by Marc Ang
When I sat and watched the ludicrous questioning of Judge Amy Coney Barrett by Senator Mazie Hirono, my first instinct was to identify with Amy as she sat on the dais in polite silence.
Grilled with inappropriate questions that were frankly sexist, bigoted against her Catholic faith and downright defamatory, I realized the line has been fully crossed. The left is now not just a religion worshipping government as God but, dare I say, a full-fledged cult.
Christians and Catholics being silenced and persecuted is now the norm. But this was just on television. Let’s move to real life.
As a minority and millennial ministry leader, the last thing I expected is to have to become a fierce defender of conservative and Christian rights in America, the country of religious freedom.
Like many suburbanite millennials born in the Reagan era and after, I never experienced the true hardships that existed before us (such as gas lines, sweeping drafts to go to war, true poverty, etc.).
We could only find our battles in words, not deeds. Therefore, up until the early 2000s, I was part of a functionally liberal Christian generation afflicted by affluenza. The one that rebels against their parents but still found fellowship in youth groups. The one that talks big about fighting causes and “goodness” but won’t functionally lift a finger to act. In short, I should have been a liberal.
The mainstream culture in the background urged the separation of politics and religion from our lives. Truly, the biggest lie that they’ve successfully peddled to a generation. They took universal truths and twisted them around, co-opted Christian imagery, such as the rainbow, and packaged snake oil of vices of the flesh and sold narcissism as the route to happiness. But it was my search for truth and long-lasting happiness that led me from brief periods of rebellion to becoming a solid conservative in my early 20s and then becoming a born-again Christian soon after. But I still had to slowly deprogram a lot of wrong things I learned, and still grow in my faith every day. The brainwashing is real and deep.
In defense of my generation, which is very attuned to our emotional space — maybe, at times, overly — we don’t like it when we get mansplained or whitesplained. I can feel that annoyance when anyone condescends to me or shuts me down to correct a minute detail because they just had to get their word in even though it had no impact in the end. This is a reaction to the helicopter parenting and many sanctimonious celebrity pastors who have talked at us, instead of truly connecting. Refusing to let us grow in our faith organically but expecting us to be in lockstep with where they are at, instantaneously and in one fell swoop.
Clearly, this type of “I’m better than you” evangelism has failed and that is a big reason why a whole generation left the church. But over the last 20 years, the liberal left has become the same as what they supposedly fought against, creating their own bible complete with mantras like gender pronouns and climate change extremism, and shutting out those who are not up on the jargon. And persecuting those who don’t think like them, calling for liberal purity tests.
It has now gone too far. 2020 has shown us that liberal Democrats and big government have no problem overreaching, legislating, ruling and controlling in a draconian manner.
Sanctimonious priests are small potatoes compared to the Democrat left. The tone-deaf preaching was an annoyance on the right but the left said, “hold my beer” and has given us riots, property damage. looting, arson and murder. Laugh at the Christian right for faith healing and we have the left completely disregarding the Scientific method, results, data and using strict rules to hold down those who they don’t favor through the power of government. Personally, I would give power to the church any day over a government bureaucracy.
Last Saturday, beyond what I’ve seen in the news, it finally hit home on a personal level. I organized an outdoor family fair at my church, featuring baby goats against a Noah’s Ark backdrop, a puppet show, a doggie parade, Officer McGruff from the LA Sheriff’s department, and lots of fun vendors and exhibitors. Speakers from different backgrounds shared religious, conservative and educational experiences and opinions.
It was an event on private property of like minds and a joyous unity celebration of conservative and religious multi-racial minorities. Did I really want to be harassed by emails from the LA County Health Department, threatening imprisonment, fines and shutdown, the day before the event? No, but I did receive them from a LA County Health Department staffer that listed her pronouns on her signature line. How’s that different from putting a bible quote on your signature line, which is frowned upon these days?
Meanwhile, women’s marches and Bay Area violent protests going on the same day were allowed to operate without intervention. Little did I realize at the time, that the Health Department was selectively targeting other churches. I also feel that they targeted Asian and Latino churches, thinking we would be too meek to fight back. It’s a subtle form of racism from the left. Not surprising as racism is what I consistently see from the left. When you talk so much about race, maybe you’re a racist?
It was even more shocking that the media circus came to cover this event as my well-attended events for years have barely gotten any mainstream coverage. Maybe they covered it because they realized we were not the first church to have been targeted by a governmental entity and it was time. Maybe the moment has met its time.
Event attendees observed the horrid reality of religious intolerance actions and Constitutional violations during the standoff to prevent the Health Department employees from trespassing on our private property. ABC, NBC, Fox, Telemundo and others filmed and videoed the Health Department employees’ attempts to enter our event and to shut it down. Some of these have been aired publicly.
In the following days, the media firestorm continued to erupt into a national story and the LA County Health Department was basically forced to issue a citation on us even though they never entered our premises because it was private property. Because the citation itself is so questionable, we will be fighting back to defend our constitutional rights. However, it was when I found their full citation list of recent lawbreakers that I discovered almost every supposed violator of these codes were churches. What a way to go after Christians. Regardless of your religious persuasion, does this seem right to you?
So I encourage my generation, especially the wayward Christians: it’s now time to come back home to the church because the church is not just a spiritual sanctuary but one for sanity. I was a prodigal son, I was fooled but now, I’ve come home. And I want to prevent my peers from getting scammed and sold a bad bill of goods. So I will speak my truth and fight for it with a vengeance.
Also, our elders, who loved on us, clothed us, fed us and who were there for us, are now under attack. Do we leave them behind to fight the battle alone? It starts by taking this stand against the true evil: a corrupt government now selectively targeting and attacking its own good citizens. Let’s direct our energies to fight the real evil.
“Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil.” Ephesians 6:11
Game on.
* * *
(The views expressed by our Op-Ed contributors are solely their own and do not necessarily reflect the predilection of the editorial board and staff of Asian Journal.)
Marc Ang is a Southern California community leader, currently serving as the president of community organizations Asian Industry B2B, People Encouraging People and Chinese American Citizens Alliance (Orange County). He is also Director of Outreach for Californians For Equal Rights, dedicated to the fight against systemic racism, specifically, ACA5, now Proposition 16 on November’s ballot. His events have drawn thousands of attendees from all walks of life, in the areas of promoting veterans, the autism community, anti-human trafficking, health and wellness and business advocacy.
