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

The Global War on Christians: Dispatches from the Front Lines of Anti-Christian Persecution.  By John L. Allen, Jr.  Image Books, 2013.

 

Recently the kidnapping of hundreds of young Nigerian schoolgirls by the radical Islamist group Boko Haram has captured the attention of a horrified world.  Politicians and celebrities around the world have expressed their outrage over this atrocity, although solutions to this horrific situation have largely been limited to attempt to defeat the kidnappers through the mighty power of Twitter. 

This terrible situation is still ongoing as of this writing, but this mass kidnapping is only one incident out of many.  Although the news coverage gives the impression that the case is an isolated one, cases of persecution against Christians is occurring around the world, and has for over a century.  John L. Allen’s book The Global War on Christians is a book covering topics similar to Persecuted: The Global Assault on Christians (see the archived July 2013 review) here.  Allen discusses the many atrocities that have been waged against Christians around the world.

Early in the book, Allen writes that,

“This book is about the most dramatic religion story of the early twenty-first century, yet one that most people in the West have little idea is even happening: the global war on Christians.  We’re not talking about a metaphorical “war on religion” in Europe and the United States, fought on symbolic terrain such as whether it’s okay to erect a nativity scene on the courthouse steps, but a rising tide of legal oppression, social harassment, and direct physical violence, with Christians as its leading victims.  However counterintuitive it may seem in light of popular stereotypes of Christianity as a powerful and sometimes oppressive social force, Christians today indisputably are the most persecuted religious body on the planet, and too often their new martyrs suffer in silence.” (1).

Allen provides snapshots of instances of Christian persecution around the world, though it is important to remember that this only provides a cursory overview of the problems that Christians face around the world.  Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Middle East, and Eastern Europe are all profiled, as victims of various forms of persecution are identified and the reasons why they were targeted are explained.  One of the most famous cases mentioned here is that of Asia Bibi, a Pakistani Christian woman who was accused of blasphemy in the predominately Muslim country and sentenced to death.  Many human rights activists have struggled to clear her name and get her released.  

Instances of persecution are more than just one woman being targeted.  Often, entire communities are in danger of being wiped out.  Present-day Iraq has long been the home of some of the oldest Christian communities in the world.  In recently, especially since the Iraq War, many of the Christians in Iraq have been either murdered or have fled the country.  Often, Christians live as second-class citizens on a permanent basis.  And unfortunately, most people around the world are completely unaware of what life is like for many Christians.

“Back in 1997, American author Paul Marshall said that anti-Christian persecution had been “all but totally ignored by the world at large.”  To be sure, the situation has changed in the sixteen years since Marshall’s classic work Their Blood Cries Out.  A cluster of advocacy groups and relief organizations has emerged, and from time to time anti-Christian persecution has drawn coverage in major news outlets such as the Economist, Newsweek, and Commentary.  On the whole, however, the war on Christians remains the world’s best-kept secret.  As recently as 2011, Italian journalist Francesca Paci– who writes for the Italian media market, which probably pays more attention to Christian topics than almost any other culture on earth, given the massive footprint of the Vatican– said about the fate of persecuted Christians in places such as Iraq, Algeria, and India: “We ignore too many things, and even more indefensibly, we pretend not to see too many things.”  (15).

Allen states that the persecution of Christians is very much an open secret, but these stories do not generally make it into the evening news.  Allen’s work is not perfect.  He mentions the infamous remarks made by Pope Benedict XVI multiple times that led to outrage around the world, but fails to note that these remarks were largely distorted by an unscrupulous media.  The final passages seem anticlimactic– they mainly consist of acknowledgements that Christians are capable of doing bad things as well, whereas a more helpful final chapter would have consisted of more instances of how attempts to help have been successful. The late chapter “What’s to be Done” is just not long or detailed enough after this wrenching book.  After all, after reading all of these despair-inducing anecdotes, it seems almost cruel to offer warning admonitions rather than means of assistance.

After all, the moral imperative of the book is powerful:

“Two of the world’s leading demographers of religion, David B. Barrett and  Todd Johnson, have performed an exhaustive statistical analysis of Christian martyrdom, reaching the conclusion that there have been seventy million martyrs since the time of Christ.  Of that total, fully half, or forty-five million, went to their deaths in the twentieth century, most of them falling victim to either Communism or National Socialism.  More Christians were killed because of their faith in the twentieth century than in all previous centuries combined.

This boom in religious violence is still very much a growth industry.  Christians today are, by some order of magnitude, the most persecuted religious body on the planet, suffering not just martyrdom but all the forms of intimidation and oppression mentioned above in record numbers.  That’s not a hunch, or a theory, or an anecdotal impression, but an undisputed empirical fact of life.  Confirmation comes from multiple sources, all respected observers of either the human rights scene or the global religious landscape.” (32-33).

A recurring theme in this book is that in the popular mindset, Christians are viewed as the persecutors, and it is absolutely vital to convince people that today, the opposite is the case.  Allen wisely dismantles other myths, each of which gets its own chapter.  The myth that Christians are only at risk when they are a minority, the myth that no one sees these persecutions coming, the myth that Islam is the main reason why Christians get persecuted, the myth that it’s only persecution if the motives are religious, and the myth that anti-Christian persecution is a political issue are all addressed in this book.  No matter what happens, persecution will continue, but at the very least, people can try to minimize the bloodshed.

“Tertullian, one of the great fathers of early Christianity, famously said that “the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.”  It’s a rare case of a theological formula for which there’s empirical proof.  Historically, waves of persecution have fueled major advances for Christianity.  Crackdowns during the Roman Empire earned Christianity admiration across the ancient world, and were perhaps the single most important ingredient in its success.  The sacrifice of missionaries during the Era of Exploration helped bring the Gospel to the New World.  Today, it’s no accident that zones where persecution of Christians is the most intense, such as China and parts of India, are also the places where Christianity is growing the most dramatically.” (262).  

This is a very good overview of the problems Christians face around the world, although Allen freely admits that it is not a complete overview of the situation.  These are just brief profiles of what is happening around the world, and a thorough analysis of these situations would take up at least ten times the paper used to print this book.  This book ought to serve as an introduction to the problems Christians face around the world.  Hopefully, The Global War on Christianswill serve to bring more people to find out more about these atrocities and find ways to fix them.

 

–Chris Chan