What Can Christians Do to Protect Religious Liberty?
by David K. Bernard
Podcast recording (no venue stated in the delivered transcript)
Kind: teaching

Source: https://acts238.life/repository/sermons/david-k-bernard--what-can-christians-do-to-protect-religious-liberty
Published by Acts 2:38 Life from the sermon transcript on that page.
Free to copy and share with attribution.

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i think it's important for us to stand up for religious freedom now let's take his case a little bit further because i think it's instructive as a baker he would serve all customers it didn't matter if they were homosexual heterosexual or whatever he didn't inquire i don't think but he he actually had people customers and friends that he knew for example were homosexual and he served them so this despite the media uh and liberal portrayals this is not a case of discrimination even on the basis of homosexual identity all he refused to do is he wouldn't bake a cake for a same-sex wedding and he went all the way to the supreme court one now they started over suing again which i think that itself shows you it's grossly unfair because they're not willing to accept what is obviously the supreme court's decision they're trying to make a test case to hurt a man destroy his livelihood because they hate what he believes that's the opposite of freedom of religion and even freedom of speech so the latest thing he refused to do to make a cake for a gender transition ceremony so notice clearly he's not discriminating on the basis of somebody's identity even if it's their professed identity he's not making a judgment call on if you want to be homosexual heterosexual if you want to claim you're a man transitioned to a woman or vice versa i'm not going to attack you or discriminate against you i will to serve you as as a customer but when i'm being asked to endorse something that i don't believe in this case a ceremony then i reserve the right freedom of religion freedom of speech not to endorse it and of course a good example would be we stand against racism we should serve customers black white brown asian whatever but if someone comes to us and say i'm having a ku klux klan barbecue would you put on my cake congratulations to the 100th anniversary of the kkk well do i have a right to say hey i don't want to make that cake because i don't believe that or do i have to the name of you know not offending these racist white people that i have to make their cake with their racist slogan on it or even worse you know some hateful slogan against african-americans or asians but obviously not so even our culture is not being consistent in this so to get to your question yes we must stand up for religious freedom freedom of speech freedom of assembly freedom of press freedom to protest peacefully and freedom to worship god freedom to preach from the pulpit freedom to publish our books so the first thing is we must pray pray for god to intervene change the hearts of people second we must vote since we live in a democracy we have this opportunity this is one way we can exert our will and express our opinions speak our voice we need to take advantage of that and if we're aggravated all these things we've got to vote third i think we can support uh political as individuals we can support political action that would protect freedom of speech now as a church we don't endorse officially political candidates or political parties and there's a good reason we want to be a church for everyone we want everyone to feel welcome to come to become part of our church and not feel like they have to belong to a party second we we don't necessarily agree with any stand uh or all the stands of any politician and we don't want to be at risk of we say well this is my politician and then they say or do something that's contrary to christian values or apostolic values then we're seen as somehow supporting that so as the church we have to keep our voice independent but as individuals we can participate in campaigns support campaigns even run for office ourselves so there is a distinction between what we can do as as private citizens but now going back to the church i think as the church we've got to network with others who believe the same message even though even people that don't agree on our doctrine but they agree on freedom of religion we've got to partner with them and join with them we can and should be involved in the political process of speaking to our moral values speaking to policies that we support and speaking of religious freedom especially so to be very practical the upci has endorsed an action organization called the naclc the national apostolic christian leadership conference and in fact i have an upcoming meeting with leaders of other apostolic organizations we're going to sit down and put flesh on this organization and our goal is to have two arms there is the alliance where individuals and churches can join together pool our resources and advocate for policies that we support uh provide legal defense for people just like jack that you mentioned and then we also want to have an action arm where we go state by state and we organize our church people and other church people to support laws and policies that will favor religious liberty and so we're working on that and we have formed an alliance our partnership with the alliance defending freedom adf that is a conservative group of christian lawyers that specialize in legal legal protection defending the religious liberty and so what's very interesting if a church joins the naclc which is our endorsed organization they automatically at no extra charge get to be a member of the adf which immediately provides them legal protection so they will have lawyers that will review all their documents and advise them on anything affecting religious liberty and if they're ever sued or in an adversary relationship with a city that's trying to regulate them then they will have lawyers to help them at no charge and the adf is is actually is the one who took jack's case all the way the supreme court won and they're now taking jack's new case so when you support the naclc you are actually giving resources to help defend the man that you mentioned in your illustration so yes i believe that we can and in fact we are trying to defend religious liberty in the united states of america and we're trying to extend similar type protections around the world as possible