By now many people will have seen the viral video of the utterly sickening police raid of a Polish Church service in South London on Good Friday. They interrupted the Liturgy of the Lord's Passion and demanded everybody go home or face fines.
This is a spectacular move on the part of the Metropolitan Police to specifically target Christian worship, a special interest of Communist regimes. A few brave worshippers persisted in kneeling and praying before abandoning their worship. The Church leadership later demanded an apology from the police as they had abided by government rules. Police showed up again on Easter Sunday, seemingly fishing for reasons to close the place down, but ended up leaving without finding a reason to repeat the raid. Full story here.
Meanwhile, in Calgary, Canada, Pastor Artur Pawlowski took a much more direct approach to the raid on his church on Good Friday.
Artur Pawlowski was born in Poland in 1973, and immigrated to Canada in 1995. In 2012 he received a Free Speech award from a Canadian business group, while in 2020 he was fined for feeding the homeless during Covid (he is fighting that fine).
Earlier this year, Mr Pawlowski was visited at home by the police attempting to fine him for failing to wear a mask at a rally. He was equally effective at sending the police on their way in this instance.
Mr Pawlowski has seen life under a Communist dictatorship and knows what it takes to overcome state oppression. On Canada Day 2018, he shared this:
I come from communist Poland, I grew up under socialism, people were arrested for nothing, thrown in jail, beaten, by the police. And in 1981 and 1982, I have seen the power of unified Poland during the solidarity and I have seen what we can do as people if we will only unite. It started small, insignificant, in the eyes of the enemy we were nothing. But it grew because the Patriots were rising up and finally they said after many decades of oppression they said no more. We will fight! We will stand up for the sake of our children.
Update! Listen to an inspiring interview with Artur Pawlowski on the Richie Allen Show (April 19, 2021)
and on the Martinz Review, (May 08, 2021)
In other Covid Persecution of Christianity News, pastor James Coates of Grace Life Church, near Edmonton, Canada is now released from prison having been relentlessly harassed and finally imprisoned for holding in-person church services. Detailed story here
On release, police and health officials barricaded the church, effectively seizing private property.
These events undoubtably point to a totalitarian trend in the West. Rod Dreher's book "Live Not by Lies: A Manual for Christian Dissidents" is an in-depth exploration of the lessons of Christian survivors of Soviet totalitarianism. He explains how the totalitarianism facing us today is based less on overt violence and more on psychological manipulation. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn famously said that one of the biggest mistakes people make is assuming totalitarianism can't happen in their country.