“Wake up, people. It’s 1939 all over again.” That’s how Christine M. Flowers ends her provocative column in today’s Philadelphia Daily News on the real-world threats to religious freedom.

Flowers focuses primarily on religious persecution outside of the United States, but does note parallels to what we are witnessing—in some ways, for the first time—on the home front:

Those who've challenged the ObamaCare birth-control mandate know that the current administration is not particularly sympathetic to claims of religious freedom. Worse, it has become obvious that anyone who questions the validity of same-sex marriage based upon strongly held religious principles can expect to be called a bigot and, perhaps, find himself slapped with a civil-rights lawsuit, as recently happened to a wedding photographer in New Mexico.

She points out that, “In the 21st century, the cross is in the crosshairs, and the most brutal attacksare reserved for those who follow Jesus.”

Unfortunately, the column fails to fully connect the dots between the heinous acts of violence committed against Christians in places like the Middle East, and the seeds of Christian persecution being sown in the U.S. through the examples cited above.

Like the proverbial “slow boil of the frog,” religious liberty in the United States is increasingly falling victim to a “soft tyranny,” whose very design is to slowly erode these unalienable rights so as not to draw too much notice until it too late.

If Americans truly prize their freedom and liberty, then the challenge is to act now to prevent a full-blown assault on Christian consciences in the U.S. like those taking place around the world.

You can read the rest of Ms. Flowers column here.