The West wants to have a leading role when it comes to promoting freedom and safeguarding human rights, Todd Huizinga writes. However, he sees important challenges when it comes to religious freedom.
Discrimination and intolerance against Christians in the West are real problems, and it is getting worse. The recently released reports of two of today's most solid religious-freedom advocacy organisations thoroughly document this: the “Report 2025” of OIDAC Europe, the Observatory on Intolerance and Discrimination against Christians in Europe, and the “Religious Freedom in the World Report 2025” of Aid to the Church in Need (ACN).
Even the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, a mainstream intergovernmental group, now explicitly recognises, in its “Guide on Understanding Anti-Christian Hate Crimes,” the problem of intolerance against Christians in the West.
>Traditional people of faith and dechristianised elites now disagree diametrically about many crucial questions
Prejudices against Christians afflict the United States as well. Since his inauguration, Donald Trump has moved to counteract the anti-religious effects of many policies and programs of the Biden administration. Among Trump's numerous initiatives are the establishment of the Religious Liberty Commission and the Task Force to Eradicate Anti-Christian Bias Within the Federal Government.
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Composed of prominent thought leaders, the RLC's core mandate is to identify threats to religious liberty in the United States and develop strategies to protect and strengthen the American tradition of religious liberty for all. The Task Force comprises top-level government officials. Its purpose is to ensure that the U.S. government will “never again …. That must change. If the Western democracies fail to uphold everyone's fundamental freedoms within their borders, we may soon find that the rights of all of us are in danger.
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The Article 18 Alliance
All of this represents a golden opportunity for the Article 18 Alliance, to which most Western nations belong. The Alliance is a network of 38 countries, including the U.S. and 26 European nations, dedicated to advancing religious freedom worldwide. It is named after Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which affirms the inviolability of the right to freedom of religion.
If the Article 18 Alliance member states would officially affirm their support for the freedom of religion of those who espouse traditional religious teachings on marriage, family, and human nature -many of them their own citizens- this could represent a small yet significant step toward helping our Western societies learn how better to live together in this time of unprecedented polarisation.
By speaking out in favour of religious freedom for all, the Alliance would not only demonstrate its immediate relevance to the citizens of its member nations but also enhance its credibility worldwide.
