(by Stanley Carlson-Thies)

There’s no doubt that religious organizations and religious people are under great pressure from governments and from societal opponents in a very many places around the world. And, thanks to globalization and technology, we hear, read, and see the conflicts and injustices nearly immediately. Wherever they happen. So it seems that the sky is falling, all of the time. But it isn’t.

Even if there are many common trends, actual religious freedom challenges can only happen in specific places, and each specific place has particular laws, one set of aggressive (or weak) opponents and not another set, one history of respect for (or opposition to) this or that religion and this or that faith-based organization, one kind of cleverly devised provocation or just an unintentional catalyst to misunderstanding. In some places, sometimes, the law will restrain, not authorize, an attempted restriction on religious exercise. Sometimes society will rally around to protect, not condemn, the dissident religious person or organization. In some countries religious organizations are widely respected because of the good they do, even when many oppose some of the beliefs and practices of those organizations. In some places religion is suspect because it used to be imposed on all by government; in other countries churches have always been voluntary institutions, part of the valued diversity of society.

An accurate and useful assessment of religious freedom requires that we be neither Pollyanna nor Chicken Little. Gordon College’s accreditation was challenged because of opposition to the evangelical college’s commitment to traditional Christian sexual morality—and yet the accrediting agency involved has affirmed the college’s good standing. In the Fall of 2014, some Houston pastors were threatened with court action because of support they had given to a petition drive to overturn an LGBT ordinance—and yet there was widespread opposition to the mayor and her administration for their threats against the pastors.

There are many reasons to be worried about limitations on religious freedom in our era—but not everything that happens somewhere else will happen here next.