• North Korea is widely considered the most dangerous place in the world to be a Christian; roughly a quarter of the country’s two hundred thousand to four hundred thousand Christians are believed to be living in forced-labor camps because of their refusal to join the national cult around founder Kim Il Sung. The anti-Christian animus is so strong that even people with Christian grandparents are frozen out of the most important jobs—a grand irony, given that Kim Il Sung’s mother was a Presbyterian deaconess. Since the armistice in 1953 that stabilized the division of the peninsula, some three hundred thousand Christians in North Korea have simply disappeared and are presumed to be dead.
Subsequent chapters will recount similar episodes from other parts of the world, but the point should already be clear: in a remarkable number of global neighborhoods, being a Christian is hazardous to your health.
The ways and means of this war on Christians vary, but at its most extreme it’s a form of religious cleansing designed to wipe Christians off a particular part of the map. Take the case of southeastern Turkey, a zone bordering Syria where today Kurds and militant Turkish nationalists vie for control. At the beginning of the twentieth century there was a flourishing community of half a million Aramaic-speaking Christians in the area, keeping alive the language traditionally thought to have been spoken by Christ. By the end of the century, the Aramaic Christian population had shriveled to twenty-five hundred due both to violent persecution and to the daily pressures of de jure and de facto discrimination, and most people believe it’s only a question of time before it becomes an artifact of history.
Nura Ardin, eighty-five, is one such exile. He recently told journalists that his family stayed in the area as long as his oldest son was alive, because the son had made a promise to the local bishop to remain as long as the bishop did. Upon hearing of that vow, Ardin said, Turkish nationalists raided the family’s home one night in 1986 and shot his oldest son to death, whereupon the rest of the family decided to cut their losses and get out. Walking through southeastern Turkey’s ghost towns of empty Christian villages, one has the feeling that here the war on Christians is basically already over.
THE RHETORIC OF WAR
“War” is probably the most overused term in politics, especially in the United States. Americans call pretty much everything a war—“war on poverty,” “war on drugs,” “war on terror,” “culture wars,” even a slightly self-parodying “war on Christmas.” During the 2012 election, several more alleged wars emerged, including a “war on women” and a “war on religion.” Generally such rhetoric is an invitation to hysteria. Believing that you don’t just disagree with someone but are at war with them makes it far more difficult to find common ground. After all, nobody wants to be the Neville Chamberlain of the war on Christmas.
Before going further, therefore, we must clearly identify the risks of describing the pattern of religious violence summarized above as a “war.”
• Calling it a “war” could suggest a degree of coordination to anti-Christian persecution that simply doesn’t exist. There’s no single enemy, and the problem can’t be solved with a single strategic approach.
• Using the imagery of war could come off as a call to arms, a way of urging Christians to stop turning the other cheek. The last thing the world needs is a contemporary version of the Crusader armies of yore, armed with AK-47 assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenades.
• Overheated rhetoric could inflame the situation, making life even more perilous for Christians who already carry a bull’s-eye on their backs.
• Because “war” is so overused, cynics might regard talk of a “war on Christians” as just another bit of spin, a slogan cooked up to serve someone’s political interests.
Even with those cautions acknowledged, the question remains: What other word are we supposed to use? We’re talking about a massive, worldwide pattern of violence and oppression directed against a specific group of people, often explicitly understood by its perpetrators as part of a broader cultural and spiritual struggle. Granted, slapping the label “war” on political disagreements is often an exaggeration. By the same token, feckless reluctance to call something a “war” when it plainly is can also be counterproductive. Among other things, failure to call this a “war” can inhibit people from facing the situation with the necessary sense of urgency.
Although reasonable observers might be willing to accept that widespread religious violence constitutes a genuine war, they may still balk at a specific focus on Christians as its victims. Again, let’s tick off the most obvious reservations.
• Followers of other religions are suffering too. Many thoughtful Christian leaders in Nigeria hesitate to frame Boko Haram in terms of Christian/Muslim conflict, in part because its largest pool of victims is actually composed of fellow Muslims. Similarly, while Syria’s Christians are paying a steep price, so too are other religious and ethnic groups in the country. Factions of the rebel alliance have taken up the chant “Christians to Lebanon, and Alawites to the sea!”
• Talking too much about a war “on Christians” could make the defense of religious freedom seem like a parochial matter of Christian self-interest, rather than principled support for the human rights of all people.
• Too much emphasis on Christians may fuel suspicions that advocacy of religious freedom is another chapter in Western colonialism, or a covert plot to promote Christian proselytism. Those perceptions are already strong in some quarters, and act as a trigger for violence.
Once again, even in the teeth of these hazards, there are compelling reasons for talking about a war “on Christians.” As we will see in the next chapter, the leading estimate holds that 80 percent of all acts of religious discrimination in the world today are directed at Christians. If the defense of human rights and religious freedom is to mean anything, its cutting edge has to be formed by robust concern for the fate of these Christians. If the rhetoric of a war “on Christians” wakes people up to that reality, it will have served a purpose.
THE “WAR ON RELIGION” AND THE WAR ON CHRISTIANS
Precisely because the language of “war” is tossed around so readily, it’s important at the outset to make a clear distinction between two different conflicts in which perceived assaults on Christianity are involved.
• The “global war on Christians,” meaning violence and overt persecution directed at individual Christians as well as their churches and other institutions on the basis of their religious faith, the works of charity they perform, or the virtues they exhibit.
• A “war on religion” in the West, a phrase that many commentators in Europe and North America use to refer to what they see as a growing climate of secular hostility to religion, and to Christianity in particular. It usually involves tensions over the ability of faith-based institutions to both be true to their creeds and play a robust public role, rather than direct assaults on individuals.
In drawing this distinction, I’m aware that many thoughtful Christians don’t believe it’s ultimately tenable. Some Christian intellectuals believe that what’s going on in Western culture today is the first wave of a more violent assault on religion. Cardinal Francis George of Chicago memorably expressed where he believes Western society is heading in 2010: “I expect to die in bed, my successor will die in prison, and his successor will die a martyr in the public square.” (Not often quoted is George’s more hopeful footnote after the reference to the martyred bishop: “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.”)
Without passing judgment on such forecasts, the subject matter of this book is the literal war on Christians already under way in other parts of the world. Readers looking for a close examination of today’s church/state tensions in the United States and Europe, which the Catholic bishops of America have characterized in terms of an “ever more frequent assault and ever more rapid erosion” of religious liberty, will not find it he
re.
I make this choice for two reasons, the first of which is unabashedly political. Matters such as the Obama administration’s insurance mandates, which require faith-based groups to cover contraception and sterilization, divide even the most rational of souls. I don’t want those divisions to get in the way of forming consensus about the global war on Christians, because while reasonable minds may draw differing conclusions over insurance policy, there ought to be no such disagreement when innocent people are being shot, tortured, imprisoned, or threatened.
Here’s an example of seemingly improbable alliances. In 2011 and again in 2013, a bill to create a special-envoy position within the U.S. State Department to advocate for religious minorities in the Middle East and South Central Asia was introduced by two members of Congress: Frank Wolf, a Virginia Republican, and Anna Eshoo, a California Democrat. In many ways, they’re a political odd couple. Wolf is a strong pro-lifer, given a 100 percent score by the National Right to Life Committee; Eshoo is pro-choice, rated 100 percent by the National Abortion Rights Action League. Wolf voted for the Defense of Marriage Act, while Eshoo, a major gay rights supporter, opposed it. They’ve split over the budget, health care reform, and many other contentious issues. Yet when it comes to defending Christians at risk, they’re in agreement. Wolf has long been a leader on religious freedom, sending a letter in early January 2013 to three hundred Protestant and Catholic leaders pleading with them to become more outspoken “on behalf of the persecuted church around the world.” Eshoo is the only member of Congress of Assyrian descent and is cofounder of its Religious Minorities in the Middle East caucus. She’s authored an amendment to the Foreign Relations Act insisting that “special attention should be paid to the welfare of Chaldo-Assyrians and other indigenous Christians in Iraq.” I want this book to contribute to holding such disparate coalitions together, avoiding anything that might split them apart.
The second reason for distinguishing a Western “war on religion” from the global war on Christians is moral. However harassed believers in the West may feel, their difficulties pale in comparison with the threats to life and limb faced by Christians in other global neighborhoods. The agony of those truly at risk has been ignored for too long, and it would be tragic—in the classic language of Christian moral theology, it would be scandalous—if metaphorical battles at home, however necessary it may be to fight them, distracted Western Christians from engaging in the very real war being waged abroad.
As a footnote, wherever one stands on the “war on religion,” there is a silver lining to those perceptions. Part of the reason Christians in the West have been slow to recognize the scope and scale of anti-Christian violence is because they have no personal experience of persecution. Today, however, a growing number of Christians in Europe and North America have come to see themselves as part of an oppressed minority. For our purposes, the extent to which those impressions are merited is almost irrelevant; in terms of popular psychology, they have the potential to make Christians more concerned about, and sympathetic to, persecution in other places.
LETTING OURSELVES OFF THE HOOK?
Another reason why some people are uncomfortable with the imagery of a “war on Christians” is concern that a narrative of Christian victimization may let those of us in the West off the hook too easily. Iraq is the most commonly cited example. Complaints about anti-Christian violence in Iraq, critics object, glosses over the fact that it was two ill-advised American wars in the country that created the chaos, waged by an administration that frequently invoked Christian values to justify its policies. If we truly want to protect Christians from harm, these critics suggest, don’t we have to consider the foreign policy and lifestyle choices in the West that often tempt people to turn their Christian neighbors into convenient targets?
Rhetoric about a “war on Christians” can be used that way, and it’s a mistake. Nothing in this book should be interpreted as an excuse for short-circuiting hard questions about equity in international relations, in the use of force, or in contemporary models of development. Pope Paul VI said in 1972, “If you want peace, work for justice,” and his insight remains as valid today as it was at the height of the war in Vietnam.
There’s an intra-Christian version of this criticism, which holds that making a fetish out of Christian suffering risks overlooking the responsibility Christians themselves sometimes bear for creating conditions of conflict. For instance, haven’t the churches over the centuries sometimes allowed themselves to be co-opted by political systems in exchange for power and privilege, offering a de facto blessing for situations of injustice? Don’t Christians sometimes engage in overly aggressive forms of proselytism that court retribution? Don’t triumphalist Christian theologies of extra ecclesiam nulla salus, “outside the church there is no salvation,” sometimes inflame resentments among followers of other faiths?
Once again, nothing in this book should obstruct conversation within, and among, the churches over these subjects. While no other global religion arguably has done greater public penance over the sins of its past and present than Christianity, the church still remains semper reformanda, always to be reformed. Yet also once again, the failures of either institutional churches or of individual Christians cannot justify indiscriminate violence and harassment. The logic cuts both ways: the global war on Christians is no excuse for avoiding tough debates over Christian doctrine and practice, but equally, those debates are no excuse for ignoring the global war on Christians.
IS IT REALLY “ANTI-CHRISTIAN”?
A final objection to claims of a war on Christians is that such language is overly simplistic, because the forces that drive the violence often have little to do with religion. When wealthy landowners in Brazil gun down Christian activists supporting the property rights of indigenous people, for instance, or militias in the Congo murder preachers and catechists because they stand in the way of recruitment or plunder, the architects of the violence are hardly driven by religious conviction. Once again, there’s merit to the concern. The mere fact that Christians are harmed someplace does not ipso facto mean they were harmed because they are Christian. It’s equally fallacious both to dismiss religion as a causal factor and to privilege it over others.
At the same time, a one-sided focus on the motives of the perpetrators of violence can also produce a badly skewed picture. When someone is threatened or harmed, there are actually two questions to ask: First, what are the motives of the attackers? Second, did the victim make choices that placed himself or herself at risk, and if so, why? Generally, most people focus only on the first in assessing whether something counts as religious violence. For Catholics, that instinct is actually encoded in their theology. Classically, the church has only recognized martyrs if they were killed in odium fidei, meaning “in [explicit] hatred of the faith.” Let’s take two cases, however, that illustrate why this way of seeing things doesn’t bring the full picture into view.
First: A businessman who happens to be Christian is on his way to a meeting to negotiate a deal, and he’s walking down the street in what’s usually a safe neighborhood. He’s mugged by a thief looking to make a quick score, getting roughed up in the process.
Second: A Pentecostal preacher is walking down the street on his way to church in a neighborhood known for drug trafficking and gang violence. He understands the risks but believes continuing his ministry in an otherwise abandoned community is what God is calling him to do. The preacher is mugged, getting roughed up in the process. (In some parts of Latin America, by the way, this is almost a daily occurrence.)
Most people would say the businessman did not suffer because of his Christian beliefs but the pastor did—even though the motives of the party inflicting the violence are precisely the same.
Aside from logical cogency, here’s a further argument for taking a more expansive view of anti-Christian persecution. Many experts believe that a society’s treatment of Christians is a harbinger of its track record on human rights across the board. B
ecause Christians today are distributed across the planet, because they’re disproportionately women and nonwhite, because they often belong to other at-risk groups (such as ethnic and linguistic minorities), and because they’re often found in the forefront of efforts for political and economic liberalization, the way a society treats its Christians is a fairly reliable test of its overall approach to the protection of minorities and the rule of law. To ignore threats against Christians because they’re not explicitly religious is, therefore, to miss the forest for the trees.
Admittedly, it can be dangerous to describe something as a religious conflict when other forces are also involved. To take the best-known example, one can get an overheated impression of animosity between Muslims and Christians by focusing only on the religious identity of jihadists in the Middle East, without considering the political, economic, and cultural factors that also foment violence. Accurate diagnosis is a key to cure. If Christians are being targeted in Sri Lanka, for instance, not primarily because of their religious affiliation but because of lingering ethnic and political tensions related to that nation’s civil war, protecting them may require solutions that have more to do with statecraft than with confessional rivalry.
The Global War on Christians: Dispatches from the Front Lines of Anti-Christian Persecution Page 2