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It was a sign of the times.
Emotions were running hot in Virginia on Election Day as one man was recorded verbally confronting a Republican outside a voting precinct.
His words regarding Christians are not something we would typically print here.
Matthew Hurtt, chair of the GOP in Arlington County in the northern portion of the state and close to Washington, D.C., posted a video on X, formerly Twitter, that shows a man approaching him while he was legally passing out literature endorsing specific candidates and initiatives.
"I did not expect [the encounter] to blow up like it did," Hurtt told Newsweek.
Most believe America is at a boiling point and will soon boil over.
Unfortunately, we are a divided, angry nation.
Be informed, not misled.
The video posted by Hurtt, which has been viewed over 12 million times on the X platform, shows a man in a T-shirt and cargo shorts walking towards him and initiating a conversation. Hurtt referred to the incident as an "unhinged progressive confronting a Republican poll greeter."
As it turns out, the guy who went ballistic, losing it on a Republican poll greeter, was identified later as “long-time federal contractor” Brendan Anthony Martin.
Opposition research group Marco Polo exposed Martin’s identity on Twitter using facial recognition tools. Martin allegedly works as a technical administrator for the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) foster care system, according to his LinkedIn found by the group.
I'm not going to embed the video because it is laced with hardcore language.
This is a sanitized version of some of what is on the video:
"When you (expletive) people tried to overthrow the election, you might as well have been walking to my head on the way to the polling station, getting a gun to my head and trying to tell me not to vote. And you expect me not to take that ( expletive) personally? You (expletive) try to overthrow elections with violence and then you're out here among decent people? What do you have to say to that?"
Hurtt, who is behind the camera, thanks the man and seems to want to conclude the ordeal. The man then asks what his "policy prescriptions" are, referring to "racist rights" and conservatives involving themselves in people's lives and bedrooms.
Then there is this:
The man called Hurtt "a (expletive) animal" before temporarily walking away. He then turned around and said, "If you try to steal my vote next year, I'm gonna (expletive) remember you personally."
And this: "Try not to be buddy-buddy with these people because they put on the face of a good neighbor, but they support lynch mobs and (expletive) KKK, or they're (expletive) Bible-beating bigots and freaks."
Joshua Arnold noted how the man describes Christians: “Bible-beating bigots and freaks.” A bigot is “a person who is obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices.” A freak is “one that is markedly unusual or abnormal.” Despite the negative connotations, this angry, progressive voter is describing people who believe the Bible contains absolute truth and are unwilling to compromise on that — in short, Bible-believing Christians.
Of course, his characterization is uncharitable and largely incorrect. The term “bigot” applies to people who unreasonably insist on opinions they haven’t thought through, but many Christians have thought deeply about their faith. As G.K. Chesterton said in his autobiography, “The object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid.” As to the term “freak,” it’s true that born-again Christians are unusual, but they are not abnormal to a moral compass pointing to true north. They only appear that way to people who see the world the wrong-way round. Finally, while “Bible-beating” is an evocative phrase, what Christians do to the Bible should be far closer to “believe, obey, and submit” than “beat.”
Again, note the irony. From this brief exchange, it seems unlikely that this enraged voter has ever met a Christian, or for that matter a Republican. He called Bible-believing Christians “bigots,” but he is the one displaying uninformed prejudice toward another group of people.
In a recent interview with Family Research Council President Tony Perkins, House Speaker Mike Johnson discussed the hostility he has faced in Washington as a result of his Christian faith. “There are whole industries, as you know, that are dedicated to taking down public officials like me,” he said. “They can’t stand the idea that someone would openly acknowledge their faith. That’s not in vogue in Washington anymore — hasn’t been for a long time.”
That anti-Christian bias seems to have spread beyond select industries to infect a large part of the federal bureaucracy. So, when Christians go to Washington to advance pro-life, pro-family policies, or even basic morality, they are bound to face near-crushing opposition.
Perkins connected the hostility faced by Christians to the rising wave of anti-Semitism across America. During his time as Chair of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), Perkins said they heard testimony from a U.N. official overseeing efforts to counter anti-Semitism in Europe, who warned that “we need to be paying attention because it’s the canary in the coal mine,” said Perkins. “When you look at what’s happening here in the United States, it’s not going to stop with this anti-Israel, anti-Jewish [hatred]. I mean, it moves to Christianity next. History tells us that.”
Perkins says, "On Monday, news broke that a pro-Palestinian protest in Los Angeles had reached a new low, when a protestor struck a 69-year-old man on the head with a bullhorn, knocking him to the ground. The man later died at the hospital, and his death was ruled a homicide."
Only days after anti-Semitic protestors struck and killed an elderly Jewish man, a federal contractor near the nation’s capital indulged in a profanity-laced rant against Bible-believing Christians. While the two incidents share no direct causal link, both are symptoms of a rising tide of intolerance and hostility towards religion — particularly those based on the Bible.
Takeaway
“That’s a part of the cancel culture: to try to suppress, repress, to make people of faith feel like they’re isolated and alone, so they’ll go silent,” Perkins responded. “And that’s all the more reason we need to speak up.”
"Peter instructed his exiled readers," Perkins explained, “This is the will of God, that by doing good you should put to silence the ignorance of foolish people” (1 Peter 2:15). That’s what Speaker Johnson aims to do, but he earnestly needs prayer, too. Paul instructed Christian churches to pray for “all who are in high positions” (1 Timothy 2:2), even if they aren’t Christians. How much more should we pray for a man like Mike Johnson, who is inevitably going to face intense spiritual and political attacks!
Be Informed. Be Discerning. Be Vigilant. Be Bold. Be Strong. Be Prayerful.