A study commissioned by the U.K. Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt has found that the persecution of Christians around the world is nearing near genocidal levels, and political correctness has kept the issue from being addressed.
The study, led by Anglican Bishop Philip Mounstephen, found that approximately one in three individuals suffer from religious persecution, with Christians being the most persecuted religious group in the world. “Persecution on grounds of religious faith is a global phenomenon that is growing in scale and intensity,” reads the report’s overview. “Though it is impossible to know the exact numbers of people persecuted for their faith, based on reports from different NGOs, it is estimated that one third of the world’s population suffers from religious persecution in some form, with Christians being the most persecuted group.”
The overview goes on to note that evidence suggests “acts of violence and other intimidation against Christians are becoming more widespread,” with concerted efforts by some groups in parts of the Middle East and Africa to “eradicate” the Christian faith in their areas.
The report cites a Pew Research Center study showing that in 2016 Christians were targeted in a total of 144 countries, up from 125 just a year earlier. The Pew study found that “Christians have been harassed in more countries than any other religious group and have suffered harassment in many of the heavily Muslim countries of the Middle East and North Africa.”
The U.K. report goes on to state that in some regions of the world, “the level and nature of persecution is arguably coming close to meeting the international definition of genocide…. The eradication of Christians and other minorities on pain of ‘the sword’ or other violent means was revealed to be the specific and stated objective of extremist groups in Syria, Iraq, Egypt, north-east Nigeria, and the Philippines.”
That “intent to erase all evidence of the Christian presence,” continued the report, “was made plain by the removal of crosses, the destruction of Church buildings and other Church symbols. The killing and abduction of clergy represented a direct attack on the Church’s structure and leadership. Where these and other incidents meet the tests of genocide, governments will be required to bring perpetrators to justice, aid victims and take preventative measures for the future.”
The BBC quoted Foreign Secretary Hunt as saying that he thought “political correctness” was, in part, responsible for a lack of response among Western nations to the rising problem of Christian persecution. Hearkening back to Britain’s history of global conquest, Hunt observed, “I think there is a misplaced worry that it is somehow colonialist to talk about a religion that was associated with colonial powers rather than the countries that we marched into as colonizers. That has perhaps created an awkwardness in talking about this issue — the role of missionaries was always a controversial one and that has, I think, also led some people to shy away from this topic.” He added that “what we have forgotten in that atmosphere of political correctness is actually the Christians that are being persecuted are some of the poorest people on the planet.”
Juliana Taimoorazy of the Iraqi Christian Relief Council concurred with the notion that political correctness has prompted many to ignore religious persecution, especially of Christians. “I believe the death of most people suffering today is truly because of political correctness,” she said, “because the world turns a blind eye to this, and when we are politically correct, we are sympathizing with those terrorists that are destroying communities and erasing history.”
The U.K. report noted that the Christian population in Palestine is now below 1.5 percent, and in Syria, where ISIS and other Islamic terrorist groups have held sway, the number of Christians has dropped from 1.7 million in 2011 to below 450,000 today. Similarly, in Iraq, the Christian population has fallen from 1.5 million before 2003 (when the second Gulf War began) to fewer than 120,000 today.
“The main impact of such genocidal acts against Christians is exodus,” the report stated. “Christianity now faces the possibility of being wiped out in parts of the Middle East where its roots go back furthest…. Christianity is at risk of disappearing.”
In a statement, Bishop Mounstephen said that through his previous experience with the global church in Asia and Africa, “I was aware of the terrible reality of persecution, but to be honest in preparing this report I’ve been truly shocked by the severity, scale, and scope of the problem. It forces us in the West to ask ourselves some hard questions, not the least of which is this: why have we been so blind to this situation for so long? It is essential we now recognize that religion is a massive vulnerability marker for many communities worldwide. The oft-cited Western mantra that we attend to ‘need not creed’ disguises this fundamental fact. Put simply your creed might put you in much greater need — and we cannot be blind to that.”
He added that it “is also ironic that many western secularists, Islamic extremists, and authoritarian regimes share a common erroneous assumption: that the Christian faith is primarily an expression of white western privilege. In fact, Christianity is primarily a phenomenon of the global south and the global poor.”
Am I the only one on this site that thinks genocide and persecution of Christians is evil? Where are the voices of other Christian and Jewish AMAC members on this topic? As stated in the above referenced article, “political correctness” has apparently paralyzed Western nations from responding forcefully and clearly to what has become a global harassment campaign against Christians, historically the most threatened religious group in the world. The ancient Romans tormented, persecuted, and killed Christians without mercy, including the disciples of Jesus who founded the early Christian church. That genocide continues today in many places where Christians are not welcome. Those Christians who travel as missionaries in foreign countries walk a dangerous road; it’s only by the grace of God that some are spared the horrific fate of many others. In China, Christian churches are pretty much “undergound” where worship is confined to someone’s house, in secret. If you’re a Christian there, you won’t know who’s the head of the church you’re attending; you don’t want to know, as fear of exposure runs high and the Chinese Communist government still persecutes and imprisons Christians today —- despite wanting better trade deals and cultural exchanges with the United States. In North Korea, Christian persecution is the same or worse. Likewise in parts of India, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East as we all know from news reports.
Here in the U.S., Christians are also being hounded and harassed consistently in American high schools and universities. And to such an extent that Christian students have frequently pursued legal challenges against institutional discrimination. Organized opposition groups have tried to ban Christmas displays on public property (citing “separation of church and state” — although no such phrase appears in the U.S. Constitution. The First Amendment only guarantees that, apart from freedom of speech and the press, the government shall not establish any religion). Atheists have attempted to force legislation to remove “In God We Trust” from our national currency, and demanded that the Ten Commandments be removed from all public monuments on which they are inscribed. School prayer (commonly accepted when I was a child) was taken out of the classroom by the U.S. Supreme Court in the late 1960s (the same high court that made “same-sex marriage” legal, contrary to the tenets of Christianity). From that day to this, God has been back-staged, diminished, and increasingly made irrelevant by our contemporary culture. And how has that worked out for us?
To Jack and others that are in the fight against the genocide of our Christian faith.
We are with you.
I spent time in the Southern Philippines working with the area Church and witness to the Muslim community there. My friend and brother in Jesus is Roger Roldan. He lives there and has a program to teach the local church pastors and lay leaders how to reach out to the Muslim world. His trip here early this year to seek help with this project bore very little help.
Yes, Christian leaders are targeted there. Yes, we lost some good people in my time there and especially since. I pray for them often. I hope you all join us in prayer for the end of this goal of wiping out the love of God through the Lord Jesus Christ. We need a Great Awakening of God.
Jack Thomas, you provided a well-written response. I have heard that 11 Christians are martyred every day; in light of this report, that may be a low estimate. PC and removing symbols are probably just the beginning. Who would have thought we would ever live in such an age of persecution. Those who claim we must be diverse put limits on that. Those who do not know history are certainly doomed to repeat it. It has also been said that when Christians are persecuted, the Church rises and strengthens. Pray that this is true since so many turn a blind eye to all this and say it can never happen.
Political correctness to me simply means that you now have prevented yourself from truly understanding the intention of another person’s heart. If I am around a bigot, I would much rather they say it up front so I can make the decision NOT to be around them. Instead of making it “politically correct “ not to discussion on such issues as right to life, Christ, free speech and so on. I would rather know up front , if some one is a bigot so I can get the truth up front.Political correctness has become the reason we no longer can have a conversation without hurlings insults at those we disagree with. Not a single time in my life , has anyone changed my mind by screaming at me with insulting words. However I have looked at the other side of an issue, when someone has said calmly and intellectually, “I will tell you why I feel this way about that issue”. I l may not change my mind but at least I have been able to listen because I do not feel threatened. Can’t we all agree that speaking the truth, without causing harm is a better way to treat human beings! Why must we prove the other person point by acting like our thoughts are everyone’s thoughts? I am a Christian, a woman, a grandmother of 8 boys and 1 girl, I’m disabled and Republican pro lifer. To name just a few things about myself. I am not a racist, nor do I hate legal aliens. My 2 sister in laws and a husband of a first niece all came here legally and are law abiding citizens who love the USA. We have at least 5 different cultures representing our huge family. We are all ONE race! The human race is our genetic make up. Some know God, some atheists, some pro life, others pro choice. Some vegan, some carnivores, some pro, some against guns. We all speak truth to each other and have very productive conversations. We are able to respect each other opinions, and still speak our truth without hurting each other. Because we value our relationships enough understanding we are not all going to agree on everything that is important to us. We value diversity and a good conversation. My goodness how did we get this upside down in society? I have never been a mathematician, however the way we are conducting our lives under this rule of law now is:
(POLITICAL CORRECTNESS + narcissism = dysfunctional society )
God have mercy on us all!
Ps. I am not a writer either so I ask your forgiveness on punctuation and sentence structure. May God bless those who read this food for thought!
Things are only going to get worse for Christians as foretold in Scripture. The wake-up call of 911 only had an effect for a few weeks. The U.S. that was once a light on a hill for religious freedom has now become part of the persecution. There is no Great Awakening coming until Jesus comes back.
One will never hear this on “any” news channel including Fox News … sad. Now Christians are under attack in formerly Christian countries including the U.S. … take advantage of the 2nd Amendment while you can.
Then why did the Brits let them take over England? This should not have been a no brainier. Cry about it later and clean up your country’s! .
We have to the same thing but with them voting for the Demo-rats it’s going to take some doing!
90% of Christian persecution is happening in Muslim countries. Look at Open Doors latest top 50 countries who persecute Christians-the overwhelming majority are Muslims. Only the first dozen or so years of the Prophet Mohammed’s were peaceful. Then he received this verse from Allah: “And the Jews will not be pleased with you, nor the Christians until you follow their religion. Say: Surely Allah’s guidance, that is the (true) guidance. And if you follow their desires after the knowledge that has come to you, you shall have no guardian from Allah, nor any helper.” (Koran 2:120) That was when jihad started. What many writers call the “First Age of Islam” lasted from the 600’s to 1905, when the last Islamic caliphate was crushed. 270 million were dead: 120 million Africans, 60 million Christians, 80 million Hindus, and 10 million Buddhists. Did you know Islam allows Muslims to lie to “People of the Book?” (Jews & Christians) It’s called Taqiyya and means “concealing or disguising one’s beliefs, convictions, ideas, feelings, opinions and/or strategies at a time of eminent danger, whether now or later in time, so save oneself from physical and/or mental injury.” The Verse of abrogation rolled back all the phrases in the Koran about peace and tolerance. Remember the Jewish Star of David Hitler made Jews wear to mark them? He didn’t invent it-he copied it. It was created by Baghdad’s caliph Al-Mutawakkil in the 9th century. Stop listening to the talking heads and DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH! Read the books of Brigitte Gabriel from Act For America-she was a Lebanese Christian who lived thru the civil war in Lebanon when the PLO began slaughtering Christians. Get Clarion Funds DVD “Obsession: Radical Islam’s War Against the West.” Christian pastors, who are supposed to EDUCATED should know Islam’s bloody history. Why aren’t THEY speaking out? And before anyone calls me an Islamaphobe, I’ve lived and worked in two countries with significant Muslim populations-Germany and Bosnia. I don’t hate Muslims-it’s the ideology. Muslims are turning the once proud cities of Europe into third world
ghettos with Muslim enclaves called “no-go” zones where police only enter in force. Violence against non-Muslims is epidemic. Those ancient beautiful churches that have stood for hundreds of years are being burned to the ground. Muslims have a saying. “First comes Saturday, then comes Sunday.” That’s not a nursery rhyme to teach their kids days of the week-it means first they will kill the Jews, then come for the Christians. In the Middle East and around the World, they are killing the Christians first. The online resource Gatestone Institute has some of the most detailed reporting-like I said-DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH-YOU IGNORE THE THREAT OF ISLAM AT YOUR-AND YOUR FAMILY’S PERIL.
This is really horrendous and something must be done about it. I say that all Christians denominations should get together and discuss some kind of process to eliminate this problem. They must put political correctness aside and deal with this problem. Perhaps like in the past some type of crusade may be needed. I really don’t know if the Catholic church is strong enough to do something about this.
Genocide is what muslim’s truley stand for. They know Allah and Muhamed are the biggest farce in the world. It’s like the democrats. When they know they don’t have any facts that show that they truley care for anyone else than their own skin they have to rely on killing the Christians and Jews. The Jews and Christians are the one’s who started the schools and universities but now there filled with lies and wickedness perpetrated by satan and the wicked left. Anyone who shows up to tell the truth is drowned out by bull horns. Chick-fil-a is not allowed on campus, because they actually show respect and kindness to all in spite of some who are vile and wicked. The wicked can’t allow anyone to see the truth shown to them. These wicked people have to put blinders on people so they can lead them off a cliff to their final destruction!!! Wickedness likes company.
There is nothing wrong with Christians being armed and able to defend themselves, they are not the flock that let’s the wolf prey on them and this hate and intolerance that has consumed islamics who misuse their faith can find their abuse of all others a real detriment to their own survival………..
One of my favorite verses in the Bible is “God has not given us a spirit of fear; but of power, and love, and a sound mind” I Timothy 1:7.
So ask yourself, “where is fear coming from”? A follower of Christ has to know that the antichrist is the giver of fear and he is using people who don’t want to believe in God. God says in the Bible this would happen so as believers in Jesus we need to put on the full armour of God that we can be protected and be bold and know fear has no hold on you, you are a child of King Jesus. Yes, I know, easy to say when we live in America. But, as stated by others, persecution is happening in our society and we do need to be prepared to stand against it. God is the judge, not me. God stated these people will have reprobate minds and I believe that is why we are seeing the degrading of society because of not standing up for what is right and good and true.
But no one, including the U.N. and the Catholic Pope, seems to care about the persecution of Christians. Not even the U.S.. If we really cared, we would be restricting our entire allotment of refugees/asylees to these persecuted Christians, denying any spots to any others as long as the Christian’s situation exists. We are supposedly a Christian nation so we have a perfect right to prioritize our refuge spots for Christians.
Islam is not a religion of peace, it’s a political theory of conquest that seeks domination by any means it can.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali a former Muslim bravely stated this fact.
Islam is a backwards 7th century ideology of hatred bigotry racism and intolerance, death and destruction.
Western civilization has to wake up to this fact.
This article is an example of he very political correctness it ostensibly is decrying. Even here it can’t name the ideology, the religion, that is far and away the most murderous and treacherous with an unabashed mission of eradicating Jews and Christianity, and everything else that stands in its way of a global Uma, a central part of their religion. The biggest and boldest lie of our time is that Islam is a peaceful religion.
I don’t know if I misunderstood, but the author seems to be saying that Christianity is as much the problem as the victim, in that its creed keeps people the poorest, and that whatever good missionaries do and have done is suspect. Such foolish nonsense is more of the political correctness that is indeed allowing the perpetrators of such persecution to thrive, and become almost unassailable even in our western “Christian” countries. The truth is that this Anti-christian, hateful, terroristic religion may have almost as many martyrs within its own religion as the various sects war against each other. Until it is recognized as the real problem with an underlying Satanic ideology it will continue to spread like the lethal virus that it is – and I don’t see that happening.
As a student of Bible prophecy, especially Revelation and Daniel, what is happening globally today is only going to continue to get worse with a world leader who will promise peace in order to gain global dominance. His religious base will be Islam, but his victims will eventually be all those who resist his control, and his demands to be worshipped as God. But it is all part of God’s plan, and He Himself, in the form of Jesus Christ will bring it to an end. Then there will be justice, and world peace, but not until then. So all this political correctness is just a strong delusion (rooted in willful ignorance), which scripture predicts, which will all allow the worst imaginable to happen. We should resist it because of who and what we are, as followers of Christ, but not under any false hopes or expectations that we as humans will stop it or change it in the long run, but with the faith and hope and expectation that God (the God of the Bible) will eventually intervene, and make it all right. But this is all total foolishness to the wisdom of this world, just as the Bible tells us it will be.
Evil days are upon us… and far worse is coming…
God has always had a plan. Man has forever fought the plan. Adam and Eve were not to eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Yet they did. Man went steadily downhill from there, starting with Cain who slew his brother Abel. When man got so bad that God would no longer tolerate his sin, he destroyed the earth with a flood after giving Noah the task to build an ark. Though the ark was open to all who would join Noah, only Noah’s family plus the animals he had been instructed to bring were saved. It’s sad to note that though there were probably millions of people on the earth only eight (8) people were saved. More years went by and when the Gentiles disobeyed God and built the “Tower of Babel” he changed their language from one to many and scattered them. Continuing with his plan, God chose Abram (later called Abraham) to form a nation (the nation of Israel) and he was promised land and a “seed”. When Abram did not get the son promised to him in the time he and Sarai, his wife, thought was long enough, Sarai (later called Sarah) sent her maid, Hagar, an Egyptian, in to Abram who was 86 at the time. Hagar conceived a son called Ishmael she was told he “would be a wild man, his hand will be against every man , and every man’s hand against him; and he shall dwell in the presence of all his brethren”. Later, when Abram asked God to let Ishmael “live before him”, God promised Abram that Ishmael would be the father of 12 princes and and that he would make him a great nation. When Abram was 99 years old, God told him he would have a son and again that he would make a covenant with him, making him the father of many nations, he would have land and kings would be his descendants and that he would be their God. Abram’s name was changed to Abraham and Sarai was now to be called Sarah. Sarah was to bear him a son and the son was to be named Isaac When Ishmael was 13 years old he was circumcised along with Abraham and all of his house. (Notice, by not heeding God’s word, Abraham and Sarah caused a lot of problems which exist even today, for all the Arab nations come from Ishmael)! As years went by Israel, God’s favored nation, continued to disobey God. When Jesus Christ came to the earth, he was sent “to the lost sheep of the house of Israel” (Matthew 15: 24 KJV Bible). Israel’s leaders should have know who he was, but they chose to crucify him along with the Gentiles. Israel was given another year to accept Jesus, but with the stoning of Stephen, God set them aside and turned to Saul/Paul. The risen Christ revealed to Paul the mystery that had been “kept secret since the world began” (Romans 16:25-26 KJV Bible) and sent Paul to the Gentiles. This took away all of the laws that Israel had to follow and placed mankind under grace, not under the law. So that there was no longer a difference between the Jew and the Greek (Gentile) and all that was/is needed to be saved is to “believe that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures”. (Portion of I Corinthians 15: 1-4 KJV Bible). Then we should study our bible as it tells us in II Timothy 2:15-16 “Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. 16) But shun profane and vain babblings: for they will increase unto more ungodliness.
Is mankind doing that today? No, not many do. There are many and diverse “religions” but most of them are not following the bible. Many claim that they are Israel and follow the earthly Jesus, not the risen Christ that the Apostle Paul followed. However, God’s plan is still being worked with or without us. There will be a time when the people who do follow God’s plan, who are called the “Church the Body of Christ” will be taken out of this world, if they don’t die first. (We call this the Rapture although that word is not in the bible). Then all of the prophesies of a Tribulation time, the second coming of Christ and the millennial reign will be accomplished. In the meantime, man continues to go down hill. The world becomes more sinful and corrupt and persecution by the ungodly grows more prolific.
While we cannot change mankind, we can change ourselves if we are not following God’s word. We may end up being persecuted, but if we are saved we will be with God when our time comes. Our earthly body is a temporary house and our life, even if we live to be 100+, is still short lived. Our soul and spirit are eternal, so we need to remember that and spend our time here following God’s word to the best of our ability. God has always had just a remnant of humanity. Make sure you are part of that remnant!