Stormy forecast

When the Barna Group reported a couple of weeks ago that we Americans tend to be more worried than ever before about the loss of religious freedom in this country, it set me thinking. Were these people just worrywarts? Or is there reason for such concern?

So I emailed 25 of my friends and asked them: There’s a lot of talk among evangelicals these days about increased persecution of Christians. Do you think that forecast is on target? What form do you think such persecution might take? I sent my query to a handful of folks I think have the respect of many WORLD readers.

“The forecast is perhaps conservative and likely to be worse than most people expect,” said Buck Jacobs, founder of C12, a training and consulting service for Christian-owned businesses. “The slide down the slippery slope is accelerating, and without strong resistance will continue.” And Jacobs warns that those businesses are likely to be specifically targeted with legal action by activist attorneys. “As it does so often in other frivolous lawsuits, the cost to litigate and the threat of losing, even if innocent, will be very present and will no doubt tempt compromise.”

“Yes, indeed,” Bill Bennett told me—and without a moment’s hesitation to qualify or soften his prediction. Bennett, who was Secretary of Education under President Ronald Reagan, repeated himself: “Everything we’ve seen points that way. The shootings and beheadings of Christians through the Middle East have not slowed, but are evident on an increasingly wider scale. Things are worse right now there than anyone can remember. More and more, it means there are places where there used to be Christians, and now there simply are no Christians left.” With all that in mind, Bennett is putting the finishing touches on his latest book, Tried by Fire—a Thomas Nelson release set to come out shortly.

‘Hiding is the very last thing we need to teach [our children]. Love is always vulnerable.’

Some of my correspondents suggested looking at issues from a different perspective. Tim Bayly, a pastor, educator, and publisher in Bloomington, Ind., agreed with a “yes” answer, but qualified it a bit: “The prediction is right, and we have long prepared our children and the children of our church for persecution. But hiding is the very last thing we need to teach them. Love is always vulnerable.” Bayly suggested thoughtful study of persecution in the early church.

Marlin Detweiler, founder and head of a Pennsylvania company that creates and provides textbooks and curriculum materials for Christian families, said simply: “I’m less concerned about persecution than I am the possibility that God has removed his blessing from us here in America.”

Frank Brock, an industrialist, educator, and entrepreneur from Chattanooga, Tenn., said bluntly: “Talk of persecution exposes a troubling attitude. Followers of Jesus should be children of hope and light who are pro-life (in every sense of the word) and pro-marriage and family (for the good of the children). We should be people who save and work hard, so those coming after us will be blessed. We should care for the poor, especially in the household of faith. We should be striving for justice for all, especially for health and education of children. And we should not expect any special favor from those who govern.”

Author and lecturer Os Guinness sounded a similar caution: “I am less concerned about the persecution than about bad responses to the talk of it. We are at a solemn moment for humanity and for the church in the U.S. and the West. We are nearing the climax of the centuries-long attempted secularist takeover from the Jewish and Christian faiths as the defining faiths of the West. But many of the problems in our culture are of our own making, so our primary concern should be for repentance and restoration. If we were what we are called to be, we would have nothing to fear—and any mounting anti-Christian discrimination would be bracing. We have the numbers, so if we engage the country with integrity we will not be silenced and our influence will be healthy.

“But we must avoid the obvious extremes—responding to those who call us their enemies with antagonism or retreating with an inward turn that ends in accommodationism to the spirit of the age. The present moment is a crisis, but a creative crisis, and we must respond with faith and courage.”

All that for starters. A great deal to think about, and to discuss with your fellow believers. And I hope that you will let us at WORLD be a regular part of that discussion.

Email jbelz@wng.org