Has Religious Liberty Made the American Church Weak?

​The topic of religious freedom is hotly contested these days, showing up in Supreme Court debates, state laws, and executive orders.  Some church leaders, comparing the church in America with the church in China, are drawing the conclusion that the growth of Christianity in China is happening because of persecution, while religious freedom in America, they say, has made the Church weak.  Although this idea does contain a grain of truth, it demonstrates a misunderstanding of God's Word and of Chinese and American history. 
 
Francis Chan, for example, recently said:
When you look at the places where there is religious freedom and you compare those places to where there is not religious freedom, what have we done with the freedom? It’s just weakened the Church.

Francis Chan did qualify his remark, saying that he does not wish for the U.S. to lose its religious freedom, but his thoughts echoed a misunderstanding that many believers have repeated in recent years.  Here's why they are mistaken:

God's Word
Scripture is certainly clear that God does use persecution and suffering for our good (Matthew 5:10-12, Acts 5:41).  But nowhere in scripture are God-followers found longing for more restrictions on their freedom to follow God.  A possible exception can be found in 1 Samuel 8, where Israel longs to be ruled over by a worldly king—and this desire is condemned by God, not applauded.  1 Timothy 2:2 tells us to pray “for kings and all who are in authority, so that we may lead a tranquil and quiet life in all godliness and dignity.”  Our prayer is to be able to live out our godly lifestyle without interference from the government.

So it confuses me when I hear Christians express the idea that we might be better off with more persecution.  Christ's followers are called to leadership, not passive victimhood.  Before Jesus ascended, leaving his Holy Spirit to guide and empower, he made it clear that he has been given all authority, not only over Heaven, but over the whole earth, and he commanded The Church to make disciples of all nations, teaching them to obey everything he, Jesus, had commanded.  This commission was not a one-off thought, dropped by Jesus as a nearly forgotten postscript--it was the culmination of history to that point, a working out of Christ's mission of redemption, and the fulfillment of prophesy.   Genesis 12, for example, declares that the seed of Abraham would become a blessing to all peoples on earth.

In his command to disciple and teach the nations, Jesus left room for discipling, baptizing, and teaching even as a persecuted minority, and we are not to be surprised when the world reacts harshly to us (Matt 10:22-25), but persecution and lack of religious freedom were not to be the goal.  On the contrary, The Church, a royal priesthood and holy nation (1 Peter 2:9), was to be blessed by God and be a blessing (Gen 12), making disciples of nations and transforming those societies to serve their Lord Jesus.  We’re not left with a picture of a Church dependent on abuse to keep it strong.

Poor treatment of God’s People in a society would not be the result of successful implementation of Christ’s Great Commission in that society.

American History
To reference pop culture, Bono once shared that, as an Irishman, he had "always believed that America is not just a country, it's an idea, it's a dream that belongs to the whole world."  God brought together the "idea" of America with the Pilgrim and Puritan Founders who sacrificed deeply to build a place for religious freedom. This American idea was then propelled and shepherded by God, and many brave men have given their lives to protect this "dream that belongs to the whole world."

As Christians, the best way to view this history is with an attitude of gratefulness and a resolve to defend the historically unique Christian freedoms we enjoy in the United States.  Tragically, I find that the history of the unique Christian freedoms in America are taken for granted and undervalued by today's church.
 
The strength of America’s Christianity was built by God out of the Great Awakenings, the prayer movements, through the work of pastors, and through the multi-generational discipleship of Christian families bringing up their children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord (Eph 6:4).

The greatest slide into weakness by the American church has come not through religious freedom, but quite the opposite.  The massive pressure on families to have their children educated in Secular Humanist schools has resulted in an unsustainable position for the church, with three out of four children from Christian families leaving the faith.

Chinese History
Pointing to persecution as the reason for a strong Chinese church is like pointing to Communism as the reason for China's strong economic growth, when, in fact, Communism created poverty and even starvation in the days of the Cultural Revolution and Great Leap Forward.  China's rapid economic development began when its government embraced a form of capitalism in its economic policy.  The Chinese economy blossomed in spite of, not because of Communism.

The growth of the church in China began with the Holy Spirit empowered, sacrificial work of western and native missionaries.  The Gospel spread in spite of, not because of persecution, and when China relaxed its persecution of Christians during the 1990's, the Church began to explode.  God used the relative increase of religious freedom to allow fast growth and fruitfulness, to the point that in 2003 and 2004, Chinese pastors and church leaders met openly to begin a missionary sending movement from the Chinese church into the Middle East.

The World Today
While we can point to encouraging numbers in China, increased persecution in the Middle East has decimated the Christian population.  Since this is the region of the world with the worst Christian persecution, one would think the Middle East would be a good testing ground to see how well a lack of religious freedom helps strengthen the church.  It turns out that over the past 100 years, the number of Christians has dropped from 20% of the population to about 4% in 2019, and the number is still falling.  God is using the suffering in the Middle East to strengthen the faith of some individual believers, He is receiving glory through the death of Christian martyrs, and He will ultimately use everything for His good purposes, but the big picture shows that right now, God is using the Great Commission and the religious freedom it produces as His main tool to grow and strengthen the worldwide church.
 
Conclusion
The idea that religious freedom is a cause of weakness in the American church may seem plausible on the surface, but this idea misses the main lessons of scripture, history, and a survey of the world today.  God can and does use trials of many kinds to train and strengthen His people (James 1:2-4), and He does sometimes use loss of liberty to spread the gospel, as in Acts 11 and the conversion of Scandinavia, which came as a result of Viking raids of Christian areas and the forced relocation of Christian prisoners.  However, God never stops there.  He wants His people to transform their societies into Christ-following sanctuaries, with freedom to build His church and send out the Gospel as the Irish did after the time of Saint Patrick.