Virginia Prodan, an international human rights attorney who fled Communist Romania and resettled in the United States in 1988, is drawing parallels between the religious repression she experienced under Nicolae Ceaușescu and what she views as emerging social and cultural pressures on Christians in America. She cites a 2024 Cato Institute survey indicating widespread concern about the potential loss of freedoms and plans to join a panel on the issue at the Museum of the Bible in December 2025.
Virginia Prodan, an international human rights attorney and author of the memoir Saving My Assassin, grew up under Nicolae Ceaușescu’s Communist regime in Romania, where she recalls that basic freedoms were systematically curtailed.
According to her December 3, 2025 commentary in The Daily Wire, Prodan writes that in Communist Romania the state sought to control religious life by appointing loyal leaders to head churches, restricting activities, and nationalizing church properties. Atheism, she notes, was promoted through education and propaganda that portrayed Christianity as outdated, while religious groups that resisted were pressured to align with state policies, with non‑compliance sometimes resulting in imprisonment, loss of employment, or even death.
Prodan says she defended Christians as a human rights attorney in Romania and ultimately became a political refugee, arriving in the United States in 1988. In her account, she credits support from American policymakers — including frequent meetings with U.S. congressmen Frank Wolf and Christopher Smith — with helping raise awareness in Washington and among the U.S. public about the situation of Romanian Christians under communism. She writes that their efforts drew media attention and contributed to a heightened sense of urgency around supporting persecuted believers.
In her piece, Prodan argues that the challenges faced by Christians in the United States today differ markedly from the outright physical persecution she observed under Communist rule, but that she sees parallels in what she describes as marginalization, pressure to conform, and struggles over freedom of expression. She emphasizes that, in her view, persecution often begins with social and cultural pressures rather than violence, and contends that early signs of such pressures are now visible in America.
To underscore growing public unease, Prodan cites a 2024 Cato Institute survey that found nearly 74% of Americans worry that, if the country is not vigilant, citizens could lose what respondents described as their God‑given freedoms and liberties. She argues that an overreaching government can gradually build persecution through incremental policy and cultural changes that may go largely unnoticed until, she warns, it is too late.
Prodan links these concerns to U.S. foreign policy, highlighting the role of former Representative Frank Wolf in shaping Washington’s approach to international religious freedom. In her article, she notes that Wolf co‑sponsored the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998, which created a framework for the U.S. government to monitor religious persecution worldwide, recommend policy responses, and support measures aimed at protecting religious liberty in countries such as Iran, Sudan, North Korea, and China.
Prodan also points to her continued advocacy work in the United States. She writes that she will join the “Persecuted and Prevailing” panel on December 4, 2025, at the Museum of the Bible in Washington, D.C., an event she says is intended to promote truth, amplify the voices of persecuted Christians, and encourage legislative action on their behalf.
In her commentary, Prodan urges Americans who enjoy constitutional protections to use their freedoms to petition their government and speak out on behalf of believers facing repression abroad. She warns that if citizens remain silent about oppression elsewhere — and about what she views as early warning signs at home — the conditions that once enabled persecution in Communist Romania could take root in the United States. Preserving freedom, she argues, requires public vigilance, civic engagement, and a willingness to defend religious liberty before it is seriously eroded.
