![\"\"](\"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/image-7-1024x576.png\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\nFor peaceably assembling to petition his government, Rev. Harold Ristau says, he was threatened with the removal of his security clearance and government confiscation of his life\u2019s savings.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
By Joy Pullman\\<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A Canadian pastor has \u201cexiled\u201d his family to Kenya after his government invoked emergency war measures to punish citizens who attended a protest where he prayed and sang the national anthem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Harold Ristau, a decorated veteran and seminary professor, participated in the \u201ctrucker convoy\u201d against lockdowns last February, when The Federalist interviewed him last<\/a>. He is now party to a lawsuit<\/a> arguing the government\u2019s response to Covid that included treating dissent as terrorism violated Canadians\u2019 fundamental rights.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe fight is far from over,\u201d said Marty Moore, a lawyer for the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms (JCCF), which is litigating Ristau\u2019s case. More than 14 months after the protest, police arrested<\/a> another convoy leader this May. Lockdown litigation will likely continue for several more years, Moore said. The same is true across the West.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For peaceably assembling to petition his government for one day last year, Ristau says, he was threatened with the removal of his security clearance and government confiscation of his retirement nest egg, kids\u2019 college funds, and other life savings. Ristau says he\u2019s also experienced serious damage to his reputation, career, and friendships after the government used anti-terrorism measures against peaceful protesters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThere\u2019s no protection, if a pandemic started tomorrow, from future mandates. So that\u2019s why I was really open to coming here,\u201d his wife, Elise Ristau, said, sitting beside her husband in a recent video interview from Kenya.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Besides dealing with overbearing health restrictions, their children were mocked at school for their family\u2019s religious and political views, Elise Ristau told The Federalist. After enduring more than two years of severe social and government repression, the Ristaus moved outside Nairobi with their five children last August.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI don\u2019t know that I can go back and be a Christian in Canada. So that\u2019s why we\u2019re here in Kenya,\u201d Harold Ristau said. There, the former chaplain with a Ph.D. in philosophy trains Kenyan pastors at the Lutheran School of Theology<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Government use of \u201cdebanking\u201d to punish dissent is growing in the West. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau\u2019s government used it on essentially every convoy participant authorities could identify, said Moore.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAs soon as they knew your name if you were on the ground [protesting] in Ottawa, they froze your bank account,\u201d Moore told The Federalist. \u201c\u2026The federal government met with the banks, they gave the [protesters\u2019] names to the banks, and the banks were then pushed to freeze the bank accounts of anyone with that name in their banks. It was a fascist collaboration.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Right-leaning British politicians including Brexit leader Nigel Farage recently told the public<\/a> banks have closed their accounts<\/a> over their political views.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In May, American whistleblowers disclosed<\/a> the FBI obtained, without any warrants, \u201ca huge list\u201d of citizens\u2019 private banking data in its Jan. 6, 2021 capitol riot investigation. Investigators targeted any American who legally bought a firearm using a Bank of America account all the way back to the 1990s, the whistleblower testified.<\/p>\n\n\n\n After the Canadian government announced it would freeze the bank accounts of convoy protesters and their mostly small-dollar donors without legal due process, rumors of bank runs spread. Multiple large Canadian banks appeared to shut down online operations<\/a> soon after the announcement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Elise withdrew their family\u2019s savings that Friday, too, she and Harold said. Like thousands of Canadians, they had donated to the convoy. Yet Ristau was the only one of the four plaintiffs in his lawsuit whose accounts were not frozen. He thinks it\u2019s because of his military record.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cSome of the measures that were at least attempted to be invoked are the kind of measures you find to freeze terrorist financing,\u201d Moore noted. \u201cSo peaceful protesters were the equivalent of terrorists and the government leaned on banks in the guise of a national emergency to freeze their bank accounts.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Leftist activists also filed a class-action lawsuit against every Canadian who donated to the convoy. It seeks $300 million in damages. When before the convoy Canada experienced<\/a> multiple race protests<\/a> that included violence<\/a> against stores and police, no class action was filed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Canadian lockdowns kept gyms, restaurants, and liquor stores open but closed churches. Leftist protesters were allowed to yell and sing<\/a> without masks, and the prime minister kneeled to them<\/a>, all while provinces banned Christians from singing and chanting in church for years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Rev. Johannes Nieminen wasn\u2019t allowed to cross provincial borders to perform his pastoral duties, while other Canadians could do so for work, he told The Federalist. After he was denied border entry several times, he said, police finally let him through \u2014 but told him he wasn\u2019t allowed to meet with parishioners or hold church services.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIf I\u2019m going to go to the grocery store for physical food, I\u2019m going to the church for spiritual food. If I\u2019m going to the doctor\u2019s office for physical medicine, I\u2019m going to church for the medicine of immortality,\u201d Nieminen said. His denomination believes Jesus Christ\u2019s body and blood are physically present in the wine and bread of communion, and that Christians are commanded to physically eat these \u2014 impossible without gathering in person.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Until moving to pastor in New Mexico this summer, Nieminen was clergy in the same denomination as Ristau, the Lutheran Church Canada. He said lockdowns sharply divided many churches, and even though most Covid measures are now lifted, church leaders have largely failed to seek reconciliation and repentance, as commanded in the Bible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe need to repent. There\u2019s been crazy division here, and we need to actually talk about it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Nieminen said pastors who obeyed the government to treat churches worse than liquor stores and gyms taught lay people church is non-essential or can be conducted online. The Bible commands keeping a day of worship, meeting in person, singing hymns and psalms, and physically receiving the bread and wine of communion. Christians have done all these every week since the time of Christ.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Communion is a \u201csacrament,\u201d an action God commands that produces faith and eternal salvation. Only pastors can deliver it, a tradition going back to Christ\u2019s commissioning of His apostles. In all the great pandemics of history, priests and pastors knowingly braved death to bring the sacrament to the dying desperate for the peace and unity with God it promises.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Nieminen said he saw Canadian Christians publicly plead for the sacrament amid lockdowns that nearly lasted three years. They received no response from their pastors, who told Nieminen the pleading parishioners didn\u2019t use the \u201cproper channels.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThere\u2019s that lack of trust in pastors and a church that they see as giving up on them and basically persecuting them,\u201d Nieminen said. \u201c\u2026They\u2019re being coerced by tyrants to do something against their conscience, and then they go to church and then they\u2019re hearing the same thing from the church.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Within days of him praying at the protest, says Harold Ristau\u2019s sworn affidavit<\/a>, fellow clergy began refusing to let him preach and to take communion with him. Some checked with superiors on whether to commune him. Refusing communion to a church member is tantamount to excommunication.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Praying at the protest \u201cdemonstrated I was this political insurrectionist\u201d to some clergy whose beliefs about Covid were shaped by state-funded, anti-Christian media, Harold Ristau said: \u201cPrior to Covid, everyone recognized the media were a bunch of liars who hated Christians, but with Covid suddenly we trust them entirely.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n So far, \u201cnone of the [legal] challenges to worship restrictions on church services have succeeded\u201d in Canada, said John Sikkema, a lawyer at the nonprofit firm ARPA Canada.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cCulturally, people find going to the gym very important and less so going to church,\u201d Sikkema noted. \u201cEspecially when some churches don\u2019t seem to care and don\u2019t think it\u2019s necessary.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n To secular authorities, keeping the economy going easily trumps the church\u2019s work of caring for human souls, Sikkema noted. That\u2019s why they opened restaurants while restricting churches despite similar health risks: \u201cThat\u2019s not really a health decision, it\u2019s a political decision about what\u2019s important to the health of your society.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Police regularly showed up at churches on Sunday mornings and fined pastors whose parking lots had too many cars, he said. ARPA Canada and JCCF litigated a number of those cases and were often able to get pastors\u2019 fines negotiated down to charitable donations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Most churches that capitulated to government discrimination against Christians were already declining before lockdowns, and disproportionate percentages of their members didn\u2019t go back to church afterward. Churches that kept to historic orthodoxy, on the other hand, tend to have recovered better from post-lockdown membership losses and many have even grown, Nieminen and Sikkema noted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The difficulty of raising their children in rapidly apostatizing Western culture also affected the Ristaus\u2019 decision to move across the globe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThings are normal here, people have traditional values,\u201d Elise Ristau said of Kenya. \u201cIt\u2019s inconceivable to think of transgender mutilation. As a mother and father, we do our very best to keep our kids Christian.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n In Canada, Christians are often required to lie or betray their faith to access government grants and licensing credentials, and avoid punishment<\/a> in many professions, Sikkema said. Many Canadian doctors, lawyers, and teachers, for example, are required to endorse abortion and LGBT sexual acts.Canadian doctors and many other health care workers must help patients obtain<\/a> an abortion or doctor-assisted suicide.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In 2018, Canada\u2019s Supreme Court banned <\/a>a Christian law school from opening over Christian sexual standards. The Canadian military is also working to eject<\/a> chaplains over Christian sexual ethics. Just about every Canadian business sports a government-provided pride flag, Nieminen said. Churches that object to transgender mutilation of children have faced naked protesters as families arrive to worship, Sikkema said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cCanadians are very aware that we don\u2019t have freedom of religion, we don\u2019t have freedom of speech, we don\u2019t have the right to assemble if that\u2019s in disagreement with the regime,\u201d Nieminen said. \u201cPastors and teachers cannot speak about the morality of human sexuality. That is a reality Canadians live in, and I think that\u2019s partly why they\u2019re afraid to speak out.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Ristaus had been invited to their current post before lockdowns, but Elise hadn\u2019t wanted to uproot after moving the family so many times for Harold\u2019s military career. They had bought land in Canada for their dream home and planted more than 1,000 trees on it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI had dreamed of this perfect life for myself in Canada,\u201d Elise said. But then \u201cthere was a kind of turning point where I said, \u2018We can go. Nothing is holding us here.\u2019 It was a \u2018shake the dust off our boots\u2019 moment.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n From Toronto to Nairobi is approximately 7,500 miles. Flying commercially between the two takes 16 hours or more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIn Kenya, I know it\u2019s poor, and there\u2019s corruption, but we\u2019re not getting arrested for praying silently outside abortion clinics,\u201d Elise said. \u201cFor a Christian in Canada, it\u2019s pretty bleak.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I followed the Freedom Convoy in Canada often watching the live streams as people walked around showing the fellowship and interviewing the participants from conservative truck owners to young people against government overreach. It was actually a great example of people peacefully protesting against lockdowns, vaccine mandates…. until the government cruelly cracked down on them. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4659","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-god","category-world"],"blocksy_meta":[],"featured_image_src":null,"author_info":{"display_name":"Jason","author_link":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/author\/jturning\/"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4659","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4659"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4659\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4662,"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4659\/revisions\/4662"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4659"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4659"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4659"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Confiscating Dissenters\u2019 Life Savings<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Treating a Veteran Like a Terrorist<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Christians Assisting Government Persecution<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
State-Run Western Churches<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
A Political Decision, Not a Health Decision<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Religious Freedom Better in Africa<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Christians Welcome in Kenya<\/h2>\n\n\n\n