Will we see Christians in America killed for their faith?

By Jim Thompson
HCP columnist

We can certainly answer in the affirmative, “Will we see Christians in America persecuted for their faith?”

This has been happening and is getting worse by the day. Face it, it is no longer cool – if it ever were – to be a Christian in America.

And, in a abstract way, we have already seen Christians in America killed for their faith; after all, to some extent, that was what 9/11 was all about – killing the "infidels."

Further, there have often been reports of one-off killings, sometimes of a “Good Samaritan” or other person just trying to help out their fellow human being.

However, I am being more simplistic. Can America in the near future become what Germany became for the Jews (and others) in the 1930s?

Is religious persecution, particularly Christian persecution, in America leading to a very bad outcome?

What is most disturbing is that I can no longer say, “Absolutely not.”

In Germany, it was first necessary to make the Jews something despicable, something to be hated. A key event in aiding this was Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass (Nov. 9-10, 1938). During this night, windows were broken in Jewish shops, buildings and synagogues.

If this is the model, how is the war against Christianity going in America?

For a long time in the South, African-American churches had been torched. This has subsided as of late, and it seems more racially motivated than an attack on Christianity.

But what about one nationally known restaurant chain? When they took a stand on homosexuality, a stand they said was Bible-based, were they not harassed?

Maybe there was not a lot of glass broken, but perhaps in the refined world of today, glass need not be broken to make the same statement as was made in Germany in the 1930s.

Then there was the hobby store chain. This is another Christian-owned private company, quite large, which has had to sue the government in order to keep the government from imposing what the owners see as anti-Christian mandates on it via Obamacare.

It is one thing to take your business elsewhere if you don’t like the policies of a company. It is quite another to actively harass them for their deep-seated personal beliefs.

Then, there are the Christian college students who are forced to answer questions and write papers in a certain way, a way against their beliefs, merely to achieve an acceptable grade in classes.

These stories are legion. They are harassment. They have nothing to do with obtaining an education other than a non-believer in a position of power forcing someone to do something against their very nature in order to pass a class.

So back to my original question: I find the most disturbing issue to be that I cannot with certainty and gusto any longer say, “No, there is no way Christians in America will be killed for their faith.”

Very, very, disturbing.

Jim Thompson, formerly of Marshall, is a graduate of Hillsboro High School and the University of Cincinnati. He resides in Duluth, Ga., following decades of wandering the world, and is a columnist for The Highland County Press.