The Shameful Politicization of Christian Persecution

(Mark Carney's trans activist daughter, & other stories)

The column was first published at The European Conservative

The gruesome beheading of seventy Christians in a church in the Democratic Republic of Congo by an Islamist terrorist group in February and the murder of up to 3,000 people—some sources say 7,000—in Syria this month by Islamist militants have briefly focused the world’s scattered attention on the global persecution of Christians. Most of the Syrian victims were members of the Muslim Alawite minority, but a number of Christians were also killed, and as Benedict Kiely noted in the Spectator: “the old Syrian phrase has it, ‘first the Alawites, then the Christians.’”

Christians are the most persecuted group on earth. According to Open Doors, more than 380 million Christians face “high levels of persecution and discrimination for their faith,” with 1 in 7 Christians persecuted worldwide, including 1 in 5 Christians in Africa and 2 in 5 Christians in Asia. Western countries, convulsed in a decades-long struggle session to reject the Christian foundation of our civilizational inheritance, have preferred to largely ignore these horrors. Christians complicate progressive oppression narratives and do not make convenient victims.

Indeed, when atrocities are impossible to ignore, progressive politicians frequently twist themselves into pretzels to avoid noting the identity of the victims. Barack Obama’s famously vague tweet condemning a 2019 ISIS terrorist attack on four hotels and three churches in Sri Lanka famously managed to convey no information about the event whatsoever: “The attacks on tourists and Easter worshippers in Sri Lanka are an attack on humanity.” The attacks were, of course, specifically against Christians rather than “Easter worshippers” or “humanity.”

But another trend has emerged of late: self-identified conservative commentators using the issue of Christian persecution to push preferred ideological narratives or, in some cases, insidious agendas. This tactic is used by influencers to generate support for their issue du jour amongst Christians by insisting that the target of their ire is persecuting Christians and that, conversely, anyone who disagrees with them supports the persecution of Christians. It is a potent tactic buttressed by context-free soundbites and video clips capable of generating an enormous emotional response.

Exhibit A is Tucker Carlson, who consistently accuses the Ukrainian government of having “banned a Christian faith” and refers to the “persecuted Christians of Ukraine.” Without context, the accusation appears damning. When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, the Orthodox Church in Ukraine severed ties with the Moscow Patriarchate due to Patriarch Kirill’s endorsement of Putin’s war. One of the three branches of the Orthodox Church in Ukraine chose to maintain links to the Kremlin (while formally condemning the war). The Ukrainian government believes these Russian connections are a national security threat.

Thus, in 2023 the government terminated a lease that allowed Ukrainian Orthodox Church monks to reside at the monastery caves of Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra, and the abbot of the monastery was placed under house arrest for alleged Kremlin links. The move was defended publicly by many prominent Orthodox leaders, including the global Orthodox Public Affairs Committee. It is worth noting that 72% of Ukrainians identify as Orthodox, and that the membership of the Moscow-affiliated branch dropped from 18% to 4% after the Russian invasion.

The Ukrainian government’s decision is worthy of scrutiny and people can disagree in good faith. But it becomes clear that the accusations leveled by Carlson and his clones are ideologically driven when they are deliberately disinterested in both context and what most Ukrainian religious leaders have to say, while Putin’s Russia is conversely portrayed as staunchly Christian and Putin’s own record left unremarked on. If your case against the Ukrainian government is premised on their religious liberty record, surely the record of the invaders is relevant, as well.

I spent several weeks in Russia in 2018 covering the church-state relationship. Russia does not have religious liberty. Putin views Orthodoxy as a useful repository of Russian identity, and other Christian denominations as a threat. In fact, hundreds have been charged with “anti-missionary activity” for proselytizing under a 2016 “anti-terrorism law.” Russia’s Christian dissidents do not fare well. To emphasize Ukraine’s debatable position on religious liberty while ignoring Russia’s absence of it is a deceitful—and very effective—exercise in narrative-building.

A second example of how influencers are exploiting the persecution of Christians for their own ideological ends is the reaction to the recent pogroms in Syria. Almost immediately, anti-Israel influencers began claiming that the Israelis were somehow responsible for and perhaps even supportive of these atrocities. Regardless of your views on Israel’s military operation in Gaza to recover kidnapped civilians and destroy Hamas, the allegation that Israel is an anti-Christian nation that is either apathetic to or actively endorses the persecution of Christians is a vile echo of ancient blood libel.

To make such claims, you must deliberately ignore the fact that Israel is the only country in the Middle East that legally guarantees religious freedom as well as the only country where the Christian population has steadily grown, from 34,000 in 1948 to 180,000 today. About 80% are Arab Christians. In the rest of the Middle East, the Christian population has dropped from about 13% a century ago to 5% today. Jew-hating social media influencers make much of video clips of Ultra-Orthodox Jews showing disdain for Christians in Jerusalem—while neglecting to mention that the Israeli government makes it safe for over 1.5 million Christian visitors each year, including the holy sites. Israel, to put it bluntly, is the only truly safe place for Christians in the Middle East.

Christians have frequently borne the brunt of Middle Eastern conflicts and often fare better under brutal strongmen such as Bashar Al-Assad and Saddam Hussein than under Islamist leaders. I wrote a column detailing concerns that Al-Assad’s overthrow would be bad for Christians back in 2017. The ever-shifting geopolitics of the Middle East are volatile, and no nation understands this better than Israel—a tiny Jewish minority surrounded by Muslim nations. But those who seek to portray Israel as a persecutor of Christians, rather than acknowledging those who are actually doing the persecuting, are saying something else altogether.

Indeed, Fr. Benedict Kiely, the only Catholic priest in the English-speaking world who works full-time to support persecuted Christians around the world, has noted that Jewish leaders are incredibly supportive of that work. Cardinal Dolan of New York once told him that “the greatest support he had received over the ISIS persecution of Christians was from Jewish leaders.” That, too, has been ignored by the online cohort who wish to “notice” facts that feed their antisemitism, and the Jew-hatred swamping the online conversation surrounding Christian persecution is nothing short of vicious.

There is something sacrilegious about cynically using the persecution of Christians as a political plaything. To be clear, many influencers are doing good faith work raising awareness about the plight of the persecuted. But there are more than a few others who see videos of families being bullied or butchered and assume, immediately, that the leaders or indeed entire groups that they hate or hold in contempt must bear some responsibility and immediately set to work to place the blame where their bigotry or suspicions already rest.

No nation or government, of course, should be free of criticism—and certainly not those engaged in war. But in far too many cases, that is not what we are seeing, and it is shameful. For many on the Left, the persecution of Christians is inconvenient. For too many on the Right, the persecution of Christians has become convenient. Persecuted Christians deserve better than to serve as evidence for preferred political narratives—especially when those narratives are designed to encourage hatred.

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As I detail in The Bridgehead Briefing, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s daughter is a transgender activist. Why does that story matter? I explain here and here.

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