Editorial Religious persecution
Steinfels, Margaret O'Brien
Religious persecution Murder, enslavement, torture, imprisonment of Christians have been in the news. In places like Sudan (see, Commonweal, "For Sale: People," January 17,1997) and China (Richard...
...The suffering of religious believers overseas has been rhetorically assimilated to the grievances of conservative Christians against liberal elites in the United States...
...other Christian groups are restricted...
...When Americans speak of religious freedom, we operate with the assumptions of the First Amendment: in principle and in practice our government favors no particular religion and is broadly tolerant of all...
...And more or less, the same situation of virtual establishment prevails in Roman Catholic Poland...
...Final caveat: The State Department report describes conditions in some countries that are not persecution but discrimination-an important distinction...
...when pointed out, it is not often forthrightly acknowledged...
...when acknowledged, it is rarely protested...
...Some advocates, relatively recent converts to the issue, appear ready to treat approaches other than their own as signs of moral pusillanimity...
...Austria recognizes only thirteen religious organizations, which must meet specified religious criteria...
...And Christians-Orthodox Serbs and Catholic Croats-have persecuted each other...
...Islam is the official religion of Saudi Arabia, and all of its citizens must be Muslim...
...Religious communities should assist and support persecuted members abroad...
...Ending these should be the first priority...
...Second caveat: Having achieved a degree of public notice and political momentum for the cause of persecuted Christians, advocates should think carefully about future strategy...
...On July 22 the State Department issued a report, "United States Policies in Support of Religious Freedom: Focus on Christians...
...Some Islamic countries tolerate indigenous Christian groups but prohibit their growth...
...Building broad religious and political coalitions might actually end their persecution...
...In November 1996, then Secretary of State Warren Christopher named an Advisory Committee on Religious Freedom Abroad...
...The next issue will be dated September 12...
...Because Christianity has been the dominant faith of the West, more likely to be in league with power than its victim, the persecution of Christians around the world often goes unnoticed...
...All of this is to the good...
...This is not the American tradition of religious freedom, but we should not act as if all restraints and limits on religious groups are the same as murder, imprisonment, and torture...
...But competing in the contest of victim politics can hardly serve the long-run needs of real victims be they Christians, Jews, Hindus, Muslims, or Baha'i...
...But when the government of a pluralist society is called to act, the picture gets more complex...
...Where they are the majority population, Buddhists and Hindus limit the activity of other traditions...
...Tibetan Buddhism, long persecuted by the Chinese government, lies on the brink of extinction...
...They seem as interested in settling scores with the National Council of Churches and the United States Catholic Conference as in exerting effective pressure on persecuting governments...
...That suggests some caveats: First, the merits of focusing on one group, or claiming, as some advocates do, that Christians are the most persecuted group in the world is debatable...
...This past June, there were congressional threats to revoke China's trade status, in part, because of its persecution of Protestants and Catholics...
...England supports one established church...
...So do the religious practices of indigenous people around the world...
...Elsewhere, Christians are the special targets of Islamic mobs or rebel forces attempting to overthrow their governments, for example, in Algeria and Egypt...
...And now, there is the State Department report...
...And what is the point of making claims that threaten to minimize the tragedies of others...
...The Orthodox church holds a privileged position in Russia...
...The National Association of Evangelicals, in its "Statement of Conscience" on the topic, wisely matched its legitimate conIn keeping with Commonweal's usual schedule, only one issue is published each month during July and August...
...In places like Sudan (see, Commonweal, "For Sale: People," January 17,1997) and China (Richard Madsen, "China's Catholics: Devout and Divided," April 25, 1997), governments are the perpetrators...
...Organizations like Freedom House and the National Association of Evangelicals, individuals like Michael Horowitz, a former Reagan administration official now at the Hudson Institute, and Congressmen Frank Wolf (R-Va...
...American responses-both government policy and the mobilization of public opinion- must be equally complex...
...Some of the conservatives leading the current effort seem unable to resist the impulse to make the issue a political football in America's culture wars...
...Vatican initiatives on behalf of the church in Cuba and China have been dismissed as too soft...
...The report, covering the state of religious freedom in seventy-eight countries, did not just happen...
...The current campaign, still in a formative phase, has to become a long-running effort, which may not be easy...
...Not so in many other nations...
...The State Department report has the virtue of conveying the complexity of "religious freedom" in the real world...
...cern for Christian persecution with protection for "all those suffering from religious persecution," and noted how anti-Christian policies often serve to intimidate dissenters of all sorts...
...Will this new attention to a very real problem be lasting...
...The Clinton administration and the Republican Congress have finally responded...
...The international human-rights movement has traditionally focused on political prisoners, not persecuted believers...
...have prodded and politicked to get the issue of persecution of Christians on the public agenda...
...A narrow focus on Christians obscures the links that must tie religious freedom to the protection of human rights overall...
Vol. 124 • August 1997 • No. 14
