American Christians have witnessed progressively worsening threats to their freedoms in recent decades, especially surrounding cultural and moral issues to which the Bible clearly speaks.
Many contend that the victory of President-Elect Donald Trump earlier this month marks a chance to dismantle such threats from the federal government, especially with respect to the weaponization of federal agencies against those with conservative religious or political beliefs.
Davis Younts, a constitutional attorney who defends Christian service members in religious liberty cases, said in an interview with The Sentinel that families, churches, businesses, and other Christian institutions can hedge against legal and political threats they may see in the coming decades, whether or not efforts to reform the federal government are successful.
Younts, a retired Air Force JAG, noted that believers face “cultural challenges where states, governmental entities, and others are pushing an agenda that isn’t just progressive, but is actually in direct opposition to traditional American values and the teaching of the Bible.”
Those trends often make headlines as governments erode the rights of Christian parents whose children express gender confusion since Christians affirm that humans are immutably created by God to be either male or female. Younts noted that while “there are multiple states that have gone down that path,” parents can proactively utilize resources such as Heritage Defense, which supports Christian parents in child protective services cases, as well as the Home School Legal Defense Association, which offers legal representation and seeks to change public policy to protect homeschooling.
The laws that seek to undermine parental rights in the name of transgender ideology fall into a broader category of threats Younts described as “pronoun tyranny,” under which “if you refuse to refer to an individual by their preferred pronouns” or otherwise fail to recognize their self-proclaimed identity “then that is somehow a threat to them, or is even potentially a hate crime.” He likened those legal threats to “anti-blasphemy laws” similar to those which regulated speech about the God of the Bible in early colonial America and even into the twentieth century.
“Every structured society has had some sort of anti-blasphemy rules,” Younts said. “In other words, there are things you could not say, or could not ever express, without facing significant consequences. We are seeing a rise of anti-blasphemy laws around things like pronouns.”
In the same way, Younts voiced concern that some pastors may face sanctions in the coming years if they fail to endorse so-called same-sex marriages as they also perform real marriages.
He asserted that pastors who perform wedding ceremonies and sign marriage licenses are “performing a magisterial function” with the permission of the state, exposing them to a possible vulnerability under which the state could say “if you sign one, you must sign them all.” Younts compared that possible scenario to the county clerks who refused to sign licenses for so-called same-sex marriages when the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the practice a decade ago.
Some cases have also emerged against pastors and charities accused of violating nonprofit laws for addressing issues perceived to be political. Younts concurred to The Sentinel that nonprofit laws can be written “intentionally ambiguously to scare people into remaining silent.”
“There should never be a scenario where a church taking a position on an issue should be deemed too political, but that’s just part of the lie from the society that wants to silence the church, saying the church doesn’t have a place by redefining everything as political,” he added.
Younts recommended that churches and pastors take advantage of resources from the Alliance Defending Freedom, which helps congregations navigate the legal realities of nonprofit laws. Those resources will assist churches with examining their constitutions, bylaws, and facility use policies to hedge against legal threats stemming from their beliefs on pressing cultural issues.
Younts also cautioned that “not applying the rules consistently” can expose churches to legal risk. He used the example of a church allowing their facility to be used by non-members for a marriage between a Christian and an unbeliever while prohibiting a so-called same-sex marriage in that same facility, even though both practices are clearly forbidden by the Bible.
Christian businesses meanwhile face threats in the form of equal employment opportunity rules written to protect against discrimination related to so-called sexual orientation and gender identity. Younts recommended that Christian businesses “be very careful” how they expand and “prioritize personnel,” especially as they foster a distinctly “gospel-focused culture” where an unbeliever would not necessarily be attracted to work. “I think there are ways culturally to do that, where you’re clear about who you are and why you’re doing things,” he observed.
Even amid the reform efforts at the federal level against government weaponization, Younts said to The Sentinel that the most important form of Christian political involvement centers on the local level, especially by supporting reliable county commissioners, district attorneys, election officials, and sheriffs.
“If you’re a Christian and you don’t know who your district attorney is for your county, and you don’t know anything about them, you’re making a huge mistake,” he commented.
Younts noted that the lockdowns and mandates imposed by federal and state authorities four years ago were preempted by sheriffs and other local officials across the country who refused to support tyrannical or unlawful emergency orders, meaning that Christians today should not be “afraid to prioritize” elevating fellow believers “into all of those lesser magistrate positions.”
