One of the primary ones is activist judges, no question. They are the most dangerous branch of our system and they have ruled no prayer, no Jesus, no Bible, no Christmas, no crosses. They are basically saying, "We're going take from you your First Amendment rights and there's nothing you can do about it," which is why this Supreme Court battle is just so critical. Because if we don't get our courts back, then we don't get our country back -- nor do we have the rights to exercise our freedoms and our religious beliefs as we see fit.
I do a little satire called "Heather's Two Cigarettes." That's really what we're looking at. We would never suggest a smoking section in a high school cafeteria and have "smoker-pride" month.
The fact of the matter is, homosexuality is dangerous behavior -- actually three times more dangerous than smoking -- yet we're promoting it. We're actually sending kids to remedial classes just to make sure that they embrace this agenda that will very likely, according to the research, take twenty years of their life.
I believe hate crimes is the most dangerous law in America. Which is worse; robbing someone or calling them a mean name? John Guimond stole a cell phone -- which is a bad thing to do. And he's gonna face between three and a half to seven years behind bars for that. But because of the words he spoke when he took that cell phone, he's facing an additional 23 to 26 years behind bars. This guy's looking at -- not three for stealing a cell phone -- but 30 years in jail for the content of his speech, because it was ruled to be anti-homosexual.
Now if you were aiming your language toward lovers of cheesecake -- you call somebody a fatso -- you're not going to be spending 23 years in jail. Maybe you're targeting the visually impaired and you call somebody four eyes, you're not going to be spending 23 to 26 years in jail. We'd clean off all the playgrounds all across this country.
This one issue is so hyper-protected that we can't even have the freedom to say homosexuality is dangerous. There are programs that they simply will not allow on the air and included among those are programs that accurately report what happens to you when you engage in this very dangerous and often lethal behavior.
FOR MORE INFORMATION:
To learn more about the book, or to order a copy, visit the Faith2Action Web site.
(NOTE: Referral to Web sites not produced by Focus on the Family is for informational purposes only and does not necessarily constitute an endorsement of the sites' content.)
