Most American Christians do not lead typical Christian lives. The typical Christian lives in a developing country, speaks a non-European language, and exists under the constant threat of persecution–of murder, imprisonment, torture, or rape.
The persecutor’s sword dangles by a hair over Christians in the still-communist countries and in lands where the rising tide of Islamism overwhelms political efforts at fairness, tolerance, and due process. Human rights and religious liberty are high-sounding abstractions. But for these believers, the lack of basic liberties American Christians take for granted is a datum of daily existence:
* In China, where anywhere from 40 million to 115 million Christians worship in “house churches” outside government control, believers know that each time they gather it may be the last time they hear their pastor preach or see the sister beside them raise her hands in praise.
* In Sudan, a program of “cultural cleansing” has been under way for many years. Soldiers from the country’s Muslim north round up children from the Christian and animist south, relocate them in detention camps, force them to live as Muslims, and conscript them into the armed forces at very young ages.
* In rural areas of Egypt, Muslim thugs force Christian farmers to pay protection money. Those who don’t have been shot and killed. Christian girls have been raped by Muslim men, pressured to marry the rapist, and then convert to Islam in the process.
IN REMEMBRANCE OF THEM
It is easy to forget the realities of the typical Christian’s life, living as we do in a country formed in the age of toleration and the discovery of personal liberty. But remember them, we must.
We must remember them in prayer. Prayer unites us with God’s heart, and it links us with all whom God holds dear. It changes circumstances. It gives strength to meet challenges.
We must remember them by listening to what they can teach us. Information that will help us pray more to the point is readily available from organizations such as Open Doors, Freedom House’s Puebla Institute, and Voice of the Martyrs. Publicizing in our churches the reports that come through these channels will offer lessons in faithfulness.
We must remember them by supporting those who work to strengthen and develop the churches in these countries. In some countries (where the violence against believers is either sponsored or encouraged by the state), official diplomatic pressure can often ease the situation. But in others, rogue tribalism and religio-ethnic populism are the sources of persecution. In those places it is only the missionaries, tentmakers, and relief workers who can help in small but significant ways.
We must remember them in foreign policy. On January 23, over 60 concerned Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish leaders gathered in Washington, D.C., to highlight the problem of Christian persecution. The National Association of Evangelicals issued a Statement of Conscience at that meeting. And the Clinton administration responded warmly by telephone to the NAE overture.
But warm responses need to be acted upon. The State Department and the Immigration and Naturalization Service need to brief their own on the religious persecution in various countries, and they need to consider such persecution as a sufficient reason for providing asylum in the United States. For instance, following the murder of four prominent church leaders in Iran in 1995, 20 other Christians, mostly leaders, fled the country for fear of losing their lives. All have been denied asylum in the U.S.
The U.S. State Department has expressed its concern for religious liberty, but too often those who represent the United States in important trade negotiations with such countries as China and Vietnam are not fully briefed on these problems. And too often economic considerations are allowed to trump religious liberty as American corporations press for free trade with oppressive countries. Such trade is a Faustian pact.
Some argue against upsetting a delicate political balance in these countries–and their warning must be considered on a case-by-case basis. But the track record of history is this: when the U.S. links trade and economic aid to a country’s human rights performance, that country’s record improves.
Indeed, by putting pressure on Islamic extremism, we do a favor to moderate Muslims. They, too, lose their liberties when intolerance terrorizes Christians.
We must remember them in order to keep our own political perspective. Americans have seen encroachments on their own free exercise of religion; but nothing in our experience is close to the persecution that is commonplace elsewhere. An elementary school student who is not allowed to write a class essay on Jesus has had her rights violated. But she is not persecuted. A school district sued (by a Jewish student) for allowing its choir to sing an ancient Hebrew blessing is simply being harassed. But this is not persecution. Nor does it necessarily portend martyrdom. We must work to protect our liberties, but we must keep our perspective. The imperiled lives of believers make these civil rights violations pale by comparison.
THE ‘MUST’ OF SUFFERING
While we must work for the liberty of Christians in the hot spots of persecution, persecution and oppression will not be eradicated until the parousia. Although persecution and martyrdom are not to be sought, Jesus, Paul, and Peter all taught that they were to be expected. A Christian’s duty is simply to be faithful and live the kind of godly life that would render the inevitable persecution inexcusable.
To read the witness of the New Testament church or the writings of the sixteenth-century radical Reformers or the adamant challenges of Dietrich Bonhoeffer is to conclude that “when Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die” (“The Cost of Discipleship”). As Bonhoeffer wrote:
“Jesus . . . make[s] it clear beyond all doubt that the ‘must’ of suffering applies to his disciples no less than to himself. Just as Christ is Christ only in virtue of his suffering and rejection, so the disciple is a disciple only in so far as he shares his Lord’s suffering and rejection and crucifixion.”
Indeed, the church is the community of those “who are persecuted and martyred for the gospel’s sake,” according to a memorandum drawn up in preparation for the writing of the Augsburg Confession.
Interacting with, working for, and praying on behalf of suffering believers in intolerant lands reminds us that it is they who live the normal Christian life and we who exist in a parenthesis of toleration. While we work and pray for their liberties, may we be strengthened to resist the more subtle and seductive attacks of the enemy in this time and in this place.
Copyright © 1996 Christianity Today, Inc./CHRISTIANITY TODAY Magazine
