Pray For The Persecuted Church

You’ve probably noticed that I am always interested in history. I feel that you just can’t understand the way the world is today without learning how we got here. I was a history major in college. And one expression of that interest is learning about my own ancestors, genealogy. I am blessed that a great aunt on my father’s side and a cousin on my mother’s side have done most of the work of laying out the family lines, the names and dates, sometimes back many generations. But I’m especially interested to find the human interest stories of their lives.

For example, my mother’s family line includes many Quakers who came to Pennsylvania in the 1680s to escape religious persecution in their home countries. I recently found a description of what that religious persecution meant for some who came from Wales.

They lived in a time of strict social classes in Britain. There were laws that enforced respect for ‘the betters of society.’ If a gentleman rode his horse through town, the common men were required to tip their hats, and the women to stop and curtsey. And those little things were only the tip of the iceberg of a whole system that gave all sorts of unfair advantages to a few rich families who held the power and all sorts of disadvantages to everyone else. But the Quakers read in their Bible that every person is created in the image of God and that Paul said all are one in Christ. So they refused to recognize such social distinctions and went to jail for it as social revolutionaries.

The Queen passed a law that required everyone to take an oath supporting the crown. And it was part of their faith that Quakers would be loyal citizens, but the Quakers read in their Bibles where Jesus told his disciples not to take oaths, so they refused, and they were charged with treason and arrested or fined.

In an effort to unify the country and the power of the crown, the Queen enacted a law that required everyone to attend the Church of England at least once a month. How’s that for a church attendance booster? This was before people figured out that you can disagree on religious principles and still treat each other with civility. The Quakers believed that the Church of England had compromised on too many things, so they worshipped with their fellow Quakers and refused to attend the Church of England. And they went to jail for it.

There was a law they made it illegal for more than 5 Quakers to congregate together in one room, but they just kept right on standing together and worshipping according to their understanding of God’s word.

And so this article described the persecutions they faced. The author of the article, John Humphreys, was an eye witness to what happened, was one of the those who suffered, recording the sordid episode for all posterity, and he was the brother of my ancestor, Samuel Humphreys. John Humphreys describes two of my ancestors, Samuel Humphreys and Rees John Williams and the persecutions they experienced for their faith.

The soldiers would break into Quaker worship services with swords and arrest the people. They broke into private homes in the middle of the night, pulling men and women out into the dark in their bare feet and bed clothes. They herded them 20 miles on foot to the jail, with the soldiers on horses, hitting the Quakers with their swords, driving them to trot, sometimes in bare feet and their night clothes. They were imprisoned in unheated cells in the winter. The jailor tried every trick he could think of to force them to pay him exorbitant fees in order to get decent food to eat. But they stood firm to what they understood of the Bible. And when fellow Quaker, William Penn provided a chance for them to be free in the new world, they took a huge step of faith and moved to the wilderness of Pennsylvania and became heroic pioneers of our nation.

Are such episodes rare in the history of the church? Not at all. Probably more Christians died for their faith in the last century than any time in history, and many Christians are suffering today. Does persecution mean that you’re doing something wrong? Not at all. Christians have often suffered for doing right. Does persecution mean that the church can’t get anything done? Not at all, When Christians stand firm under persecution and boldly proclaim the gospel we find the church often stays the purest and so grows the fastest.

Our scripture for this morning, getting to the very end of Ephesians, finds the Apostle Paul in prison for his faith, not complaining, but very much asking for the Ephesians to pray for him to be able to continue to boldly proclaim the gospel, even in prison. This passage comes on the tail end of the full armor of God. Paul doesn’t list prayer as one of the pieces of God’s armor, but he certainly could have. If he were here today, and asked me about it, I might say, “Paul you missed it. You could have continued the analogy with only a little stretching by saying that when Christians are faithful to pray for one another, covering each other in prayer, it’s like those Roman formations were the soldiers stood side by side, each with their shields up, each protecting the other.” I like to think he would answer, “Thanks, Steve, that’s a good idea.” But I don’t what he would think. Please open your Bibles to Ephesians 6:18-20, and stand for the reading of God’s word.