Denver’s Archbishop Charles Chaput spoke to Catholics in Slovakia on Tuesday in a speech entitled “Living within the Truth.” Although directed to Catholics, it could easily have been directed to all of Christendom in its call to stand tall and resist the cultural slide (in Europe as well as America) into “post-Christianity,” characterized by intolerance toward Christians and their faith and, inevitably, government repression of the church. His audience understands government repression from bitter 20th-Century experience, so his words of warning carry heavy meaning.

Read the whole thing here. Following are some of the noteworthy excerpts to whet your appetite.

First, on some of the differences between American and European Christianity:

America’s founders were a diverse group of practicing Christians and Enlightenment deists. But nearly all were friendly to religious faith. They believed a free people cannot remain free without religious faith and the virtues that it fosters. They sought to keep Church and state separate and autonomous. But their motives were very different from the revolutionary agenda in Europe. The American founders did not confuse the state with civil society. They had no desire for a radically secularized public life. They had no intent to lock religion away from public affairs. On the contrary, they wanted to guarantee citizens the freedom to live their faith publicly and vigorously, and to bring their religious convictions to bear on the building of a just society.

And his European audience would have no difficulty understanding who the “murder ideologies” were in this next quote:

The Enlightenment-derived worldview that gave rise to the great murder ideologies of the last century remains very much alive. Its language is softer, its intentions seem kinder, and its face is friendlier. But its underlying impulse hasn’t changed — i.e., the dream of building a society apart from God; a world where men and women might live wholly sufficient unto themselves, satisfying their needs and desires through their own ingenuity.

The worldview Chaput warns of seeks to reduce freedom of religion to a “freedom of worship” that can be kept within the four walls of a church building, and he’s having none of it:

First, “freedom of worship” is not at all the same thing as “freedom of religion.” Religious freedom includes the right to preach, teach, assemble, organize, and to engage society and its issues publicly, both as individuals and joined together as communities of faith. This is the classic understanding of a citizen’s right to the “free exercise” of his or her religion in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. It’s also clearly implied in Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In contrast, freedom of worship is a much smaller and more restrictive idea.

And he points out that those forces that seek to marginalize Christianity are getting cleverer at it:

Today’s secularizers have learned from the past. They are more adroit in their bigotry; more elegant in their public relations; more intelligent in their work to exclude the Church and individual believers from influencing the moral life of society. Over the next several decades, Christianity will become a faith that can speak in the public square less and less freely. A society where faith is prevented from vigorous public expression is a society that has fashioned the state into an idol. And when the state becomes an idol, men and women become the sacrificial offering.

I could go on quoting from the speech forever, but you catch the drift. Definitely worth your time.

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