Former Congressman Frank Wolf has been a friend and ally of Dr. James Dobson for decades. During Wolf's thirty-four years in Congress, he was a stalwart defender of faith, family, and freedom. Even though he is now "retired," he continues his efforts to alert American Christians about the growing peril we face.
Wolf just completed a term on the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), which he helped establish during his time in Congress. He used the occasion to write an open letter to the religious freedom advocacy community. In his letter, Wolf made some bold recommendations, including urging Congress to enact a total ban in the US on lobbying on behalf of communist China, a country aggressively persecuting Christians and other faiths.
Additionally, in recent weeks, the former congressman sounded the alarm on what's happening to Christians right here in the United States. He wrote in Providence magazine:
In the United States, we see troubling violations of religious freedom—Christian schools and churches facing threats, assaults on parental rights, the FBI visiting pro-life families, businesses canceling people and organizations because of their political and religious beliefs, and Jewish students facing rampant antisemitism on American college campuses. We witness an insidious relativism that teaches that concepts of right and wrong are old-fashioned and even oppressive. Vices are elevated, virtues are mocked, and faith is squeezed out of the public square. Our culture is coarsened because of it.
The late Cardinal Francis George, former president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and the Archbishop of Chicago, predicted in 2012: "I expect to die in bed, my successor will die in prison, and his successor will die a martyr in the public square." At the time, I thought this was alarmist, but seeing what is happening today, his statement gives me pause.
Cardinal George went on to say, "This tendency for the government to claim for itself authority over all areas of human experience flows from a secularization of our culture. If God cannot be part of public life, then the state itself plays God."3
JDFI agrees with this powerful warning. The hour is late. American Christians must be in the public square and voting booths if we hope to remain free.
3. Frank R. Wolf represented Virginia’s 10th congressional district in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1981 to 2015. While in Congress, “Parting Thoughts from Outgoing USCIRF Commissioner Frank R. Wolf,” Providence, June 14, 2024, Web.