The Global War on Christians: Dispatches from the Front Lines of Anti-Christian Persecution

by John L. Allen

  Fifth, Christians can demand that policies on refugee admission and resettlement in their societies recognize persecuted Christians as a protected category. In recent years, scores of Christians fleeing situations of violence and oppression have encountered difficulties when applying for status as refugees, because in many nations “Christians” are not specifically identified as a persecuted group. In other cases, basic bureaucratic forces compound the difficulties. Many Iraqi Christian refugees, for instance, were either turned away or faced lengthy delays in their applications to enter the United States after enhanced background checks due to terrorism concerns plugged the pipeline. As author Lela Gilbert has noted, “Christians have no Israel,” meaning no place they can go when facing repression that will automatically accept them. Christians in the West can at least help ensure that their nations remain receptive to Christians seeking a safe harbor from the global war.

  As is always the case in political life, there is no guarantee that these efforts will be successful, and advocacy is no substitute for the other measures described here. At the same time, most of the other strategies outlined in this chapter fall into the category of responding to crises after they’ve occurred. A more robust climate of protection for religious freedom at the level of both law and political administration, on the other hand, can help prevent the crises before they occur.

  RESETTLING REFUGEES

  Given the realities of the global war, it’s hardly surprising that millions of vulnerable Christians today find themselves living as refugees or displaced people. Christian churches and organizations have done admirable work assisting these refugees, often providing visa assistance, aid with housing and finding work, providing breaks so that the children of refugees families can attend church-run schools, offering legal aid and help with navigating the immigration systems of host countries, providing pastoral care in their native languages, and so on.

  All that assistance is urgently needed, and may well have to be ramped up. Churches and denominational structures should be mobilizing now to identify the most likely areas of need and to organize an effective response. (Syria and Egypt, for instance, may soon be generating new waves of Christian exiles.) Further, it’s important to remember that a truly effective resettlement program is not a one-and-done affair. Refugees need monitoring and ongoing support well after the initial challenge of finding a home and a source of income is resolved, and church organizations need to be with them along the journey.

  One caution, however, is in order. In trying to understand the Christian exodus out of the Middle East, some experts wonder if the good intentions of Western churches aren’t actually fueling the phenomenon. One reason that Christians are disproportionately more likely than other groups to choose to leave is precisely because they have access to networks of care and support, many run by Western churches, that are not always as readily available to others. Jabbar Yassin Hussein, the most prominent living Iraqi poet, who’s been in exile in France since 1976, has said that “if America and Australia opened their borders, not a single Christian would be left in Iraq.”

  Some pastors and church officials in the West have openly asked whether the extensive refugee programs they operate will end up accelerating the demise of Christianity in places where it’s most at risk. Of course, no one becomes a refugee on a lark; the choice to leave behind one’s home, and often members of one’s family, is always traumatic, and people who feel compelled to make that wrenching decision certainly merit support.

  A thoughtful refugee program that’s sensitive not only to the welfare of the church in the host society but also to the one in the country of origin will come with a guarantee: “We’re with you now, when you’ve chosen to leave because you believe circumstances required it and we trust that judgment. However, we will also be with you if the situation changes and you believe it’s possible for you to return. We welcome you here, but we’re also in solidarity with your church back home, and we will match every dollar and every hour we’ve invested in helping you get out with a commensurate amount of resources to help you go back, if you ever reach the conclusion that’s what you want.”

  NORTH/SOUTH PARTNERSHIPS

  Relationships between churches and congregations in the developed and developing worlds have deep roots, such as the “twinning” of parishes in, say, Iowa and El Salvador, or Italy and Burundi. Sometimes these relationships arise organically, for instance when a pastor from a mission country happens to spend time at a congregation in Europe or the United States, and a natural bond is formed. Other times these relationships are the result of an organized effort at the denominational level, or they come from a direct request made by a congregation in the developing world for support. Typically, these relationships involve mutual prayer, financial support, missionary exchanges, and other forms of solidarity.

  Such partnerships have the capacity to deepen a sense of membership in a global church, as well as to spread resources around the world in a more equitable fashion—often drawing upon the human capital of the churches in the South, and the financial and logistical capital of churches in the North. In light of the global war on Christians, such North/South partnerships are likely to be challenged to expand in three ways.

  First, churches and congregations in the North will feel pressure to become more deliberate about which relationships they undertake, and in particular to try to identify fellow believers most at risk of becoming the victims of anti-Christian persecution. At the moment, congregations looking for potential partners would likely feel inclined to turn to Syria, Egypt, India, or Nigeria, understanding that many churches in those societies are exposed to special risks. The nature of these relationships will likely also evolve, coming to focus more intensely on advocacy on behalf of Christians in the society where the partner is located, as well as on more extensive humanitarian aid when members of the partner community find themselves in need.

  Second, many people in Western churches and congregations will likely feel pressure not merely to support their partners at a distance but to go and see for themselves what the situation is like. These personal exchanges already take place in the form of missionary and humanitarian expeditions, and that will doubtless continue. Increasingly, however, partners in the West may also want to organize delegations of “observers,” whose role is not necessarily to evangelize or to build homes but rather to document the persecution facing Christians in that society and then to report back both to church officials and to policy makers. Such outings must be organized with care, because responsible church leaders will not want to put their people in harm’s way. At the very least, however, in places where basic calm has returned after an eruption, these observers would be able to witness the aftermath and to collect testimonies before memories fade. Doing so would not only change the participants’ perspectives but also help to build a broader consciousness around the world as they talk with others back home about what they saw and heard.

  Third, North/South partnerships will also be pressured to grow beyond the realm of parishes, churches, and congregations and include to a greater degree faith-based institutions such as schools, hospitals, and social service agencies. Such relationships already exist, for instance in the form of partnerships between religiously affiliated universities. There will be accelerating pressure to expand such ties, both to address immediate situations of crisis and to build long-term networks of solidarity. For instance, Christian hospitals in the United States and Europe will likely feel new pressure to mobilize medical assistance for Christians who suffer violent persecution in areas where local health care systems are overwhelmed. In situations where Christian schools are damaged or destroyed, Christian educators in the West will be asked to dispatch assistance, both to address the physical damage and to provide stopgap support while repairs are under way. Even Christian businesses that aren’t part of any denominational structures may be pressed into service; Christian CEOs, for instance, may be asked to target regions where Christians are at
risk to open new franchises, to offer employment, and to engage in commercial transactions to support the local economy.

  Across the board, any Christian with institutional responsibility in the twenty-first century is likely to feel new pressure to exercise a kind of “preferential option” in deploying the institution’s resources to support the victims of the global war on Christians.

  POSTSCRIPT

  When a Christian reflects on religious violence, it’s tempting to forget all about embarassments such as Anders Behring Breivik, the Norwegian lunatic who bombed a government building in Oslo on July 22, 2011, killing eight people, and then opened fire on a Labor Party youth camp, leaving sixty-nine people dead, mostly teenagers. Breivik imagines himself as a “modern-day crusader,” a protagonist in a vast cultural struggle to save Norway from Islam, Zionism, Marxism, feminism, and a host of other “isms.” For someone with such a grandiose and delusional sense of his own importance, perhaps the most fitting punishment would be to ignore him altogether.

  Alas, that’s not an option open to thoughtful Christians. It’s part of the record that Breivik described himself as “100 percent Christian” in his rambling manifesto, declared that he prayed to God for help during his attacks, and asserted that only the “Cross of Christ” could bring Europe back to its senses. Though he is apparently not terribly spiritual, he claims to be a devoted cultural Christian. He wants to overthrow the existing authorities in both Protestant and Catholic churches, whom he regards as weak, corrupt, and fatally given to make nice with Muslims, to be replaced by a “Great Christian Congress” to establish a newly militant European church.

  In other words, Breivik imagines himself as a miniature Christian version of Al-Qaeda.

  In the aftermath of Breivik’s atrocities, many well-meaning Christians insisted that he could not actually be a Christian, because the loving teachings of Christ could not possibly justify such horrors. The Norwegian head of the World Council of Churches, Rev. Olav Fykse Tveit, accused Breivik of “blasphemy” for citing Christianity as a justification for his actions. Of course, that’s the same reasoning many Muslims use to insist that jihadist terrorists are not real Muslims, because Islam is a religion of peace. Both may have a point in terms of orthodoxy, but the fact remains that Breivik saw himself as a Christian, and he acted, at least in part, to defend the faith. His story illustrates a point that Christians dare not forget: Christians are as much in the grip of sin as anyone else, and Christianity is as capable of being perverted to support cruelty and inhumanity as any other system of belief.

  This book is devoted to documenting the vast scale of anti-Christian violence and persecution around the world, and to debunking the chronic mythology that too often impedes a clear understanding of this global war on Christians. At the close, however, it’s apposite to add a brief word regarding possible abuses of the story I’ve tried to tell.

  First, the focus on Christians as victims should not suggest that Christians are incapable of being perpetrators. Beyond rare madman such as Breivik, we’ve already seen that some of today’s new martyrs go to their deaths at the hands of their fellow Christians. The irony can sometimes seem especially cruel, as in April 1994, when the Catholic bishops of Africa gathered for a synod meeting in Rome and exhorted their followers “to join together in the service of life … in justice and peace.” At the same moment that message was issued, the genocidal frenzy in Rwanda was erupting. An estimated 1.2 million people were slaughtered over a period of one hundred days between April and July, which adds up to ten thousand killed every day, four hundred every hour, seven every minute. While the vast majority of the victims were Catholics, so too were their murderers. The bishops were forced to acknowledge that something had gone wrong in the evangelization of Africa, because if baptized Christians had refused to participate, the genocide could not have happened. It’s an old story, one that applies with equal force to other dark chapters of history such as the Shoah in Nazi Germany. In every case, to celebrate the victims is not to diminish the responsibility of the victimizers, whatever their religious affiliation may be.

  As a related point, it’s sometimes suggested by apologists for Christianity that there is no Christian form of violent fundamentalism akin to “Islamic radicalism” or “Hindu radicalism.” While perhaps not on the same scale, Christian radicalism does exist. It too can give lethal expression to religious passions that are often intertwined with national, political, economic, and cultural antagonisms.

  In March 2007, I met a Nigerian Pentecostal preacher named James Wuye, who’s become internationally renowned for his efforts at Muslim/Christian harmony along with his partner, Imam Muhammad Ashafa. It wasn’t always that way. Born a Baptist, Wuye entered the Catholic Church while attending Catholic school, then gravitated to the Assemblies of God. When the first waves of religious violence hit northern Nigeria in the late 1970s, Wuye said he watched as Christians were targeted by Muslim extremists, with no support from the local police or army forces. Wuye and other young Christians decided to organize themselves into secretive paramilitary bands. These groups were designed to protect churches and Christian populations, and members took oaths never to strike first. Yet, Wuye concedes, as the logic of violence took over, the militias eventually took on a more provocative role. In one case, he said, they blew up a bridge in a Christian area and blamed it on Muslims, in order to radicalize Christian opinion.

  Having grown up the child of an army officer—“in the barracks,” as he put it—Wuye was a natural drill sergeant. He told chilling tales of how young Christians were indoctrinated to justify violence against Muslims, including selective use of Biblical texts. (For example, Luke 22:36: “If you do not have a sword, sell your cloak and buy one”). He paid the price in his own flesh. In 1992, he lost his right hand during a pitched battle to defend a church against Muslim militants in Kaduna; today, he wears a prosthetic limb due to the injury.

  “In my heart,” Wuye said, “my hatred for Muslims knew no bounds.”

  His conversion moment came in 1999, when he attended a local revival where he heard a well-known local Pentecostal pastor thunder from the pulpit, “You can’t preach Christ with hate … you have to take on the mind of Christ!”

  Today Wuye is an interfaith hero, and I suspect most Christians would agree with the Pentecostal pastor that his activity became authentically Christlike only after 1999. Descriptively and psychologically, however, Wuye also understood himself to be fully, even heroically, Christian while he was slaughtering Muslims.

  Eric Rudolph is an American example of the impulse. Convicted of a series of bombings between 1996 and 1998 that left two people dead and injured 150 others, Rudolph has described himself as a Christian warrior in the struggle to end the “holocaust” of abortion. Aside from the Olympic bombing in 1996 in Atlanta, Rudolph targeted two abortion clinics and a lesbian bar. He was linked to a movement known as Christian Identity, which includes militia groups in its network. While it’s exaggerated to style Rudolph as a harbinger of a looming Christian jihad, it’s equally disingenuous to suggest that he doesn’t count as a “Christian” extremist because his beliefs are heterodox. If Christians don’t have to take responsibility for Rudolph, then Muslims ought to get a free pass for Osama bin Laden. This is not, of course, to suggest that the two figures are mirror images, or that their crimes are of equivalent moral gravity.

  Put simply, the notion that Christianity is insusceptible of fomenting radicalism and terrorism is bunk, and nothing in this book should be taken to suggest otherwise. Christians must always be on guard against the stirring of prejudice in their own hearts, and should not use the suffering of their coreligionists to evade that examination of conscience.

  Nor is this book intended as a form of Christian apologetics, an exercise designed to bring people to the faith or to persuade them that Christianity is spiritually or morally superior to other religions. Christians may be suffering persecution today in greater numbers than other faith traditions
, but that doesn’t automatically mean that Christianity is nobler than, say, Zoroastrianism or Buddhism, or for that matter atheism. Spiritually, many Christians may well see today’s persecution as part of a cosmic struggle between good and evil, between God and Satan, which validates the claims of the faith. Logically, however, there’s no correlation between violence directed at a belief and the ultimate truth of that belief. The effort here is not to convert anyone to a religious position but rather to bring individuals to a humanitarian conviction that the suffering of innocent people is being ignored and merits attention.

  Finally, the reality of a war on Christians should not suggest that everyone who makes a principled argument against Christianity or who clashes with representatives of the faith is a bigot. It’s quite possible to believe that religion is a delusion, that Christian churches in the West enjoy too much wealth and power, or that orthodox Christian teachings on sexual morality are wrong without succumbing to religious hatred. In the same way that opponents of gay marriage aren’t all religious fanatics, its supporters are not all bent on destroying the Christian foundations of the West. The global war on Christians is the most chilling human rights story of our time, but not every critic of contemporary Christianity is among its authors.

  Yes, some Christians have blood on their hands; yes, Christians and their churches often take controversial positions on political and social issues that are fair game for debate; yes, Christians can sometimes be overly attached to systems of privilege and too quick to see any questioning of those privileges as an assault on their rights. Nothing in this book suggests anything to the contrary, and Christians themselves should be in the front lines of asking hard questions about their own conduct, in the spirit of Matthew 7:3: “Why do you notice the splinter in your brother’s eye, but do not perceive the wooden beam in your own?”