The Four Engines of Persecution
Ronald Boyd-MacMillan, Writer-at-large for Open Doors International
WHEREVER you go in the world today, there is a source of persecution near you! Everyone, all the time, fights a battle for religious freedom.
What are the four main driving forces of persecution against Christians today?
1. Religious nationalism – for the sake of national purity
Religious nationalism is where a particular territory is staked out exclusively in religious terms, and the leaders say, "Only Hindus can stay in India" or "Croatia is for Catholics only" or "You are only a true Sri Lankan if you are a Buddhist."
In
those states which define themselves around Hinduism, Buddhism or Islam,
Christians must either accept second-class status, facing daily discrimination,
or they have to get out.
At its mildest, it makes religious minorities feel they no longer belong in their own land. At its worst, it gives a potent justification for religious genocide.
Beneath religious nationalism is a concern for purity. The purity of the religion in question must be maintained, and a Christian presence is a defilement and an affront to the dominant religion.
2. Islamic extremism – for the sake of glory
The fanatical fringe forms the driving heart of Islamic extremism, and they exert an influence out of all proportion to their numbers.
The vision of Islamic extremists is pan-national. They want the whole world to be Islamic and all races to become Muslims.
However, we should beware of equating Islamic extremism with the actions of Muslim terrorists. Christians are persecuted in three distinct ways by Islamic extremism:
The first is direct state persecution. This takes place in countries like Saudi Arabia, Sudan and the Maldives where the government imposes Islam by coercive means, and anyone adhering to Christianity there faces an uphill struggle just to survive.
Then there is a second category: communal violence. Here it is the Islamic mob that is the source of the persecution.
Whipped up by extremist teachers, the mob often spill out after Friday prayers and target Christians by burning churches, attacking individuals and assassinating Muslims who have converted to Islam.
This is widespread in countries like Nigeria, Liberia, Pakistan, Ghana, Indonesia and even the Philippines.
Finally, there is the third category of persecution: direct attack by radical Islamic terrorists. In Algeria for example, Islamist guerillas target moderate Christians – especially priests, monks and nuns – for assassination.
But why are Christians targeted by Islamic extremists?
The reasoning of the extremists is that Allah has been affronted by what the Christians have done to the Muslim world, and these reversals must be wiped out so that his glory is seen again.
Because
a Muslim has no theology of defeat, to lose territory to a Christian, is
an affront to Islam. Their God is victorious. There is no possibility of
defeat. So that territory has to be taken back, lest Allah be shamed.
This is hard for Christians to understand, because we do have a theology of defeat. In fact, our whole faith is centred on it: Jesus dies on a Cross to bring us salvation.
But the idea of redemptive suffering, of God bringing victory in the form of defeat, has no place in Islam.
In Islam, defeat equals disgrace, and honour must be restored, lest Allah be shamed.
So Islam cannot lose a person, land or tribe to another religion; and since Christianity is the main evangelistic competitor to Islam, there will always be this clash.
Both have global evangelistic visions – each wants to the whole world to convert to their religion.
3. Totalitarian insecurity – out of fear
Totalitarian states persecute Christians out of fear, knowing that committed Christians are a threat to their rule.
This would include what is left of the Communist bloc: Cuba, and the four remaining Asian countries – China, Vietnam, Laos and North Korea. This comprises a quarter of the world's population.
And don't forget those states where former communists are still in power – Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Ethiopia and Eritrea (and others).
Notice we have not mentioned atheism as the engine of persecution. This would have been true twenty or thirty years ago, but communism as an ideology has withered on the vine. All that is left is the totalitarian structure that holds on to the rhetoric of communism for convenience, and persecution becomes understandable in terms of the basic power dynamics of totalitarian leaders and states.
The essence of a totalitarian state is that the government has to know everything everyone is up to. Paranoia goes with the territory. Everything is dominated by the state. The leadership has to be served. Anyone who demurs – no matter what their motive – is automatically an enemy.
Christians are a subversive bunch – that is why they get into so much trouble in totalitarian situations. They don't worship anybody but God!
And this plays out in any situation where someone holds all the power. It need not even be in an actual state government.
Gangster 'landlords'
All over Latin America there are territories within states controlled by caciques – local gangsters who run drugs and rule local populations through intimidation and extortion, often with the government turning a blind eye, or taking a payoff to stay clear.
If
a pastor in Colombia refuses to allow the young women of the church to be
seized as the sex slaves of the bandits, he is persecuted.
No one must be allowed to stand up to the bandits. If one person does not co-operate, then others might not also.
So the caciques would rush to make an example of him out of fear that his fearless spirit would catch on. That is the main reason why 53 pastors were killed in Colombia alone in the past two years.
Most Christians who suffer under this source of persecution are based in the tribal dictatorships of Africa, the bandit territories of Latin America, and the Communist regimes of Asia.
4. Illiberal pluralism – out of arrogance
Illiberal pluralism maintains that we all have different beliefs, and we had better accept that everyone is just as right as the next person – or else!
And the democratic bloc is becoming more intolerant of evangelistic religions. Words like 'evangelistic campaign' and 'proselytising' are becoming loaded terms, conjuring up narrow-minded fundamentalists who want to "shove religion down our throats".
There is a town in the UK where a large Anglican church received a lottery grant to refurbish some of their church premises. The arrangement was to have a cafe that would serve as a resource to the town. The vicar said airily one day: "Of course, to get the money I had to sign that we would refrain from evangelising on the premises."
Amazingly, he seemed to think there was nothing wrong with doing so. But he just signed away a vital religious right: to share one's faith. And a western government asked him to!
Now the church members cannot share Christ in their own cafe.
The lottery commission have bought the line of the Dalai Lama: "Everyone should stick to the religion they were born in – that's the only way we can ensure social harmony."
The definition of religious toleration has been subtly changed to bring this about. Traditionally, the meaning of religious toleration was all to do with the state – the principle of the separation of church and state.
But now this definition of toleration is being applied to the individual, who is told, in effect, "You must accept that all religious beliefs really just amount to the same thing."
This is not a legal requirement yet in most countries, but it reflects a prevailing cultural belief that religious values are trivial. If we admit that we would like Muslims to know Christ and to convert to Christianity, we are called arrogant and bigoted by the majority, who think we are just up to mischief.
From where did people get their unexamined assumption that all religions are the same? Who are they to tell me that when I pray to Jesus Christ it's just the same as a Zen Buddhist meditating or a Muslim prostrating himself towards Mecca?
Who are they to tell me that my Scriptures are really just saying the same thing as the Bhagavad Gita or the Quran?
That is a position of colossal arrogance, especially as it is rooted in ignorance about the vital differences between religions that make them mutually exclusive.
This is the battle for the Western church. In some places, it has started legally. The French anti-cult law of May 2001 is so badly worded it may allow for the state to call a cult member any evangelical who is caught evangelising. It has not happened yet, but the mechanism is in place.
Discrimination against Christians is already underway. Nurses have been sacked in the UK and Holland for their refusal to assist abortion procedures, and I have a friend who lost his job in a multi-national company for refusing to participate in a management seminar run by an Indian Hindu cult.
So these are the great global motors resulting in over a billion Christians suffering a failure to experience – in its legal form – the benefits of religious liberty, namely the right to practise, share and change one's religion without coercion.
They result in over 200 million Christians experiencing severe persecution including beatings, jailings and martyrdom. They mean finally that every Christian has to fight against at least one source of persecution.