Persecution of Christians worldwide

US Senator David Vitter (R-La.) said the persecution of Christians is "on the rise, not on the decline.....One of the biggest threats to religious freedom is Islamic extremism which has not been challenged enough by the Obama administration. "

In Nigeria, Christian lawyer Emmanuel Ogebe of The Jubilee Campaign, said that despite the "persecution on steroids" Christians in his country are experiencing at the hands of Boko Haram – a radical Islamist organization – the US government will not label the group as a terrorists.

Dr.Thomas Farr senior fellow at Georgetown's Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs, and director of the Religious Freedom Project and the Program on Religion and US Foreign Policy, said at the Family Research Council's "Cry of the Martyrs" webcast in November 2012: "The protection of religious freedom worldwide is so essential to democracy and prosperity that it should be considered an issue of national security to the US government."

Created 14 years ago, the US Office of International Religious Freedom works to promote religious freedom as a "core objective of U.S. foreign policy," but Farr said the current administration, as well as its predecessors, has fallen short in promoting this issue as foreign policy: "Protecting religious freedom abroad is in our interest since doing so can help emerging democracies to grow beyond just one generation....... religious freedom can lead to economic development, religious freedom can lead to political development, there's plenty of history and data that suggests this."

Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, encouraged support for persecuted Christians through prayer and by petitioning the government to take more action in supporting religious freedom worldwide. "...We as individual believers in this country can take a stand with our brothers and sisters who are being persecuted around the world, and then we can get our government to do the same."

Good news is that Stanford Law School will start the nation's first law school clinic on religious liberty to be directed by James Sonne, formerly of Ave Maria Law School. That a law school of Stanford's prominence is starting a clinic focusing on religious liberty indicates the importance of the issue.