A senior legal communications officer at Christian advocacy group, Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) has warned that public expressions of Christianity are increasingly under threat.
Writing for The Spectator, Lois McLatchie Miller took aim,not at the same old suspects of North Korea, China and certain Muslim nations, but at Britain, America and parts of Europe.
The assassination of Charlie Kirk, she argues, was essentially the most dramatic type of censorship: “He spent his short life teaching students that men and girls are usually not interchangeable, that children deserve protection, and that faith can transform despair into hope. He called people to marry, to construct families, and to serve causes larger than themselves. For this, the darkness claimed his life.”
Similarly murderous techniques, if not so well-known, are deployed in Nigeria. Despite being no less than 50 per cent Christian, Nigeria currently claims the excellence of getting more Christians killed per 12 months than another country. According to Open Doors, this 12 months alone 7,000 Christians have been killed in sectarian violence, committed mostly by Muslims.
Miller cited the case of a Nigerian student, Deborah Yakobu, who was beaten and stoned to death by her classmates after thanking Jesus for her exam ends in a WhatsApp group. Compounding the crime, Rhoda Jatau, a neighborhood mother was sent to jail for 19 months for “blasphemy”, but truly for condemning the murder. She was later acquitted after receiving legal assistance from ADF.
Closer to home, Miller pointed to more insidious state-backed types of censorship. In one case that has attracted the condemnation of the US State Department, Scottish grandmother Rose Docherty was arrested yet again last week for holding a sign up an abortion zone that read “Coercion is a criminal offense. Here to speak, only for those who want.”
Miller writes, “Rose wasn’t standing with an influential message. She was giving people the alternative: walk on or stop and chat. But alternative, it seems, now belongs only to the abortion lobby. Rose, with two hip replacements, was dragged away by law enforcement officials for the crime of compassion.”
Despite the apparently bleak picture, Miller noted that throughout history, even going back to the times of Acts, persecution and attempted censorship often helps spread the Christian message.
The assassination of Kirk has reportedly result in a surge in young people attending church, by means of example.
As Miller puts it, “If the past 2,000 years teach us anything, it is that this: the darkness doesn’t win. Opponents of religion beware. Suppression provides essentially the most fertile ground to spread the religion.”
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