DHS monitors Christians

I guess there is no escape now.  Glenn Beck/The Blaze ran the following article.

According to a Colorado undersheriff, Ron Trowbridge, alleged that the Department of Homeland Security trained police to look at Christians who take The Bible literally with intense skepticism.

Trowbridge wrote:

On April 1, 2013 I attended training in La Junta, Colorado hosted by the Colorado State Patrol (CSP). The training was from 12:00 pm to 4:00 pm and covered two topics, Sovereign Citizens, and Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs. I was pretty familiar with motorcycle gangs but since we often deal with the so-called sovereign citizen groups I was interested to see what they had to say. The group consisted of police officers, deputies, and CSP troopers. There were about 20 people in attendance.
Trooper Joe Kluczynski taught a 2-hour section on sovereign citizens. Kluczynski spent most of his two hours focusing on how, in his view and apparently the view of Homeland Security, people turn to the sovereign citizen movement. Kluczynski started off by saying there are probably some sovereign citizens in this room and gave a generalized list of those groups that have sovereign citizen views. Among those groups, Kluczynski had listed, were those who believe America was founded on godly principles, Christians who take the Bible literally, and “fundamentalists”. Kluczynski did not explain what he meant by “fundamentalists” but from the context it was clear he was referring again to those who took the Bible literally or “too seriously.”

The sovereign citizen movement is comprised of individuals who believe they don’t answer to federal, state, and local laws. “It is a loosely affiliated group that rejects many elements of governance, including, but not limited to, taxation,” TheBlaze explains.

Well, I have news for DHS.  The people who take the Bible seriously obviously includes what are known as orthodox Christians.  These are the Christians who believe in 9 points about basic Christianity which include such things as Salvation by Grace, human/divine nature of Christ, and literal accuracy of Scripture.  This is what Barna calls ‘evangelical Christians’ and they comprise 8% of the population.  These basic teachings are the basic beliefs of just about every denomination in America.  A few like Jehovah Witness, Mormons, and Unitarians may take issue with one or several of the basic beliefs and are thus called unorthodox.  But since spiritual accuracy of Scripture is only one of the nine, it stands to reason that many more than the 8% fit the government’s estimate (and includes just about every pastor of orthodox Christianity).  In fact, Barna notes that 43% of the population believes in Grace and has had a personal experience of believing in that Grace for themselves.  These, he calls ‘born agains’.  That’s a lot of people for Homeland Security to monitor! (Well indeed, they are also watching those who merely believe that USA was founded on godly principles.)

 

I could perhaps joke that my own denomination is entirely full of people who believe in literal scripture, but we argue about what it means all the timeJ Indeed, I have met those who argue strongly for literal scripture but seem to believe that we get to heaven on merit. Given that our numbers are at least 8% and likely more like 40%, perhaps we should carefully monitor the Dept. of Homeland Security.

 

Are we getting close to the days of Bonhoeffer and Niemuller?