Christianity in Decline? (part 2)

In this article I want to talk about the role and situation of Christianity in Europe and North America. I was inspired by Hungarian journalist Gergely Szilvay’s articles and the 5 year report on Christianophobia in Europe, published by OIDCE (Observatory on Intolerance and Discrimination against Christians in Europe).

“485 cemeteries or places of worship were damaged between January 1st and September 30th, 2010. 410 were Christian sites, 40 Muslim sites and 35 Jewish sites.” former French minister Brice Hortefeux, November 2010.

This means that the majority’s symbols are the target of anti-religious or more exactly anti-christian attacks. This is strange for those who know that Catholicism has been the official religion of France for over 1200 years and more than half of the French are still Catholic, but we have to know that in France and in most of Europe, practicing Catholics became a minority.

But we may wonder how can the silent majority be discriminated or perhaps persecuted in extreme cases? Unfortunately the phenomenon exists, just think about women who have always been more in number than men and they are discriminated until today in workplaces, even in Western Europe and North America, blacks have always been a majority in South Africa and they were discriminated for decades under the Apartheid rule.

Anti-clerical movements have always existed in Europe and have strong traditions in many societies, but the events of May 1968 were the milestone of the current situation. In May 1968 thousands of students protested against Charles de Gaulle's government and against the whole society's status quo for a "better world". They rioted in the streets, blocked the entries to universities, their leader Daniel Cohn-Bendit pissed on the wall of the Sorbonne, they also burnt the entrance of the Paris Stock Exchange.

This better world meant more freedoms in education, healthcare (legalization of abortion and euthanasia), further steps in separation of State and Church, more freedom in everyday life (behavior between children and parents, teachers and students), sexuality (pre-marital sex), society and public issues (no compulsory military service, no death penalty), less inequalities, protection of minorities, protection of fauna and flora and "World Peace".

The separation of State and Church is becoming recently separation of Church and Society, the word Church is more understood as “Clergy”. And the new waves of youth politics, the “Pirates” are also harsh supporters of further separation of State and Church.

It is interesting that, as a continent, Europe is the first Christian continent then come the Americas, but since the 1960s the role of Christian religion, Christian churches is weakening and not only because of being old-fashioned but also because of verbal and physical attacks against them. We are living the age of the “dictatorship” of Political Correctness. How could that be?

There are lots of methods related to this issue. Please see below many examples:

-EU officials proposed to delete the Christian holidays from Christian calendars.

-Extreme-left anarchist group called for burning of churches in Germany, they were later acquitted

-Protesters against a blasphemous theatre were arrested by police in France

-Local council organizes an exhibition in which Christian personalities are sodomized

-Event related to Christian religion is mocked on TV

-Masses disrupted by sexual minority activists

-Religious (incl. Christian) symbols banned in schools because of immigrants

-Religious sites hacked

-LGBT march mocking Christians

-Ban of wearing crosses at workplace and subsequent firing of Christian workers

-Public personalities or even Members of Parliament threatened with death for backing traditional marriage

-Silence over discrimination of Christians in Europe and other parts of the world

-Forcing politically correct measures on religious schools

After checking many of the 620 cases collected, it seemed for me after a while that the process/phenomenon is systematic and somebody is behind it. Well, according to OIDCE there are 3 groups behind the acts: radical LGBT organizations, radical feminists and radical secularists. And from a scientific point of view, the OIDCE 2011 report makes the following subdivisions in the discriminatory cases:

I- Discriminative cases

-Freedom of religion (19)

-Freedom of Speech (12)

-Freedom of Conscience (12)

-Anti-Christian acts inspired by the discriminatory laws based on equality (10)

II- Intolerance

-Forcing out of public life (14)

-Acts against religious symbols (19)

-Defamation (18)

III- Acts inspired by hate

A parliamentary report indicated in the UK that the state is failing to protect Christians’ rights whether it is about majority’s rights at work or other issue and lots of specialists concluded the Christians are not making their voice heard. BBC general-director Mark Thompson has claimed Christianity is treated with far less sensitivity than other religions because it is pretty broad shouldered.

The real problem is the passivity of Christians in public life and the smaller self-confidence in talking about Christian faith and identity partly because of fear of attacks and partly because of the successful negative campaign against the Church (pedophilia, Vatican’s dark issues, rape of minors in religious schools etc.) and against people and institutions related to traditions and old aristocratic/national/Christian elites.

Mainstream media and contemporary arts attack these the most. The "traditional" churches (Catholic, Lutheran, Calvinist) are weakened and new religions are expanding in the societies (neo-protestants, born again christians, islam, buddhism) which is a concern as religion is a part of the personal and national identity and most people are not aware of this.

We can see that the generation of May 1968 succeeded in their imagination, a lot of these claims were applied but the effects, combined with other factors, are catastrophic:

Europe has the most ageing (Germany, Switzerland) and the lowest fertility rates (Czech Republic, Bulgaria) populations in the world. Tens of millions of abortions were executed, number of population is diminishing even with immigration, more and more children are born without marriage of their parents (Hungary, France), and most of the marriages end with divorce (63% in Sweden).

A hedonistic society based on consumption is in place in most urban areas in Europe and a very large proportion of households and individuals are suffering from debts, consumption has been higher than revenues for a long time, governments didn’t prevent the economic crisis we are experiencing now.

Our mission as young Christian-democrats is to make our voice heard in major topics that are related to people’s everyday life. We have to communicate the advantages of traditions, traditional family, society, family businesses etc.

The people have to know the importance of religion and historic Clergy, even those who are not practicing Christians have the right to know what religion really means.

Freedoms in our understanding do not mean political correctness.

States in the West are failing to protect Christians’ rights because they are under the pressure of tiny but well-organized secularist and minority groups and it is our task to make the voice of the silent, “invisible” majority heard.

“Do the good and talk about it”, we have to show example for the society and form lobby groups in favor of those “afraid” to express their point of view.

It will be a long battle but it will be worth it.

Christianity in Decline? (part 1)

In December 2010, a wave of street protests was started in the Arab World by young people who protested against dictatorships, corruption and unemployment. They succeeded to overthrow dictators who ruled their countries for decades, people became freer than before, exiled
leaders came back and had the opportunity to participle in elections. But, the artificial conflicts created by older regimes within the people remained and will remain for a while.

An example: On the 9th of October last year, hundreds of Coptic Christians went to the streets to protest against the destruction of a church in southern Egypt. The Church of the Marinab had all its permits from local councils since the 1930s and authorities started demolition saying permits are not valid. There are 53 other churches that are closed by the authorities and citizens (Christians) can not use them, Christian minority saw this as an attack on its identity and as a sign of lack of freedom just like pre-revolutionary era.

A march was organized from Shubra to the State TV headquarters in Masbero, the army used military vehicles to stop the march and went through civilians killing 29 people and injuring 232, in a few hours only. Official communication was that protesters had machine guns and killed 3 soldiers. There were no arrests within the military corps following the murders but there were among the organizers of the march.
This case showed the brutality of the military body ruling the country after dictatorship and its hostility towards the Christian minority, at the same time, public media stated the Copts were the
only ones responsible for the events. There were many left-wing and moderate Muslim parties and associations who condemned the events as mass murder, but there was no stronger pressure to judge the real responsible of the killings.

This is one of the bloodiest repressions against Christians in decades, there were many other crimes committed against the Coptic minority (Kosheh 2000, Nag Hammadi 2010, Imbaba 2011)
but only in a few cases were perpetrators brought to justice, in Kosheh where 21 (the youngest martyr was 11 years old) people were killed, 93 were arrested and after 11 months they were all released, except 1 who killed a Muslim by mistake, he got 13 years to spend in jail. Just to make you understand the scale of the riots, 4500 shops and houses were looted in 48 hours, the police was withdrawn from the city during that period and a very high percentage of the victims were Christian. It is alleged that many of the criminals are serving nowadays in the armed forces
of Sohag Governorate.

The attack of a monastery, the abduction of a Christian girl and forcibly marrying her to a Muslim, burning a church or a Christian's house or shop, riots by local mobs against Christians' shops and cars are weekly issues in Egyptian media and sources of conflicts between radical Islamists and Christians. This trend is made up of islamisation and radicalisation of Islam among several social levels, the resistance of Christians to appearences of islamisation and the involvement of the regime to strengthen inter-confessionnal strifes.

Why I am writing and mentioning all this is that a Christian civilization of the Middle East is in danger. A Church which was founded by St Mark the Apostle, which is 1950 years old, has 12 million members worldwide, 2500 churches and monasteries, is in danger, especially now as Islamists gained absolute majority in the General Assembly on the elections of 2011-2012 (extremist Islamists of Al-Nur gained more than a quarter of all votes).

Many times I wonder how can I/we help as Christians? what can we do to make people all over the world know about this danger? How can a massive Christian exodus be prevented? What should the effective reaction be when we hear a church is burned down? What ideas should be proposed/used to help them? Against who/where shall we protest to stop the bloodshed?
We have to think about these questions and act.

And the above mentioned cases are related to current situations in Egypt, what about Iraq?
more than half of Iraqi Christians fled their homes, fearing killings and abductions, 500 to 1000 of the most ancient churches were burnt down and US troops did nothing to prevent these.
What could happen in Syria in case Assad regime ended? Nearly all of the "freedom-fighters" are radical Sunni Islamists from Syria and the Arab peninsula.
What about Turkey? The government is always refusing to recognize the Armenian Genocide committed by Turkish soldiers, recent Christian converts are harassed, many spend years in prison for false charges.
What about Iran? we don't know if Youssef Nadarkhani (converted form Islam to Christianity) is still alive, he was transferred to a state prison and condemned to death penalty by hanging.
What about Saudi Arabia? having a Holy Bible or a definitely Christian book is considered a crime.
What about Pakistan? Asia Bibi, accused of Blasphemy for refusing to convert to Islam, is still in
prison after 2 years now.

Since the start of the Civil War in Lebanon which Christians lost, Christianity in the Middle East
is in decline. The roots of our religion, the existence of the history's first Christian nations is in danger, the actual situation is not unique, they were threatened before the Crusades and during Ottoman Islamic rule, but it survived and I hope it will survive the decades/centuries that are coming. But, our task is to keep the attention of our surrounding on them and help them in staying in their homeland in peace and dignity.

50000 Syrian Christians were made homeless by al Faruq Brigade in the last 4 weeks in the city of Homs, they are going to spend Easter in fear. So it’s time to get to action!

Happy Easter for all of you!
God Bless,

Joseph Y.F. Potter

ECPM statement Christians in Islamic world‏

In response to the Statement regarding the situation of Christians in the Islamic World several Dutch newspapers published an article.

Dutch evening newspaper Reformatorisch Dagblad (Reformed Daily) published an article today about the ECPM statement on Christians in Islamic countries today: 'ECPM: Make EU help subject to conditions' http://www.refdag.nl/artikel/1470751/ECPM+Voorwaarden+stellen+bij+EUhulp.html

The morning newspaper Nederlands Dagblad (Dutch Daily) also published an article about it: 'EU should firmly address persecution of Christians' http://www.nd.nl/artikelen/2010/april/01/-eu-moet-christenvervolging-hard-aanpakken-#12283