The head of a noted religious freedom advocacy organization cited “the dominance of woke culture that thinks it’s OK to silence people who disagree” as the greatest threat to religious freedom in the United States and around the world. Michael Farris, president and CEO of Alliance Defending Freedom, explained that many people, especially Christians, find themselves on “the receiving end of efforts to silence them, to cause them to lose their careers” and “not have the ability to even get their opinions out in public society,” Farris said “the dominance of woke culture that thinks it’s OK to silence people who disagree is very dangerous in many respects for freedom of speech and freedom of religion” in the U.S.

 Farris stated that “in some sectors of the world,” the greatest threat to religious freedom is “the same as the United States,” specifically, “the imperialism of woke culture.” He maintained that the “totalitarian mood” behind woke culture extends to the dominant orthodoxies in other countries as well: “In India, for example, Hindu nationalism operates on a very, very egregious basis and tries to close down people that are differing…I was in India just a few weeks ago and met with a young man who was beaten by the police for simply praying out loud on a neighborhood balcony of an apartment,” he said. “He was charged with a crime of forcible conversion. All he was doing was praying for his uncle’s healing.”

 Farris cited the intolerance of Hindu nationalists in India as well as woke culture in the U.S. as examples of how “we’re in a mood of the world where diversity of opinion is not being tolerated. There’s pressure to adhere to whatever the prevailing viewpoint is in a particular country, whether that’s Hindu nationalism or left-wing cultural wokeism. Get in line or face the consequences is the mood in way too many places in the world,” he said, stressing that “it’s relatively a small, very vocal, very vicious minority that wants to silence people, especially in this country.

 “I don’t think that the majority of Americans support this,” he added, noting that “waking up the big middle of the country to what’s happening” is a necessary step in reversing the trend of intolerance because “most Americans still believe in their heart that everybody should be able to say whatever they want and not suffer the consequences of being subjected to mob violence.” Farris recalled that earlier this year, one of his colleagues, ADF General Counsel Kristen Waggoner, had a mob try to “drown her out” as she addressed students at Yale Law School. At the same time, he expressed hope that “America can listen to its better angels and not listen to people who really want to pursue what I believe to be an un-American position of silencing those that you disagree with.”

 Agreeing that “Christians who hold biblical views on sexuality, gender and abortion are not being tolerated in the public square,” Farris identified “most college campuses or most public schools” as the most hostile environments for those with such beliefs: “It is very, very difficult to be able to communicate your views as a Christian and there is punishment being metered out.” Farris elaborated on his concerns with American education, noting that he had been “litigating cases” involving a tug of war between parents and schools and teachers over what is taught in public schools surrounding sex and gender for 40 years. “There has been some level of this that’s been going on at least that long,” he asserted. Farris said one change in education policy that has already materialized is a doubling of the homeschool population in the last couple of years: “It went from 5 percent of the school-aged population to about 10 percent.”

 Farris attributed the ascendance of critical theory and other concerning curriculum in schools to the fact that “school districts are organized in a way that the teachers’ union has an outsized influence in a number of ways.” He also explained that “the general education establishment, if you’re starting with the teachers’ colleges in the country that control a lot of what happens downstream, has pretty much bought into the culturally woke agenda.”

 Biblical Connection: The early church faced a similar issue when first the Jews and then the Romans tried to silence their voices through persecution and even death. However, the believers stood strong in their faith and continued to spread the Gospel.

 PRAY: Pray for those who are in danger of persecution but also pray that this tide will shift, and many parts of the world will turn back to religious freedom.