After taking self-defense lessons and repeatedly calling on the police for protection, two nuns living in France decided the escalating hostility against them for their faith was too much. They moved from the region rather than endure further “beatings, spitting and insults.”
In England, a convert to Christianity from Islam fought off a knife attack by his flatmate, who said he “deserved to die” for renouncing his former religion. The Guardian reported that both men were in the UK as asylum seekers.
And across Western Europe, Christians report “discrimination and bullying” and in some instances “even loss of employment” for expressing faith-based opinions in their workplaces. Some have even faced repercussions for views expressed in “private conversations or posts on private social media accounts.”
These examples are among 232 personal attacks against Christians documented by the Observatory on Intolerance and Discrimination against Christians in Europe (OIDAC) in its annual report last month.
The organization tallied “2,444 anti-Christian hate crimes in 35 countries” in 2023, drawing from police records, its own research, and data from other organizations; the majority of incidents involved vandalism of church buildings or property.
The OIDAC report named France, the United Kingdom, and Germany as the “most affected countries.” France had the highest number of anti-Christian hate crimes, with almost 1,000 incidents reported. The UK recorded over 700 cases. Germany’s tally, 277, was more than double its total last year.
“These trends should alert us all to step up efforts to protect freedom of religion or belief, including the freedom to openly and respectfully discuss different philosophical and religious viewpoints on sensitive issues, without fear of reprisal and censorship,” Anja Hoffmann, executive director of OIDAC Europe, said in a press release.
In reaction to the OIDAC report, Julia Doxat-Purser, sociopolitical representative and religious liberty coordinator for the European Evangelical Alliance (EEA), singled out her native United Kingdom as having a particularly troubling track record with religious workplace discrimination.
“This workplace problem has been apparent for some years in the UK, with numerous cases each year,” Doxat-Purser told CT. “Of course, the vast majority of British Christians do not face such serious difficulties at work. However, this may be because they choose to keep quiet about their faith. [The] EEA believes that the workplace should be a safe space for people of all faiths and none, where no one needs to leave their beliefs at the door, [and] where differences are accommodated with respect.”
Doxat-Purser also referenced another issue highlighted by OIDAC: discrimination against Christian politicians. One example cited in the report is David Campanale’s removal as a Liberal Democrat candidate for the British Parliament because of his faith.
“Sadly, it seems that some British political parties are making it almost impossible for Christians with orthodox views on certain matters to be party members or candidates,” Doxat-Purser said.
OIDAC’s 2024 report was compiled using an updated methodology compared to previous years. The 2023 report only included data that the organization had compiled on its own, resulting in 748 documented cases of intolerance or discrimination against Christians. This year, other sources were included, Hoffman said, to “gain a fuller picture of what is happening in Europe.”
In addition to attacks on Christians, OIDAC noted that “acts of violence against Jewish and Muslim believers were particularly high” last year. European governments reported approximately 9,000 antisemitic and 6,000 anti-Muslim hate crimes in 2023.
“It is particularly challenging to attract attention for discrimination against Christians in Europe, compared to the discrimination of minority groups such as Jews and Muslims,” said Christof Sauer, senior consultant and former founding director for the International Institute for Religious Freedom.
In Western Europe, where Christianity has a long history as a majority or even as a state-sponsored religion, intolerance toward Christians does not always receive the same attention as attacks on other groups.
“Secularists might regard Christians in Europe as those in power, as ‘perpetrators’ of violence from a historical perspective, and might have a hard time acknowledging victimhood,” Sauer told CT. “There is an increasing degree of religious illiteracy in Europe, and understanding of the broad scope of religious freedom often is limited.”
When the persecution of Christians is discussed by policymakers and believers in the West, the focus is often on countries found on the Open Doors’s World Watch List, an annual report that ranks the 50 countries where Christians face “the most extreme persecution,” most of which are in Africa and Asia.
“It is quite challenging to do justice to such a broad range of phenomena in only one measuring instrument,” Sauer said. “Therefore, I welcome complementary instruments. This includes the World Watch List … as well as the OIDAC Europe reports that systematically focus on one particular region of the world. Both help us track developments and alert us to different levels of hostility, discrimination, pressure, or violence against Christians.”
The OIDAC report closes by recommending that European governments “improve religious literacy among public officials and state media to ensure fair representation of religious views in media communication,” and “collect disaggregated data with the specific aim of monitoring intolerance and discrimination against Christians.”
The report encourages the European Union to create the position of an “EU Coordinator combating anti-Christian hatred,” which would be similar to existing positions for opposing discrimination against Jews and Muslims.
The report’s recommendations to churches and individual believers include confronting “undue restrictions on the free exercise of faith” and engaging “in public discourse in a respectful and informed manner, contributing to the dialogue between religion and secular society and building bridges between different groups.”
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