Morning kids! Monday, and the start of a new week in the middle of July 2020. The protests and riots seem to have abated some, but there are still spasms of unrest that remind us not to let our guard down.
The most recent one is a news story I discovered late last week. A group of BLM protesters assaulted a Baptist church in Troy, New York, by blocking the church entrance from the sidewalk.
In the first video below, they actually harass a young mother with three small children as she walks up the steps into the church. They threaten to call CPS (Child Protective Services) on her, then break into a chant of “Save those kids! Save those kids! Save those kids!”
Later, the mob actually begins fighting with the phalanx of church security. Two uniformed officers seem particularly inept in keeping the peace.
Once the service starts, the protesters swarm into the sanctuary and chant “Black lives matter! Black lives matter!” While we don’t see that on the video, you can see the hostility as the protesters are leaving under the eye of security officers.
I can’t vouch for why the church was targeted. I read that they were auctioning off an AR-15 that Monday night, but don’t have more details. While mixing guns and faith within the structure of a formal church congregation seems to be a contradiction in terms, they do have the right to practice their faith as they see fit as long as it is doing no one any harm.
There has been an unspoken understanding in society that churches are generally considered off limits when it comes to domestic unrest. There was, until recently, a general respect for men of the cloth, that they served God and stayed “neutral” in the affairs of state, and that the church was an oasis in times of danger. Even unbelieving men don’t want to disturb a sacred space, lest they discover that God is real and jeopardize their eternal future worse than perhaps they already have.
In the case Grace Baptist Church, that social contract was broken, and broken badly. The church members were harassed, physically threatened and mocked, and a few who were trying to offer some protection to their congregants were pushed around and punched. All were treated with great disrespect and contempt.
Such a breach of decorum should tell us that the church is no longer considered untouchable by society. There was a time when such a violation of social norms would have been considered beyond the pale, but our society no longer teaches that kind of respect for authority or traditional institutions.
That, in turn, means that Christians should be preparing themselves for an increase in confrontations and possibly violence at houses of worship. We should always be preparing ourselves by drawing near to God, but the drift of current society is not favorable to the church, which should underscore the urgency of being ready.