The Forbidden WORD

One insidious type of persecution against Christians is the denial of access to the Bible. For followers of Christ, the Bible is a source of hope and encouragement. Yet in too many places in the world, this life-changing book is forbidden.

Religious persecution is not something that most Americans have personally experienced. While we may hear the odd snide remark about our religious group or be offended by the depiction of our faith in popular entertainment, we nevertheless experience an unsurpassed degree of religious freedom. We wake up each day with the ability to read our sacred texts, attend our religious services, and speak and write freely about our beliefs. While incidences of targeted religious hostilities do exist in the U.S., they are relatively few and far between.

But religious persecution is all too common in many parts of the world. And religious persecution targeting Christians is on the rise.

That reality was driven home for me with the recent release of Open Doors USA’s 2015 World Watch List. This annual ranking of the 50 countries and regions where it is most difficult and dangerous to be a Christian features a diverse group of nations. They vary in location, from Asia to Africa to the Middle East to the Americas. They vary in size from the small to the vast, in governance from the totalitarian to the democratic, and in socio-economic conditions from the staggeringly wealthy to the startlingly poor. But what they have in common is a culture that allows for the persecution of Christians.

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