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

by John L. Allen

  State Security Policies

  Sometimes the authorities of a state may not be driven by an anti-Christian agenda, but their perceived need for security nonetheless harms Christians in a systematic way. Israel offers probably the best example, as the small but symbolically important Arab Christian community inside Israel experiences serious hardships. For instance, Palestinians living in the West Bank and in East Jerusalem hold different residency cards and cannot move back and forth without special permits. Reportedly, there are some two hundred Christian families living apart today, split between members in the West Bank and members in Jerusalem. In January 2013, a group of Catholic bishops from Europe and the United States visited Israel and reported that Christians in the Cremisan Valley between Jerusalem and Bethlehem had complained of “legal struggles to protect local people’s lands and religious institutions from the encroachment of the Security Barrier.”

  Israel, however, is not the only example. In many countries of the former Soviet sphere, security policies intended to curb political dissent end up negatively effecting Christian life, even if Christians aren’t specific targets. In Ukraine, for instance, the Greek Catholic University in Lviv has faced persistent harassment.

  Although there are roughly 170 universities in Ukraine, most are heavily dependent on state funding and thus tend to stifle dissent. Observers say only a handful foster a climate in which civil society can find its voice, and the Greek Catholic University is perhaps the most visible example. The university has paid a price. In 2010, the rector, Bishop Borys Gudziak, got a chilling visit from security agents suggesting that his students shouldn’t protest a visit to Lviv by President Viktor Yanukovych, a pro-Russian figure whom many Ukrainians see as beholden to Moscow and to his country’s oligarchs. Rather than kowtowing, Gudziak published a memo describing the meeting and outlining a broader campaign of harassment (including tapping his phones), which elicited support for the university from diplomats, NGOs, and a cross section of Ukrainian intellectuals and activists. In late 2012, the university was facing another round of pressure, with questions from government officials about its accreditation. Leaders at the university have signaled they have no intention of allowing themselves to be muzzled, believing that the road to democracy and an open society doesn’t run in that direction.

  Christian Radicalism

  To the great shame of Christianity, occasionally the protagonists of the global war on Christians are other Christians. As we saw in chapter 4, Mexico offers one example, where traditionalist Catholics have launched assaults on Protestants, mostly evangelicals and Pentecostals, perceived as threats to the country’s Catholic roots. These conflicts are also sometimes intertwined with regional, ethnic, and economic factors.

  Sometimes Christian radicals become agents of the war on Christians without intending it. Bishop Matthew Hassan Kukah of Sokoto, located in Muslim-dominated northern Nigeria, tells a story that drives home the point. His younger sister, he said, lives in the city of Kaduna in a predominantly Muslim neighborhood. There’s a Muslim family across the road who are lifelong friends, and her daughter would often hang out in their home after school. When anti-Christian violence broke out in the city, the Muslim father of the family risked his own neck to come to the shop owned by Kukah’s sister and put all of her belongings in his house to keep them safe, while the sister and her family spent a week in an army barracks to escape the mayhem.

  Later, Kukah said, armed bands of Christians started attacking Muslims as payback, and this family was among their first targets. They burned down their house, and his sister lost all her possessions in the attack. As Kukah put it, his sister thus fell victim “to a bunch of Christians who had come to save her.” The lesson is that whenever Christians become radicalized and take up arms, they don’t put only their perceived enemies at risk; they also endanger their fellow believers as well.

  Secular Hostility

  Although this book does not treat church/state conflicts in the West as part of the global war on Christians, there are times when secular hostility to Christianity can shade off into direct assaults, acts of intimidation, and physical violence. In November 2011, for instance, Cedar Hill AME Zion Church in Ansonville, North Carolina, was desecrated by vandals who spray-painted “God is a lie” on the wall, burned a cross, and reportedly defecated on the altar. In France in 2010, Catholic bishop Michel Dubost of Evry complained of silence and indifference from public authorities after a series of attacks on French churches, with the perpetrators leaving behind slogans such as “Burn your churches!” and the old anarchist dictum “Neither God nor master.”

  In extreme form, such hostilities can turn lethal. In early February 2012, a forty-eight-year-old man in the United Kingdom named Stephen Farrow murdered a widow named Betty Yates and an Anglican vicar named Rev. John Suddards, apparently after hoping to kill the archbishop of Canterbury but being discouraged by the levels of security around him. Just before the first killing, Farrow reportedly sent a text message to a friend in which he wrote that “the church will be the first to suffer.” After killing the vicar, Farrow placed a picture of Jesus and a mirror on the floor along with a Bible on the victim’s chest. In the run-up to the attack, Farrow had committed a burglary at a nearby home, leaving a note for the owners, scribbled in red ink and pinned to the kitchen table with two knives, which read: “Be thankful you did not come back or we would have killed you Christian scum. I ****ing hate God.” At his trial, Farrow claimed to have been abused by a priest and said he had an “aggressive attitude” toward the church. He was sentenced to two life terms in prison after a jury concluded that while Farrow was obviously disturbed, he was not legally insane.

  Religious Delusions

  Despite the warning delivered in chapter 8 about the “Casablanca defense,” random acts of madness do sometimes occur, especially when religion is in the mix. From time to time, an individual may develop his or her own private set of beliefs, usually augmented by some form of neurosis, and conclude that killing a Christian figure enjoys divine warrant. The story of Fr. Tudor Marin in Romania, presented in chapter 6, illustrates the point. He was stabbed to death in June 2012 inside his church by a man who had developed his own private apocalyptic interpretation of the Bible and was enraged by Marin’s unwillingness to endorse it. The thirty-year-old culprit apparently told police that he had set out that morning “to kill a priest.”

  Mehmet Ali Ağca, who shot and wounded Pope John Paul II in 1981, may well be another example. Though his precise motives remain murky thirty years later, Ali Ağca was apparently influenced in part by bizarre ideas about his own role in cosmic affairs. In a 2010 statement, Ali Ağca said: “In the name of God Almighty, I proclaim the end of the world in this century. All the world will be destroyed, every human being will die. I am not God, I am not son of God, I am Christ eternal.”

  WHY THIS MYTH IS TOXIC

  As with the other misconceptions examined in this section, the first problem with the myth that it’s all about Islam is that it’s inaccurate. The hard truth about the global war on Christians is that the long-awaited moderate reformation in Islam could arrive tomorrow, yet millions of Christians would still be at risk. That would be true even inside Islamic societies, which could be entirely free of religious extremism and still harbor corporate interests, organized crime, and despotic regimes that could all find good reasons for persecuting Christians. It’s even truer outside the Islamic world, because Islamic radicals cannot be blamed for the policies in North Korea or China that put Christians under the screws, or the serial persecution of Christians in India, or the legions of new martyrs in overwhelmingly Christian cultures such as the Democratic Republic of Congo and Colombia. Bringing relief to the victims of this global war requires diagnosing the threats correctly, and that means setting aside the idea that radical Islam is the only villain.

  Second, perpetuating the idea that Islam is by far the primary threat facing Christians in the early twenty-first century also stokes
the idea of a “clash of civilizations” between the two faiths, adding fuel to the fire of those who long for a new holy war. That doesn’t do justice to the complex reality of the situation, as there are examples of both conflict and coexistence, and for every virulent and dangerous current in the Islamic world there are also movements and individuals devoted to peace. Even in Nigeria, where no one can be blind to the threat posed by the militant Boko Haram movement today, Cardinal John Onaiyekan of Abuja insisted in late 2012 that contrary to media images, “Christians in Nigeria do not see themselves as being under any massive persecution by Muslims.

  “Most of our problems,” Onaiyekan went on, “are caused by the reckless utterances and activities of extremist fringe groups on both sides of the divide.”

  The right response is not to go quiet about the threats facing Christians in many Muslim societies. Politically correct silence does no one any good, and arguably insults the dignity of those who run risks to life and limb on a daily basis to keep the faith alive. Certainly the failure of Christian leaders in the West, and especially in the United States, to speak out more forcefully in defense of beleaguered Christians in Iraq, Egypt, Turkey, and other places is nothing short of scandalous. However, understanding that reality is a mixed bag suggests a dose of caution and balance, rather than succumbing to the rhetoric of hysteria and the logic of inexorable conflict.

  Third and finally, the “all about Islam” myth is dangerous because it obscures from view the many examples of noble Muslims who actually risk their own safety to defend endangered Christians. The story of Italian Consolata missionary Sr. Leonella Sgorbati, who was shot to death in Mogadishu, Somalia, in 2006, and that of the Muslim man who died with her, Mahamud Mohammed Osman, offers a powerful example.

  The missionary nun was born Rosa Maria Sgorbati in the Italian town of Gazzola on December 9, 1940, and changed her name to Leonella upon joining the Consolata sisters at the age of twenty. (It’s customary in many Catholic orders to take a new name when entering religious life, signifying a change in vocation.) She studied nursing and then served in a series of hospitals in Kenya before heading to Mogadishu in 2001 to open a training center for nurses. She would move back and forth between Kenya and Somalia for the next few years, often getting bogged down because of the difficulties of obtaining visas. Just before her death she had gone to Kenya with three of her nurse candidates to register them for further training, and had returned to Mogadishu on September 13. She would be gunned down, at the age of sixty-five, just four days later.

  Many observers believe the attack on the Italian nun came in retribution for Pope Benedict XVI’s controversial speech in Regensburg, Germany, six days before, which incited Muslim outrage by appearing to link Muhammad with violence. At the time, Sgorbati was one of only two Westerners left in Mogadishu. Her plan was to deploy her nurse-trainees to deliver medical care to the victims of the country’s violence, Muslim and Christian alike.

  Mahamud Mohammed Osman, a father of four and a devout Muslim, was Sgorbati’s driver, bodyguard, and friend, and was standing next to her when militants staged their ambush. They were shot as they walked from the Mogadishu hospital to the sister’s home, where three other nuns were waiting to have lunch. Osman tried to shield Sgorbati’s body with his own, and took the first bullet. They died together, their blood mingling on the hospital floor. In that sense, Sgorbati and her bodyguard became not only martyrs but symbols of Christian/Muslim friendship at its best. Many Christian commentators noted that Osman exemplified what Jesus described as the ultimate test of friendship: the willingness to lay down one’s life for another.

  Sgorbati’s last words reportedly were “Perdono, perdono,” meaning “I forgive.” That spirit, along with with Osman’s sacrifice, are perhaps the most powerful refutation imaginable that the global war on Christians is all about Islam.

  10

  THE MYTH THAT IT’S ONLY PERSECUTION IF THE MOTIVES ARE RELIGIOUS

  Although most people find violations of human rights appalling, no matter the target, not everyone is inclined to accept that Christians merit special concern. Those who would deny or minimize the global war on Christians generally have three lines of attack.

  THEY’VE GOT IT COMING

  The first line is to concede that Christians are being victimized but to argue that they have it coming—either for perceived sins in the past (such as the Crusades, the Inquisition, and the Holocaust) or for political and cultural positions of the present (opposition to abortion and gay marriage, the alleged wealth and privilege of Christian churches, and so on). The problem with this argument is that the wrong Christians are paying the price. Whatever one makes of the Inquisition, its heyday came in Spain in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and it’s irrational to suggest that a churchgoer in Nigeria or Nicaragua today carries responsibility for it. Similarly, if the beef is with churches having too much wealth and power, it’s tough to see why impoverished Dalit Christians in India and Pakistan, or poor day laborers just trying to get to church in Belarus, ought to be compelled to settle that score.

  A related version of the “they’ve got it coming” argument holds that Christians bring hostility on themselves because they’re overly aggressive in their methods of proselytism, offending the religious sensibilities of other cultures. It’s certainly true that some Christians, like some followers of other religious traditions, are capable of exceeding the boundaries of decorum. In one famous incident, a group of zealous Filipino evangelicals once made their way through neighborhoods in Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia, tossing Bibles over the walls of estates. A few of those Bibles apparently struck people standing on the other side—meaning that these missionaries were literally hitting people over the head with Scripture.

  The problem here is that the punishment is disproportionate to the crime. However obnoxious a given Christian may be, it doesn’t merit being consigned to a concentration camp, or being beaten, tortured, and killed. Moreover, as Thomas Farr, a veteran American diplomat who was the first director of the State Department’s Commission of International Religious Freedom, observes, “Religious freedom includes the right of individuals and communities to propose their faith.” Civilized societies have to find ways to discourage inconsiderate or overly aggressive forms of proselytism without resorting to violence or curbing the legitimate right to freedom of speech.

  SKEPTICISM

  A second denial strategy is to express skepticism about the scope and scale of the problems Christians face. While skeptics may concede that there are isolated cases in which Christians suffer oppression or violence, they generally deny that there’s a wide global pattern of such hostility. They often suggest that such claims have either been inflated or exaggerated—“sexed up,” in the political argot of the day—to serve a political agenda, either to make churches look more sympathetic or to bolster their positions in debates over morality and public policy.

  The difficulty with those claims is that they dissolve under careful examination. The material presented in this book or in extensively documented reports by respected organizations such as Aid to the Church in Need, Open Doors, the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, and the Pew Forum demonstrates convincingly that Christians aren’t making this stuff up.

  IT MAY BE PERSECUTION, BUT IT’S NOT RELIGIOUS

  The third way of playing down the war on Christians, and probably the most common, is to embrace the myth examined in this chapter. In essence, it holds that Christians may be subject to harassment, discrimination, and persecution in various parts of the world, but not because they’re Christian. The argument is rooted in the perception that in many cases, the architects of persecution that afflicts Christians are motivated by forces other than religious hatred—greed, ethnic rivalry, criminal intent, political ambition, and so on. If a catechist is killed in the Democratic Republic of Congo because she belongs to the wrong ethnic group, that’s not hatred of the faith but rather tribal animosity. If a Pentec
ostal pastor is shot to death in a poor favela outside Rio de Janeiro, it’s street crime rather than a religious conflict.

  In other words, this form of denial holds that a particular act of persecution or brutality counts as “anti-Christian” only if the motives of the perpetrator are specifically religious.

  The problem with this way of looking at things is that it suffers from selective focus. If it takes two to tango, it also takes two to persecute—one to do the persecution and the other to suffer it. If that’s the case, why should the analysis of motives rest entirely on the perpetrator, to the exclusion of the victim? To grasp whether there was a religious or Christian component to a given incident, we need to understand not only why someone committed the act but also why the target was in a position where it could happen.

  The great German Protestant theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer illustrates the insufficiency of focusing solely on the executioner rather than the executed. Bonhoeffer was a staunch opponent of Germany’s Nazi regime, including its euthanasia program and its genocidal persecution of the Jews. He eventually became involved in plans by the Abwehr, the German military intelligence office, to assassinate Adolf Hitler and was arrested by the Gestapo in April 1943. He was executed by hanging just twenty-three days before the German surrender, after having spent two years in a concentration camp.