The bloodiest war that the United States ever fought did not take place on a foreign battlefield but raged on American soil, as brother took up arms against brother over the issue of slavery. The war began with the bombardment of Fort Sumter, South Carolina on April 12, 1861, and ended in the Spring of 1865, when Robert E. Lee surrendered the Confederate Army to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Courthouse. The modest brick structure standing forlornly in a field in central Virginia belies the magnitude of the human tragedy, with an estimated 620,000 killed—almost as many as in all foreign wars combined.

The war led to the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment (Amendment XIII) to the United States Constitution, which abolished slavery and involuntary servitude. But while the facts of this violent conflict are familiar to students of American history, what is less-known is that the practice of slavery continues unabated. According to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), every year millions of men, women, and children are the victims of trafficking, which involves the use of force, fraud, or coercion to compel an individual against their will to perform some type of labor or commercial sex act.  The DHS estimates that many billions of dollars per year are generated by human trafficking, which is second only to drug trafficking as the most profitable transnational crime.

Traffickers seek those who are susceptible because of psychological or emotional vulnerability, economic hardship, or in many cases children who are unable to protect themselves against predators.  Doctors Without Borders reports that two-thirds of migrants traveling through Mexico to the United States experience violence, including theft, torture, and rape. As the DHS notes, “The trauma caused by the traffickers can be so great that many may not identify themselves as victims or ask for help.”

Responding to the crisis, President Donald Trump has proclaimed January as “National Slavery and Human Trafficking Prevention Month.” Referring to human trafficking as “a modern form of slavery,” the president pledged to “actively work to prevent and end this barbaric exploitation of innocent victims.”

The president noted that the lack of an impregnable barrier has enabled traffickers to transport their victims into the United States with virtual impunity. Accordingly, “I have made it a top priority to fully secure our Nation’s Southwest border, including through the continued construction of a physical wall, so that we can stop human trafficking and stem the flow of deadly drugs and criminals into our country.”

Trump refuses to sign a spending bill that does not contain funding for a border wall. Seemingly oblivious to the dangers of an unsecured border, Speaker of the U.S. House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) calls a wall “an immorality between countries; it’s an old way of thinking.” U.S. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) agreed, stating: “This president just used the backdrop of the Oval Office to manufacture a crisis (and) stoke fear.” Meanwhile, in 2018 almost 400,000 people were apprehended after illegally crossing the border.

The battle is also raging in cyberspace, as human traffickers recruit their victims through websites.  In April 2018, the FBI shut down the nation’s largest child-sex trafficking website, Backpage.com. The FBI alleged that Backpage.com encouraged the posting of ads for prostitution and the human trafficking of minors. As a result, Backpage.com CEO Carl Ferrer was convicted on charges of facilitating prostitution and money laundering.

While the bill signed in April led to the closing of an estimated 87 percent of human trafficking sites, the demand is such that other players in the lucrative online sex-for-hire market have since moved in to fill the void. The software company Marinus Analytics reports that in a one-month period after Backpage.com was shut down, 146,000 online sex ads were posted every day.

The horrors of human trafficking in our day rival the slavery of a bygone era. One can only hope that sufficient numbers of those who possess the determination of an Abraham Lincoln will arise to at long last bring the horrors of human trafficking to an end at a modern-day Appomattox.

Take ACTION: Click HERE to contact U.S. Senators Dick Durbin, Tammy Duckworth and your own U.S. Reprsenative to ask them to support federal legislation – including a border wall – to help combat this horrific practice of human trafficking into the United States.

Alternatively, you may phone the U.S. Capitol switchboard at (202) 224-3121. An operator will connect you directly with the legislative office you request.

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In the wake of the violent confrontation and death in Charlottesville, Virginia, the response of the church seems curiously one-sided. For example, one of my friends, a pastor, expressed his sadness and anger about the events and that he was grateful for those pastors who stood with the counter-protesters.

Most of what I see on social media are denunciations of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK), Nazism, and white supremacy, with calls for pastors to use the opportunity to condemn racism. Since the church of Jesus Christ must oppose any kind of racism, this is a good thing.

But my friend’s post implied that Christian pastors were standing with the counter-protestors, and perhaps suggested that other pastors should too, which is alarming. If Christians aren’t careful, they may be pulled into an association they will later regret.

While the white supremacists must be rejected and categorically condemned for their ungodly ideology, the counter-protestors—known collectively as antifa (short for “anti-fascist”)—are just as ungodly. The two groups live at the extremes of our national politics and are really two sides of the same coin. It is unconscionable for a Christian (much less a Christian minister) to join with either movement.

The conflict in Charlottesville originated with a request from Unite the Right, a white nationalist organization, for a permit to hold a rally protesting the removal of the city’s Robert E. Lee statue. White nationalists, like all American citizens, have the right to gather under the auspices of free speech, no matter how repugnant that speech may be.

And repugnant it is. White nationalism, known also as white supremacy, is a relatively small movement that believes white people are superior to all other races. It includes organizations like the KKK, neo-Nazis, and some armed militias.

Also known as the “alt-right” (“alternative right”), adherents are inspired by fascist movements like Benito Mussolini’s in Italy and Adolf Hitler’s in Germany. The Nazi flag was prominent during the Charlottesville protest, as were tiki torches which called to mind the torch-bearing lynch mobs of the late 1800s and early 1900s. The alt-right despises Jewish people, Christian doctrine, and the American Constitution, and embraces Nietzschean philosophy.

White supremacy, white nationalism, neo-Nazis, the KKK, and the alt-right all share the same goal: a whites-only nation that preserves a white culture rooted in its European ancestors. They would say they are fighting the encroachment of foreign cultures that threaten to eventually supplant “white” culture.

Such ideology has no place in our body politic, which was founded on the Lockean idea that “all men are created equal.” It should also go without saying that such sentiment rejects the biblical teaching that mankind was created in the image of God (Genesis 1:27) and, therefore, all men equally retain a measure of the divine imprint, all are sinners, and all are candidates for salvation, no matter ethnicity or skin color.

In sum, the white supremacist movement is a fringe activist cult that deserves to stay on the margins of society. There must be no uniting with them.

But neither is there uniting with antifa, the anti-fascist movement (sometimes known as the “alt-left”) which is heavily rooted in anarchy and opposition to the state. The September 2017 issue of The Atlantic includes an essay titled, “The Rise of the Violent Left,” in which Peter Beinart writes,

Antifa traces its roots to the 1920s and ’30s, when militant leftists battled fascists in the streets of Germany, Italy, and Spain. When fascism withered after World War II, antifa did too. But in the ’70s and ’80s, neo-Nazi skinheads began to infiltrate Britain’s punk scene. After the Berlin Wall fell, neo-Nazism also gained prominence in Germany. In response, a cadre of young leftists, including many anarchists and punk fans, revived the tradition of street-level antifascism.

…

Since antifa is heavily composed of anarchists, its activists place little faith in the state, which they consider complicit in fascism and racism. They prefer direct action: They pressure venues to deny white supremacists space to meet. They pressure employers to fire them and landlords to evict them. And when people they deem racists and fascists manage to assemble, antifa’s partisans try to break up their gatherings, including by force.

This explains what we saw in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election and what has followed. Members of antifa consider Trump a racist and have lumped conservatives and Republicans in with white nationalists. That’s why Ann Coulter, Ben Shapiro, Gavin McInnes, Katie Pavlich and Ann McElhinney, Charles Murray and other conservatives have encountered sometimes violent protests shutting down their speaking engagements on college campuses.

It also explains the violence at Trump rallies (click here, here, here, and here). This is not a defense of Trump (some of his supporters were no better) but illustrates what is happening in our country and why.

Perhaps the most even assessment of the events in Charlottesville came from Sheryl Gay Stolberg of The New York Times, who tweeted, “The hard left seemed as hate-filled as alt-right. I saw club-wielding ‘antifa’ beating white nationalists being led out of the park.”

Further, recall that the antifa counter-protestors were, in essence, defending the removal of Robert E. Lee’s statue. Excising history calls to mind the communists of Stalinist Russia or current U.S. nemesis Kim Jong-un, who airbrushed allies-turned-enemies from photos and purged state records of any evidence they ever existed. Where will such a purge end here in America?  Will Mt. Vernon or the Jefferson memorial be next?

The antifa movement is Marxist in form, emphasizing divisive identity politics and class warfare, and sanctioning the use of violence to subvert authority. They are godless materialists who believe that a socialist utopia can be achieved via their views of diversity, equality, and tolerance, and that violent resistance is necessary to overthrow the established order. Anarchy by definition is opposed to the biblical admonition to be subject to the governing authorities (Romans 13:1).

If allowed to progress, both movements—white nationalism and antifa—ultimately end in dictatorship. Hitler and Stalin may have been enemies in World War II, but the sickle and swastika both oppressed their people, just from different directions.

The truth is obvious: Christians must not make common cause with either movement. Yes, we must oppose racism wherever and whenever we find it, but we must not join a violent, anarchical movement simply because it too opposes racism.

We stand against both racism and anarchy, and we do so in the name of Jesus Christ who submitted himself to the ruling authorities to atone for the sins of all men. And it is to Jesus Christ alone whom we owe our allegiance and obedience.

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