RFI Research Fellow Lidia Papp recently interviewed Paul Marshall, Director of RFI’s South and Southeast Asia Action Team, for the Hungarian Conservative. They discussed the state of global Christianity amid challenges of growing persecution and discrimination. “The places where we can expect growth in the persecution of Christians,” Marshall notes, “are the ones where it is already happening and is quite intensive.” Marshall proceeds to point to dire conditions in China, North Korea, India, Nigeria, and elsewhere. 

Marshall explains that “in many authoritarian societies, Christianity is correctly seen as something likely to undercut dictatorial regimes.” Chinese leaders recognize this dynamic and it is “one of the reasons for their fear of religion in general, but particularly of Christianity.” Marshall continues:

People in authoritarian countries realize that there’s a particular fear of Christianity, even in a quiet pietistic form, as a subversive element because it will always insist that it also follows another king. There are similar patterns in India in that regard.

To conclude the interview, Papp turns Marshall’s attention to the West, and the United States in particular, where disputes over abortion, “sexual orientation and gender identity” policies, and public education continue to proliferate. Marshall observes:

…the US is an increasingly secular society. With changing ethical stances around abortion, around the nature of marriage, now very much around questions of death and killing and what’s called assisted suicide. Now, we see changing views on what constitutes a man or a woman, and claims that that’s indeterminate. 

“The issue,” Marshall argues, “is that people are being forced to support these secular views…It is not enough to allow it—you must support this new ‘morality’.”

Read Papp’s full interview with Marshall here.