Catholic World News News Feature

PERSECUTION OF CHRISTIANS CONTINUES UNABATED WORLDWIDE September 20, 1996

The persecution of Christians around the world continues at an alarming rate, according to a report released this week by the Puebla Program on Religious Freedom, a division of the New York-based human-rights organization, Freedom House.

In an effort to call attention to the problem of persecution, in time for the September 29 ecumenical observance of the International Day of Prayer for the Persecuted Church, Puebla Institute has released a new study, entitled the Lion's Den: A Primer on Mounting Persecution Around the World and How American Christians can respond. The short booklet, prepared by Puebla and with an essay by the evangelist Ravi Zacharias, details the state of Christianity under oppressive regimes all around the world.

The Puebla House effort is unusual in that it is done by a secular organization, but appeals specifically to a Christian reader. In an afterword, Dr. Zacharias cites Biblical injunctions as his justification for arguing that Christians have a solemn moral obligation to call attention to the sufferings of their suffering fellow believers. The Puebla report also serves a political purpose: forcing American government leaders to realize that religious persecution is among the most widespread and disturbing offenses against human rights in the world today.

"One of the biggest untold stories of our time is that more Christians have died in this century, simply because they are Christian, than in the first nineteen centuries after the birth of Christ," remarked Nina Shea, the director of the Puebla program.

In The Lion's Den surveys the status of religious freedom worldwide, and provides careful studies of eight countries in which Christians suffer extraordinary deprivation: China, Sudan, Pakistan, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Vietnam, Egypt, and Nigeria.

In China, Puebla finds, the current year has marked "the most repressive period" since the late 1970s in the government's unending campaign against Catholics and Protestants. Chinese police are currently circulating an arrest warrant that bears the names of 3,000 Evangelical preachers; thousands of believers are now serving prison terms for their participation in "house churches" without government approval; Catholic bishops remain imprisoned for maintaining their ties with the Vatican rather than joining the government-sanctioned "patriotic" church.

In Sudan, an Islamic government, dominated by the Muslim residents of the country's northern section, continues to wreak destruction on villages and families in the rebellious south of the country, where Christianity is more popular. Thousands of children have been kidnapped from Christian families; they are routinely sold into slavery-- commanding prices as low as $15 apiece!

In Saudi Arabia, where American troops stand ready to protect an autocratic regime, no form of Christian worship is allowed. It is illegal to celebrate Mass, to wear a cross or crucifix, to read or own a Bible, or even to recite a Christian prayer in the privacy of one's own home. Last December, seven foreigners living in Saudi Arabia were arrested, beaten, and imprisoned for participating in a private Christmas celebration.

After providing such grim details of persecution, the Puebla study urges readers to take effective political action to rescue their fellow Christians. The booklet includes a Statement of Conscience issued earlier this year by the National Association of Evangelicals. That document makes several recommendations:

- Christians should call public attention to the rising tide of anti-Christian religious persecution, and call for diplomatic efforts to stem that tide. - The US State Department should issue reports on religious freedom, giving specific attention to this issue as it does to other human-rights questions. These reports should not be edited to suppress diplomatic uproars; the facts should be exposed fully. - The US Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) should reform its policy toward refugees from religious persecution. At the moment, the INS rarely accepts religious persecution as legal grounds for asylum, and in some cases (for instance, religious refugees from Iran), the US government has turned refugees back to the country from which they had fled.

The Puebla report is available from Bristol House publishers; phone 800-451-READ.