Religious freedom expert says the West uses a ‘suffocation technique on religion’

Sam Brownback. / Credit: Albert H. Teich/Shutterstock

CNA Staff, Jun 7, 2025 / 07:00 am (CNA).

In a recent interview with the Vienna-based Observatory on Intolerance and Discrimination against Christians in Europe (OIDAC Europe), former U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom Sam Brownback discussed how Christian organizations are increasingly being deplatformed and debanked when engaging in public debate and offered ways to address these challenges and uphold religious freedom. 

“The typical technique in the West is a suffocation technique on religion,” Brownback told OIDAC Europe Executive Director Anja Hoffmann in an interview released June 4. OIDAC Europe is a nongovernmental organization that researches, analyzes, documents, and reports on cases of intolerance and discrimination against Christians in Europe. 

According to Brownback, examples of this technique include pro-life pregnancy centers being dropped by their insurance companies and organizations being taken off of social media platforms. 

Brownback’s own National Committee for Religious Freedom had its bank account canceled without explanation by Chase Bank in 2022 after 45 days of it being opened. 

“You see these techniques and it’s all a suffocation effort. We’re not going to throw you in jail — we can’t throw you in jail — but we can try to strangle you as much as possible so that you can’t operate as a group. And that’s why we’ve got to push back against it in the West more and more,” he said.

In 2018, Brownback — who previously served as a U.S. Senator from Kansas from 1996–2011 and as the 46th governor of Kansas from 2011–2018 —  was sworn in as the U.S. ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom during President Donald Trump’s first term in office. He became the first Catholic to serve in the role.

During his tenure, he promoted religious freedom as a means of promoting individual and economic flourishing and reducing religion-related violence. He also highlighted China’s persecution of Uyghurs and strongly condemned the Xinjiang internment camps. At the 2020 Ministerial to Advance Freedom of Religion or Belief in Poland, Brownback also spoke about the COVID-19 pandemic’s effect on religious freedom.

In the interview, Brownback pointed out that now with the use of social media, issues of religious persecution happening around the world have become more visible and need to continue to be brought to light.

“We’re not powerless now … we used to be just dependent upon the media to surface and to get these things out and for us in the United States; if it didn’t get on CBS, NBC, or ABC it didn’t happen, we didn’t know about it,” he explained. “That’s not the case now. You’ve got all these social media outlets that are out there … and you can put it out there and you need to get it out there.”

Brownback also encouraged individuals to not only share content about the issues taking place but also to include ways that individuals can help. He said he thinks many might be surprised to see how much people actually care about these issues once they find out they’re happening.

“You’re seeing more support for religious freedom in the United States and other places and a lot of it has been a long-term awareness building. These things are going on and then as people look at them and say, ‘Is that really happening?’ you say, ‘Yes, that’s really happening.’”

He added: “Changes rarely happen until people actually have to smell and feel something and see that something actually is going on here that’s wrong.”