ABSTRACT
Two global developments combine in our day to create what may be the most significant story of the twenty-first century. One is the unprecedented violent persecution in many parts of the world of religious minorities – often (though not exclusively) Christian minorities. The second is the “war on religion” that is a primary feature of Western societies in which a growing climate of secular hostility toward religious faith – and chiefly Christianity (given the religious history of these nations) – is aimed. Tellingly, neither of these two phenomena, however, is a part of mainstream news reporting, unless such conflicts are perceived as “political” in nature. This stunning silence accurately mirrors the precarious state of religious freedom in our time. And it suggests that an adequate grounding for religious freedom – the “first freedom” – is needed in order to establish and safeguard religious freedom, both at home and abroad. This grounding, it needs emphasizing, should contribute to sound social and foreign policy. In the face of a changing and increasingly dangerous world, it behooves those of us living in the twenty-first century to “bear the burden” of those who are suffering for their faith based on the “sacred rights of conscience,” and to consider the very roots from which religious freedom – the “first freedom” – derives.
