the respected human rights group Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW) put on a conference last weekend in the Westminster section of London. CSW is a class outfit that does work that compliments other similar groups such as Barnabas Fund and Open Doors. CSW's work has a legal and policy edge to it that distinguishes it from the other groups, at least in my take. How does what I saw there relate to my current blog theme?
I was so please at the way that the Evangelicals related to the Coptic bishop. Bishop Angelos of the UK Coptic Orthodox Church gave a very impressive talk in which he urged us not to feel sorry for Egyptian Christians but to pray for them and for all of Egypt. Having just finished Brother Andrew's book Secret Believers: What Happens when Muslims come to Christ in Muslim Countries, which also shows cooperation between Evangelicals and the Coptic Orthodox church (I am quite sure the main country is Egypt though it is not named as such) I am sure this is one the ways forward in this situation.
Tina Ramirez, who works in government in the US and has studied the issue of religious freedom at the academic and policy level and knows it in depth, spoke on the alarming trends of inceasing persecution of Christians in the world in the last 20 years. She, as well as an MP named Burt (whose first name I lazily can't recall without looking for it on the net) talked about how the case must be made to leaders in Muslim majority countries that respecting the rights of Christians is improvement in their society overall. There are statistical studies that have been done showing that levels of relgiously motivated violence against minorities is tied statistically to political instability. I wish I knew more about this, but someone named Brian Grim, whose name came up in Ramirez' talk, has done work on this and is part of a very intelligent discussion on these issues.
There was a church leader from Iran, whose name does not appear on the CSW website, I suppose for his protection, said that there a big changes taking place in Iran. The most conservative estimates say that there are several hundred thousand Christian converts in the country just in the last few years, and the more liberal estimates are one million. The speaker works for Elam ministries, who do very good work. He also mentioned the issue of Persian martyrs in the Iranian church before the coming of Islam. I am writing my dissertatin on the Church of the East and its formation in the Sasanian Persian empire, and this issue of maryrs is very close to my heart. If eastern orthodox and Roman catholics and the other liturgical tradtions believe in the power of martyrs, and the importance of martyrs, why do we not just stand up and say that the 50 people killed in Iraq last October and the 100 people who've been killed in Egypt this year for their faith are martyrs?
Tertullian of Carthage, one of my heroes and whom I wrote my MA thesis about some years back, wrote that "the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church." why don't we start thinking about what this might actually mean?
Thursday, December 1, 2011
Christian Solidarity Worldwide conference in London
Labels:Islam, mideast, Saudi, ex-pat
Christian Solidarity Worldwide
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