Outright persecution Today we are living through one of the most serious phases of Christian persecution in history. Throughout the world Christians are meeting exclusion from society, sustained violence, arson attacks, rape and murder because they profess faith in the Prince of Peace. Most people, especially the liberal opinion-formers, prefer to ignore it.

Christianity is the most persecuted religion in the world, and most of the persecution occurs in Muslim majority states. Despite continual cries of ‘Islamophobia’, and stiff competition from Hindus in India and Buddhists in Myanmar, the uncomfortable truth is that Islam is the most persecuting religion in the world.

Christianity may have been born in the Middle East but it is being systematically driven from its homeland. The apartheid states covering North Africa and the Middle East continually disadvantage and persecute their Christian populations with nary a murmur from the secular liberal West. Sadly, large numbers in the church are no more concerned about their brothers and sisters than are the unbelievers.

Christians in the West don’t help matters when we describe our problems as ‘persecution’. What we experience is as nothing to what our brothers and sisters elsewhere suffer on a daily basis.

Institutional harassment The high priests of Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion deem traditionally-minded Christians to be undeserving of the privileges of equality, diversity, and inclusion.

It is not uncommon for street preachers to be taken to a police station and interrogated before being released to wait for months before a court hearing, then finally cleared. Even although the charges don’t stick, the process is the punishment and serves to inhibit others.

There has even been a case where a woman was prohibited by police from singing Christian songs in the street on the grounds that she was not permitted to ‘sing church songs outside church grounds’. The police later admitted they had ‘made a mistake’, but the incident illustrates a prevalent official mindset which is dismissive of Christianity.

In 2018 Father Mark Morris was fired from his post as Catholic chaplain at Glasgow Caledonian University for holding an off-campus prayer meeting in response to a gay pride march in the city. As Madeleine Kearns wrote, identifying gay pride ‘as a gross offence to God then praying about it with a bunch of grannies is, it turns out, a gross offence against the Church of Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion’.

Polite Persecution Polite persecution is the opposition biblical Christians experience increasingly in the West. This well-mannered persecution takes away our freedom as well as our right to voice a considered opinion based upon Scripture or our right to conscientious objection.

Only certain modes of expression are permitted to the Christian when speaking of contentious subjects. That is to say, only those neutered expressions which have been stripped of all force, power and above all clarity.

Take the opposition of biblical Christians to same-sex marriage and sexual relations. It would be acceptable in polite society to make a nuanced philosophical argument, carefully citing exceptions and different opinions amongst authorities, about the proper ends of sex. But one may not discuss the matter in the more robust, direct and difficult-to-misunderstand terms likely to be employed by non-graduate working people.

This means in effect that biblical arguments are permitted to be put forward only by a select class of  non-controversial Christians, those who are well versed in the acceptable modes of speech used by liberal progressive graduates. As well as sharing the same background as the secularists, the acceptable Christians usually share the same political and moral views. They are considered safe.

Scorning or dismissing out of hand Christians when they voice a traditional position on sexual morality in an unapproved fashion is a way of silencing biblical Christians in the public square.

Christian vs Christian One of the most disturbing aspects of polite persecution is the refusal of many Christians to acknowledge its reality. If any Christian in the West says that the Church here faces discrimination, one of his co-religionists is sure to accuse him of overstating the case.

When pro-life Christians join demonstrations or prayer vigils there are always polite Christians ready to object that such action brings the church into disrepute. When working-class Christians question the wisdom of flooding the country with Muslims, many of whom have no intention of integrating, there are always polite respectable liberal Christians willing to denounce them as ‘racist’.

This divide-and-conquer strategy is one of the most effective powers of polite persecution. Rather than being conducted only by Intolerant progressives employing crude means, it is very often enforced by Christians themselves in order to flatter and serve their secular betters. They can always be counted on to rush to denounce other Christians as ‘hateful’, ‘insensitive’ and ‘bigoted’.

Liberal Christians should be careful they don’t allow their own biases and insecurities about their standing with their secular liberal friends to control their fellowship with other Christians. Failing to defend fellow believers from the scorn of unbelievers, even though they may not share all the convictions of those conservative Christians, is a betrayal.

This article appeared in A Grain of Sand and is republished by kind permission.