“Theological courage calls the inner-man to ignore his buckling knees and take theologically driven stances that, while potentially controversial, are righteous in nature.” So write Owen Strachen and Andrew Walker in a recent article discussing Hobby Lobby’s stance against Obamacare’s onerous trampling of religious liberty. The idea of martyrdom, be it physical, social, or [...]
Much has been said lately about how to do evangelization. I’ve contributed a bit to that myself. Now I begin to think that, instead of always stressing niceness, it might be good to give tough religion a try. That idea was inspired by a reading of Eric Metaxas’s biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the Lutheran theologian [...]
Recently an Egyptian Muslim posted a YouTube videotape of himself cursing Islam, its holy book, the Koran, tearing the latter to pieces and throwing it in the garbage. Excerpts of what he said follow: There it is, Allah’s book, this is the basic catastrophe. I don’t know what day it is of this disgusting month [...]
Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4 The air of centuries ago is healthful to inhale, especially when it blows balmy and pristine. Wafting from the past, the great Christian revolution of the 4th century has the capacity to ennoble modern hearts and uplift minds that have sunk like stones into what is seen [...]
“He moved about freely with them in Jerusalem, and spoke out boldly in the name of the Lord. He also spoke and debated with the Hellenists, but they tried to kill him.” (Acts 9:29, NAB) When St. Paul began traveling throughout the Roman Empire, truly going into the culture of death in order to proclaim [...]
Half of Iraq’s indigenous Christians are gone due to the unleashed forces of jihad, many of them fleeing to nearby Syria; yet, as the Assad regime comes under attack by al-Qaeda and others, the jihad now seeps into Syria, where Christians are experiencing a level of persecution unprecedented in the nation’s modern history. Likewise, some [...]
The so-called “Arab Spring” continues to transition into a “Christian Winter,” including in those nations undergoing democratic change, such as Egypt, where the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafis dominated the elections—unsurprisingly so, considering the Obama administration has actually been training Islamists for elections. Arab regimes not overthrown by the “Arab Spring” are under mounting international [...]
“The Church is a place of refuge and a sign of hope for the people.” With these words, a bishop in East Congo drew attention to the growing significance of the Church in this crisis region. Vincent de Paul Kwanga Njubu, Bishop of Manono in the south-east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo made [...]
Egypt’s Maspero massacre—where the military killed dozens of Christians protesting the destruction of their churches—dominates October’s persecution headlines. Facts and details concerning the military’s “crimes against humanity” are documented in this report, and include videos of armored-vehicles running over civilians, a catalog of lies and deceitful tactics employed by Egypt’s rulers and state media, and [...]
A year after the attack which left 58 Christians dead in Baghdad, the faithful in Iraq’s capital city continue to be scared of fresh violence. “Living in Iraq means living in fear. There’s no feeling safe and during the last two or three weeks the situation has got worse, because of tensions among political parties,” [...]
A faith removed from lived experience is no faith at all (James 2:14ff). Our faith concerns the totality of the human person, the shape of culture, with a commitment to building a “civilization of love.” The political arena is a very specific place we are called to “go into the world” (Matt. 28:19). So it was [...]
Christian prisoners in Pakistan’s jails are suffering severe discrimination, according to a local Catholic lawyer. Moazzam Aslam Bhatti reported his claims of anti-Christian prejudice to staff from Aid to the Church in Need (ACN), who are currently visiting projects which the Catholic charity is supporting in the country. Mr. Bhatti said that Christians are marginalized [...]
To what extent was Egypt’s Maspero massacre, wherein the military literally mowed down Christian Copts protesting the ongoing destruction of their churches, a product of anti-Christian sentiment? A video of Egypt’s Grand Mufti, Sheikh Ali Gomaa (or Gom’a), which began circulating weeks before the massacre, helps elucidate. While holding that Muslims may coexist with Christians [...]
According to a local Coptic leader in Egypt, “Christians are currently experiencing their worst time in recent centuries.” This statement was made by the Coptic Orthodox Bishop Stephanos of Beba and Elfashn to international Catholic pastoral charity Aid to the Church in Need (ACN). As he described, Christians are being violently killed under the eyes [...]
A DC-area legal activist has filed a federal human rights complaint against the Catholic University of America (CUA) for acting “probably with malice” against Muslim students for having Catholic imagery in all of its rooms that would hinder Muslim prayer – though the school says it has never heard a complaint from the students themselves. [...]
For at least one group of Middle-Easterners, the Arab Spring is turning out to be a decidedly wintery affair. And if confirmation was ever needed, just consider the escalation of naked violence against Christians throughout the region. The recent instance of Egyptian army vehicles crushing and killing Coptic Christians protesting against a church burning was [...]
“What the Catholic Church in the United States really needs to stiffen its backbone is a good persecution.” How often, I wonder, have I heard somebody say something like that? How often have I said something like it myself? Be careful what you ask for—you may get it. The persecution of religion in America has [...]
An especially busy month in the persecution of Christians in the Muslim world, September also witnessed Secretary of State Hillary Clinton release the Annual Report on International Religious Freedom. Ironically, aside from Iran and Sudan, none of the countries that habitually appear in this series were designated as “countries of particular concern,” defined by the [...]
Finding and connecting similar patterns of behavior throughout Islamic history is one of the most objective ways of determining whether something is or is not part of Muslim civilization. Consider the issue of forced conversion in Islam, a phenomenon that has a long history with ample precedents. Indeed, from its inception, most of those who [...]
Christians in one corner of Iraq have tripled in number over the past 15 years according to a leading bishop who is grappling with an influx of people escaping persecution and oppression. Christians in Ankawa, a suburb of the Kurdish capital Erbil, have increased from more than 8,500 in the mid-1990s to more than 25,500 [...]
The situation of Christians in Syria could worsen under a new government. This was the fear voiced by Bishop Samir Mazloum of the Maronite Patriarchate of Antioch, in a discussion with international Catholic pastoral charity Aid to the Church in Need (ACN). According to Bishop Mazloum, whose See is in Bkerke, Lebanon, the Church is [...]
This series was developed in order to collate some—by no means all—of the foulest instances of Muslim persecution of Christians that surface each month. It serves two purposes: Intrinsically, to document that which the mainstream media does not: habitual, if not chronic, Muslim persecution of Christians. Instrumentally, to show that such persecution is not “random,” [...]
“We are a growing Church, and each year around 1000 people find their way to the Faith.” This was the report of a bishop from India during a visit to international Catholic pastoral charity Aid to the Church in Need (ACN). Bishop Cyprian Monis, from the Diocese of Asansol in West Bengal, on the eastern [...]
The isolated ruling class in charge of a bloated government increasingly turns its back on the millennial religious traditions that had once made their nation great. Under the prods of a small cadre of activists, they strip the public square of the symbols of that old time religion. All that their ancestors revered they now [...]
