For a few days before and through Easter Sunday, for the second year, we ran on this and the KingsWay WEB site the latest (2011) “Resurrection Day street dance” from Faith Church in Budapest, the capital city of Hungary. That made me reflect or at least wonder about “political implications” for something so large.
In years past if a church or organization attempted such an activity in this country, there would not have been much government involvement. Certainly a permit would have been issued and police assigned to provide security and safety. But, I seriously doubt if it would be that simple these days!
The church in Budapest (Faith Church) probably commands a lot of attention locally since they have a total congregation of 60,000 (in fact they do not occupy a single facility; there are satellite churches in strategic locations). There are thousands of towns and cities even in the USA with less population than this church! However, greater Budapest, known as “the Capital of Freedom”, has a population of just over 3 ¼ million people.
This annual “religious” event has brought more world-wide attention to their city than anything else since that Nation’s separation from the USSR in 1989.
In the United States things probably would not be so easy if a church was that size AND would try to produce a “religious” celebration with world-wide attraction. Can you imagine that happening in our capital city – Washington, DC?
First of all, you would have all the “alphabet” organizations that would try (probably successfully) to impose their objections of it being held in DC.
The atheists would demand that the celebration not be held at all because it IS religious and offends their non-godly stance. The denominations, churches, synagogues, mosques, etc. who are NOT of the same faith position of the host church would declare favoritism by the government in granting a permit.
The unions would demand that they organize it. Bro Jesse Jackson would insist on giving the invocation. The Black Panthers would require that no whites attend and would strategically place their storm troopers to make sure that none enters.
Obama would be overseas, cow-towing to his Mid-Eastern buddies.
And on and on – – – .
We have become SO politically-correctly-sensitive that it would be difficult to pull off something of that magnitude here. We have taken God out of virtually everything; He is no longer welcomed here, at least by the government. Even towns and cities have been robbing churches of their property under Eminent Domain and, of course, with the state & federal courts’ concurrence, have sold that same land for private, commercial uses.
I was glad to see that scores of groups & churches in cities and towns in the United States (as well as many, many other countries) became a part of that World-Wide celebration of faith emanating from Hungary. I doubt if you will ever see anything like that originating here – someONE may be offended!
God help us . . . .
Oh, if you missed the “Global” dance, you can catch it here: Up To Faith.