Giving Tuesday: Chinese Christmas Buttons

Today is Giving Tuesday. IRD’s International Religious Liberty Program would like to offer you a very special, limited edition button to wear during the Christmas season. For a donation of $15 or more to our work to be advocates for persecuted Christians and for wider religious liberty issues, you can receive a button that says “Merry Christmas!” in Chinese characters. And you have special dispensation to wear the button throughout Advent!

We first created these buttons about 15 years ago when a Chinese Catholic Midnight Mass was raided by the Chinese Communist Party regime. The priest and hundreds of attendees were arrested and imprisoned. But I was inspired to offer them again this December after hearing some outrageous news! Coca-Cola, Nike, and Apple are lobbying against U.S. legislation that would curtail their ability to profit off of slave/prisoner labor in China. It is the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act. If passed into law, it would prohibit product imports manufactured in China, using slave labor. The bill passed overwhelmingly, with bipartisan support in the House of Representatives.

I’ll be writing more about that legislation. Also about other efforts in Congress and by the Trump Administration to stop China’s brutal human rights abuses and its lust for power. But in the meantime, here is my video pitch for why you should wear a button that says Merry Christmas in Chinese!

The button will help you call attention to the Chinese Communist Party’s persecution of Christians and other people of faith, as the button-wearers did 15 years ago. And you have the added benefit that when the button provokes a friend or stranger to curiosity and inquiry, you have the opportunity to use the words Merry Christmas boldly and confidently. You can rejoice that we still have the freedom to use those words, and to proclaim our faith! And, of course, you have the satisfaction of your charitable action of donating to IRD’s International Religious Liberty Program, as well!