Christian Persecution

Running for Their Lives, Christians in the Middle East

January 21, 2011January 21, 2011 by Orthodox Editors

by Chuck Colson –

“As the last of Baghdad’s and Mosul’s Christian population packs up their cares and flees for their lives,” writes international religious freedom expert Nina Shea, people are finally taking notice.

Before the Iraq War began, Christians comprised about five percent of the population of Iraq. Since then more than half have fled the country. And with last fall’s Islamic terrorist raid on Our Lady of Salvation Church in Baghdad that left fifty-nine dead, many who are still there are planning to run for their lives as well.

The New York Times reported that an Iraqi army officer told a Christian living in hiding, “We cannot protect you.” “Cannot”? Or “will not”?

What is especially disturbing is that what is happening in Iraq is beginning to happen across the Middle East. And the implications for Middle Eastern Christians and the strategic interests of the United States and the West could not be more serious. [Read more…]

Prominent Coptic Editor in Egypt: ‘I Accuse!’

January 4, 2011January 16, 2011 by Orthodox Editors

by James Lewis – On January 1, 2011, a hugely important terror attack took place in Egypt that you probably were not told about. A terrorist bomb went off at the al-Qiddissin (Saints) Church in Alexandria, Egypt, killing innocent civilians in the usual ruthless and bloodthirsty manner. The Western media hardly noticed, but the shock waves rippled through the Muslim and Christian Orthodox world.

The Coptic Church in Egypt traces its origins back to the Apostle Mark in A.D. 42. It is one of the earliest churches with a continuous history from the beginnings of Christianity, which rose several centuries before Mohammed and Islam. In Egypt, the Coptic Church has survived as a symbol of coexistence between the major institutions of Christianity and Islam. The Coptic Church is identified not only with Egypt as a country, but also with the other Orthodox Churches, including the Greek, Armenian, Bulgarian, and Russian Churches. [Read more…]

We Must Embrace Conflict

December 23, 2010 by Orthodox Editors

12/23/2010 – Steve Jalsevac –
Christ lived and taught and was Love, but that love and teaching were never politically correct. They often involved the saying of hard truths that many did not want to hear.

Christ’s birth was the ultimate sign of God’s love for the human race. And yet He was hated and there were those who wanted to kill Him, even as an infant and later as He healed thousands of diseases and even raised some from the dead. In the end, He was cruelly murdered.

One of the lessons of His life was that true love does not avoid conflict, and true love is often obliged to say things that are not welcomed or that disturb people, although the intent is never to disturb or to hurt. True love involves sticking one’s neck out where others refuse to do so for fear of personal discomfort, loss of worldly respect, or other less-than-admirable reasons. [Read more…]

The Assault on Christmas and Other American Norms

December 13, 2010December 13, 2010 by Orthodox Editors

12/12/2010 – George Scaggs –

Over the last several decades, government’s sanctioning of secular fundamentalism has emboldened its proponents, aiding a slow but sure erosion of our societal norms. Nothing escapes its wake. Ultimately, Christmas, right along with everything else, is swept up in it.

Sadly, our most basic time-honored expressions of Christian faith and celebration have become contentious issues. Today, it wouldn’t be Christmas season without someone being offended by it. Previously unthinkable assaults on the cherished holiday that an estimated 91% of Americans celebrate now occur all too routinely. [Read more…]

The Murderers of Christianity

November 9, 2010November 9, 2010 by Orthodox Editors

11/9/2010 – Patrick J. Buchanan –

Sunday, on the eve of All Saints’ Day, Nov. 1, 2010, the faithful gathered at the Assyrian Catholic Church of Our Lady of Salvation in Baghdad.

As Father Wassim Sabih finished the mass, eight al-Qaida stormed in, began shooting and forced him to the floor. As the priest pleaded that his parishioners be spared, they executed him and began their mission of mass murder.

When security forces broke in, the killers threw grenades to finish off the surviving Christians and detonated explosive-laden vests to kill the police. The toll was 46 parishioners and two priests killed, 78 others wounded, many in critical condition after losing limbs.

Within 48 hours, al-Qaida in Mesopotamia issued a bulletin: “All Christian centers, organizations and institutions, leaders and followers, are legitimate targets for the (holy warriors).” [Read more…]

God, Liberals and Liberty

October 26, 2010September 11, 2012 by Orthodox Editors

by Dennis Prager –
America’s anomalous religiosity is very much worth celebrating — not because it leads to affluence, but because it is indispensible to liberty. Had Blow made a liberty chart rather than an affluence chart, he might have noted that the freest country in the world — for 234 years — the United States of America, has also been the most God-centered.

Yes, I know that the Islamic world has also been God-based and that it has not been free. But that is because Allah is not regarded as the source of liberty, as the America’s Judeo-Christian God has been, but as the object of submission (“Islam” means “submission”).

Since the inception of the United States (and, indeed, before it in colonial America), liberty, i.e., personal freedom, has been linked to God.

America was founded on the belief that God is the source of liberty. That is why the inscription on the Liberty Bell is from the Old Testament, the Hebrew Bible (Leviticus 25): “Proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof.”

The Declaration of Independence also asserts this link: All men “are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” [Read more…]

The Cross in Torment

October 15, 2010October 15, 2010 by Orthodox Editors

10/15/2010 – Stephen Brown –

While Tariq Ramadan is hectoring Americans about “Islamophobia,” calling Muslims the new “blacks” in America, a synod is currently underway in the Vatican to save Christian communities in the Middle East’s Islamic countries from extinction. The flight of the region’s Christians to the West from the area where Christianity was born has reached such alarming proportions, Pope Benedict XVI gathered 285 delegates in Rome last Monday to investigate the phenomenon.

In his homily in St. Peter’s Cathedral to open the two-week synod, the Catholic pontiff called upon the delegates to scrutinize the situation with a “view to God” to ensure the region’s Christians can escape “discouragement” and “the temptation to flee.” The pope also indicated that the heart of problem lies in the threat Middle Eastern Christians face from Islamic radicalism, calling it, along with the international drug trade, “terroristic ideologies.

“Violent acts are apparently made in the name of God; but this is not God: they are false divinities that must be unmasked,” he said. [Read more…]

Civilizational War

August 20, 2010August 24, 2010 by Orthodox Editors

8/19/2010 – Bill Warner –

The Civilization of Islam
One of the clearest lessons about Islam is found in the Sharia. The largest part of the Sharia is devoted to regulating the life of Muslims down to the smallest detail. There is no aspect of life that is not regulated — sex, food, art, business, education, prayer, manners, speech, and how to think and not to think. There is no aspect of life that is outside the power of Sharia — religion, politics, ethics, and culture are included. The Sharia is the operating manual for a complete civilization. Islam is complete within itself and needs nothing from the outside. [Read more…]

What About the Ground Zero Church? Archdiocese Says Officials Abandoned Project

August 17, 2010August 18, 2010 by Orthodox Editors

8/17/2010 – Judson Berger –

The Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America accused New York officials on Tuesday of turning their backs on the reconstruction of the only church destroyed in the Sept. 11 attacks, while the controversial mosque near Ground Zero moves forward.

The sidelined project is the St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church, a tiny, four-story building destroyed in 2001 when one of the World Trade Center towers fell on top of it. Nobody from the church was hurt in the attack, but the congregation has for the past eight years been trying to rebuild its house of worship.

While the mosque project cleared red tape earlier this month, negotiations between the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and the church stalled last year — and will not be revived, according to government officials. [Read more…]

Re-education, It’s Not Just for Tyrants Anymore

August 16, 2010August 16, 2010 by Orthodox Editors

8/16/2010 – Chuck Colson –

The threat to religious freedom in this country is not a hypothetical threat. It’s real, and real people are suffering as a result.

When we wrote the Manhattan Declaration last fall, we warned about “the decline in respect for religious values in the media, the academy and political leadership.”

An example of this decline is on display currently in Georgia. Jennifer Keeton, who is a 24-year-old studying for a master’s degree in counseling at Augusta State University, has been threatened with expulsion. The grounds for the threatened expulsion are not poor grades or misconduct – they are Keeton’s beliefs.

Specifically, they are Keeton’s beliefs about the morality of homosexuality. In written assignments and classroom discussions, Keeton has said that people’s sexual conduct is “the result of accountable, personal choices,” and not “a state of being.” [Read more…]