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

by John L. Allen

  In political terms, Gerardi profiles as a classic martyr for the left, someone who challenged poverty and oppression associated with a right-wing regime. The witness of Gerardi, and countless other Christians like him in various parts of the world, offers proof that defending Christians at risk is hardly an exclusively “conservative” enterprise.

  FR. DANIIL SYSOYEV

  The November 19, 2009, slaying of a celebrated Russian Orthodox priest in Moscow is the equal and opposite version of Gerardi’s story. Fr. Daniil Sysoyev’s story presents a classic instance of a new martyr whose death stirred immediate sympathy and outrage on the political right, not just in Russia but across the world.

  A gunman wearing a hospital mask shot Sysoyev four times at point-blank range inside an Orthodox church in southern Moscow, where he served as rector, and he died on the operating table in a nearby hospital. The assailant was identified as a Muslim radical and Kyrgyz citizen who was later killed during an attempted arrest. A militant Islamic group based in the North Caucasus took credit for the assassination of the Orthodox cleric, saying in a statement that “one of our brothers … expressed his desire to execute the damned Sysoyev.”

  In the Orthodox world and beyond, Sysoyev has become an icon of the dangers of radical Islam and the failure of authorities to confront the threat with sufficient vigor. He’s a clerical analogue, in some ways, of Theo van Gogh, the Dutch filmmaker whose 2004 assassination by a Muslim fanatic made him an posthumous darling of hawks and neo-cons.

  Thirty-five at the time he died, Sysoyev was married with a wife and three children. After his ordination to the priesthood in 1995, he became a leading figure in the post-Soviet renaissance of the Russian Orthodox Church, having graduated from the Moscow Spiritual Academy and later founding an academy for street preachers in Moscow. He was an active member of the center for the rehabilitation of the victims of totalitarian sects and pseudo-religious movements. Sysoyev authored dozens of books, including a work titled Son of Man, styled as an introduction to the life of Christ for people in the former Soviet sphere. He founded the Orthodox Open University, launched one of the first Sunday schools in Russia, and helped to found a charity group at the Russian Children’s Hospital in Moscow. Sysoyev clearly belonged to the conservative wing of the mainstream Russian Orthodox Church. He was critical of Darwinian evolutionary theory and famously instructed Orthodox believers that they were not to participate in yoga, karate, Latin American dances such as the tango or salsa, or belly dancing, because, in his view, all those activities had non-Christian origins and thus posed the risk of syncretism and religious relativism. Sysoyev also struck out against what he saw as the growing influence of “paganism” and the occult in Russian society, becoming a specialist in trying to bring people attracted to New Age spirituality back into the church.

  For most Russians, however, Sysoyev’s real claim to fame was his strong opposition to Muslim immigration and his insistence on the need to confront Islamic radicalism, making him something of a celebrity on the political right and among some nationalist currents in Russian society. (Ultranationalists had a cool view of Sysoyev because he wasn’t a monarchist.) He conducted two celebrated public debates with a former Orthodox priest named Vyacheslav Polosin, who had converted to Islam and taken up a mission to spread his new faith. Sysoyev published a book titled Marriage with a Muslim, in which he asserted that God and the Orthodox Church condemned marriages between Christians and non-Christians—in context, meaning mostly Muslims. The cochair of Russia’s Council of Muftis and a Muslim journalist both sued Sysoyev over the book, accusing the priest of inspiring hatred against Russia’s Muslim minority of roughly twenty million, basing their complaints on Russian federal statutes banning “hate speech.”

  Sysoyev made a special point of missionary outreach to Muslims and at one point claimed to have personally baptized eighty Muslim converts, “among them Tatars, Uzbeks, Chechens and Dagestanis.” The fiery priest pointedly charged that many of his fellow Orthodox clergy were unwilling to follow his lead because “they are afraid of revenge from the Muslim world.” One prominent leader in Russia’s Muslim community, Mufti Nafigulla Ashirov, branded Sysoyev “the Russian Salman Rushdie.” In a 2008 television interview, Sysoyev testily insisted, “As I see it, it is a sin not to preach to Muslims, for I am half-Russian and half-Tatar myself,” meaning that his family hailed from a Tatar region with a heavy Muslim presence. Sysoyev organized weekly missionary courses in his parish, explicitly designed to prepare Orthodox Christians to attempt to spread the faith to Muslims.

  As a result, Sysoyev routinely received death threats. In one instance, the priest said that he had received an anonymous email threatening to “cut his head off and let his guts out.” In 2008, a man identifying himself as a Muslim called the parish in which Sysoyev was serving and said that the priest would be killed if he continued to publicly express his negative attitude toward Islam. On the basis of those threats, Sysoyev twice asked Russia’s Federal Security Bureau to assign agents to protect his personal security. In October 2009, he posted this note in an online service called LiveJournal: “I have news again. Today, you’ll laugh, but Muslims once again have promised to kill me. Now by phone. Already tried. The 14th time. I’ve got accustomed.… And so, I ask you all to pray.”

  According to a friend and colleague of Sysoyev’s, Fr. Oleg Stenyaev, an Islamic warlord had sentenced the Orthodox priest to death in absentia on the basis of two charges: that Sysoyev conducted open debates with Muslims, challenging core principles of their faith, and that he baptized Muslim converts to Christianity. (Stenyaev would later claim that several more Muslim converts were baptized in the wake of Sysoyev’s death.)

  After his death, Patriarch Kyrill I of Moscow, the leader of the Russian Orthodox Church, proclaimed Sysoyev a “confessor of the faith” and a “martyr” for the cause of evangelical preaching. The murdered priest is popularly celebrated as a martyr even outside Russian Orthodox circles; in Greece, he is venerated as a saint and martyr by many Greek Orthodox believers, who place him in the same category as their fellow believers who were martyred during the Turkish occupation.

  Looking back on the murder three years later, Stenyaev wrote of his friend: “Saints are difficult people. They always have an inspirational impulse, and they are ahead of others in ideas, words, and actions. It looked as if he [Sysoyev] was in a hurry. But actually, it was us who were behind. Father Daniil was not in a rush, he was a measured person. But he set the pace and the tension and it wouldn’t let one rest idly.”

  Given the circumstances of his assassination, Sysoyev became a hero to critics of policies of “multiculturalism,” which many social and political conservatives believe to be overly accommodating of radical currents in the Islamic world, failing to insist that Muslim immigrants assimilate to the values of their host societies. More broadly, Sysoyev is hailed by many conservatives as a martyr in the “clash of civilizations,” whose death illustrates the need for a more muscular response to Islamic-inspired terrorism.

  To be clear, neither Gerardi nor Sysoyev understood himself as a politician or an ideologue, and neither man lived or died in order to advance the interests of a particular party or faction. Though Gerardi’s own political and theological instincts were probably to the left of Sysoyev’s, both men probably would have said what they shared as Christian believers, despite the denominational divide between Catholics and Orthodox, was more important than any political differences. The relevant point here is that the stories of Gerardi and Sysoyev show that both the right and the left have their martyrs, that no political position is excluded from the global war on Christians, and therefore that raising an alarm over the kind of violence that claimed the lives of these two clergymen, and that continues to afflict Christians all over the world, is not a political exercise.

  WHY THIS MYTH IS TOXIC

  As ever, the basic problem with the “political issue” myth is that it’s inaccurate. The forces driving the global war on
Christians don’t skew predominantly in one political direction, and the fact of this global war does not support the ideological diagnosis of any given faction. There are martyrs on all sides of contemporary political divides; liberals and conservatives both can be found both among the victims and among the protagonists. For every Dorothy Stang or Oscar Romero, there’s a Bishop John Han Dingxiang or a Fr. Daniil Sysoyev. Beyond such well-known figures, there are also anonymous casualties like Asif Masih in Pakistan, people victimized by every imaginable kind of political ideology and interest. To suggest that attempting to mobilize a response to this global war is in some sense a political exercise thus misrepresents the situation on the ground.

  In addition, the “political interest” is also an impediment to galvanizing a coherent and nonpartisan response to the global war on Christians, perhaps especially in the contemporary West—where everything is perceived to have a political subtext. As long as some sectors of opinion in the West suspect that political axes are being ground whenever someone speaks out against anti-Christian persecution, the response will be hamstrung. The threat must be framed in terms of universal human rights, not partisan interests. Crystal clarity needs to be achieved on this point: calling for more aggressive action on behalf of suffering Christians, in terms of both direct humanitarian efforts and a policy response at the government level, does not carry any direct political payoff, because Christians of all political persuasions, and of none, are equally at risk.

  Finally, the “political issue” myth is also spiritually offensive because it taints the sacrifice of the new martyrs, suggesting that they went to their deaths for a political agenda rather than on the basis of their religious beliefs. In terms of both secular politics and Christian doctrine, today’s martyrs represent a wide range of instincts. Simply because people understand themselves to be religious believers does not mean that they cease to be citizens, or stop having their own opinions on political questions. What the people described throughout this book have in common is a profound conviction that faith matters. Their life choices were fundamentally rooted not in secular ideology but in their own reading of the Gospels, however different that reading may be from one person to another. First and foremost, these martyrs lived and died as Christians, not as participants in the culture wars, and to attempt to exploit their legacies in order to score political points is both crass and dishonest.

  PART THREE

  Fallout, Consequences, and Response

  As we have seen, the global war on Christians is in many ways the greatest story never told about the early twenty-first century. Anti-Christian violence is often masked by silence and indifference, or touted only when publicizing a particular atrocity happens to serve someone’s interests. Like all generalizations, however, this assessment paints with too broad a brush, because it’s not as if no one is paying attention. Beyond the victims themselves, consciousness is beginning to grow both at the grass roots across the Christian world and at the leadership level.

  On September 12, 2012, the Catholic bishops of the United States organized a symposium devoted to the issue, “International Religious Freedom: An Imperative for Peace and the Common Good.” Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York, president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, called for greater consciousness-raising and advocacy, saying: “Many Christians experience daily affronts and often live in fear because of their pursuit of truth, their faith in Jesus Christ and their heartfelt plea for respect for religious freedom. This situation is unacceptable, since it represents an insult to God and to human dignity; furthermore, it is a threat to security and peace, and an obstacle to the achievement of authentic and integral human development.”

  Looking forward, it seems likely that the defense of persecuted Christians will increasingly become a front-burner priority for the various churches and denominations around the world, in part because of an inexorable demographic reality: a robust two-thirds of the 2.2 billion Christians in the world today live outside the West, a share destined to reach three-quarters by midcentury. These people live on the front lines of the global war on Christians, and as their numbers afford them greater influence in shaping the agenda in church affairs, inevitably the realities of anti-Christian violence and persecution will rise up the to-do list. In part too, growing attention to the fate of the persecuted will be the result of a sort of spiritual “amplifier effect.” Average believers in the West may not yet have heard the stories of the new martyrs, but once they do, it’s hard not to be stirred.

  As that happens, it is likely to have consequences across the board—for how Christianity chooses to spend its political and social capital, for the theological and spiritual interests of the different churches, and for the ways in which Christians attempt to make a difference. This section tries to sketch those implications.

  In chapter 12, we examine the observable, this-worldly fallout of the global war, suggesting that Christianity is likely to experience three broad consequences:

  • First, growing attention to the global war on Christians is likely to accelerate the emergence of leadership from the developing world, both in terms of internal doctrinal wrangles within Christian churches and in terms of Christianity’s external agenda.

  • Second, consciousness about the often violent persecution of Christians around the world will cement religious freedom as the paradigmatic social and political concern of Christian churches in the twenty-first century. That’s a development already in progress, often driven by perceived new restrictions in the West, but it will be turbocharged by a growing wave of alarm about the global war on Christians.

  • Third, the mounting preoccupation with anti-Christian persecution, and new leadership from believers and churches suffering harassment, will make Christianity a stronger pro-democracy force around the world. Scholars say that religious actors are most likely to be strong promoters of democracy when they’re not controlled by the state, and they have an occasionally rocky relationship with the ruling powers. Research shows those same dynamics also tend to make religious actors more ardent activists in peacemaking and social justice, which is also likely to have an echo in Christianity as a result of leadership from cultures where Christian suffering is most intense.

  Chapter 13 then ponders the spiritual fruits of a growing focus on the global war on Christians. It outlines what many experts describe as a new “ecumenism of the martyrs,” meaning a renewed commitment to Christian unity as a result of the common experience of persecution. It also hints at the implications for a new “theology from below,” meaning a new Christian self-understanding rooted not in a context of power and privilege but in one of suffering and deprivation. The chapter also proposes that the witness of the martyrs could prove to be a central ingredient in the success or failure of Christian efforts at evangelism in the twenty-first century, with a considerable body of empirical evidence suggesting that martyrdom may well be the most powerful tool in the missionary toolbox.

  Finally, chapter 14 considers practical steps that both individuals and communities can take to try to express solidarity for the victims of the global war on Christians, ranging from personal prayer to widespread education campaigns, from humanitarian relief to advocacy of a more muscular defense of religious freedom at the policy level. The core idea is that while Christianity celebrates its martyrs, Christians also have an obligation not to stand by and watch new martyrs go to their deaths when there are practical steps to be taken that might curb their suffering.

  In terms of the bottom line, this section is designed to make a very simple argument: rallying to the defense of Christians who find themselves on the firing line in this global war would obviously be good for them, but that’s not the whole story. This effort ought to have extraordinarily healthy consequences, both in human terms and in matters of the spirit, for the rest of us too.

  12

  SOCIAL AND POLITICAL FALLOUT

  One paradox about Christianity is that while it’s not a political par
ty, it has always had massive political implications for any society in which it takes root. In his famous eighteenth-century treatise Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, English historian Edward Gibbon blamed Christianity for the fall of Rome, charging that the turn-the-other-cheek ethic of Christianity sapped Rome’s warrior spirit. Gibbon also believed that financial support of monasteries and convents siphoned off Rome’s public resources, and that theological disputes exacerbated factionalism and weakened the state from within. Ever since, historians have debated whether the introduction of Christianity was good or bad for ancient Rome, but everyone acknowledges that it mattered.

  That point is by no means an artifact of history. Throughout the twentieth century, totalitarian states of all stripes waged war on churches, understanding that if you want to control the population, you have to control its religion. In the early stages, totalitarians tried to wipe out religious institutions. When that proved impossible, they tried to buy the churches off. Nazi Germany, for instance, promoted a policy of Gleichschaltung, meaning “bringing into line,” which included rewarding compliant churches and pastors and punishing defiant ones. After the Nazis fell, Christians were also prominent in the recovery from fascism. Many of the architects of the European Union after the Second World War were laity inspired by Christian social teaching. One of them, French statesman Robert Schuman, is now a candidate for sainthood in the Catholic Church.