The Church and Religious Persecution

Robert J. Joustra, Kevin R. den Dulk

• Publisher: Calvin College Press
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781937555146
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Church

Religious persecution is on the rise. Daily news stories and social science research chronicle the suffering of Christians and those of other faiths at the hands of both governments and private citizens. Yet, with few exceptions, the North American church has been largely absent from serious action that addresses this global problem. The Church and Religious Persecution examines the nature and scope of religious persecution worldwide, explores the response of the church, and proposes steps church leaders and members can take to stand up for religious freedom and build a faith-based movement against persecution.

Calvin Shorts is a series for global Christians who want to understand our world better. Each book examines a single topic, untangles misconceptions, and suggests ways to think and act faithfully.

1

Introduction

We live in a time of growing religious persecution, both in breadth and brutality.

Daily media reports have become a familiar horror. The stories often fall into patterns that we can name: the bloody insurgencies of Boko Haram or al-Shabaab in Nigeria, Somalia, and Chad; the kidnappings, massive displacement, and monstrous killings of Christians and other religious minorities in Kenya, Syria, Iraq, and Egypt, most recently at the hands of ruthless Islamic State militants; the conflict between Muslims and majority religions in India, Myanmar, and neighboring countries; the struggle of non-sanctioned churches for legal acceptance in China and elsewhere in Asia; and so on. And countless other cases of suffering and abuse are motivated by religion yet capture little to no attention—in places where “their blood cries out,” as author Paul Marshall puts it, but no one hears.

Governments are often chief culprits in targeting religious believers for brutality and intimidation. Many states around the globe are cracking down on houses of worship or individual believers. They consider them threats to “social stability,” which is usually an authoritarian regime’s euphemism for attempts to solidify its power. But governments are certainly not alone in mistreating believers. “Non-state actors”—private individuals and groups in society—account for much of the religion-based hostility over recent years. In this respect the “Islamic State,” in claiming the mantle of statehood, is the exception rather than the rule. The cruelty of ordinary people, who often live as neighbors to those they attack, is especially distressing. And even if they do not engage in the attacks, ordinary people can make them possible. Nina Shea and Paul Marshall argue that a scandal in many places in the Islamic world is the blind eye that the majority moderate Muslims turn to radicals and their acts. Similar indifference is common among other groups in regions across the world—including, we must confess, in North America and other places with a stronger Christian legacy.

It is easy to become desensitized or overwhelmed by the persistent news stories. It is also natural to recoil at heinous violence. But this book argues that the complexity and inhumanity of global persecution is no excuse to avoid a response. On the contrary, the church urgently needs a call to action.

In the past decade, think tanks and advocacy groups have warned about the threats against religious freedom across the globe. The Christian church’s experience has been a key trigger for their concerns. Religious persecution has affected Christians more than others, and the situation appears to be worsening. The church, particularly in North America, clearly has good reasons and ample resources to confront these rising hostilities and the weakened protection of religious expression in many countries. Yet with few exceptions, the church has been largely absent from serious action that addresses the global problem of religious persecution.

In this book, we explain the church’s absence and argue for its presence. In this chapter, we clarify what we mean by three important terms: religion, religious freedom, and religious persecution. Chapter 2 describes the nature and scope of religious persecution worldwide. This “big picture” shows that Christians and others face threats that range in severity and come from a variety of sources. In Chapter 3, we explore the response of the church, including its relative silence on global persecution in recent years. We conclude in Chapter 4 with recommendations for action, especially for the institutional church.

It is important to note that we approach this difficult topic as both social scientists and Christians. As social scientists, we hope to offer clear explanations and careful use of evidence about a complex global problem. As Christians, we explain how our beliefs are particularly well-suited to addressing the problem. In doing so, we realize that the history of our own faith is not innocent. Our brothers and sisters have often been responsible for terrible violence and intimidation across lines of religious difference. But the Christian tradition also provides tremendous resources for understanding persecution as a basic injustice, a fundamental violation of the dignity of human beings. We argue for that dignitarian perspective even while we acknowledge that Christians have often failed to live up to its aspirations.

Defining Terms

As both Christians and social scientists, we know that many key ideas in this book are contested, specifically religion, religious liberty, and religious persecution. Entire academic professions have grown up around debates over the controversial assumptions about the human relationships embedded in these concepts. Take the most basic and probably most contested of the terms: religion.

In recent Western history, religion has often been defined as a set of “private” beliefs and practices, in contrast to a neutral “public” space where religion ought not be taken into account. Some commentators talk about the “separation of church and state” in these terms. They mean not only that the state should not support institutional forms of religion, but also that religion should stay out of public life altogether.

Our definition of religion totally rejects this way of thinking for both theological and social scientific reasons. Theologically, we define religion from a distinctively Christian perspective: the understandings and practices of communities and persons that are lived out of love for and in obedience to God.

This definition captures several critical pieces:

1. religion is not merely a belief but a bodily and often public practice;
2. religious practices often occur in communities; therefore the organizational forms of religion and its freedoms are an essential part of any definition;
3. the primary test of conscience for whether an activity or belief is religious is the person or the community itself, as the meanings and boundaries of the religious can shift from place to place and time to time;
4. religion is ultimately about living lives of obedience to God, expressed in the great commandments to love the Lord our God with all our heart, mind, and strength and to love our neighbor as ourselves.

As social scientists, we define the term “religion” in a different (though not opposed) way: as a genus including certain species such as Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, and so forth. While social scientists frequently disagree about the precise nature and scope of religion, most could accept a definition similar to that of international relations scholar Daniel Philpott: “communities of belief and practices oriented around claims about the ultimate grounds of existence.” This social scientific approach encompasses a broader range of beliefs and practices than our theological definition, which is rooted in Christian assumptions. When we analyze the data on religious freedom in Chapter 2, we use this more capacious definition to illustrate the restrictions on and hostilities toward religions of all sorts.

Our definition of religious freedom, or religious liberty (used interchangeably in this book), follows the social science definition of religion: the capacity to manifest fully, in public and private, one’s religion without interference from the state and also the obligation of the state to protect citizens from anyone who might threaten the expression of the citizens’ faith. In other words, religious freedom both limits and empowers the state: It ought not restrict religion unreasonably but ought to provide a safe environment in which religious persons and communities can thrive.

This definition assumes that religious pluralism—accepting that many religious expressions can coexist in the same political community—is a good thing. In pluralist societies, people come to a mutual resonance on political and social virtues that enable their society to function. People agr...

Table of contents

• Series Editor’s Foreword
• Additional Resources
• 1
• 2
• 3
• 4
• Notes