OSV STORY FOR NOV. 16

Will ideology get in the way of human rights?

Liberal activists balk at conservative Christians’ efforts to curb global religious persecution

This confusion might explain why legislation meant to assist persecuted Christians will — again, depending on whom you talk to — either certainly pass or is dead in the water.

A coalition of conservative Christian groups is pushing Congress to pass the Freedom From Religious Persecution Act. The bill would create a new White House office that would impose economic sanctions on nations that persecute its citizens on the basis of religion.

While the legislation received qualified support from the U.S. Catholic Conference, the American bishops’ public-policy arm, it is strongly backed by the National Association of Evangelicals, the Christian Coalition and other groups.

"From our perspective, the issue is really taking off," said Michael McNinch, spokesman for the International Day of Prayer for the Persecuted Church (IDPPC). "Everything from the numbers of people requesting some of our information to just the activity level around here argues for more people paying attention to the persecution of Christians."

More than 51,000 local churches have formally let the organization know of their intent to participate in the Day of Prayer Nov. 16. The Christian Coalition has agreed to take up the cause for the coming year, and stories about the issue have appeared widely in the secular print media.

Well-known Catholics such as Keith Fournier, president of the Christian Coalition’s spin-off, the Catholic Alliance, and Father Michael Scanlan, T.O.R., president of the Franciscan University of Steubenville, Ohio, have also signed on.

Some of the building interest about the issue may be tied to the recent U.S. visit of Jiang Zemin, president of the People’s Republic of China. China, critics charge, is notorious for abusing the rights of Christians and other religious minorities as the government seeks to crack down on any potentially subversive movement.

Protesters, including Christians, were on hand to publicize the issue at every stop of Jiang’s tour, although the Chinese president reportedly denied the protests’ importance, calling them "noise pollution" upon his return to Beijing.

But Jiang is not the only one to have viewed with disdain the outpouring of concern over persecuted Christians around the world. Human-rights groups in the United States that are generally regarded as liberal, even among the active human-rights lobby, have been slow to take up the cause of persecuted Christians — in large part, critics charge, because of the conservative nature of the groups that have recently begun raising awareness about the problem.

Writing in The Wall Street Journal (Oct. 23), Adrian Karatnycky, president of Freedom House, declared openly that "many liberal human-rights activists are unwilling to join forces with religious groups — largely because of the latter’s opposition to abortion."

Karatnycky noted that Human Rights Watch, a well-respected mainstream advocacy group, had mentioned persecution against Christians only twice in the previous 15 months, and that its exhaustive report on China had failed to mention Beijing’s one-child policy that has been the source of much forced abortion and sterilization.

But nowhere else has the conflict over whether Christians are being persecuted in the world and whether the United States should do anything about it been as fiercely fought as in the debate over the Freedom From Religious Persecution Act, the so-called Wolf-Specter bill.

Named for its two primary sponsors, Rep. Frank Wolf, R-Va., and Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., the legislation’s main provisions would establish a White House office whose job it would be to monitor religious freedom around the world.

Nations that are found to violate their citizens’ religious freedoms would have their U.S. aid suspended. The legislation would also streamline the immigration process for people fleeing religious persecution.

In a statement in support of the bill, Jesuit Father Drew Christiansen, director of the U.S. bishops’ office on international peace and justice, noted that the legislation has "given religious liberty a new presence and visibility that, with a few notable exceptions, has been largely absent in the past."

But that very awareness has drawn the ire of significant liberal commentators. Anthony Lewis, writing in The New York Times, suggested that the Freedom From Religious Persecution Act sends a "wrong signal" that America cares more about people persecuted for religious reasons than about those persecuted for other reasons.

Noting that "fundamentalists and evangelical Christian denominations" support the bill, Lewis took particular issue with the status those escaping religious persecution would get in the immigration system. "The victims of torture, threatened assassination, female genital mutilation and other horrors would get shorter shrift," Lewis wrote.

His "doubts" about the effort, he wrote, only increased because "conservative Christian groups are [the bill’s] strongest, though not only, backers."

"Of course their concern for persecuted Christians is sincere. But they undoubtedly have another object, too: to advance their cause of giving religion a prime role in the American political structure," Lewis added.

Slate, an electronically published journal of generally liberal reputation, also found dark conspiratorial elements behind the effort to pass the legislation.

In a story whose headline called the campaign "spurious," Franklin Foer wrote that the bill’s real concern is to provide "an opening for leadership on the religious right."

"Contenders, especially Gary Bauer of the Family Research Council, have seized on an issue that formerly was a concern mainly of apolitical church groups," Foer wrote, after characterizing Pueblo Institute President Nina Shea, a legislation supporter, as "a born-again Catholic activist and one of the movement’s most important propagandists."

William Shulz, executive director of Amnesty International, U.S.A., expressed similar concerns about Christian motives when he asked in a Sept. 11 article in The New York Times: "Is it right for Christians to limit their outrage to violations against Christians? What about Muslims in China’s Xinjiang Province or Buddhists in Tibet? What exactly is the motive of political and religious conservatives, and is it pure?"

As might be expected, with so many worries about conspiracy, the legislation has not had an easy time.

Though much of its core support still seems to be building, the American Spectator ran a brief item that suggested that Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott was backing away from the bill.

According to the Spectator, the root of the problem rests in a dispute between Lott and Michael Horowitz, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, over how the legislation might affect Israel.

Neither Horowitz nor Lott were available for comment, but both McNinch at IDPPC and Paul Gallagher with the Center for Jewish and Christian Values affirmed their respective organizations’ commitment to the bill, and said they believe the legislation is going forward.

"We have long looked for any legislative vehicle that would help ease the plight of persecuted Christians around the world," Gallagher said. "We support Wolf-Specter and all similar efforts."

Morrison writes from Arlington, Va.

Copyright Our Sunday Visitor, 1997; from the 11-16-97 edition

To make Jesus Christ Lord of the Americas

The Word on the street

New World ardor

Trials in the megacity

Soul of the Southwest

Why it’s a synod for America (not the Americas)