“Yesterday my family and I walked a short journey to our local church, and enjoyed an uplifting Christmas service. We attend as a simple matter of personal choice, but since being appointed Foreign Secretary, it has struck me how much we take that choice for granted: others around the world are facing death, torture and imprisonment for that very right,” Jeremy Hunt wrote in an op-ed published in The Telegraph and the U.K. government website on Wednesday, which was Boxing Day in the U.K.

Hunt pointed out that 100 years ago, close to 20 percent of the people in the Middle East were Christian, but various terror campaigns have pushed that number to below five percent today. ...