Christmas Holidays Remind Us Why We Must Keep Fighting for Religious Freedom
This article was originally published by First Liberty Institute, a Christians Engaged partner.
By Jorge Gomez
As a New Year begins, I want to share with you a quick story that brought me a lot of perspective this holiday season. It reminded me why First Liberty’s mission of protecting religious freedom is so important—and why we must keep fighting for religious liberty in our nation.
A couple weeks ago, I was at my home church here in Texas waiting for our Christmas service to start. I’ve been serving on the worship team for many years—and Christmas is perhaps our most anticipated and attended service of the entire year.
I was sitting in the green room with the rest of our team, anxiously awaiting to lead our congregation in worship to celebrate the birth of our Savior. But this year, things were going a little different than in years past.
We were having some sound problems throughout our pre-service rehearsal. Most of us couldn’t hear our instruments or voices very well. With less than 30 minutes left until the service started, we all knew that we weren’t going to have the sound we wanted. We’d have to push through and focus on doing the best we could through the unexpected audio issues.
A few of us felt discouraged. Others were visibly frustrated. Here we’d been waiting, planning and diligently practicing for this big service, expecting that things should go according to our plan. Of course, God has a way of using these types of circumstances to teach us lessons and show us that His strength is made perfect in our weakness, as we read in 2 Corinthians 12:8 – 10.
It was at this point of frustration that one of our leaders stood up and encouraged us to keep our focus on what matters: worshipping. No matter the audio quality, or whether our team played all the right notes, or hit every queue perfectly, he reminded us that our calling is to give God the glory—in all circumstances: good, bad, ugly or imperfect.
To ease the tension, our leader told us this in a very lighthearted way:
“Guys, we are so lucky to be able to worship today! Look at this amazing building we’re in. Look at this awesome audio system we have. It may not be working today, but we still have it! Let’s not forget about being grateful that we even get to be at church today.”
“There are no militia groups outside waiting to arrest us—or worse—just for getting together to have a Christmas church service,” he added. “We’re so blessed that we get to do what we do. Let’s go out there and just play for an audience of One—because at the end of the day that’s all that really matters.”
What he said couldn’t be more true. It was exactly what we needed to hear. And it made me so grateful to be part of First Liberty and everything that God is doing through this incredible organization.
My leader’s words reminded me that at First Liberty, we are truly fighting for what matters most. Because of what First Liberty does, churches like mine remain free to worship in peace. Every case we fight, every house of worship and religious leader we help, every government bully we stand up to, every lawsuit filed, every client we pray for and visit, every phone call we make and every email sent…all of it is about protecting the most sacred liberty of all: religious freedom.
Only a few days after our Christmas service, I read in The Christian Post about a group of Christians in Nigeria who were killed after their Christmas carol service—including a one-year-old baby. Coincidence? I don’t think so. It was God once again nudging me toward gratitude for the impact of First Liberty’s work on our nation.
In 2024, Aid to the Church in Need—an international religious freedom watchdog—noted in its Religious Freedom Report that more than 4 billion people live in a country where they’re persecuted for their religious beliefs. That’s more than 50% of the world’s population. The U.S. State Department also reported increasing religious persecution globally, with alarming “threats to religious freedom in almost 200 countries.”
These reports from across the globe always make me remember that no nation is immune to tyranny.
We often think religious persecution and oppression happen in faraway nations. But religious freedom violations are happening all around us. Some worst offenders are America’s neighbors. Mexico, Cuba, Colombia, and Nicaragua—all here in the Western hemisphere.
Of course, rising attacks on religious freedom aren’t just happening in neighboring countries. This is happening right here on our shores. This should spur us as Americans to continue defending religious liberty as the bedrock on which our nation is built.
From its inception, the U.S. has always striven to be a safe haven to those who experience persecution. When the Puritans set sail for America, they understood what it was like to be a religious minority fleeing an oppressive state. So, they vowed to create a culture where religious expression thrived. The first Governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, John Winthrop, envisioned America as a beacon of light for religious freedom. “The eyes of all people are upon us,” he wrote. “We shall be as a city upon a hill.”
Religious freedom is a pillar of our Republic. Being grounded in this founding principle is more crucial now than ever before, especially considering global trends.
The fight for religious freedom is the most important one of our lifetime. The last thing I want to see in America is a day when people like me—like you, your children, or your grandchildren—a are carried off to jail for having a Christmas service or gather at a church to worship. Plus, once religious freedom is gone, history shows that all our other civil, economic and political liberties are quickly taken away. This is not a time for indifference. We must continue to stand up for our First Freedom.
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