Evangelicals and Pentecostal
Christians are most at risk among worldwide persecuted Christians (in part)
because of their zeal to evangelize.
This is the conclusion of a new study – “In Response to Persecution” –
of Notre Dame’s Under Caesar’s Sword project.
The study was recently revealed at the
National Press Club where panelists mentioned several times during a discussion
that evangelicals and Pentecostals are targeted for persecution more intensely
than mainline, Catholic, and Orthodox believers for several reasons.
In many nations, the report reads, “evangelicals
and Pentecostals are comparatively recent arrivals and thus have not
established patterns relating to surrounding populations and government to the
same degree with churches with centuries of history in a given region.” They are also perceived as being supported by
likeminded believers in the West, the research finds. But perhaps most importantly, because
evangelicals and Pentecostals understand evangelization and the necessity of
conversion as “verbal, urgent, and sometimes dramatic processes,” they actually
anticipate being persecuted.
Both governments hostile to
Christianity and non-state actors like terrorist groups and militant varieties of
other religions thus view them as more of a threat.
While a pattern and not an exact
correlation (since other churches also evangelize sometimes and in some cases
evangelicals and Pentecostals seek cooperative relationships with the state),
the trend does hold in several nations. In
Central Asian Republics and in Russia, where ever since the conclusion of the
Cold War extensive missionary activity has risen dramatically, persecution is strong. The repression of evangelical and Pentecostal
Christianity is particularly severe in Iran; Christians in that country
routinely “disguise their faith in public, aiming to appear little different
from the surrounding Muslim culture.” Such
a survival strategy is not at odds with their faith, the report notes in
another of its key findings. Yet many
Christians are willing to profess their faith publicly and contend for their
rights, and thus risk being killed, which comports with their theology.
When Christians in repressive
countries do dare to confront regimes opposed to their faith they do so with
the expectation of harsh consequences. The
word “martyr,” the study notes, is derived from the Greek for “witness” and
those who die for their faith “embody the fullest expression of Christian
freedom, testifying with their lives to the ultimate triumph of the God in whom
they hope.”
“When Chinese Catholic and Protestant
leaders accepted decades of imprisonment for their refusal to join the
Communist government’s official church structures, and when Pakistan’s Shahbaz
Bhatti stood for persecuted minorities, knowing that a form of martyrdom was
their likely fate, they bore witness not only to their God but also to the
dignity of all, Christians and non-Christians alike,” the report reads.
The Under Caesar’s Sword project is a 3-year
research endeavor and a collaboration of 17-scholars and academic centers
including the Notre Dame Center for Ethics and Culture, the Religious Freedom Institute,
and Georgetown University’s Religious Freedom Research Project. Read the report for yourself at http://ucs.nd.edu/assets/233538/ucs_report_2017_web.pdf
Rev.
Dr. Kenneth L. Beale, Jr.
Chaplain
(Colonel-Ret), U.S. Army
Pastor,
Ft. Snelling Memorial Chapel
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