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Rep. Chris Smith sounded the alarm this weekend on Life, Liberty & Levin, calling out what he rightly called a “culture of denial” when it comes to the global assault on Christians. Americans who still believe in religious freedom watched a career legislator refuse to look away from a humanitarian crisis that our elites pretend isn’t happening.
Smith isn’t just talking tough on cable for attention; he’s pointing to a moral catastrophe documented by independent groups: hundreds of millions of Christians now live under harassment, discrimination or outright violence for their faith. The scale is staggering — recent counts put the number of Christians facing high levels of persecution at roughly the same order of magnitude that should shame every diplomat and NGO in Washington. This is not abstract theology, it’s people being martyred, jailed, and driven from ancestral homelands.
Those grim numbers are reflected on the ground, where thousands of believers were killed, congregations attacked, and churches profaned last year alone. Nigeria, in particular, has been a bleeding wound with jihadist and communal violence responsible for a disproportionate share of those faith-motivated murders. We cannot be surprised that a seasoned human-rights advocate like Smith names these facts plainly — the data won’t disappear just because the media won’t cover it.
What’s most galling is how comfortable elites are with their moral amnesia: administrations, international bodies, and big-name human-rights outfits too often reduce this to a talking point while refusing to press real, sustained pressure on the worst offenders. Conservatives shouldn’t sigh and shrug — we should be furious that American power and moral clarity are not being used to protect the vulnerable. Silence in the face of persecution is complicity, plain and simple.
Congressman Smith has earned the right to be heard; his decades of work on human rights, leadership on the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, and chairmanship of the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission show he means business. He has brought hearings, pushed accountability, and refused to let geopolitics become an excuse for passivity. When a lawmaker with his record calls for action, patriots ought to rally behind him rather than listen to the naysayers.
Policy responses are straightforward if politicians abandon their cowardice: increase targeted sanctions on persecutors, expand refuge and resettlement for religious minorities, and use every diplomatic and economic lever to secure religious liberty. Organizations on the ground have documented how resettlement and focused pressure save lives, and it’s high time Washington followed their lead instead of playing geopolitical favorites. The GOP should lead on this as a matter of conscience and national interest.
This is not a niche religious gripe — it’s a test of whether the West still believes in the basic rights our founders enshrined. If conservatives don’t make religious freedom a central plank of our foreign policy, the hollowing out of liberty abroad will sooner or later come home. Stand with Smith and demand that our government stop treating Christians as an inconvenient statistic and start treating them as fellow human beings worthy of protection.
Hardworking Americans who love liberty must push Congress and the next administration to act with urgency and clarity. We can no longer accept a world where Christians are burned out of their homes while politicians posture and journalists look away. The time for moral clarity is now, and patriots will answer that call rather than hide behind the tired, comfortable silence of the elites.
