Whether through pressure exerted on social media platforms or through armed raids carried out against pro-life Americans, former President Joe Biden and his administration oversaw an alarming increase in the suppression and censorship of religious — chiefly Christian — expressions and actions in the public square. At the National Religious Broadcasters (NRB) conference on Thursday, Christian journalists, broadcasters, and policy experts gathered to discuss where religious censorship stands today, now that President Donald Trump has returned to the White House.

“Censorship, as we know, is the trademark trait of authoritarian regimes throughout history, which is very telling that the Biden administration crossed that Rubicon in many ways and sent us down that slippery slope,” National Review columnist Caroline Downey told moderator Tyler O’Neil, a senior editor at The Daily Signal. “For progressive administrations, discrediting speech that threatens the ruling class is essential. And what is the most threatening kind of speech is mock or ridicule.”

Downey pointed to the example of the Babylon Bee, a conservative and Christian-themed satire news website, which has been repeatedly censored on social media for satirical posts critical of transgenderism, mainstream media outlets, and Democratic Party policies. She noted that the censorship of the Babylon Bee was a key factor in prompting tech billionaire Elon Musk to purchase Twitter (now called X) and usher in a “renaissance of free discourse on a major social media platform.” While Downey expressed her gratitude to Musk for restoring freedom of speech on X, she added that she found it “harrowing” that freedom of speech was protected only by “a benevolent billionaire,” asking, “How do you depend on those types of people to make sure that we have free conversation?”

A more recent example Downey highlighted was that of former CNN anchor Don Lemon, who last month participated in an anti-immigration enforcement protest which disrupted services in City Church in St. Paul, Minnesota. Downey suggested that Lemon behaved as though his First Amendment right to freedom of the press “trumped those worshippers’ freedom of religion.” She continued, “I think what that shows is a flippancy toward people of faith, that they somehow … don’t apply under the protections of the First Amendment. But beyond that, I think it does show that there is a double standard when in politics, when it comes to religious people.”

The Daily Signal’s president and executive editor, Rob Bluey, agreed with Downey that the censorship of Christian media seems to be easing, thanks to individuals like Musk and President Donald Trump and his administration, but cautioned that there is still “a lot of work to do because, on a daily basis, conservative media, Christian media are facing these challenges of censorship.” Today, Bluey said, the threat is “cancellation.” He noted that a video series The Daily Signal had produced on gender ideology had been flagged by YouTube as “hate speech.” Bluey explained, “The big tech firms that exist today, their leadership is most decidedly not Christian and do not particularly like people of faith and I think exercise these terms of service rules they’ve written into their platforms to censor the content that we experienced.”

Family Research Council President Tony Perkins pointed to gender ideology and marriage as a key media battlefield between Christians and progressives. Perkins recounted that he used to make frequent guest appearances on mainstream media news programs but became persona non grata after then-President Barack Obama endorsed same-sex marriage in 2012. “All of a sudden, the networks began to drop anyone who had a biblical view of marriage between a man and a woman, that was really the pivotal point, was on human sexuality and marriage. It later became gender, but the starting point was the redefinition of marriage,” Perkins observed. He noted that even supposedly conservative media outlets like Fox News would not present a biblical perspective on marriage and sexuality. “It’s fundamental as a society, if we drop the idea of marriage and we capitulate to the Left’s redefinition of marriage, we have no future.”

Perkins recalled that the tide began turning against gender ideology thanks to parents, who made national headlines showing up to school board meetings and protesting progressive practices like critical race theory and transgender bathroom policies. “That was the tipping point. It was moms and dads who said, ‘Enough of this, because you’re taking my children and you’re indoctrinating them, and you’re jeopardizing their future and leading them down a destructive path.’ So thank God for parents who had the backbone to stand up,” he emphasized. Once parents began drawing attention to the issue, Perkins said, politicians began taking notice, in turn inspiring men and women of faith to step “into the political arena at every level: school board level, city council level, state legislature, and now in Congress. So yes, the resistance to censorship is becoming intense. Now it’s stepped back a little bit.”

However, Perkins also warned that American Christians ought not grow complacent. He pointed out that organizations like the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), which he said “has been the junkyard dog of the Left, forever labeling people hate groups so that it gives the media legitimacy to knock them off,” have substantial monetary reserves and are “probably not going to go away anytime soon.” The Left’s censorship regime, Perkins averred, is evidence that the Left fears the message shared by Christian media. He urged fellow Christians “not to shrink back, not to be complacent, thinking that all problems are solved, but to charge forward and retake many of these institutions that have been the agents of censorship. … Now is not the time to shrink back. Now is not the time to be silent. Now is the time to take the hill.”

Alexis Wilkins, a senior fellow at the American Principles Project, agreed. “This cannot be a generation of careful men. There is great concern that there are too many careful men,” she said, encouraging Christians to “address these problems — especially problems that arise in people censoring faith — with conviction, instead of cowardice, and credibility.” While Wilkins acknowledged that Christians are called to treat others with charity and grace, she added that “we are not required to take a step back if someone challenges the values that we hold or the safety that we want to provide for our children, for the freedom to believe in Jesus in public spaces and private spaces, as we’ve seen during the Biden administration.”