Tag Archive for: Christian persecution

Biden Regulation Could Deny Christians, Conservatives Government Employment: Critics

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The Biden administration has proposed new federal guidelines that would politicize the civil service and potentially bar Christians and others who hold disfavored opinions from government employment. Critics say the president’s proposal essentially states, “Conservatives need not apply.”

Current federal law deems an applicant “unsuitable” for federal employment if the applicant engages in “[k]nowing and willful engagement in acts or activities designed to overthrow the U.S. [g]overnment by force.” (Emphasis added.) But the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) proposal would strike the words “by force with a collection of provisions that are broad, ill-defined, and over-inclusive,” said a comment offered by Family Research Council. “We urge the OPM to withdraw the proposed rule changes.”

Removing the words “by force” renders the rule “dangerously vague. Such lack of clarity would give the government great leeway in keeping people out of federal employment that it did not like,” Chris Gacek, coalitions senior research fellow at FRC who guided the group’s comment, told The Washington Stand. “The provisions repeatedly ran afoul of First Amendment norms — and would imperil the rights of clergy and religious believers.”

The Biden administration admits its new, legally binding employment policy includes “more nuanced factors,” but only punishes “conduct that is not protected by the First Amendment.” Still, FRC objects that the code contains “vague and broad provisions that could target disfavored groups with unpopular beliefs — including groups of religious believers whose beliefs not infrequently challenge societal norms and loyalties.”

For instance, one part of the revised policy would ban acts of “force, violence, intimidation, or coercion with the purpose of denying others the free exercise of their rights under the U.S. constitution or any state constitution.” The Biden administration has repeatedly stated the U.S. Constitution contains a right to an abortion, in contravention of a current Supreme Court ruling.

Further, “the idea that mere speech can be deemed ‘violence’ has gained some acceptance in much of America,” FRC’s comment states. “Such thinking, if absorbed into OPM legal practice, could transform pure speech into ‘violence,’ ‘intimidation,’ and ‘coercion.’” Yet the underlying action, of engaging in free speech, “does not seem far removed from teaching, instructing, or preaching doctrine — a common practice in churches, seminaries, and schools.”

It would also deny government employment to any applicant who belongs to a group with “unlawful aims,” a term FRC found broad enough to include those who sheltered runaway slaves on the Underground Railroad. FRC asked Biden officials if a pastor who allows an illegal immigrant to take sanctuary inside his church, or who holds services in defiance of a pandemic order, could be denied government employment.

“There needs to be a precise definition of violence in the rule to preclude such unconstitutional, post-modern interpretations of the law,” FRC continued. Since the regulation’s current wording does not require criminal conviction, “how does the OPM plan to decide whether state constitutional provisions have been violated?

The request for clarity comes as Democrats classify an ever-widening panoply of actions as acts of “insurrection,” a term legally condemned by the U.S. Constitution. These actions include refusing to automatically mail ballots to inactive voters, automatically registering everyone with a driver’s license to vote — even voting to remove then-Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) from her House leadership position. Using broad definitions of such terminology in the national or state constitutions, Democratic officials have sued to keep Republican candidates — including Rep. Marjorie Taylor Green (R-Ga.) and Rep. David Eastman (R-Alaska) — off the ballot. Both Democrats’ disenfranchising lawsuits proved unsuccessful.

Yet under Biden’s proposed federal employment guidelines, applicants would never see their day in court. Instead, the language “would allow hiring managers to reject candidates solely on the grounds of being lawfully critical of government policy,” said a statement spearheaded by the Heritage Foundation and signed by 41 people representing 35 organizations, including Quena González of Family Research Council. “[T]he terms used in the proposed change, ‘intimidate’ and ‘coerce,’ have become synonymous — wrongly so — in the eyes of some, with vigorous, active speech that seeks to change opinions and federal and state laws.” As a result, “opinions on abortion, the Second Amendment, or climate change, or membership in an association that actively works to change the law on such issues, whatever side of the political aisle they are, could be used by a hiring manager to unfairly reject an otherwise well-qualified, excellent employee.”

The statement — which calls the OPM regulation “unwarranted and dangerous” — has been signed by former Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts, Reagan administration OPM Director Donald J. Devine, former HUD Secretary Dr. Ben Carson, Leadership Institute President Morton Blackwell, Sandy Rios of the American Family Association, Claremont Institute President Ryan P. Williams, Concerned Women for America President Penny Nance, Jon Schweppe of the American Principles Project, and Jordan Sekulow of ACLJ Action, among others.

The rule accelerates what critics call Biden’s pattern of politicizing the federal bureaucracy. The White House demanded members of the Consumer Financial Protection Board (CFPB) quit and, when they refused, launched investigations into recalcitrant conservatives. “It’s very clear what’s happening — it’s forcing people out who are not political actors,” a former CFPB employee told the Government Executive website. “This is being done in a pretty underhanded way and, frankly, they are getting away with it.”

Such efforts stretch back to Biden’s very first day in office, when the president demanded National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) General Counsel Peter Robb resign or be fired. Robb’s tenure did not end for months, and a previous administration’s appointees have typically served out their full terms alongside new members. Yet in a violation of norms, Biden proceeded to fire both Robb and his assistant, Alice Stock, placing the agency under the leadership of former union lawyer Jennifer Abruzzo. He then fired the general counsel of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), Sharon Gustafson, after she refused to resign, as well as Social Security Commissioner Andrew Saul and religious liberty/civil rights official Roger Severino.

Biden went on to clear-cut numerous members of the Council of the Administrative Conference of the United States, the National Capital Planning Commission, and to terminate all 10 members of the Federal Services Impasse Panel (which also deals with labor unions’ concerns).

The White House then set its sights on the military, targeting 18 Trump appointees to military advisory boards such as the Air Force Academy, West Point, and the Naval Academy. Biden also fired members of the Homeland Security Advisory Council and the Administrative Conference of the United States.

Fantasies of depriving one’s political enemies of the ability to earn a living, in the public or private sector, have increasingly consumed the Left. In 2020, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) endorsed the work of the Trump Accountability Project to blacklist “Trump sycophants” from gainful employment.

“In the Biden regime, the new rule could more simply be written as ‘conservatives need not apply,’” said Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts.

AUTHOR

Ben Johnson

Ben Johnson is senior reporter and editor at The Washington Stand.

RELATED ARTICLE: FBI Undercover Agent Developed Plan To Spy On Catholics: Jordan

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2023 Family Research Council

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Not Just Nashville: Attacks Against Churches Nearly Tripled in 2023, Report Finds

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Last week’s mass murder of six people at a church-run Christian school constitutes 2023’s deadliest act of violence against churches, which have increased nearly three times this year compared to last year, a new report from Family Research Council finds. The number of anti-church attacks in 2022 had already tripled over four years, a previous report found.

In all, assailants attacked churches 69 times in the first three months of 2023, compared with 24 such acts during the same period last year, a 288% increase. The rising tempo of anti-Christian assaults — which includes arsons, bomb threats, vandalism, and sacrilege — has affected places of worship in 29 states. The motives behind such desecration run the gamut from pro-abortion activism or controversies over transgender ideology to apparently senseless acts of destruction.

“American churches are increasingly bearing the brunt of anger and aggression, whether that’s from political or other motivations,” the report’s author — Arielle Del Turco, assistant director of the Center for Religious Liberty at Family Research Council — told The Washington Stand. “This contributes to an environment of hostility toward Christianity.”

The acts of anti-church aggression documented between January and March of this year includes:

  • 53 incidents of vandalism;
  • 10 suspicious fires;
  • Three gun-related incidents; and
  • Three bomb threats — including a pipe bomb recovered outside Philadelphia’s 127-year-old St. Dominic Catholic Church.

“If this rate continues, 2023 will have the highest number of incidents of the six years FRC has tracked,” the report notes. The number of church attacks in 2023 already exceeds “the entirety of 2018, in which we identified only 50 incidents, or 2020, in which we identified 54.”

The month of January 2023 had more church attacks than any single month in the five years FRC has kept records, with 43 such events, according to data furnished to TWS. “This steep increase is a cause for concern,” says the update.

Hostility toward Christian views of hot-button political issues have exploded into violence and vandalism numerous times this year. In January, abortion activists spray painted the words “Women’s Body, Women’s Choice” over a pro-life banner hanging outside St. Stephen Catholic Church in Riverview, Florida.

Last month, transgender activists lashed out at Kentucky legislators who voted against their agenda by defacing an historic church. Vandals spray painted the words “TRANS PWR” on St. Joseph Catholic Church in Louisville, Kentucky, on March 3 — “the day after the Kentucky House of Representatives passed a bill that would protect children from harmful gender-transition procedures,” the report states. Undeterred state legislators enacted the child safety protections over Democratic Governor Andy Beshear’s veto later that month.

Individuals who identify as transgender have focused their rage on Christian facilities as well. In addition to 28-year-old Audrey Hale’s attack on The Covenant School in Nashville, a 27-year-old man who identifies as a woman set the 117-year-old Portland Korean Church building ablaze on January 3. The suspect, whose legal name is Cameron Storer, claimed to hear voices that “threatened to ‘mutilate’ Storer if Storer refused to burn the church down,” the new FRC report states.

Nashville police have yet to release Hale’s “manifesto,” purportedly due to an “ongoing investigation,” but officers have said Hale’s views of the transgender issue may have touched off her violent rampage. Storer apparently suffers from mental illness, which afflicts those who identify as LGBTQ at far higher rates than average, according to the Biden administration.

Sometimes, the same perpetrator strikes multiple times. Police say 40-year-old Peter Sirolli vandalized three Roman Catholic churches in New Jersey on the same morning, including burning a 10-foot-tall cross on the lawn of St. Patrick’s Catholic Church in Woodbury on January 13.

The new FRC update builds on an 84-page report released last December. In the original study, FRC verified 420 acts of hostility against houses of worship between January 2018 and September 2022. The new addition brings the full number of anti-Christian incidents in 2022 up to date. In the original report, FRC calculated 137 intentionally damaging incidents against churches had taken place through last September. The last three months of 2022 brought an additional 54 such acts, bringing the total number of assaults against churches to 191 in 2022.

In all, researchers documented a total of 543 attacks on 517 separate churches between January 2018 and March 2023. Of the 517 separate churches attacked, 26 of the churches were victimized more than once, with three being targeted three times each, according to data furnished to The Washington Stand.

Between 2018 and 2023, American churches have suffered:

  • 442 acts of vandalism;
  • 71 cases of arson;
  • 15 gun-related incidents;
  • 14 bomb threats; and
  • 25 miscellaneous acts of aggression against church facilities

A total of 25 incidents fell into multiple categories, according to FRC researchers.

The worst period of sustained assaults during those 39 months broke out last summer over the unprecedented, and heretofore unsolved, leak of the Supreme Court’s Dobbs ruling last May. After the media reported the Supreme Court would overturn Roe v. Wade and return the issue of abortion to democratic control, pro-abortion activists committed 86 attacks against Christian churches last May (24), June (28), and July (34).

Churches also sustained damage from the “Black Lives Matter” riots, which broke out in the summer of 2020 over the killing of George Floyd. BLM rioters committed 11 acts of church desecration, researchers told TWS.

Despite the quickening pulse of anti-Christian crimes, some of which have been investigated as “hate crimes,” conservatives say the Biden administration has been too lax in its response. In January, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives passed H. Con. Res. 3, which noted that abortion extremists such as Jane’s Revenge had “defaced, vandalized, and caused destruction to over 100 pro-life facilities, groups, and churches” in 2022, yet “the Biden Administration has failed to take action to respond to the radical attacks on pro-life facilities, groups, and churches, or to protect the rights of these organizations.”

The Democrat-controlled Senate has taken no action on the bill.

“American leaders and citizens alike should condemn acts of hostility against churches and affirm the right for all people to attend their houses of worship without feeling targeted or threatened,” Del Turco told TWS.

AUTHOR

Ben Johnson

Ben Johnson is senior reporter and editor at The Washington Stand.

RELATED ARTICLE: Loudoun County Bans Teacher from Adding Bible Verse in Email Signature

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2023 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

American Pride Burning

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They called it a “night of rage.” But outside the charred walls of Buffalo’s CompassCare, pro-lifers could barely get the national media to call it anything. Like the string of domestic firebombings across Wisconsin, Oregon, Colorado, Tennessee, and Washington, the blown out windows, graffiti, and trashed offices were barely a blip on network news. It’s been quite a contrast to the extensive coverage a single burned flag in New York is getting. But then, that’s the power of the Pride.

The incident that’s grabbing headlines happened in the wee hours of Monday morning. According to security footage, a woman parked her SUV, walked over to a rainbow flag hanging outside SoHo’s Little Prince restaurant, pulled out a lighter, and set the flag on fire. An employee working late inside saw the flames and called 911. Although the residents on higher floors had to be evacuated, no one was injured. There were, however, cracked windows and “external damage,” especially to the outside landscaping.

“It’s disgusting,” restaurant owner Cobi Levy said. His staff, he told the press, is shaken and scared. “These kinds of acts are desperate acts committed by people who are consumed with hate and filled with hate,” thundered Eric Bottcher, a local councilmember. The New York Times and other major newspapers descended on the scene, interviewing sympathetic neighbors and calling for the suspect to face the harshest penalties.

Within 24 hours, an investigation had been launched by NYPD’s Hate Crime Task Force and a replacement flag — larger than the one that proclaimed “Make America Gay Again” — had already been hung.

The all-hands-on-deck response was quite a contradiction to what more than 100 churches and pro-life groups have experienced over the last seven months from the FBI, which waited six of those months just to list the attackers on its Most Wanted website. Not a single arrest has been made in CompassCare’s case. In fact, the federal government has been so indifferent to the crimes that several pro-life groups have resorted to launching their own private investigation.

Meanwhile, in the Big Apple, Bottcher celebrated the LGBT movement’s resilience. “Our resolve is only strengthened when acts like this happen,” Bottcher told the community at a special ceremony to replace the colors on Tuesday. “We are standing up in the face of this hate and reasserting our pride in ourselves and our community. That’s why we hung the flag again.” Little Prince posted a photo of the new flag with one word: “Defiant.”

I want to be clear right off the bat: While there’s an obvious discrepancy in how the two sides have been treated by the media and law enforcement, no one is defending this woman’s actions. Respect for other people’s property — whether it’s a ministry or a drag bar — ought to be a reasonable expectation of every American. There’s no excuse for lawlessness in any form or against any person. That said, the hysteria over what happened in SoHo is a powerful illustration of where we are as a nation, and ignoring it only primes the pump for more hypocrisy.

There are plenty of double standards at play here, not the least of which is the excessive significance the legacy media assigns to victims of their pet political causes, while more than 100 pro-life ministries, churches, and pregnancy care centers sit smoldering in the ashes of a similar hatred, virtually ignored. Imagine if this woman had set fire to an America flag. Would the press race to the scene and mourn the lack of national pride across their platforms? Of course not, because in this age of identity politics, we’ve gotten to the point where setting fire to a rainbow flag is a “hate crime” and burning Old Glory is self-expression.

Frankly, the fact that a single act of arson can make national news is astonishing in an age when mobs can burn down entire cities with the ruling class’s blessing. During the George Floyd riots of 2020, torching federal buildings, courts, city property, and private businesses wasn’t violence, the Left said. It was “justice” — the kind that major Democratic figures publicly embraced.

It wasn’t even two years ago that Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), told the masses that if there wasn’t a guilty verdict in the Floyd murder case, then “… we got to not only stay in the street, but we have got to fight for justice.” Party leaders, like then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi (Calif.), defended Waters’s call to arms, saying she should not have to apologize for inciting violence. Rep. Alyssa Pressley (Mass.) flat-out called for “unrest,” while liberal city leaders from Portland to Chicago linked arms with anarchists, even going so far as to sue federal officials who tried to restore law and order.

The soon-to-be vice president of the United States, Kamala Harris, also endorsed the mobs, telling Stephen Colbert, “They’re not going to stop. … This is a movement. … And everyone, beware. …They’re not going to let up. And they should not, and we should not.”

Protestors, emboldened by Democrats, went on an anti-American rampage, toppling statues, defacing monuments, spraypainted historic buildings, and destroying private property, racking up more than $1 billion dollars in damage across the country — the most expensive riot spree in U.S. history. And yet this, the burning of a single LGBT flag, is “war in America.”

The irony is hard to miss. At a time when liberal ideologues argue against prosecuting anyone for anything, a woman destroying a rainbow flag faces double the punishment under New York’s hate crimes statute, which not only penalizes crimes but motives too. But what about the motives of the arsons in Buffalo? Where was the demand for “hate crimes” in cities where “ABORT THE CHURCH” and “DEATH TO CHRISTIAN NATIONALISM” were spraypainted across houses of worship?

If you’re starting to believe double standards are America’s only standards, you’re not alone. When burning our flag is “protected speech,” and a banner of sexual fanaticism is untouchable, we’ve passed the point of absurdity as a nation. And yet, these are the lessons our children have been taught: you can kneel for the national anthem but not refuse to wear a rainbow.

Now the bitter fruits of that indoctrination are everywhere. Today, more of Generation Z identifies as LGBT (20%) than feels proud to call America home (16%). Is it any wonder that society treats the Pride flag with a reverence it used to reserve for the country that gave activists the right to fly it in the first place?

In 1989, when the Supreme Court struck down the criminal penalties for burning a U.S. flag, Justice John Paul Stevens lamented in his dissent, “[The American flag] is more than a proud symbol of the courage, the determination, and the gifts of nature that transformed 13 fledgling Colonies into a world power. It is a symbol of freedom, of equal opportunity, of religious tolerance, and of goodwill for other peoples who share our aspirations.” It does not “represent the views of any particular party, and it does not represent any political philosophy,” Chief Justice William Rehnquist insisted. “The flag is not simply another idea or point of view competing for recognition in the marketplace of ideas.” The value of its unifying power, the four dissenting justices argued, cannot be measured.

Thirty-four years later, that unity is being tested as never before. We’ve become a people determined to wave our own flags, so comfortable in our factions that we’re trampling our country’s ideals — the same ideals that laid the foundations of self-expression the Left worships today. But if America has any hope of healing these deep divides, of ending these uncivil wars, the solution is returning — not to what divides us, but to what connects us. A national identity found, not in a spectrum of colors, but in three: red, white, and blue.

AUTHOR

Tony Perkins

Tony Perkins is president of Family Research Council and executive editor of The Washington Stand.

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The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Chinese Communists ‘Hope to Erase’ Christianity: Report

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Last August 25, several faithful gathered around one of the largest churches in China’s Shanxi province to watch it dissolve into dust. Chinese Communist Party (CCP) authorities had planted explosives inside Beihan Catholic Church, bringing its 131-foot-tall bell tower crashing to the ground. In a bout of déjà vu, the 10-year-old church had been built on the site of another church, which the CCP demolished in 1990.

Many Chinese religious systems believe in reincarnation — but in Communist-controlled China, a cycle of destruction repeats itself for Christians, according to a comprehensive, 63-page report from ChinaAid.

The Chinese Communist Party has continued to destroy churches, arrest and abuse Christians, forcibly “disappear” clergy, prevent believers from expressing their faith online, and attempt to coerce Christians into proclaiming Marxist principles from the pulpit in place of the Holy Bible. The report’s “partial list of persecution cases in 2022,” broken down by province, takes up 20 pages.

“The CCP implemented various strategies against Christians in 2022. By using the new measures against religious content online and the infamous zero-COVID policy, authorities limited or eliminated Christian gatherings,” recounted ChinaAid President Bob Fu. “By using charges of ‘fraud,’ the Chinese government financially suffocated the house church movement.”

The report details the forcible disappearance of 10 clergy from Hebei prince’s Xuanhua diocese — including two Roman Catholic bishops — and another 10 priests in the province’s Baoding diocese. Those allowed to remain in the country may be forced out of their ministry by government interference. Fengwo Township Religion Bureau showed up at a church last January to tell parishioners the bureau deemed their pastor, Huang Yizi, unfit to preach sermons, because of his arrest record — for refusing government orders to remove public crosses.

The government has told Christians not to evangelize, preach, print, proselytize, or in some cases pray — especially in the name of Jesus. While preventing many registered churches from worshiping in person, allegedly to stop the spread of COVID-19, Jiangsu province also made it a crime “to illegally preach online, give sermons, interpret scriptures, chant,” etc. Police visited churches that persevered. “Village cadres came to me yesterday and asked me not to preach religion on WeChat. Now we are not even allowed to say the word Jesus in our prayers, or ‘trust in the Savior,’” one Chinese citizen told her U.S.-based family.

The government also tried to prohibit Christians from carrying out their scripturally mandated duty to pray for those in authority. “Our church has received orders from government officials. Now when we pray in WeChat groups, we’re not allowed to say, ‘We pray for those in power,’ let alone pray for President Xi Jinping by name or ask God to make him repent. These are all forbidden now. Some of us used to pray for China’s top government leaders, but that’s not allowed anymore,” another believer told a family member who had emigrated. “We don’t know if we can still pray together in WeChat groups after this March.”

To stifle the growth of house churches, the government has treated tithing and other standard Christian economic activities as a form of “fraud.” In July, police arrested Pastor Qin Sifeng and coworker Su Minjun of Beijing Lampstand Church for “illegal business activities” when it printed hymns for the church to sing. Officials have repeatedly postponed their trial, originally scheduled for last November, effectively imprisoning them indefinitely. Others received swift, crushing punishment. Officers arrested a believing couple, Chang Yuchun and Li Chenhui, in December 2021 for printing Christian books; last May, a court sentenced them to seven years in prison and a fine of nearly $37,000 (U.S.).

The report notes the heart of the persecution campaign: the determination to follow through with what the CCP called the “Sinicization of Religion” at the Chinese Communist Party’s 20th national Congress last October 16. The party demands churches teach Communist principles and revise religious dogma in light of socialism.

“Their goal is not only to curate a ‘socialist-friendly’ church; they hope to erase it,” said Fu. “Previously, they asked for sole allegiance to the Communist Party, but since the 20th National Party Congress, they shifted their emphasis to aligning with Xi Jinping.”

To this end, government officials insist the church cede the education of children to the secular, socialist state. Last May, CCP officials reminded college graduates and students of their official policy: “No one may use religion to carry out activities that obstruct the national education system.” They have effected this policy by shutting down church-operated schools, including the Wenzhou Bowen Bible School and Wenzhou Bible School in Zhejiang province last August, or fining those who hold religious education conferences nearly $21,000 (U.S.). Fined people who rented out facilities to a church school and illegally held a human rights lawyer who represented Christians under house arrest.

These measures likely violate the wording of the Chinese constitution, which states Chinese citizens “enjoy freedom of religious belief” and the right to attend “normal” services — but the document, written by Communists, does not define normal services.

The problem of religious persecution is as old as Marxism itself. Karl Marx considered religion the opiate of the masses. Yet suppression of Christians appears to have intensified as China has gained economic and military strength over the last two decades. The U.S. State Department has classified the People’s Republic of China as a “Country of Particular Concern” since 1999.

The CCP faces credible and consistent charges of committing “deaths in custody and that the government tortured, physically abused, arrested, disappeared, detained, sentenced to prison, subjected to forced labor and forced indoctrination in CCP ideology, and harassed adherents of both registered and unregistered religious groups for activities related to their religious beliefs and practices,” noted the State Department’s most recent report on Chinese religious freedom, published last June.

Despite their oppression, Chinese Christians remain resilient. Last February 20, “Christian activist Zhou Jinxia held up a sign to preach the gospel to Xi Jinping,” knowing it would result in arrest.

China Aid’s new report coincides with an emboldened China that has increasingly begun saber-rattling, provocatively sending spy craft to hover over the U.S. mainland. While the CCP has begun “brazenly pushing the limits, to see how far they can go,” said the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, Rep. Mark Green, R-Tenn. “President Biden’s administration has consistently demonstrated weakness, showing a willingness to act against adversaries like the Chinese Communist Party only after the public outcry was so deafening that they could not ignore it,” Rep. Green told The Daily Signal.

This overseas aggression has bled into the CCP’s treatment of Christians, as officials have attempted to reach beyond its own shores to harass or kidnap ethnic Chinese living in the United States. They also sanctioned Family Research Council President Tony Perkins.

“The international community needs to know about these trends and developments” of Beijing’s persecution of Christians “as China continues to rise on the global stage,” said Fu. Unless Western Christians stand up for their brethren, Chinese Christians believe the cycle of destruction will continue.

AUTHOR

Ben Johnson

Ben Johnson is senior reporter and editor at The Washington Stand.

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

What Will Persecuted Christians Face in 2023?

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The Bible radically challenges the status quo. It speaks truth to power.

During a recent conversation with Margaret, a woman who suffered life-changing injuries after Islamists assaulted a Catholic church in Nigeria last Pentecost Sunday, I couldn’t help but reflect deeply on the words of Christ:

“Whatever is born of God overcomes the world; and this is the victory that overcomes the world, our faith. Who is it that overcomes the world but he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?” (1 John 5)

Indeed, who is it that can forgive their enemies and overcome hatred, violence and abuse of the kind suffered by Margaret but he or she who knows Christ?

In my work for the Catholic charity Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) UK, I am frequently asked about how I deal with all the negative stories and the “doom and gloom”. But as St John’s letter reminds us, a strong faith in Christ’s ultimate victory upends this question: rather, how can I deal with all the pessimism and negativity without learning from the example of the modern-day martyrs?

Speaking to Margaret taught me two key lessons: that we in the West need the example of the persecuted Church, and they need us. The more that the opponents of the Church become emboldened in persecuting her, and the less we speak truth to power, the more severe will the persecution be this year. Our silence is a green light to violence.

2022 made this fact clearer than ever. More Christians suffer for their faith in Christ than any other religious group suffers for their faith, according to the Pew Research Center. This is borne out by fresh data from Aid to the Church in Need’s latest report Persecuted and Forgotten? A Report on Christians oppressed for their Faith 2020-22.

The oppression or persecution of Christians increased in 75 percent of the 24 countries ACN surveyed. In Africa, the situation for Christians worsened in all countries reviewed amid a sharp increase in genocidal violence from militant non-state actors, including the jihadist groups Islamic State West Africa Province and Boko Haram. Nigeria is in particular trouble. In the Middle East, continuing migration deepened the crisis threatening the survival of three of the world’s oldest Christian communities located in Iraq, Syria and Palestine.

State authoritarianism has been the critical factor causing worsening oppression against Christians in China, North Korea, Vietnam and Burma (Myanmar). Religious nationalism has caused increasing persecution against Christians in Afghanistan, India and Pakistan, among other countries. Fashionable holiday destinations like the Maldives fare poorly when it comes to the treatment of Christians. Football-famous Qatar has also been on our radar.

A key trend we are witnessing in the West which aids and abets the persecution of Christians is civil authorities’ frequent denial of the extent of the problem. This can stem from ignorance of and outright unwillingness to alleviate the suffering of Christians, but also takes the form of dubious arguments that reject explanations of the crisis rooted in anti-Christian hatred, instead preferring economic justifications or cries of “climate change”. But climate change alone cannot explain Christian persecution, as the UK parliamentarian Sir Edward Leigh MP explained in a recent article.

2023 will see these trends escalate, ACN’s research suggests. Our work proactively identifies the trends Christians face early on, rather than being purely reactive. This call to justice is crucial to waking up governments, decision-makers and the Church to the plight of the most vulnerable. We defend the persecuted Church and stand in solidarity with her but, perhaps even more importantly, we provide support and pastoral care so that she can persevere in her mission to preach the Gospel to all nations, whatever the cost.

Speaking to ACN last year after her release from captivity in Mali, west Africa, Sister Gloria Cecilia Narváez said: “My God, it is hard to be chained and to receive blows, but I live this moment as you present it to me … And, in spite of everything, I would not want any of [my captors] to be harmed.”

The Franciscan sister was held by Islamist militants for over four years, during which time she was repeatedly physically and psychologically tortured. Sister Gloria made clear that her Christian faith was the source of the animus against her, describing to us how her captors became enraged when she prayed. On one occasion, when a jihadist leader found her praying, he struck her saying: “Let’s see if that God gets you out of here. Sister Gloria continued: “He spoke to me using very strong, ugly words…My soul shuddered at what this person was saying, while the other guards laughed out loud at the insults.”

As Christ says to the persecuted Church and to us: “In the world you have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.” (John 16:33)

When I read these words, the smiling portrait of a humble and persevering Nigerian woman comes to mind. This year, like so many other Christians, Margaret will continue to suffer and to triumph. This year truth and falsehood will be asserted variably in the courts of power.

Yet, however worldly justice deals with the cause of persecuted Christians, long may their suffering smiles ring out the joy of victory.

AUTHOR

John Pontifex

John Pontifex is Head of Press and Information at Aid to the Church in Need (UK), an international Catholic charity which supports persecuted and other suffering Christians. More by John Pontifex

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