John Hinderacker at Powerline (I got there from Instapundit) has this observation about the latest slaughter of Christians in Nigeria:
“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.”
I suspect most of us Christians living in the relatively safe West are here because we haven’t the faith or strength to be martyred like our brothers and sisters elsewhere. But do we have the faith and strength to remember them in more than a passing prayer?
As for the difference between Muslims and Christians on the point of violence, I don’t know what to say. They are called to force the world into bloody submission; we are called to turn the other cheek. They are called to strap bombs to the chests of their sons and daughters; we are called to obey the civil authorities.
Still, I don’t know how I could witness the slaughter of my family and friends without taking up a gun or blade or rock and spilling blood. Which is one reason why, I suppose, I live here and not there — because I haven’t the faith to die as these martyrs daily die.
