Western countries are being asked to protect religious freedom, including for people of faith who hold traditional views on marriage and sexuality.

Meeting in Berlin recently, religious freedom experts from around the world raised concerns about "increasing intolerance" towards people of faith in Europe and North America.

The hostile climate is causing many believers to hide their beliefs, warned Anja Hoffmann, executive director of the Observatory on Intolerance Against Christians in Europe, one of the co-organisers of the event.

"It is very worrying that the peaceful expression of personal religious beliefs on matters relating to marriage and family has become the potential end of a political career or employment, or even the beginning of a court case," she said. 

"This is a serious threat to religious freedom and leads to widespread self-censorship among traditional believers in the West." 

The event took place on the fringes of the 2024 International Ministerial Conference on Freedom of Religion or Belief which brought together representatives of 38 member states of the International Religious Freedom or Belief Alliance (IRFBA) in Berlin earlier this month. IRFBA member states include the UK, US, Australia, the Netherlands and Germany.

The fringe meeting was co-organised by the Commission of the Catholic Bishops' Conferences of the European Union, the Hungarian State Secretariat for the Aid to Persecuted Christians, and the Religious Freedom Institute in Washington DC.

The Religious Freedom Institute said, "The institutions that monitor and advance religious freedom in the EU and around the world have come together in response to a common concern: religious believers in the West are increasingly being targeted, marginalised, and sometimes even prosecuted for peacefully expressing their traditional religious convictions about family, marriage, and human nature.

"This problem must be addressed to safeguard the pluralistic societies of Western democracies." 

Dr José Luis Bazán, of the Catholic Bishops' Conferences of the European Union (COMECE), said, "This phenomenon, which Pope Francis has aptly described as 'polite persecution,' can be understood as compelling policies and legislation, as well as social pressure, that undermine and curtail Christians' possibility to express and live according to their moral and religious principles in contemporary liberal societies."

The meeting also heard how Western nations are attempting to impose liberal ideologies abroad. Marcela Szymanski, of Aid to the Church in Need and a member of the IRFBA Council of Experts, described how Global South countries can be punished materially if they adopt local measures that are contrary to prevailing beliefs in Western nations, or do not agree to ideological conditionality clauses.

Organisers submitted a declaration to IRFBA member states asking that they affirm religious freedom for all, including those with traditional views on marriage, the family and human nature. 

Todd Huizinga, Senior Fellow for Europe at the Religious Freedom Institute, said, "We believe this statement could have a real effect not only in safeguarding religious freedom for all, but also in increasing mutual understanding, tolerance and peace in our pluralistic societies."

David Trimble, president of the Religious Freedom Institute, expressed concern about pervasive efforts in the West to marginalise and even eradicate fundamental truths about God, the family, and human sexuality that are core to the Abrahamic faith traditions.

"When accommodation means the unwillingness to recognise these enduring truths, then freedom of religion for all is no longer freedom of religion at all," he said.