As incomprehensible to average Americans as it may seem, three stories about government school students facing disciplinary actions for expressing their Christian faith were featured in Christian media publications over the past few months:

• A six-year-old girl loves Jesus and is concerned about her second grade classmates’ eternities. She shares her newfound faith and it scares her friends. The Des Moines Washington teacher hears concerns from the classmates’ parents, and the little one finds her book bag searched everyday when she enters the schoolyard.

• A 14 year old student in Florida is ridiculed for reading his Bible at school. Not only did classmates reportedly threaten the boy on account of his faith, the high school freshman’s science teacher publicly questioned him and insinuated he was “ignorant” for believing in God and the Bible.

• Last year, yet another Florida high school student was reprimanded by her drama teacher for writing a monologue that referenced her faith in Jesus. The student was told to rewrite the assignment with no reference to religion.

Those are only three instances made public by legal groups representing the students who, their lawyers say, have had their First Amendment rights restricted in government schools.

The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution says, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”

While the First Amendment focuses on the U.S. Congress and what they cannot do, it asserts that public policies restricting religious practice or expression at lower levels are not acceptable, either.

The 14-year-old Florida student whose teacher ridiculed him for his faith experienced something no American should ever have to experience, his attorney Harmeet K. Dhillon said in a statement.

“It’s bad enough that the school has done nothing to stop the bullying from his peers, but have gone as far as joining in on targeting [the student] for simply practicing his faith. This blatant violation of his First Amendment rights is another example of how extreme so many in our education system have become,” Dhillon said, and why her law firm took on his case.

The American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ), which took on the 14-year-old drama student’s case, described a similar legal scenario.

“This is what ‘wokeness’ has come to—shaming middle school students for expressing their joy in their personal relationship with Jesus Christ because it is considered ‘offensive,’” Christina Compagnone (Stierhoff) of the ACLJ wrote in April 2021. “This was a clear violation of this student’s First Amendment rights and an affront to the religious liberties rooted deeply in the history and culture of the United States.”

The U.S. Supreme Court dealt with the First Amendment rights of students five decades ago, in Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District, 393 U.S. 503 (1969). In their ruling favoring the plaintiffs, the highest court in the land wrote:

In our system, state-operated schools may not be enclaves of totalitarianism. School officials do not possess absolute authority over their students. Students in school, as well as out of school, are “persons” under our Constitution. They are possessed of fundamental rights which the State must respect, just as they themselves must respect their obligations to the State. In our system, students may not be regarded as closed-circuit recipients of only that which the State chooses to communicate. They may not be confined to the expression of those sentiments that are officially approved. In the absence of a specific showing of constitutionally valid reasons to regulate their speech, students are entitled to freedom of expression of their views.

And while that’s a strong statement in favor of students’ rights to express their opinions, the question is whether the Court would hold a similar position in 2022, or would the Court decide that maintaining peace in a politically- and religiously-divided setting is the “greater good?”

A growing number of Christian parents are choosing home schools and private Christian schools rather than dealing with antagonistic settings and curriculum offered in state-operated schools.

As more and more cases like those hit Christian media headlines and eventually make it to dominant media, the more intense the issue will become and all the more urgent for American freedom-loving parents to defend future generations from anti-Christian sentiments within government schools.

Illinois Family Institute offers an array of resources on their website at illinoisfamily.org to help parents make crucial decisions about their children’s education.

In 1929, Josef Stalin signed a law that dealt a devastating blow to religious freedom in Russia. For most of a century, Russian Christians suffered enormous persecutions for their faith. Some estimates suggest that as many as 20,000,000 Christians may have been martyred in prison camps in the 20^th century for holding to their faith. One historian stated that over 85,000 Russian Orthodox Priests were shot in 1937 alone.

Communism, despite its slogans of equality and social utopia, has never come through on its promises. Stalin’s draconian measures were reaffirmed by Leonid Brezhnev’s updated legislation in 1975. A remnant of faithful underground churches remained active, but experienced severe opposition and punishment.

On November 9, 1989, the unbelievable happened. Two years after Ronald Reagan’s famous, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” speech, the Berlin Wall, separating East and West Germany came down. A new policy of reform and religious liberty was proclaimed in the Soviet Union. And indeed, changes began to happen.

In October of 1990, President Mikhail Gorbachev and RSFSR’s Boris Yeltsin (then chairman of the Russian parliament or Supreme Soviet), both introduced new legislation allowing for an opening of religious freedom and liberty of conscience.

Soon, Christian ministries from the West poured into Russia with evangelism and Christian discipleship tools. We must not be deceived, however, into thinking that everything was rosy. During the Clinton administration, a mass immigration occurred as Christians from Russia poured into the United States seeking asylum for religious persecution.

The KGB was still deeply entrenched in positions of power in Russia. They were just subtler and covert. But nonetheless, an unprecedented access to religious materials and Western media became available, and it seemed the door of communism would never close again on the former USSR.

The Noose is Tightened Again

In 1997, a new law was passed governing religion in Russia, but it gave no definition or description of how religious expression and promotion could be administered. Some local regions had laws restricting open expression, but most areas have been relatively open and unharassed.

However, on July 6, 2016, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a controversial anti-terrorism law that infringes on many human rights, including religious freedom. It restricts proselytizing of religion in Russia, and imposes heavy fines for violators. The new law applies to all religious groups except for the Russian Orthodox Church (which many religious groups claim has been under the thumb of the Russian government for many decades).

Under the new law, any promotion of Christian faith, outside of an officially recognized church building, would be considered subversive, and would be faced with a fine of up to $780 for an individual, or $15,000 for an organization. It has been reported that this may apply even to evangelizing in homes or over the internet. Foreign missionaries who violate the ordinance would be deported. According to Christianity Today, “The ‘Yarovaya package,’ requires missionaries to have permits, makes house churches illegal,” among other restrictions.

Placing restrictions on religion by means of amendments to a terrorism bill was a clever move on Putin’s part. Who would want to be seen as standing up for terrorism? And, I’m sure it has been argued, religion, after all, has been the driving force between much of global terrorism. Although this measure has been condemned by religious leaders around the world, it is almost certain that Putin and his henchmen will remain deaf to their concerns.

Coming to America?

For the past half century there has been, in America, an increasing push to privatize religion. The courts have reaffirmed the desires of the ACLU, Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, American Atheists, and others, to see all vestiges of public expressions of faith eradicated. What you want to believe in your own personal little heart about God, or the tooth fairy, or whatever you want to call Him or it, is between you and your god. But don’t bring it into the public square.

Systematically, Bible distribution in schools, public displays of the Ten Commandments, nativity scenes on public property, and public prayers in Jesus’ name are all being removed by a left-leaning, black-robed oligarchy.

The New Tolerance

It goes beyond mere privatization, however. Now, there is even a desire to move into the realm of regulating moral conscience. Atheist leader, Richard Dawkins, has suggested that it is child abuse to teach your children to believe the tenets of Christianity as being objectively true.

Many evangelical leaders in America have predicted the coming of religious persecution in America. In his 2014 inauguration speech as President of the National Religious Broadcaster’s convention, Jerry Johnson predicted a move against freedom of speech in Christian broadcasting, on the basis of supposed, “Hate Speech” legislation.

At a national homeschooling leadership conference in Chicago in 2010, Dr. Erwin Lutzer, former pastor of the historic Moody Church in Chicago told the audience they should encourage Christian homeschooling parents they serve to teach their children about the history of religious persecution as a part of their education. Dr. Lutzer has authored a book entitled “When a Nation Forgets God: 7 Lessons We Must Learn from Nazi Germany.” Author and radio host Eric Metaxas describes the book this way: “It clearly and powerfully explains what the parallels are between Germany’s fall from grace and the beginning of our own fall.”

Christian leaders like Dr. Albert Mohler, Russell Moore and others, and even former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Scailia have suggested the possible threat to religious liberty posed by the SCOTUS’ decision on same-sex marriage. What happens if a Christian college or seminary is required by law to allow same-sex dating on campus?

We’ve already seen nationally televised court cases regarding Christians who have refused to bake wedding cakes for same-sex couples, or Christian county clerks who refused to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples.

The fact is, it is not enough for atheists, homosexuals, socialists and cultural leftists to have their own freedom and equality to believe whatever they believe (a freedom which most Christians fully support). No, they want to ensure that Christians are not permitted to live out their own faith and convictions without retribution. This is the legacy of the New Tolerance movement. The doors of religious liberty are closing once again in Russia, after a brief twenty-six year limited window. Are the doors of our four-hundred year window of liberty closing? Frankly, that answer will be determined by what this generation of Christians in America does in the next ten years.