Capitol Hill Conference Publicizes Christian Persecution      12/19/2005
By Emma Elliott

Christmas season brings increased attacks around the world.

Did you know that persecution of Christians worldwide tends to increase around Christmas time? Past incidents have included bombings of Christmas Day services in Indonesia. In Saudi Arabia it is illegal to wish someone “Merry Christmas.”

Facts such as these influenced the timing of a recent conference on Capitol Hill, titled “Christmas Under Siege Around the World” and sponsored by Freedom House’s Center for Religious Freedom and the Congressional Working Group on Religious Freedom. Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pennsylvania) chaired the event, which took place on Tuesday, December 13.

Nina Shea, Director of the Center for Religious Freedom, told Concerned Women for America (CWA) that the event’s purpose was to “draw attention to persecution of Christians, especially at this time of the year.”

“It is ironic that here in the United States the cultural focus during the Christmas season is on getting people to use politically correct rhetoric that substitutes the secular word ‘holiday’ for the holy word of ‘Christmas,’” said Dr. Janice Crouse, Senior Fellow of CWA’s Beverly LaHaye Institute. “In other parts of the world the attacks are more direct; there are cultural efforts to destroy the Christian faith by attacking believers whose transformed lives give testament to the power of Christianity.”

The conference’s speakers included Charles Chaput, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Denver and a member of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom; and Dr. Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission. Other experts spoke on persecution in countries such as China, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, North Korea, Vietnam, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia and Sri Lanka.

Archbishop Chaput has been speaking out for many years about the need to protect religious freedom as a basic human right, an issue that he feels does not receive enough media attention.

He discussed the growing persecution of Indonesian Christians by Muslim militants and pointed to the beheadings of three teenage schoolgirls this fall. “Those murders were not isolated or random incidents,” he said. “They were part of a brutal ongoing war by Islamic militants against the country’s Christian minority.” This trend is especially disturbing as Indonesia is a democracy with a constitutional guarantee of religious freedom.

“During our celebration of Christ’s birth, we must remember those whose faith means sacrifice and persecution,” said Crouse. “We dare not forget that fellow believers are under attack in numerous nations around the world.”

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