Power Line's John Hinderaker ponders sad questions, questions frequently raised on this blog too.In a number of places around the world, it is open season on Christians. We read of Christians burned out of their homes and slaughtered in Pakistan. Most recently, at least 500 Christians were murdered in Nigeria. The attackers in all cases are Muslims, inspired by the warlike message of their Prophet...
So where is the outrage? I don't know what denomination those Nigerian Christians were, but Lutherans are the most numerous Christian denomination in Africa. I'm a Lutheran, but I have never heard a single word from any church source, local or national, about the mass murder of African Christians. No one seems to care.
No doubt readers can refer us to some Christian sources--evangelical, most likely--who have tried to draw attention to the plight of Christians in Africa, the Middle East and Asia who are being exterminated. But any such effort has wholly failed to gain traction in the "mainstream" Christian community.
Why? I can't explain it. Maybe "mainstream" Christianity is dead, except as an appendage of secular liberal opinion. Maybe, as the world's largest religion, Christianity has become so diffused that New World Christians don't much relate to their co-religionists in Africa and Asia. I don't know. What I do know is that it is much more dangerous to publish a cartoon of Mohammed than to slice apart a Christian with a machete.
To learn more (and to insure that your own heart isn't marked with an indifference to the persecuted Church), read through some of the posts here on Vital Signs Blog dealing with this crucial matter. Just use the Topical Index on the left sidebar and scan through those posts under "The Persecuted Church."
Also you can check out various organizations that concentrate on religious freedom issues. A good start would be two that are in our Links section, International Christian Concern and Voice of the Martyrs.
