Persecution against true Christianity (as opposed to cultural Christianity) has a long history beginning with the birth of the Church. In fact, Jesus said that “if the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you” (Jn 15:18) and “In the world you will have persecution. But take heart; I have overcome the world” (Jn 16:33).

There is growing evidence that many in America lack a commitment to something greater than themselves. This is a definite sea change from the first half of the 20th Century. The cultural accent today is on having rather than being. It is about rights without responsibility. Meanwhile, truth-speaking is held hostage by a charge of racism (or homophobia) and the importance of character bows to the weight of the economic. At the center of this cultural shift is the denial of objective truth or it is the affirmation of total relativism (philosophically this is the result of existentialism which got a foothold in America in the early 1960s). Objective truth means there is something above experience by which experience is judged. Put another way, objective truth means there are universal truths which are reflected in the universal human experience such as human behavior being measured by such universal ideas as justice. Furthermore, to say there is no objective truth is self-defeating as the claim itself requires the existence objective truth. This subsequent change in the cultural forces can and are having a negative effect on how Christians, when not vigilant, talk about their beliefs. That is, to speak of Christian theology in a way that does not offend the world. However, here I only consider what the rejection of objective means for Christians who do speak publicly of objective truth. To affirm publicly that God exists and that He has revealed objective truth in the Holy Scriptures puts the one making that claim an object of ridicule at best or threat of death at worse. This possibility exists because of the increasing level of Christian persecution in America. There is no clearer example of this than the current reaction to Turning Point USA. It appears that it is not hyperbole to say that Christian persecution is growing in America although at this point it has not reached the level, for example, of the persecution in Nigeria.

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