Battle Urged Against Religious Persecution

The author of a recent book on the plight of persecuted Christians worldwide called on a Newport Beach congregation Sunday to pray for fellow believers and join the blossoming movement to decry human rights abuses of Christians around the globe.

Paul Marshall, author of “Their Blood Cries Out” and senior fellow in political theory at the Institute of Christian Studies in Toronto, has seen the issue grow from near-obscurity two years ago to become a focal point for conservative and liberal groups in and out of government.

“We must not be romantic about persecution,” the 49-year-old Marshall, who carries a trace of his native Liverpool accent, told the Sunday morning crowd at St. James Church. “Persecution is an evil. We must pray and fight so that it might end.”

Marshall’s book has helped breathe life into a well-oiled movement that aims to reshape foreign policy toward nations such as Sudan, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, China and Pakistan, where Christians have been killed, raped or forcibly converted, or face systemic discrimination.

In an interview after his talk, Marshall spoke of his fact-finding missions. In Sudan, Christian mothers from the Nuba Mountains spoke of watching as their children were tied together and dragged behind a horse into a life of slavery and forced conversion to Islam.

In Malaysia, he learned of an awe-struck young Christian who confronted the police with his newfound knowledge of the law and convinced them they had no right to detain him. And in China, Marshall conducted hours of taped interviews with soft-spoken members of the underground church who had not seen their families in more than a year because they were in hiding.

“I cried when I wrote it,” Marshall said of his book.

Marshall says that more than 200 million Christians around the world live in daily fear of “secret police, vigilantes, or state repression and discrimination.”

In 30 to 35 countries, he said, Christians face violence, kidnappings or church burnings, and in 30 more they face legal discrimination, often from other Christian groups seeking to maintain national dominance.

Persecution has continued to flare since Marshall’s book was published in March, he told more than 70 church members who gathered to listen as part of a six-week study session on the issue.

In the last 15 months, Marshall said, more than 110 churches have been burned by Islamic militants on Indonesia’s main island of Java. In Pakistan last February, a Christian village of 20,000 residents was burned to the ground by an Islamic mob from a distant city. Neighboring Muslims are helping to rebuild it, he said.

And in March, Marshall said, government troops in Egypt bulldozed a Coptic home for disabled youth because the facility did not have the proper permits.

Marshall’s Orange County visit comes as legislation that would establish a White House office to monitor religious persecution makes its way through Congress.

Backers range from conservative evangelical Christians to liberal intellectual Jews. But the rallying cry has brought criticism from some mainline Christian churches, Muslim organizations and other groups concerned that the human rights of other persecuted religious minorities will be overlooked.

*

Marshall dismisses the criticism. He counters that the issue has galvanized many American Christians to become human rights activists--people who have long held stereotypes of the Christian church as Western and white but are now learning otherwise.

“A lot of Americans are getting interested in religious persecution, and that can only help” other causes, he said. “This will involve a lot of American Christians in the human rights movement. Their first cause will be this one, but they won’t stop there.”

Some human rights activists have criticized the movement as “special pleading for a particular group,” but Marshall said that is no different from any other successful human rights campaign.

“Who just calls for human rights for everyone? You campaign for women, for children, for homosexuals, for Jews,” Marshall said. “I think Christians are still underrepresented” in human rights campaigns.

Critics have also complained that the movement paints an oversimplified picture of religious persecution, which is complicated in many countries by political or ethnic conflict. Marshall emphasized that he used a rigorous standard in researching his book and includes only examples where people were persecuted primarily because of their faith.

The federal legislation, introduced by Rep. Frank R. Wolf (R-Va.) and Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), would create a White House office to monitor religious persecution of all peoples, not just Christians, Marshall said, though it singles out Christians, Tibetan Buddhists and Bahais.

Marshall, a Christian, said he knew little of the issue when he was asked in 1992 to be an advisor to the World Evangelical Fellowship’s newly formed commission on religious freedom. He met in the Philippines with a group of persecuted Christians from around the world, many of them prospective members of the commission or advisors to it.

One was killed on his way home to the Andean highlands of Peru. Another--the former leader of the Assemblies of God church in Iran--was killed because of his faith less than two years later.

“That gets your attention,” Marshall said. “It changes your life.”

*

While he had long been well-versed in the law and philosophy of human rights and had followed the work of groups that track Christian persecution, the experience put the two issues together for him, Marshall said.

In January 1996, he attended a conference on the issue in Washington and realized that no generalized survey of the problem existed. At the urging of colleagues, Marshall decided to write one.

Marshall, who also conducts research as an adjunct fellow for the Claremont Institute, was on sabbatical and living in Corona del Mar. In April 1996, he shelved his other projects to work full time on the book with south Orange County writer Lela Gilbert. Every Sunday, he worshiped at St. James Church.

His presentation there this week was greeted as necessary medicine.

“This church offers a lot for our spiritual growth, but we can’t just keep ourselves as ostriches with our heads in the sand,” said member Linda Reese of Laguna Beach. “We need to reach out and embrace all that’s going on in the world. This event with Paul Marshall helps keep me balanced.”