By Jon BrownChristian Post Reporter Monday, April 29, 2024

The president of a nonprofit Christian watchdog that monitors hostility to faith and freedom abroad warned that too few Christians in America and the West seem aware of how such trends are manifesting at home.

“Basically, we are frogs in the kettle, and the bubbles keep coming under us,” Jeff King, president of the Washington-based. International Christian Concern (ICC), told The Christian Post.

“Too many people are politically unaware, and they're so used to thinking about the way things were that they can't figure out where these bubbles are coming from, not realizing they're cooked.”

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ICC, which was founded in 1995 to advocate for the persecuted church around the world, spoke out, especially about the case of Staci Barber in Texas.

Barber is a school teacher who processed the Katy Independent School District near Houston in March after her principal allegedly reprimanded her last September for praying with two other teachers at the school's flagpole as part of “See You at the Pole,” an annual international event.

The administrator reportedly told her that teachers were not allowed to pray where students could see them and be influenced to join, according to the American Center for Law & Justice (ACLJ). Teachers were told they “could not pray in any place where students would be present, even if that prayer occurred before the school day began,” according to the lawsuit.

Barber had previously been barred from starting a campus chapter of Students for Christ, and the school board instituted a policy requiring that “employees shall neither advance nor obstruct religion.”

“Employees may not promote, lead or participate in religious activities of non-plan-related student groups,” said the policy, which the ACLJ argued is “clearly unconstitutional,” according to the policy. Christian Broadcasting Network.

King told CP that Barber's case “highlights the depth of ignorance among school boards and even at the principal level of what rights the Constitution gives people,” but he suggested that her situation is symptomatic of a broader hostility toward Christians in the United States on all levels.

King warned that the same trends that his nonprofit tracks and advocated against abroad are increasingly manifesting themselves in the historically free nations of the Western world, including the United States. He pointed to a corrupt, cumbersome legal process and proliferating hate speech laws as the main points of the attack on Christian beliefs.

King explained that dictators and despots will promise religious freedom out of one side of their mouths while at the same time effectively forcing religious citizens to keep their opinions to themselves and out of the public square.

“If that sounds familiar, there's a reason,” he said. “The big picture, and what people need to understand, is what's happening here in the West, and that's what a lot of people who dislike Christianity are proposing and trying to push.”

In countries where leaders harbor an antipathy to Christianity, a politically-armed legal system plays a key role in suppressing critical speech and pushing Christians into self-censorship, King said. He cited the example of India, where there are Christians increasingly persecuted and their churches vandalized despite the guarantee of religious freedom in the country's constitution.

“They have freedom of religion in their constitution, but it doesn't matter,” he said of India. “It is what happens in practice. And so when priests are often attacked in the streets or in the churches, guess who is arrested? It is the priest. What happens is that you keep your head down. So this is what we see in the States.”

Even if courts rule against the bad actors, King noted that the arduous sentencing process itself is enough to convey the regime's message.

“People learn that you don't raise your head up, and you start to be calm because the process is the punishment”, he said, adding that he has even seen examples of similar situations in Christian ministries in the United States where employees have been dragged before. HR for not “toeing the line” on LGBTQ issues and pronoun usage.

He pointed out that the worst hate speech laws are in Canada and Europe, but noted that the same push to curb speech — especially about sexuality — is also emerging in the United States with proposed legislation like the Equality Act.

“It's strategic, it's a banana republic, and these are political enemies of Christianity,” he said. “They have gained power, and they are using the very laws, the very power of democracy, to go against their political enemies.”

King also observed that American culture had changed dramatically within the past 30 years or so, and that the population had been “softened” to the creeping totalitarian and anti-Christian impulses of their political leaders.

Noting how such issues progressed gradually along a spectrum, he was reluctant to trace such trends to any particular year or event, but said they seemed to escalate as a backlash to the political rise of the Moral Majority during the 1980s.

Comparing their influence to “poison that has been poured into the masses for the last 30 years,” King said the media and the entertainment industry have played a pivotal role for decades in promoting immorality and portraying people of faith in a negative light.

“When you use propaganda, you can turn the masses over time, and that's part of what happened,” he said, adding that a hedonistic society views Christians as an unwelcome “giant stop sign” against such impulses, leading to building resentment.

As for whether there is any hope that things can be turned around, King acknowledged that while some recent US Supreme Court decisions have been favorable, the behavior of many school boards and employers is “disheartening.”

He also said that with the rise of zero culture, public discourse has also shifted from encouraging vigorous debate to considering it acceptable to silence and “punish those who have different opinions.”

King asserted that Christians must first seek revival in their own spheres of influence.

“This is really coming to life, and it starts with us personally,” he said. “We all need to turn around and cry out to the Lord not about the political state of our country, but about the religious state,” he said.

“We desperately need a revival, and that all starts with us personally looking to the Lord and saying, 'Call me back and I will be all yours, whatever you want me to do. My whole life is yours.'”