Never have there been as many persecuted Christians as there are today: the 21st Century between lions and new catacombs.
Today, the religious freedom alarm was raised in the latest report published by the Pew Forum.
Numbers of Christians are increasing but the areas in which this increase is taking place are the hottest parts of the world.
As a result the number of Jesus’ followers who are falling victim to violence is on the rise too.
“The world’s most widely followed faith is gathering persecutors,” British weekly newspaper The Economist commented.
“Even non-Christians should worry about that. Christianity is growing almost as fast as humanity itself, but its 2.2 billion adherents cannot count on safety in numbers. That is partly because the locus of the world’s largest religion is shifting to hotter (in several senses) parts of the world,” The Economist went on to say.
The number of Christians within Africa’s sub-Saharan population has skyrocketed in comparison to the last century, from 9% to 63%. Meanwhile, the committee of experts confirms that the proportion of Christians in Europe and America has fallen, from 95% to 76% and from 96% to 86% respectively.
“But moving from the jaded north to the dynamic south does not portend an easy future,” The Economist underlined. In Nigeria, dozens of Christians died in Islamist bomb attacks, deliberately planned for the Christmas prayer period.
In Iran and Pakistan, Christians are on death row for “apostasy” – the abandonment of Islamism – or blasphemy. Dozens of churches in Indonesia were attacked or closed. Two thirds of Iraq’s pre-war Christian population has fled. In Egypt and Syria, where secular despots have been shielding Christians from political and other types of riots, Muslim zeal is threatening ancient Christian groups.
Not all Christian strife is down to Muslims though.
The Christian faith is facing persecution by formally communist groups in China and Vietnam.
In India, nationalist Hindus want to persecute Hindus who want to convert to Christianity.
In the Holy Land, local churches are stuck between a rock and a hard place with the invasion of their properties by the Israelis on the one hand and bids by Islamists on the other to monopolise life in Palestine.
Jesus’ followers could become a minority in his own homeland. Little blood is being shed in comparison to the religious wars that once destroyed Christianity and the various modern intra-faith battles, such as those fought within Islam. But the current brutality is not to be taken lightly.
Even though Western powers no longer see the promotion of Christian interests as a geopolitical priority, it is hard to imagine American evangelicals ignoring a large-scale crackdown on house churches in China.
And whatever their faith, Western voters have further reason to be concerned about the fate of Christians. The regimes and societies that persecute Christians tend to oppress other minorities as well. Sunni Muslims who demonise Christians detest the Shiites.
Once religion gets involved, any conflict becomes difficult to resolve. “Just don’t call it a crusade- The Economist warned -. Among liberal values, the freedom to profess any religion or none has a central place.
America’s government is bound by law to promote that liberty. In line with its own ideals, America is rightly as concerned by the persecution of Muslims of any stripe as by the travails of Christians in China or Jews and Bahais in Iran. And it objects when Christian lands, like Belarus, practise persecution.”
Other more secular European countries should do more to defend that right. So, “what about those who see persecuting other religions as part of their calling? No faith is blameless: from Delhi to Jerusalem many of those stirring up hatred are men of God.
But there is a specific problem with Islam. Islamic law (though not the Koran) has often mandated death for people leaving the faith.
There are signs of change.
The 57-member Organisation of Islamic Co-operation has, with American encouragement, toned down its bid to outlaw “blasphemy” in various UN resolutions. It also condemned the attacks in Nigeria.
But more Muslim leaders need to accept that changing creed is a legal right. On that one point, the West should not back down. Otherwise believers, whether Christian or not, remain in peril,” The Economist emphasised.
The emergency was referred to last Monday by the Pope in his speech to the Holy See’s diplomatic corp.
“When Benedict XVI condemns the fact that religious freedom is still a limited or scorned right, he is reminding us above all that Christians are still being killed throughout the world,” sociologist Massimo Introvigne, outgoing OSCE representative on discrimination against Christians stressed on Vatican Radio.
“A hundred and five thousand deaths each year, one every five minutes, as I said on more than one occasion during my mandate as OSCE representative. These figures qualify as genocide – he explained.
But the Pope also reminds us that there is a “religious cleansing” going on that closely resembles ethnic cleansing. It is enacted through a number of terrorist bombings which are not able to eliminate a country’s community but scare it to the point of driving Christians to flee.”
Furthermore, according to Introvigne, Benedict XVI places emphasis on “the marginalisation of Christians from political life, through methods including defamation and mockery: this is an attitude that is also witnessed by us Westerners and the Pope reminded us that this marginalisation is to do with issues such as family protection and the freedom of education and of life.”