Persecuted Christians

"The church is universal. The church is growing. And the church is persecuted," declared Paul Marshall, a religious liberty advocate, during a General Conference lunch sponsored by UMAction. Emphasizing the global and non-Western nature of Christianity, Marshall said, "The church was in China before America...and in India before England. Christianity is older in Mongolia than Buddhism is."

Sixty percent of today's Christians (those at least nominal) live outside the West in Third World countries, said Marshall, a scholar and author with the Washington D.C.-based Freedom House. And 80 percent of practicing Christians live outside the West.

"There are more people in church in China on a typical Sunday than in France, Spain, Germany, Italy, Britain, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Holland, Belgium, and Austria put together," Marshall told an appreciatively laughing audience. "The same is probably also true for the Philippines, Nigeria, Brazil, and maybe true of India and Indonesia."

Marshall said there are more missionaries from the Third World in the U.S. than there are U.S. missionaries in other countries. South Korea will soon become the largest missionary dispatching country in the world.

"At no time in history has there been the growth of Christianity like this," Marshall said. He pointed to China, where the number of Christians has exploded in 25 years, from several million to as many as 80 million today. Marshall said this explosive growth in Christianity is accompanied by increasing persecution in remaining communist countries, in Islamic countries, and in south Asian countries dominated by Hinduism or Buddhism, such as India, Burma, and Sri Lanka.

The largest pattern of persecution, Marshall said, was Islamic extremism. He pointed out that September 11 was not the beginning of Islamic terrorism, but was simply an extension of violence aimed at non-Muslims for many years. "It did not begin on 9-11, it simply came to us," he said. Osama bin Laden thinks of his enemies as infidels and crusaders, Marshall said. Islamic terrorists target Christians and Jews, but also Buddhists and Hindus.

Marshall pointed to over 12,000 people, mostly Christians, killed in Nigeria in recent years under the imposition of Islamic or Sharia law. In showing acts of Islamic violence in Nigeria, Marshall shared photos of its victims, including shots of bombed beer trucks, which violated Islamic prohibitions against alcohol consumption.

Marshall also mentioned 9,000 mostly Christians killed during recent violence in Indonesia by Islamic militias. Two thousand Indonesian Christians were forcibly converted to Islam. "Islamic terrorist groups have been attacking other people long before they were attacking us," Marshall stressed. "The persecution of Christians is widespread, growing, and a lot connected to radical Islam and terrorism," he said.

The first request from persecuted Christians overseas is always for prayer, Marshall said of his interactions with them. The hardest thing for them is the impression that nobody knows or cares about their plight, he added.

Marshall urged his audience to ask their respective congregations to pray for persecuted Christians, focusing on a different country every week. "We remember we're part of a universal body," Marshall concluded, as he urged direct aid for persecuted Christians, more direct contacts with them by U.S. Christians, and filling U.S. pulpits with visiting overseas Christians.

Marshall observed that the decline of the slave trade and possible end of the war in Sudan, where an Islamic government has been battling against non-Muslims, was largely the result of U.S. government pressure, which resulted from lobbying by U.S. Christians.

Mark Tooley is director of UMAction in Washington D.C.

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