Persecution or Privilege?

Apr 13, 2026

When Jesus spoke about persecution, he made it clear that not all suffering his followers experience is persecution. He said, “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness . . .” and he went on to bless those who are persecuted, “on my account.” It is when we suffer for doing what is right or for being identified with Jesus that we are blessed, but there are plenty of Christians who may claim persecution who are actually suffering due to their own foolish or unrighteous behavior.

“Persecution,” as John Stott deftly defines it, “is simply the clash between two irreconcilable value-systems.” The value system of the kingdom of the heavens presented by Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount is radically incongruent with the one presented by the kingdoms of the earth. Therefore, anyone who follows Jesus’ way should expect to be misunderstood, maligned, or mistreated. In fact, persecution is often seen as a sign of genuine faith in Christ. This is why Martin Luther listed suffering as an identifying mark of the true church.

A desire to be seen as a “genuine” Christian, however, may cause us to claim persecution where none exists. This temptation is compounded by two additional realities of our age. First, the privileged position of Christian faith and values in our culture is diminishing. We see this, for example, when Christian prayers or symbols are removed from public spaces, or when other religious traditions are incorporated where in the past Christianity stood alone. When this occurs, the loss of Christian privilege can be misinterpreted as Christian persecution.

Second, we live in a strange time when some want to claim the label of “victim” as a source of cultural and political power. Because our culture desires to show deference and dignity to groups that have been marginalized, it can be advantageous to exaggerate the amount of persecution your group faces and minimize the harm experienced by another. This may explain the surprising results from a recent PRRI survey that found 57 percent of white evangelicals said Christians face “a lot of discrimination” in the U.S. The same group, however, said only 44 percent of Muslims face discrimination, despite the empirical evidence that Muslims are targeted in far more hate crimes than Christians.

We must resist both the temptation to misidentify a loss of privilege as persecution and to inflate our perception of persecution to gain a cultural or political advantage. Persecution is never something a Christian seeks. It is the byproduct of seeking first the kingdom of God rather than the praise of the world.