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Religious Liberty Advocates: Americans Don’t Care Enough About Their Constitutional Rights

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Houston Mayor Anisse Parker is infringing upon American citizen’s basic constitutional rights and the people should be outraged, author Eric Metaxas told The Daily Caller.

“We should be out in the streets, banging pots and pans,” Metaxas said. “This is big news, and we should be alarmed: we should be sounding the alarm.”

The city of Houston subpoenaed sermons and personal correspondence on the topics of homosexuality and gender identity from a group of five pastors. This is not an issue of religion, but an issue of constitutional rights, Rev. Dave Welch, executive director of the Texas Pastor Council told TheDC.

“This kind of overreach by government, directly into constitutionally protected activities, both of petition and of speech and religion, is just unprecedented,” Welch said.

In response to the Houston subpoena, the Southern Baptist-affiliated Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC) proposed that pastors across the nation send their sermons to the mayor’s office. The group’s president Dr. Russell Moore told TheDC that the ERLC had an immediate response of pastors in Houston and around the country that wanted to stand in solidarity with the pastors who had been subpoenaed.

“I thought that the pastors who had received the subpoenas should ignore them because the state should not have authority to intimidate on the basis of sermons preached,” Moore said. “But the pastors here who had not been subpoenaed should show that they’re standing in solidarity.”

Metaxas went even further to say that Americans should send in Bibles, or a card with a scripture verse on it. Metaxas proposed this as a way to let Parker know that Americans intend to push back.

“I even asked for people to send Bibles as a way of saying that: this is a book valued by most people in America — it’s not subject to governmental oversight or regulation and you need to know that, Houston mayor,” Metaxas said.

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee echoed Metaxas’ thoughts on his TV show Saturday, insisting that people send “thousands and thousands” of Bibles and sermons. There has been no indication of just how many the offices have received. Several calls to the mayor’s office were not returned Thursday.

“The Anisse Parker Administration and the city attorney have been trying to cover up this affair from the beginning,” Welch said. “They’re probably in bunker mode right now, trying to figure out how to dig themselves out of a hole that they’re certainly not going to get out of.”

Metaxas said that religious liberty has never been trampled on in this way before, so Americans need to know about it and more importantly — they need to fight it. He insisted that if Americans do not wake up in time, then by the time they do see the urgency, it will be too late.

“If people don’t stand up, if people don’t do their job as citizens, we will lose the liberty that we have and so I’m thrilled that there are still Americans who get this, but I would say to all those Americans who get this: make your neighbors get this,” Metaxas said.

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