Western nations asked to guard religious freedom amid growing intolerance

Western countries are being asked to guard religious freedom, including for people of religion who hold traditional views on marriage and sexuality.

Meeting in Berlin recently, religious freedom experts from all over the world raised concerns about “increasing intolerance” towards people of religion in Europe and North America.

The hostile climate is causing many believers to cover their beliefs, warned Anja Hoffmann, executive director of the Observatory on Intolerance Against Christians in Europe, one in all the co-organisers of the event.

“It may be very worrying that the peaceful expression of private religious beliefs on matters regarding marriage and family has change into the potential end of a political profession or employment, and even the start of a court case,” she said. 

“This is a serious threat to non secular freedom and results in widespread self-censorship amongst traditional believers within the West.” 

The event took place on the fringes of the 2024 International Ministerial Conference on Freedom of Religion or Belief which brought together representatives of 38 member states of the International Religious Freedom or Belief Alliance (IRFBA) in Berlin earlier this month. IRFBA member states include the UK, US, Australia, the Netherlands and Germany.

The fringe meeting was co-organised by the Commission of the Catholic Bishops’ Conferences of the European Union, the Hungarian State Secretariat for the Aid to Persecuted Christians, and the Religious Freedom Institute in Washington DC.

The Religious Freedom Institute said, “The institutions that monitor and advance religious freedom within the EU and all over the world have come together in response to a typical concern: religious believers within the West are increasingly being targeted, marginalised, and sometimes even prosecuted for peacefully expressing their traditional religious convictions about family, marriage, and human nature.

“This problem have to be addressed to safeguard the pluralistic societies of Western democracies.” 

Dr José Luis Bazán, of the Catholic Bishops’ Conferences of the European Union (COMECE), said, “This phenomenon, which Pope Francis has aptly described as ‘polite persecution,’ will be understood as compelling policies and laws, in addition to social pressure, that undermine and curtail Christians’ possibility to precise and live in keeping with their moral and spiritual principles in contemporary liberal societies.”

The meeting also heard how Western nations are trying to impose liberal ideologies abroad. Marcela Szymanski, of Aid to the Church in Need and a member of the IRFBA Council of Experts, described how Global South countries will be punished materially in the event that they adopt local measures which are contrary to prevailing beliefs in Western nations, or don’t conform to ideological conditionality clauses.

Organisers submitted a declaration to IRFBA member states asking that they affirm religious freedom for all, including those with traditional views on marriage, the family and human nature. 

Todd Huizinga, Senior Fellow for Europe on the Religious Freedom Institute, said, “We consider this statement could have an actual effect not only in safeguarding religious freedom for all, but additionally in increasing mutual understanding, tolerance and peace in our pluralistic societies.”

David Trimble, president of the Religious Freedom Institute, expressed concern about pervasive efforts within the West to marginalise and even eradicate fundamental truths about God, the family, and human sexuality which are core to the Abrahamic faith traditions.

“When accommodation means the unwillingness to recognise these enduring truths, then freedom of faith for all is not any longer freedom of faith in any respect,” he said.