A new report published by the First Liberty Institute reveals an alarming increase in incidents of hostility toward religion in America in the past few years.

WorldNetDaily.com is reporting on the study, entitled, “Undeniable: The Survey of Hostility to Religion in America” which details attacks on Christians from florists to bakers to religious orders and Christian-run companies who were targeted for their faith.

According to First Liberty Institute’s team of researchers, which is led by a Harvard-trained constitutional attorney, the number of cases has doubled since 2012, rising from 600 to more than 1,258 today.

“These cases … show a clear expansion during this past year,” the report said. “Quantitatively and qualitatively, the hostility is undeniable. And it is dangerous.”

Kelly Shackelford, the chief counsel for First Liberty, explained that “hostility to religion in America is rising like floodwaters.”

“This flood is engulfing ordinary citizens who simply try to live normal lives according to their faith and conscience. It is eroding the bedrock on which stand vital American institutions such as government, education, the military, business, houses of worship, and charity. It has the potential to wash away the ground that supports our other rights, including freedom of speech, press, assembly, and government by consent of the people.”

The report divides the attacks into four categories – attacks in the public arena, in schools, against churches and ministries, and in the military.

There have been very high-profile attacks against people of faith in the public arena during the last year with employees being fired, refused employment, or fined for praying in the sight of other people, for wearing religious attire and for speaking out about their religious beliefs. These include companies who are opposing the Obama Administration’s birth control mandate which punishes them with exorbitant fines for refusing to provide health insurance for sterilization and contraceptives such as Plan B and Ella which are abortion-inducing.

There have also been an increasing number of cases challenging the display of Ten Commandment monuments on public property and the type of invocations made before public meetings.

Free speech rights in the public square are also under attack, from a State Department of Health firing a worker because of the sermons he preached in his local church to senior citizens being told they can’t pray before meals or listen to religious messages in a public place.

Schools are another area where the rights of people of faith are in increasing danger. These cases generally involve prohibiting students or teachers from sharing their faith or exercising free speech rights.

“Many of these cases arise because of the misinformation that secularist organizations send annually to school officials, threatening lawsuits unless the school officials stamp out all religious expression within the school,” the report states. “While this type of attack on religious liberty has been common for decades, these attacks are now occurring with increasing frequency.”

Recent cases include a substitute teacher from New Jersey who was terminated for giving a bible to a student, and a third-grader from Texas who was prohibited from putting religious themed items into goodie bags he would be handing out at the school’s “Winter Party”. In these and other similar cases, the rights of the Christians were upheld in the courts, but not without considerable hardship imposed upon the faithful.

Attacks against churches and ministries are even more disturbing.

“Only five years ago, the idea that the federal government would argue before the Supreme Court that it could regulate churches to the extent of determining who a church may choose as its pastor was unthinkable, yet the government made that very argument—effectively arguing that the religious liberty clauses of the First Amendment are meaningless—in Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church Executive Summary 15 & School v. EEOC,” the report states.

“Not only did the government, for the first time, argue that it may regulate churches and determine qualifications for pastors, but the past ten years have seen an explosion in cases involving local governments discriminating against churches, particularly in the local governments’ use of zoning laws and granting of permits.”

Thankfully, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church, but that isn’t stopping the attacks.

In the case of Opulent Life Church v. City of Holly Springs, MS, the church wanted to move to a larger facility but was told that the city wouldn’t grant a permit for the move until the church received the permission of 60 percent of all property owners within a one-quarter mile radius of the proposed site—a requirement that applied only to churches and to no other type of facility or business. A court eventually ruled in favor of the church.

Attacks against military personnel are also becoming much too frequent.

“While religious liberty and open religious sentiment in the armed forces goes back to the Continental Army and was formalized in the administration of President Thomas Jefferson, even military chaplains are now subject to attack and persecution for following their religious beliefs,” the report states.

These attacks include the case of Senior Master Sergeant Phillip Monk, a 19- year Air Force veteran at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas, who was relieved of his duties after affirming his belief in the biblical definition of marriage. When he reported the retaliation, officials accused him of making false reports. After a lengthy legal battle, the charges against Monk were dropped.

There have been other incidents of the censorship of religious speech within the military such as in cases where chaplains are forbidden to invoke the name of Jesus. In one case, First Liberty Institute lawyers discovered that the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs actually had a policy that funerals at national cemeteries could not include religious content. Government officials would tell grieving families who wanted a religious funeral that the service could not reference God. Thankfully, a federal district court ruled that the government could not dictate prayers at memorial services and funerals and the Department of Veteran’s Affairs had to amend its policy.

The bad news is that attacks on religious liberty are dramatically increasing in the United States, but the good news is that persons and organizations who stand up for religious liberty very often win the fight.

“As more and more Americans become aware of the growing attacks on religious liberty and what their rights are, they can stand and turn back the tides of secularism and hostility that have so eroded our religious liberty rights, our First Freedom.”

Click here to read the report.

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