Around the world: the Cross is in the crosshairs

Christians Attacked Across the World

Owning a Bible is a death sentence in North Korea and going to Mass is a suicidal act (Nigeria).

Unfortunately, this doesn't attract the attention of the homegrown media, because we in the West have a problem seeing religious folk as victims. (We also find Miley Cyrus and her impersonation of a slut to be much more interesting.)...

Tragically, there is no balancing in some parts of the world, particularly when it comes to Christians. In the 21st century, the cross is in the crosshairs, and the most brutal attacks are reserved for those who follow Jesus. This is not to diminish the historical persecution of Jews, which is, perhaps, the only similar template that we have for deadly intolerance. The Holocaust is the single worst incident of religious-based violence in modern memory (with the possible exception of the extermination of Armenians by the Turks.)

But as Archbishop Charles Chaput observed in an afterword to the book Persecuted: The Global Assault on Christians, "We are living in an age of intensifying, anti-Christian persecution." Again, it is hard for the average American to understand how perilous it is for a Christian to openly profess his faith in a place like, for just one deadly example, Iran. Pastor Youcef Nadarkhani sat in a jail cell for years under a death sentence because he converted from Islam to Christianity. In Iraq, Catholic students were murdered on their way to school. In China, an elderly priest was abducted, never to be heard from again. In Pakistan, a woman was given a death sentence for insulting Muhammad.

And this past month, Egypt's Coptic Christians saw their worst fears realized as the persecution that had begun decades ago increased exponentially as the Arab Spring became a summer of hell. Churches were burned, nuns brutalized, worshippers murdered, and the rest of the world called it a "political problem."

This is not about politics. This is about human rights. Westerners need to realize that just because we prize our "freedom from religion" and stand on top of that euphemistic wall screaming "Keep your rosaries off my ovaries," people in other parts of the world are dying for their faith. And most of them are dying at the hands of people who subscribe to a twisted vision of Muhammad's prophecy, one that feels threatened by believers in Christ. It is the same mentality that motivated Hitler to destroy God's chosen people, the same diseased rationale that led Stalin to burn the churches and imprison its children. ...

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