Some interesting articles about persecution

I've been thinking a lot about the question of persecution of Christians lately, fueled by some recent articles.

This one from the New Statesman talks about how Christians are not really being persecuted, rather we are loosing the privilege we've traditionally enjoyed.

http://www.newstatesman.com/2014/01/christians-are-merely-losing-their-unfair-ad...

I kind of see their point. We definitely don't face genuine persecution in the UK And US. I would say the way things are going at the moment is more than losing our privilege, and does amount to disadvantage, but maybe that's because I'm on the receiving end. What do you think?

And this one from The Week is about real persecution faced by Christians elsewhere in the world.

http://theweek.com/article/index/255403/the-worlds-most-ancient-christian-commun...

The Archbishop of Canterbury recently referred to Christians in the UK experiencing "mild discomfort". It's certainly nowhere near persecution. I don't live in my native land any more, but when I do go back to UK for periodic visits it doesn't even feel like "disadvantage" to me. As you say, it's more a question of losing some privileges which one might once have taken for granted.

From the New Statesman link: "Most religious people I know are more bothered by social justice than who has consensual sex with whom." I concur.

Some US religious people might be surprised to hear Christians calling for "secular law" (The Week link). But that is what Christians were also calling for in Sudan. Ideally, secular law protects all, including both minority religions and atheists, yet still leaves space for religious expression by all, including the majority.

I get prayer updates from Open Doors and Barnabas Fund which include a lot of the persecution going on around the world. So little is reported. I'd like to know why not.

This seems to be a convo that went pretty much nowhere.

I have to agree with the philosopher quoted in The Week piece, "The victims are 'too Christian' to excite the Left, and 'too foreign' to excite the Right."

In the U.S., I think there's an element within Christianity that sees itself as persecuted. As a prime example, the "War on Christmas". I think it's unfortunate because it detracts from the real persecution occuring throughout the world.

I agree that Christianity is losing it's most favored status. Not all of that is bad because it makes me more sensitive to others (Muslims, Sikhs, etc) who do face prejudice. And it's why I think we need to treat all persons fairly, so that when and if I end up on the wrong side of culture, my rights will be protected.

Are there any countries currently persecuting Christians?

Most countries I believed to allow the practice of all world religions that existed besides Christianity excluding the cults and deviations of their religions.

Maybe, there are still some countries disallowed or suppressed the rights to practice other religions over their common religion of the majority of its people in the country.

>8 razzamajazz: Sudan

>8 razzamajazz:: "Are there any countries currently persecuting Christians?"

There aren't many countries where it is official government policy (outside perhaps the stringent rules against apostasy from the state religion in places like Saudi Arabia and Iran). But there are many, many places--most suffering from gross political and social instability--in which Christians are targeted for violence and repression:

• Egypt
• Syria
• Central African Republic (though it's a bit more complicated there, as the Christians are the majority but the most recent government to fall was Islamic)
• the aforementioned Sudan
• Pakistan and Afghanistan
• India (also more complicated, as both Christians and Muslims, as minority groups, have been the targets of Hindu-based violence)
• China
• North Korea....

The whole point of this thread (and others like it recently on LT) is that the American resistance to paying attention to anything that happens outside her own borders makes for a dangerously naive and parochial point of view.

ETA: It should also be clarified that in many of these places, the strife and persecution between groups is not simply a factor of religion against religion, but rather the more holistic combat (if I may coin that term) between one cultural identity and another, between one cultural group and another. Religion is often a major factor in determining those cultural identities, but it not the only one, nor can it be easily separated from tribal and ancestral loyalties and identities, or from other socio-economic factors that determine who has power and who doesn't, who has access to wealth and who doesn't, etc.

Sometimes it's the state that persecutes, other times it's widespread discrimination technically outside the law, but basically sanctioned by virtue of not being challenged.

You have the extremes where apostasy (converting away from Islam) or shaking the faith of a Muslim are punishable by death, down to marginalisation where Christians are unable to run businesses or enrol their children in schools.

There's a summary of the 50 worst places here:
http://www.opendoorsuk.org/persecution/country_profiles.php

>12 eclecticdodo: From that link:

The future of the Kenyan church appears precarious

This is nonsense.

I also think that their characterisation of Tanzania is very dubious. I don't know Colombia, but it seems their main complaint is that some Christians get killed in the ongoing FARC conflict. In Nigeria, while some Muslims are killing Christians it's also true that some Christians are killing Muslims, so to characterise it as persecution of Christians would need a bit of nuancing. As Nathaniel says, it's often about complex identity conflicts rather than simply religious persecution.

While I don't deny that many of the countries at the top of their list really do have persecution, to be honest I'm not sure that Open Doors is the best and/or most impartial judge of Christian persecution.

I must admit, I hadn't looked beyond the top dozen or so. You make some good points.

>13 John5918:, I've known a few Christians with persecution complexes. Like Chicken Little they run about proclaiming the sky is falling. Sadly, it numbs society to real persecution.

It would be better if we could realize how blessed we are in Christ and focus on spreading the good news of God's love.

*** Points finger at self and says, "Yeah, I'm talking to you."***

A Muslim-Socialist President weighs in http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/07/us/politics/obama-denounces-religious-repressi...

Can you mixed politics and religion?

President Obama's agenda on religious freedom is viable in US foreign policies.

Are church leaders being suspected for creating public unrest or disturbing national security?
They are being treated as "spies" and "political detainees". Infringement of internal security?

>16 theoria: Sorry, am I missing something? I don't see any reference to Muslim and Socialist presidents in the article.

>17 razzamajazz: President Obama's agenda on religious freedom

Is this "Obama's agenda" or does it reflect the fact that the USA is a signatory to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which includes freedom of religion?

Who is a " Muslim-Socialist" president" being referred to?

>16 theoria:-19: I believe theoria was being sarcastic by invoking the absurd caricature of President Obama that obtains in conservative circles that insist he is both a crypto-Muslim and a socialist. The President's remarks in the article linked in 16 are the opposite one would suspect if he were either a crypto-Muslim hellbent on destroying Christianity or a secular socialist hellbent on destroying Christianity and all other forms of religion, to boot.

(No, it doesn't occur to the conservative caricaturists that the Obama-as-Muslim and the Obama-as-Socialist memes are rather contradictory.)

>20 nathanielcampbell: Thanks, Nathaniel. I suppose you have to be from the USA to appreciate some of this stuff. Obama-as-Socialist would be a compliment. Politics is so right-wing in the USA that even your most left-wing Democrats are still to the right of most right-wingers in Europe!

21> for your book pile
Newt Gingrich, To Save America: Stopping Obama's Secular-Socialist Machine
Andrew C. McCarthy, The Grand Jihad: How Islam and the Left Sabotage America

Christian Leaders Denounce Trump’s Plan to Favor Christian Immigrants

...Mr. Trump has followed through on his campaign promise to rescue Christians who are suffering. The executive order he signed on Friday gives preference to refugees who belong to a religious minority in their country, and have been persecuted for their religion. The president detailed his intentions during an interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network on Friday, saying his administration is giving priority to Christians because they had suffered “more so” than others, “so we are going to help them.”

But if Mr. Trump had hoped for Christian leaders to break out in cheers, that is, for the most part, not what he has heard so far. A broad array of clergy members has strongly denounced Mr. Trump’s order as discriminatory, misguided and inhumane. Outrage has also come from some of the evangelical, Roman Catholic and mainstream Protestant leaders who represent the churches most active in trying to aid persecuted Christians...

It remains to be seen whether Mr. Trump’s executive order will find more support in the pews. During the campaign, Mr. Trump successfully mined many voters’ concern about national security and fear of Muslims. He earned the votes of four out of every five white evangelical Christians, and a majority of white Catholics, exit polls showed.

Christian leaders who defended Mr. Trump’s executive order were rare this weekend...

Among the claims Mr. Trump made at his campaign rallies was that the Obama administration had denied refugee status to Christians, and had given preference to Muslims...

But the claim is simply untrue. In 2016, the United States admitted almost as many Christian refugees (37,521) as Muslim refugees (38,901), according to the Pew Research Center.

While only about one percent of the refugees from Syria resettled in the United States last year were Christian, the population of that country is 93 percent Muslim and only five percent Christian, according to Pew. And leaders of several refugee resettlement organizations said during interviews that it takes 18 months to three years for most refugees to go through the vetting process to get into the United States. Many Syrian Christians got into the pipeline more recently...

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/29/us/christian-leaders-denounce-trumps-plan-to-...

Righteous Gentiles/Muslims--I read a similar story (Africa?) about Muslims on a bus who concealed identity of Christian passengers:

Sat Jun 3, 2017
Residents shield Christians in bold exodus from Philippines city
Tom Allard | MARAWI CITY, Philippines

More than 160 civilians walked out of the besieged Philippines city of Marawi just after dawn on Saturday, deceiving Islamist fighters they encountered by hiding the identity of the many Christians among them.

The audacious exodus came after text message warnings that a major assault by Philippines aircraft and ground troops was imminent in the center of the southern city, where some 250 militants and more than 2,000 civilians remain trapped.

"We saved ourselves," said Norodin Alonto Lucman, a well-known former politician and traditional clan leader who sheltered 71 people, including more than 50 Christians, in his home during the battle that erupted on May 23 in the town of more than 200,000 on the southern island of Mindanao.

...Lucman and his guests had begun their escape march ... holding white flags and moving briskly.

"As we walked, others joined us," he told reporters. "We had to pass through a lot of militant snipers."

Some of the civilians were stopped and asked if there were any Christians among them, said Jaime Daligdig, a Christian construction worker.

"We shouted 'Allahu akbar'," he told Reuters, adding that thanks to that Muslim rallying cry they were allowed to pass.

Those who fled included teachers from Dansalan College, a protestant school torched on the first day of the battle.

Christians have been killed and taken hostage by the militants, a mix of local fighters from the Maute Group and other Islamist outfits, as well as foreigners who joined the cause under the Islamic State banner.

The vast majority of Filipinos are Christian, but Mindanao has a larger proportion of Muslims and Islam is followed by the vast majority in Marawi City...

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-philippines-militants-idUSKBN18U0IK

>25 margd: a similar story (Africa?) about Muslims on a bus who concealed identity of Christian passengers

Kenya, if I recall correctly. The bus was ambushed by Al Shabab militants.

>25 margd:

Here is the Grauniad on the Philippines story:

Philippine sectarian bloodshed unites Muslims and Christians

Despite Islamist militants’ attempts to cause division, their violence has prompted selfless interfaith compassion

On a different note, Christian and Muslim cooperation can also be found in Palestine, where the common oppressor is Israel.

>27 John5918: Wow, how humbling and inspiring! The Muslims are taking real risks to help the Christians, and the Christians are moving past their fears to help Muslims. An oh-so important example for us all in a time of division, terror, and nationalism!