Why Christians Should Value Free Speech

Yes, I'm a Christian. But my fellow Christians often confound me. Like these who value free speech less than religious freedom. Don't these Christians understand that free speech is what directly allows freedom of religion? This is why the First Amendment, protecting free speech,is even there. There's a reason why it's the first. 

If this article is to be considered typical, then it seems many Christians don't understand our Christian duty to evangelize, nor the value of free speech to that duty. 

As believers, we are called by Jesus to go and teach others the Gospel of Jesus Christ. About our sin and the sacrifice of our Redeemer. Free speech is extremely valuable to that activity. 

We Christians must be out there in the plaza of public opinion, speaking out against sin. And to teach that salvation is only through Jesus Christ. 

People do not like hearing this. They tend to want to shut you down. (See what they did to Saint John the Baptizer, Saint Stephen, and countless others through time.)  

Without freedom of speech, religious liberty suffers. If there is no protection of speech, then a pastor teaching one Sunday about original sin and the promise of salvation through Jesus, may be arrested if someone in the audience is offended and tells the police. This actually happens around the world. Every day, Christians are persecuted and even martyred for their faith - not limited to pastors, but also for those just having a Bible or professing their faith, or in some cases, just suspected of being a Christian. 

How can religious liberty prosper without freedom of speech? Answer: It can't, without miraculous intervention. Miracles do happen. However, is the Gospel of Christ well-served by Christians who do not defend the rights we have already by vigorously proclaiming the Gospel? 

Political correctness, also known as "cultural Marxism", is causing Christians to stop teaching the truth about sin and salvation. Christian religious teaching now must be couched in "socially acceptable" terms, which creates a watered-down Gospel, not the gospel of Christ, else we may "offend" someone. 

When Christians gathered to worship cannot even speak freely within the church itself, is this religious liberty? Obviously, no. 

Religious speech in America, particularly political speech, has been censored voluntarily by churches in exchange for "tax-exempt status". Interestingly, this is less true in black churches, where pastors talk politics all the time (from personal experience in a local black Baptist church and visiting a local AME church). I recall in my Bible that Jesus threw the money-changers out of the synagogue. Seeking to keep tax-exempt status has led many churches to view the government, and specifically the IRS, as a more important "master" than God. These churches seem to teach not the Gospel, but a heresy called the "green gospel" - a "new thought" globalist feel-good construct which proclaims love and peace, rarely mention sin or its consequences, and may not even teach that there is one God. 

Mainstream, major church denominations have mostly all been affected by this self-censorship to some degree. 

So we see that without freedom of speech there is no religious liberty. 

The reason progressives can speak so loudly with impunity is that Christians aren't speaking out loudly in response against practices that are harmful and sinful. Progressives attack, and Christians shrink away, praying but then not rebutting falesehoods. 

We may not like all the things other people say under their protected right of free speech. That isn't our role, to like what everyone says. Our role is to speak the truth in love and bring in the flock. If you don't like someone else's speech, rebut it.  But if you call for shutting it down then you are participating in censoring yourself one day.  

Oh, that'll never happen, right? Wrong. It already is, even in the US. Censorship has a long history, particularly regarding religious speech. 

In the US we have a protected right to free speech; it's the basic reason our country was founded. So we Christians had better start speaking up and telling the public the truth from our lips and from the pulpits. We must be the salt of the earth and light of the world. 

Else we will lose the liberty we have being silent, worrying about tax status, living in fear that we may offend someone, watering down the Gospel to a pablum which saves no one.