Persecuted and Forgotten? has been published by the UK office of Catholic charity Aid to the Church in Need.

Some of the report's findings are:

• Persecution of Christians reached a new high between 2015 and 2017, as groups such as ISIS and Boko Haram stepped up attacks
• Not only are Christians more persecuted than any other faith group, they are also experiencing the worst forms of persecution
• The international community is failing to respond adequately to the violence.

The report says if Christian organisations and other institutions had not filled the gap, the Christian presence could already have disappeared in Iraq and other parts of the Middle East.

Researchers focused on 13 countries, providing an overview of the state of religious freedom for the country's various denominations.

As well as in Iraq and Syria, Christians are under increasing threat in several major Islamic countries, and under authoritarian regimes such as North Korea and Eritrea.

In China, Christians have come under increasing pressure as authorities try to force their religion to conform to Communist ideals.

More than 2,000 churches have been demolished in the coastal province of Zhejiang and police are still routinely detaining clergy.

Source

The Christian Post

The Catholic Herald

Image: All News Pipeline

In perhaps the only sign of action from the West to the increased intensity of Christian persecution, France has opened itself up to refugees from Iraq, who are being driven out under pain of death by ISIS.

This is a welcome reversion to form for France, which ever since the Middle Ages has periodically found ways to protect Christian minorities abroad.

This is a great beginning — but it is such a small response to the magnitude of Christian persecution, happening not just in Iraq and Syria, but in Nigeria and Egypt as well.

Why hasn't there been a greater response from the once-Christian West to the plight of Christians?

It's not for lack of outrageous events.

The International Society for Human Rights estimates that 80 percent of acts of religious discrimination in the world have Christians as their victims.

And these are starting to poke through the headlines.

The purge in Mosul attracted some attention, the kidnapping and threatened murder of mostly Christian girls by Boko Haram even more.

But much less is said about the fate of Syrian Christians or Copts.

Still less is said about even more obscure religious minorities like Yazidi and Druze who face discrimination from ISIS.

One reason for our silence, suggested by John Allen Jr. in his book The Global War on Christians, is that the modern humanitarian West has difficulty seeing Christians as "native" to third-world nations.

Their imagination of "global" Christianity is one of a religion implanted by Europeans and Americans through a violent, racist, and discredited colonialism.

Of course this isn't true in these cases, as there were Christians in Iraq, Syria, and Egypt long before there were any in Britannia or Biloxi.

Allen also cited French philosopher Regis Debray's view that in Christian persecution the victims are "'too Christian' to excite the Left, and 'too foreign' to excite the Right." Continue reading

Source

• Michael Brendan Dougherty in The Week

Michael Brendan Dougherty is senior correspondent at TheWeek.com.

"This matter of Muslim persecution of Christians is a humanitarian crisis at this point," said Raymond Ibrahim.

He said the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom had even predicted that Christians might disappear altogether from Iraq, Afghanistan, and Egypt.

Continue reading

On Thursday, the congregation of the Batak Protestant Church (HKBP) in Taman Sari, Setu district in Bekasi regency, watched the local administration demolish their unfinished church building.

The congregation formed a barrier between their church and the idling bulldozer.

They sang Batak hymns in the afternoon heat, wailing between the verses, as church member Megarenta Sihite shouted at the officers from the Bekasi District Public Order Agency.

"What is our sin, sir?" she screamed. "Is it a sin to pray? Show us where our mistake is. I thought this is a democratic country. Please, Mr. President, we were born here in this country with five religions. We never did anything bad to their houses of worship. Why are they doing this to us?"

Around 2:45 p.m the church building was demolished amid cheers of "Allahu Akbar" ("God is great") from members of the hard-line Taman Sari Islamic People's Forum (FUIT) who had gathered outside the building.

On Friday an Advent church in West Java's city of Tasikmalaya was vandalised by an unknown group early on Friday morning.

Police said that vandals damaged the church walls, gate and construction materials, which were intended to be used during the church's renovation.

On Saturday evening, members of Muslim community groups closed off the Damai Kristus Catholic Church in Tambora, West Jakarta.

The attack took place from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m., with dozens of members of the congregation unable to leave, while other congregation members were locked out.

Rev. Matius Widyo said around 20 police officers were guarding the place but did nothing to the people who sealed the church. "They seemed to start to take action only when a fight broke out," he told The Jakarta Post.

On Sunday the congregation of Damai Kristus held their Sunday service protected by the police to prevent another lock out by members of Muslim community groups.

Jakarta Police spokesman Sr. Comr. Rikwanto said that around 50 officers had been deployed to stave off possible conflict with the Joint Forum of Mosque, Mushollah and Koran Reciting Groups (FKM3T) members.

Sources

• Jakarta Post
• Jakarta Globe
• Image The Straits Times

These figures from a conference on the persecution of Christians around the world lead John Allen to comment: "By any standard . . . the scale of anti-Christian violence is stunningly vast. In fact, this may be one of the reasons it's difficult to raise an alarm: the numbers are so big it's hard to believe they're real."

Continue reading

Its president says people who have not experienced persecution firsthand "cannot fully understand what it means to receive threats against your life, to have your house destroyed, your own rights violated and your loved ones taken away from you and imprisoned; and all this because of your faith in Jesus Christ".

Continue reading

There is such a minority in the world today, and it's Christianity. The fact that there isn't yet a broad-based movement to fight anti-Christian persecution suggests something is missing in public understanding.

In part, of course, the problem is that unquestionable acts of persecution, such as murder and imprisonment, are sometimes confused with a perceived cultural and legal "war on religion" in the West, a less clear-cut proposition. In part, too, it's because of the antique prejudice that holds that Christianity is always the oppressor, never the oppressed.

Yet as with most things, politics also has a distorting effect, and a story out of Israel this week makes the point.

On Tuesday, the doors of a Trappist monastery in Latrun, near Jerusalem, were set ablaze, with provocative phrases in Hebrew spray-painted on the exteriors walls, such as "Jesus is a monkey." The assault was attributed to extremist Jews unhappy with the recent dismantling of two settlements on nearby Palestinian land.

Founded in 1890 by French Trappists, the Latrun monastery is famed for its strict religious observance. Israelis call it minzar ha'shatkanim, meaning "the monastery of those who don't speak." Ironically, it's known for fostering dialogue with Judaism, and welcomes hundreds of Jewish visitors every week.

Tuesday's attack was not an isolated incident. In 2009, a Franciscan church near the Cenacle on Mount Zion, regarded by tradition as the site of Christ's Last Supper, was defaced with a spray-painted Star of David and slogans such as "Christians Out!" and "We Killed Jesus!" According to reports, the vandals also urinated on the door and left a trail of urine leading to the church. Read more

Sources

• John L Allen Jr in National Catholic Reporter
• Image: Global Church