Should we care?

I read an article in the Star Tribune that talked about the effect that FBI spies/informants were having on the atmosphere at mosques around the country. The article said that many Muslims who were just looking for a place to pray were avoiding mosques and that mosques in turn were being more carefully with who they asked to speak or how political they would let a message be. What struck me the most was a comment someone made. They implied that since everyone was welcome in a church that this would include FBI agents and that all a church did was preach the word of God so it had nothing to fear. The reader's comment raises the age old question, does an innocent person have anything to fear from the law?

As a pastor and therefore one of the "gatekeepers" of how welcoming a church is I struggle with government spying on people in church. There is something sacred about places of worship, whether Christian, Muslims, or whatever. To enter into such a space with deceptive purposes to me is disrespectful to that faith and the sacred atmosphere it is seeking to create. The counter to such an argument however is IF someone is using a church/mosque/synagogue for a political agenda, then they have violated the space already and so the FBI is not the one to blame. That only leads to the old "he started it" playground argument. Regardless of who is to blame, the net result of taking the "war on terror" onto sacred ground is that the sacred ground is one more place that will end up scorched. One of the most egregious and horrific acts of the Civil Rights Movement was the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, AL in which four girls were killed while attending Sunday school. When we make sacred places part of the battle zone then everyone loses. I believe that the government is called to take a higher road than the criminals are. We do not let our policemen shoot an unarmed person just because the criminals might do the same thing. We cannot lower ourselves to the level of others. The principals of liberty and freedom should still have value in this country.

So how would I feel about an FBI agent spying on my church. First of all I do not think that churches are as innocent or maybe should be as innocent as people make it seem. Abortion clinic bombings are almost always carried out by Christians. It seems likely that some of these bombers might have gotten inspiration/encouragement in their beliefs even if they were never told in church to do it. Should churches be so proud that we do not do anything that is against the law? Shouldn't we actually feel like the church is a safe place to say when we disagree with the law and government? If I knew the government was monitoring what I said on Sunday I would probably rethink some of my sermons, try and reword some of my messages. If we had a perfect government and a perfect justice system maybe I would not be as worried, but the abundance of innocent people in prison and the reality of the witch hunts our government has undertaken looking for communists and terrorists makes me feel we are far from perfect.

The bottom line to me is this, if the government really is about respecting the free practice of religion I believe we need to mak efforts to allow space that is without government incursion for the practice of such religion. One could point to prohibitions around drugs in religious ceremonies, governmental regulations around marriage, and all sorts of other laws as a reminder that we do not really give people unfettered religious freedom, but even if some of thoes laws are justified, spying and deception to me undermine too much this basic right of our country, that we are free to gather and worship as we choose, without fear of the government watching us and monitoring us. At least that is the way I see it right now.