Christians in the West must ‘stand strong’ or risk losing religious freedoms: humanitarian activist

(LifeSiteNews) — Today on The John-Henry Westen Show I’m joined by humanitarian activist Gia Chacón, who regularly travels around the world to speak with persecuted Christians.

As the founder and leader of For the Martyrs, Chacón devotes her life to raising awareness on the persecution of Christians worldwide — a “human rights crisis” that the mainstream media and even the world itself largely ignores.

Why is this ignored? In Chacón’s eyes, it’s precisely because they’re Christians.

“Christian persecution is a human rights crisis. The only reason that people don’t talk about this issue is because of the mere fact that they are Christian, and that it’s Christians who are the ones who are suffering,” she says. “And it’s seen as an issue for the church. But Christian persecution should be seen as, and treated with the same level of urgency as, any other human rights crisis.”

I also ask Chacón what she thinks about the increasing anti-Christian rhetoric in America. She believes the government response to COVID served as a “testing period” to see how compliant the churches were in following their dictates.

READ: Biden has declared war on conservative Christians

Chacón then makes a salient point about the true meaning of religious freedom and warns what will happen if Christians don’t fight to safeguard it.

“We have to realize that religious freedom does not mean that we have the ability to go to church, okay? Religious freedom doesn’t mean that we can wake up on Sunday and go to church and no one’s going to bother us,” she says. “Religious freedom means that we have the ability to practice our deeply held religious beliefs in every area of society.”

“If Christians do not stand strong now in the West, these kinds of anti-Christian movements and attacks will only get worse, and we will soon lose our religious freedom.”

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John-Henry is the co-founder, CEO and editor-in-chief of LifeSiteNews.com. He and his wife Dianne have eight children and they live in the Ottawa Valley in Ontario, Canada.

He has spoken at conferences and retreats, and appeared on radio and television throughout the world. John-Henry founded the Rome Life Forum, an annual strategy meeting for life, faith and family leaders worldwide. He is a board member of the John Paul II Academy for Human Life and the Family. He is a consultant to Canada’s largest pro-life organization Campaign Life Coalition, and serves on the executive of the Ontario branch of the organization. He has run three times for political office in the province of Ontario representing the Family Coalition Party.

John-Henry earned an MA from the University of Toronto in School and Child Clinical Psychology and an Honours BA from York University in Psychology.