Religious Persecution & Human Freedom

Christianity Today reported from Open Doors’ latest report on Christian persecution:

Almost 5,000 Christians were killed for their faith last year. Almost 4,000 were abducted. Nearly 15,000 churches were attacked or closed. Over 295,000 Christians forcibly were displaced because of their faith. …Overall, 365 million Christians live in nations with high levels of persecution or discrimination, 1 in 7 Christians worldwide.

American Christians tend to toss off such statistics. They are not terribly relevant to us. These people are far away. They look different, speak differently, often worship differently. We, by nature, like all people, prefer to focus on our own problems, real or imagined.

The chief places of persecution are majority Muslim countries, all of which, even the most moderate, limit the public practice of Christianity. Other leading persecutors are remaining Communist regimes. North Korea is top of the list. Vietnam and Laos are there, as is Cuba. China is there of course. Nicaragua, under unending Sandinista rule, is now a persecutor of the Catholic Church, just as it was in the 1980s when it was more specifically Marxist. India, although democratic, is on the list, as Hindu nationalism surges there. Bhutan and Burma have Buddhist nationalism. Mexico and Colombia are on the list as Christians are targeted by criminal syndicates because they are perceived to be threats. Many Christians in majority Christian Democratic Republic of the Congo are lethally targeted in that country’s various insurrections. Christians are killed in northern Nigeria where Islamist militants wage war. The same is increasingly true in majority Christian Mozambique.

There is little that is specifically new in this data. Christianity has always been the most globally targeted religion because it is the largest religion and the most geographically dispersed. It is also the most threatening to despotic governments. Dictators, like Nicaragua’s endless Daniel Ortega, do not like to contend with alternative sources of transcendent authority. Christians, when faithful to their teachings, are supremely loyal to their God and His teachings, which supersede unjust earthly authorities. Communist China has for nearly 80 years been trying to coerce Christians and other religionists to submit faith to the supremacy of the ruling party and nation. North Korea barely allows open churches, except as showcases for western visitors. Muslim governments and cultures obviously believe non-Muslims must accept a socially and politically subordinate status.

Christianity will always threaten tyranny. So tyrants, understandably, will always fear and try to suppress or coopt Christianity. Christianity proposes that each person bears God’s image and therefore has certain dignity, rights, and duties that no government can rightfully suppress. The Christian message is the most subversive message in the world and always will be. It is also the most hopeful message in the world because it has the most elevated view of humanity.

When IRD was founded in 1981 to critique U.S. church groups finding common cause with Marxist governments and movements, Richard John Neuhaus wrote our founding statement Christianity and Democracy, which prioritized religious freedom:

The most fundamental of all human rights is the freedom of religious faith and practice. As the Westminster Confession of Faith proclaimed in 1646, “God alone is Lord of the conscience, and hath left it free from doctrines and commandments of men…”

Religion is both freedom’s shield and central sphere of action. “For religion,” Pope John Paul II has declared, “consists in the free adherence of the human mind to God, which is in all respects personal and conscientious; it arises from the desire for truth and in this relation the secular arm may not interfere, because religion itself by its nature transcends all things secular.” Religious freedom consists of many parts: the freedom to believe, to worship, to teach, to evangelize, to collaborate in works of mercy and to witness to the public good. Where religious freedom is violated, all other human rights are assaulted to their source.

Here’s the key point:  religious freedom is the shield for all other liberties. No liberty is safe unless the right to practice religion without coercion is protected. Some secular proponents of human rights are reluctant to highlight religious freedom, but they undermine their own case for doing so. Any government or culture that restricts how people address faith and conscience is potentially despotic.

Many conservative American Christians are rightly distressed about threats in America to full religious freedom on questions relating to LGBTQ+ or abortion. These battles must be fought while not confusing our still comfortable situation with what hundreds of millions of Christians face globally. Progressive religionists are still, as during the Cold War, mostly silent about global religious persecution aimed at Christians. For them, Christianity is the privileged Western colonizer, not the oppressed victim. But most Christians don’t live in the West but in the Global South. And millions of Christians live in societies where Christianity was never close to being the majority.   

It should be the priority of all Christian social witness to advocate the protection of religious freedom for all people everywhere regardless of faith. After all, if Christianity is true, and all persons are equally created by God with freedom to live without coercion, then we must honor each person’s liberty of conscience.

The progress of Christianity and human freedom are inextricably interwoven. Christianity will always be despised by tyrannies. And Christianity, when faithful, will always be an advocate for the oppressed.