How Christians are fighting back against the EU’s radical left-wing agenda
The article is about the EU context and how one organization is fighting on the pro-life/pro-family side within it. However, there are some good, tactical, lessons that can be drawn from it.
...Van Schothorst began his fight against the international left after working as a staffer for a member of the European Parliament for seven years beginning in 2000. During his time in Brussels, van Schothorst became acquainted with the “enormous power of the unelected bureaucratic elite,” especially the European Commission.
Lesson 1: He understood how the bureaucracy works. To fight the entrenched Liberal/Progressive ideologies in the bureaucracies, one has to know how the mechanisms work and where to apply pressure.
The pro-life/pro-family groups in Canada are not all so savvy; Right Now is pretty good and understands how to work the system, but Campaign Life not so much.
But back to the article:
...Seeing that no one was fighting the liberal agenda of the U.N., van Schothorst thought through what he wanted to see accomplished and decided to establish the Transatlantic Christian Council in 2013.
...All the while, van Schothorst began applying for consultative status internationally, seeing that the only way to win the court cases was by implementing his objectives. Once he received consultative status, he could enter the U.N. headquarters in New York and the premises of other international institutions to lobby and promote his objectives.
So, Lesson 2: He worked through existing channels that had legitimacy within that bureaucracy.
...Van Schothorst recalls that the push for LGBT ideology from the U.N. and other organizations began almost a decade ago with a resolution at the Human Rights Council in Geneva, Switzerland. He says that that organization was chosen because it was smaller, having only 47 member states and the members “rotating” every three years. ... After failing to stop the resolution in Geneva, van Schorthorst went to New York to try and convince U.N. member states to vote against the resolution, warning that the adaptation of LGBT issues in law is a Western phenomenon and that they should look to their own laws and constitutions regarding the issue.
The final vote resulted in 84 countries in favor, 77 against, and 16 abstentions.
He was not successful in preventing the passing of that vote, but has some good observations that the Liberal/Progressive side has been working very strategically for YEARS to line up all their ducks to get things through.
Lesson 3: Our side is definitely playing catch-up. We have to focus our efforts and be strategic and solid. But we're wasting a lot of effort and money. I read an article recently about how a lot of the lawsuits launched post-covid about how unfair it was to fire/punish/etc. the unvaxxed ended up going nowhere because the legal arguments were so weak. People had donated a fair bit of money to these various efforts, but the funding was wasted because the efforts, though well meaning, were not well executed and strategic.
...van Schothorst speaks about the irony of how non-Western countries are upholding Christian values while the places directly formed by Christian civilization are not. For van Schothorst, the Bible is a “standard” that “applies to everyone and for every policy.” To look at the scriptural commandments, van Schothorst notes, is to know right from wrong, good from evil, and that we can use this lens to examine resolutions and treaties.
Lesson 4: Never forget, the battle is first and foremost a spiritual one. We fight not against flesh and blood--our political opponents are not our enemies. We fight against principalities and powers--our enemies are the demons that inspire the evil ideologies. Our political opponents have been "captured" by the enemy, but can be "rescued" from evil. Always, always, always pray for a change of heart.
Link to the 48 minute episode is within the article.
Thank you for sharing. This is very interesting to read. And I would say: mea culpa!