The recent storming of Cities Church in St. Paul by Don Lemon and crew has once again put a spotlight on the growing hostility toward orthodox religious beliefs here in the United States.

This was not an isolated confrontation over ICE. It was a snapshot of something deeper unfolding in our culture.

According to Family Research Council’s Hostility against Churches in the United States report, the previous six years showed a troubling escalation in incidents targeting U.S. churches. FRC documented 50 incidents in 2018, 83 in 2019, 55 in 2020, and 98 in 2021. Then came a dramatic spike after the overturn of Roe v. Wade: 198 incidents in 2022. That was followed by 485 in 2023.

While 2024 leveled off at 415 incidents, the elevated number reveals a new norm of hostility.

Here is the question we need to ask: Is hostility toward religious exercise expanding beyond vandalism and threats — and becoming institutional resistance?

We have seen increasing pressure on conscience protections in health care. We have seen faith-based adoption and foster care providers forced out of states for adhering to biblical truth. We have watched regulatory agencies treat religious organizations not as partners in civil society, but as obstacles to ideological agendas.

This is not merely about broken windows, graffiti, or even fire bombs. It is about a shifting cultural posture toward faith itself. Yet this is where we must look beyond the fog of the cultural war and recognize what is really happening — religious exercise is on the march.

If religious liberty becomes only a defensive battle — court cases, injunctions, reactive legislation — we risk narrowing the focus to survival. But religious liberty was never intended merely to shield private belief. It was designed to protect public witness.

The First Amendment does not secure faith in a fortified lock box; it protects its free exercise. And that means religious liberty is not only something to defend — it is something to exercise.

Members of Congress who pray openly, who allow conviction to shape their votes, who speak about transcendent moral truth in committee hearings — they are not violating the Constitution. They are living within it. Pastors who engage public issues from the pulpit are not trespassing into politics; they are exercising their God-given responsibility to speak truth.

Has hostility increased? Yes. Hostility rises when faith refuses to retreat. And across this country, believers are refusing to retreat. Over the last decade, hundreds of Christian men and women have answered God’s call to step into the realm of government without checking their faith at the door. That has the forces of spiritual darkness behind the prophets of secularism deeply troubled, because they are losing ground they have taken.

The ultimate question before us in Washington, D.C. and across the nation is not whether religious liberty survives on paper. It is whether it is lived with conviction.

Religious liberty is strongest when it is visible — when it is exercised with humility, confidence, and courage. If faith withdraws from the public square, hostility wins without passing a single law.

But if believers live their convictions openly by serving, speaking, legislating, and praying, then religious liberty becomes more than a defensive line. It becomes a transforming testimony.

Religious freedom is not being attacked because it is in retreat. It’s attacked because it is advancing.

Originally published here.