A truth that’s still powerful and ageless - Religious persecution

On the eve of one of the great Christian festivals, even if we now celebrate materialism with the zeal we once reserved for Christmas religious observance, it may be appropriate to consider the consequences of being Christian in the many parts of the world where religious freedom is an unknown concept and where being a Christian may endanger your life.

The relentless growth of pluralism and the decline of religious observance run more or less in parallel in the western world but that is not the case across vast swathes of our planet. Even though the western world is increasingly indifferent to any commitment to formal, institutionalised religion, nobody is persecuted for their religious beliefs in the West.

Ironically, living in a country where there is a decline in formal religious expression is probably the safest place to express religious views; the pluralism that allows people not to believe is also the pluralism that guarantees people’s right to believe.