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Daily dying
March 11th, 2010 Posted in Faith and LifeJohn 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.
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3 Responses to “Daily dying”
By Adam
on Mar 11, 2010
Where is the outrage indeed. But Nigeria, sad to say, is not unique at all–only the most recent example of the persecution of Christians in Africa since Egypt was first conquered by the Arab Muslims in the 630s. Today it is a regular part of life there. Two good sites for information:
http://freecopts.net/english/
http://www.fatherzakaria.net/
By Ronald
on Mar 11, 2010
My immediate sense was to see this as simply Muslim violence against Christians but I am not so sure after I read a story via Yahoo News a couple of days ago (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100307/ap_on_re_af/af_nigeria_violence). At least according to this article, the violence does go both ways. So after describing the killing of hundreds of Christians, the article speaks of Jos, part of the turbulent section of Nigeria: “Jos has been under a dusk-til-dawn curfew enforced by the military since religious-based violence in January left more than 300 people dead — most of them Muslims.”
So I am not sure what to make of the violence in Nigeria. It was the same with the story of Copts being attacked by Muslims at a church in Egypt; when I read further into the story, an article suggested the violence wasn’t simply one sided but was in retaliation to things the Copts had done.
By Ronald
on Mar 17, 2010
Just read this about Jos, Nigeria by the Roman Catholic archbishop there and found it informative. http://www.zenit.org/article-28647?l=english (H/t First Thoughts blog)