c. 1998 Religion News Service
UNDATED _ A Presbyterian pastor overlooks threats and builds the first Christian church in his region of Pakistan. A mob destroys the church. Masked men invade the pastor’s home and stab him to death.
A man leaves Islam to become a Christian. Egyptian secret police arrest him without a formal charge and torture him with an electric probe to make him inform them about other converts.
A Roman Catholic boy in southern Sudan plays in the trees with his friends. Soldiers waging a holy war capture him and send him into slavery, where he is given an Islamic name and beaten with sticks by his master’s wives.
From Bosnian Muslims to Soviet Jews to Buddhists in Tibet, Americans have long been concerned about the rights of religious minorities around the world.
Only recently have Christians been added to that list.
In the United States, where more than 80 percent of Americans identify themselves as Christians, the First Amendment right to freedom of religion is so firmly entrenched it’s often taken for granted. Religious persecution doesn’t raise many flags here.
In recent years, however, an increasingly active coalition of evangelical Christians, human rights organizations and Jewish opinion leaders has brought to light the plight of Christians in countries where they are vulnerable minorities.
Through books, videos, sermons, prayer circles and Internet discussion groups, this loosely bound group has been alleging that in dozens of countries throughout the world, Christians are victims of abuse, violence and discrimination because of their faith.
They call it persecution.
The issue made its way to the U.S. Congress this year. In October, lawmakers passed and President Clinton signed the International Religious Freedom Act. It is backed by a wide range of liberal and conservative religious groups, from the Christian Coalition to the Episcopal Church and the American Jewish Committee.
The law provides for a range of penalties against nations that persecute based on religious beliefs. Although the law covers freedom of all religions, the focus is clearly on Christianity.
When a pattern of persecution persists, the law forces the president to take action. The sweep of possible redress is wide, ranging from a private diplomatic protest to economic sanctions.
The final version of the legislation passed 98-0 in the Senate and with an overwhelming voice vote in the House; still, little public attention has been given to the Christians abroad who will supposedly benefit.
There is ample evidence of persecution.
Around the world, Christians are being tortured, beaten, raped, imprisoned, enslaved, forced out of their homes and killed _ in large part, advocates say, because of what they believe.
Still, Christian persecution is much more complicated than it first appears.
It is rarely an issue of people suffering solely for their faith, as portrayed in emotion-charged videos and fund-raising letters.
Instead, victims are often caught in a nexus of social and political as well as religious currents. In places such as Sudan, religious persecution has become an instrument of war. In countries such as Egypt and Pakistan, it’s intermingled with social tensions and the perception that Christianity is the oppressive religion of the West.
In China, the communist government sees Christianity not so much as a spiritual threat as a political one. Complicating that picture is the fact that many Chinese Christians say they are experiencing a golden age of religious freedom _ if they abide by the government’s controls.
In many parts of the world, governments may have good reason to fear Christianity. History proves it can inspire followers to acts of bravery, and sometimes rebellion, in the name of an invisible God who is seen as more powerful than the state.
With its biblical stories of first-century martyrs and Beatitudes saying “blessed are those who are persecuted,” Christian philosophy is viewed by some as a self-fulfilling prophecy. In China, for example, some Christians view persecution as a spiritual merit badge and a precursor for church growth.”It’s good for the church, like growing pains with children,” said Allen Yuan, 84, a Chinese underground church leader who spent more than 21 years in a labor camp.
Peasant Chinese pastors have developed a slogan: “Prison is our seminary.”
Before it became a political issue in the United States, the mandate to find solidarity with suffering Christians was primarily a spiritual matter.
Voice of the Martyrs, an Oklahoma-based organization, has been focusing on persecution since 1967. It emphasizes biblical passages such as 1 Corinthians 12:26, which tells Christians to care for one another as if they were all parts of the same body: “If one part suffers, every part suffers with it.”
Voice of the Martyrs and similar groups, such as the California-based Open Doors, smuggled Bibles into foreign countries and established “prayer alerts” for those they found in trouble.
But it was a Jewish attorney and Washington, D.C., power broker who turned persecution of Christians into a political issue.
Michael Horowitz says his awakening occurred in 1994, when he hired Geteneh Getanel, a Christian Ethiopian, to live in his home and do housework.
The domestic helper tried, unsuccessfully, to evangelize Horowitz, who describes himself as a “traditional conservative Jew.” But in the process, Getanel recounted how he had been imprisoned for preaching in Africa, then tortured by having boiling oil poured on the soles of his feet as he was whipped by metal cables.
Horowitz had served as the Reagan administration’s general counsel for the Office of Management and Budget and as a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, a nonprofit think tank that analyzes public policy issues.
Horowitz fired off letters to 143 missionary organizations across the country, saying he was “pained and puzzled” about their relative lack of interest in coming to the aid of fellow persecuted Christians around the world.
“What struck me,” Horowitz says now, “is how Christian leaders were so intimidated in speaking out on behalf of their own. It was a fear that if they did that, they would be reminded of all the sins that have historically been made in the name of Christianity. But I challenged them. I said, `Would you be willing to speak of your own virtue instead of just your own sins?”’
In 1996, Horowitz drafted “A Statement of Conscience,” which was adopted by the National Association of Evangelicals and the Southern Baptist Convention, the country’s largest Protestant denomination. That and similar efforts laid the foundation for the bill Congress passed this fall.
A Jew had awakened American Christians to fight for their brethren in other parts of the world. Horowitz argues that if the United States fails to take decisive action, Christians will become “the Jews of the 21st century, the scapegoats of choice of the world’s thug regimes.”
That Jewish connection has not been lost in Muslim countries, where the American movement is often seen as a strategy to tarnish Israel’s enemies, and the theory has some supporters in the United States, including John Esposito, director of the Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University.
The movement is “an excuse,” Esposito says, “for Muslim-bashing.”
Some American Muslims are concerned the movement _ in focusing on problems in Muslim countries _ will unfairly tarnish their entire religion and make their life more difficult.
“We’re heading in a direction of saying Islam as a faith is what we have to fear,” says Faiz Rehman, editor of the California-based Pakistan Link newspaper.
“We have a double standard. If a Christian country does something wrong, we don’t blame Christianity. We dropped the bomb on Hiroshima. Was that a Christian bomb? Absolutely not. But it came from a Christian country, or at least a country where Christianity is the predominant faith.”
With the end of the Cold War and the demise of the Soviet Union, some allege that the “religious right” has created a new enemy.
“It’s the new anti-communism for them,” says the Rev. Albert M. Pennybacker, associate general secretary of the nation’s largest ecumenical group, the National Council of Churches of Christ.
Nevertheless, advocacy of religious freedom is now a foreign policy mandate.
(OPTIONAL TRIM _ STORY MAY END HERE)
“It’s being seen the same way as we would see military security and economic contracts as part of our foreign policy,” says Robert Seiple, whom Clinton appointed this year to fill a new position as the representative of the secretary of state for international religious freedom.
Rep. Frank Wolf, R-Va., who drafted an earlier version of the bill, says the legislation sends “a message of hope” to millions of people abroad.
He says its power lies in creating a permanent mechanism requiring the State Department to focus on persecution in annual reports. In addition, a nine-member bipartisan commission, with appointments from Congress, will provide an outside, independent voice analyzing persecution.
Wolf expects the State Department reports and commission recommendations to keep persecution in the public spotlight for years to come. He is convinced that having the world’s superpower keep a watchful eye on persecution will be enough to prompt some countries to reform.
DEA END O’KEEFE
