A Christian film studio run by former Sen. Rick Santorum, who is weighing a second run for the presidency next year, rallied members of some 200 churches across the country Wednesday night to stand up for religious freedom as they watched the studio’s latest docudrama on the subject.
The film “One Generation Away,” simulcast Wednesday, was produced by EchoLight Studios, of which Mr. Santorum is the chief executive officer. The studio partnered with the Family Research Council to hold the one-night-only simulcast screening at churches nationwide. Mr. Santorum and FRC President Tony Perkins took questions by email.
Religious freedom has become a hot-button issue amid reports of Christian persecution around the globe, lawsuits challenging portions of the Affordable Care Act and the expansion of gay marriage among the states.
“One spark of revival can change an entire nation,” says one pastor featured in “One Generation Away.”
“Pastors and churches, wake up!” says another religious leader.
The film’s title — “One Generation Away” — is taken from a 1961 speech by Ronald Reagan, who said “freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.”
In the film, scholars, activists and political leaders like former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee review America’s right to religious freedom and what it has meant to the nation’s founding and culture.
According to the film, today’s Christians and other people of faith are dissuaded from praying at public schools, military chaplains are asked not to pray in the name of Jesus Christ, and business owners who are happy to serve gay individuals are taken to court if they decline to participate in same-sex wedding ceremonies.
Christians must stand up for religious liberty or it will be lost, say speakers such as Eric Metaxas, author of a book about Lutheran theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who tried in vain to rouse the German church to resist Adolf Hitler in Nazi Germany. Bonhoeffer was executed in 1945.
Hitler was “such a clear enemy of the church,” but the church would not act, Mr. Metaxas says on camera.
Today’s government is again getting larger and stepping on religious freedoms, he says. “There’s a window of opportunity where we can fight” for religious freedom, but it won’t last forever.
Alexander Kurikeshu, an elder at the International Christian Fellowship Church in Beltsville, Maryland, which hosted a screening with Pastor C.C. Thomas and about two-dozen parishioners, said the world needs “more Bonhoeffers to be awakened and speak the truth.”
“We are living in “a very crucial time,” said Mr. Kurikeshu, adding that the solution is to “turn to God.”
A religious rights battle not included in the EchoLight film involves the Mennonite owners of an old-church-turned-art gallery and bistro in Grimes, Iowa. Owners Richard and Betty Odgaard have held many weddings in their Gortz Haus Gallery, which has Latin crosses, stained glass windows and a Bible verse on the wall to welcome visitors.
In 2013, when the couple declined to host a same-sex marriage due to their religious beliefs that marriage is the holy union of a man and a woman, they were reported to the Iowa Civil Rights Commission for discrimination.
The gay rights group One Iowa applauded the gay men’s complaint, saying the Odgaards had no right to apply their religious convictions to their business, since it serves the public.
The Odgaards went to state court seeking a ruling in favor of their constitutional rights but were advised that the court couldn’t act until after the commission issued its findings.
In December, after months of delays and anguish, personally and financially, the Odgaards decided to settle the case with the Iowa commission.
“It had to end, and there was not going to be any good ending,” Mrs. Odgaard told the Des Moines Register in late January.
The settlement said the Odgaards did not break any Iowa laws, but they had to pay $2,500 to each of the aggrieved gay men.
The Odgaards have since said they will not hold any weddings at their venue.
Donna Red Wing, executive director of One Iowa, told the Des Moines Register she thought it was “sad that people have to make a decision like that,” but “if they’re not going to allow same-gender weddings, they really can’t allow any.”
The Odgaards — who never got their day in court — are still “considering their options,” Eric Baxter, senior counsel at Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, said Wednesday.
“Tolerance is a two-way street, and there has to be a way for the rights of both parties to be respected,” said Mr. Baxter.
• Cheryl Wetzstein can be reached at cwetzstein@washingtontimes.com.
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