“Duck Dynasty” patriarch Phil Robertson warned a Houston audience on Sunday that a day of state-sponsored persecution of Christians is coming – and congratulated them for being in an early round.

In a short speech at the Family Research Council’s “I Stand Rally,” Robertson cited the nationally publicized fight between Houston Mayor Annise Parker and a handful of the city’s churches over Houston’s gay rights ordinance.

Parker made national news when her city’s legal department actually issued subpoenas to pastors demanding their sermons related to a petition to overturn the ordinance as well as a wide range of other materials, including emails and text messages.

The city has backed down, but Robertson said even more overt state hostility toward religion is inevitable. (He never mentioned the Obama administration, but a federal government that has gone out of its way to try to curtail religious freedom – or force elderly nuns to pay for birth control against their religious beliefs – could not have been far from anyone’s mind.)

Citing a New Testament letter of Paul to the Philippians, written while the apostle was in prison, Robertson told the crowd the words were prophetic.

“They arrested him and locked him up,” Robertson said. “You say, ‘Is America headed that way Phil?’ We’re headed that way.”

The secular and liberal media scoffs at pronouncements like that, but Robertson is far from the first religious figure in America to see persecution from the state.

In 2012, Chicago Cardinal Francis George made wide headlines when he responded to a questioner at a conference about the secularization of American society:

“I expect to die in bed, my successor will die in prison and his successor will die a martyr in the public square. His successor will pick up the shards of a ruined society and slowly help rebuild civilization, as the church has done so often in human history.”

Like George – and Paul’s letter to the Philippians itself — Robertson ended his Houston address on a hopeful note.

“It’s been granted to you, you lucky Texans, it’s been granted to you, Texas, to not only believe in Jesus, but also to suffer for it,” he said, as the crowd began to roar. “Praise God for suffering for Jesus Christ, the son of God.

“Let’s get it on!”

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Joe Saunders

Joe Saunders, a 25-year newspaper veteran, is a staff writer and editor for BizPac Review who lives in Tallahassee and covers capital and Florida politics. Email Joe at [email protected].

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