Christianity’s Failure in India? Think Again

Historian Philip Jenkins has a post at Aleteia in which he takes on a piece in an Indian magazine by Tony Joseph claiming that Christianity has failed in India, evidenced by its small and declining numbers.  Jenkins voices strong cautions about Joseph’s arguments, including ones about the Indian census:

Nobody can claim that Christianity has claimed major shares of the Indian population, or that it is likely to do so in the near future. But some counter-arguments do need to be stressed, especially about the overall numbers. No sane person believes the religious content of the Indian national census, which is one of the world’s great works of creative fiction. At all levels, there is enormous pressure of all kinds – cultural, political and bureaucratic – to minimize the presence of all non-Hindu religions, including Hindus, Muslims and Buddhists. That pressure becomes overwhelming when dealing with people of low and no caste, those who are most tempted to defect to one of the alternative faiths. Bureaucrats are especially hard to convince in matters of religious conversion from Hinduism.

He claims even more strongly that Christianity is not populous in India because others want it that way:

Also, Joseph is wrong to suggest any deep-laid cultural reasons why Christianity is incompatible with Indian culture. As recently as the 1940s, Chinese Christian numbers were just as tiny as those in India, and they have ballooned. The reason the same thing has not happened in India is because of systematic and widespread persecution by Hindu extremist sects, often operating in alliance with local governments and police authorities — violence that receives virtually no publicity in the West. If and when conversion became easier and less dangerous, we would presumably see a Christian boom in India comparable to that in China or Korea.

Jenkins reminds us that in a country that is intensely religious and one of whose greatest challenges is managing religious pluralism, religious freedom is not all that it is cracked up to be.

 

 

 

Be Afraid! No John Paul II for France

The enthusiasm for Pope John Paul II that I have expressed in the last two blog posts is apparently not shared by a French court, which has ordered the town of Ploëmel, France to take down its statue of John Paul II under France’s 1905 law establishing laïcité.  The statue quotes the former pope’s motto, “Be not afraid.”  The court, it seems, would have the good citizens of Ploëmel be afraid — of its jurisdiction.

Remember Solidarity?

More on mercy in politics emerges from an international seminar that I attended in Brussels today, “The Treasure of Solidarity: Lessons for Europe.” Sponsored by the Centre for the Thought of John Paul II in Warsaw, the seminar assembled a fascinating group of mostly Polish politicians and intellectuals, many of whom were active in the Solidarity movement of the 1970s and 1980s that overthrew Poland’s Communist government in 1989, leading, in turn, to the end of the Soviet empire and to the end of the Cold War.

Reflecting back on Solidarity, they identified several extraordinary features. First, it brought together in a sense of community sectors of society who would not otherwise be inclined to associate with one another – workers, managers, farmers, and intellectuals. Second, it was arguably the first truly working class movement to overthrow a government – ironic, given the Communist regime’s claim to represent the working class. Third, it was a rare revolution in that it succeeded without collapsing into revenge or war. Fourth, relatedly, it was non-violent. Fifth, it was a Christian revolution, undergirded by Catholic thought and the leadership of John Paul II.

There was also a general consensus that Solidarity was quickly forgotten about soon after Communism was defeated. Speakers felt that Poland has descended into deep domestic divisions; it is now the most divided country in Europe, according to one panelist.

These cleavages include a division over the Communist past. Conservatives believe that the Roundtable negotiations of 1989 proceeded too quickly, involved too hasty a compromise with the Communist government, and that too little has been done to bring accountability and the telling of truth about the Communist period. Those on the left demur, calling for a drawing of a line across the past in order that the nation may move on with its future. Another source of intense controversy is over the Smolensk air crash that killed President Lech Kaczynski and other top officials on April 10, 2010, with one side believing it was an accident and the other side that it was a conspiracy. Then, there are culture wars over life and marriage, divisions over economic policy, and a general sense that the spiritual depth of the Solidarity years has been replaced by materialism and technocracy.

Many speakers thought that Solidarity’s stress on reconciliation, faith, and forgiveness could be retrieved and brought to bear on Poland’s cleavages as well as on those of other countries and relationships between countries – Poland and Ukraine, for instance.

That Bull About Mercy

Pope Francis has issued a “Bull of Indiction” declaring the coming year, beginning December 8, 2015, a Year of Mercy.

Does mercy have meaning for global politics? There is a long tradition, including thinkers as diverse as Thomas Aquinas and John Rawls, holding that the first virtue of the political order is justice. But justice, while crucial, is “not enough,” insists Pope Francis. Alone, it descends into legalism, resulting in its own destruction. Complementary to justice and critically necessary to politics is mercy.

Pope Francis is not the first pope to espouse mercy, despite the fact that he is frequently celebrated for his novelty. Pope John Paul II made mercy a major theme of his pontificate and argued in his second encyclical of 1980, Dives in Misericordia (“Rich in Mercy”), that mercy could be a political virtue. Mercy, he argued, is the will to restore all that is broken in human affairs.  We might see mercy, then, in policies aimed at directly alleviating suffering — for instance, humanitarian relief.  Most distinctively, though, John Paul II thought that mercy could be manifested through forgiveness.

Forgiveness in politics? The very phrase rings oxymoronic. But John Paul II thought the idea held promise and argued as much not only in Dives in Misericordia but also in two subsequent Messages for the World Day of Peace, one in 1997 and one in 2002, the latter in the wake of the attacks of September 11, 2001.

Is there any evidence that forgiveness is actually practiced in politics? In the past generation, forgiveness has entered global politics in the context of a wave of tens of countries facing past crimes of dictatorship, genocide, and civil war. A discourse, and substantial evidence for the practice, of forgiveness can be found in countries ranging from South Africa to Uganda, Sierra Leone, Guatemala, and Chile. Forgiveness is often associated with religion and stands in contrast with the global practice of “transitional justice” and its stress on law, rights, and especially, judicial prosecution.

Mostly, forgiveness is practiced by individual victims, as I have documented through a recent study of victims of armed violence in Uganda, conducted in partnership with the Refugee Law Project (mentioned in this previous post). Far more rarely is it practiced by leaders, but this is not unheard of.  An outstanding example is Nelson Mandela, who forgave apartheid leaders after being released from his prison sentence of 26 years and set an example that many other South Africans followed.

Forgiveness has also taken place in the high politics of international relations. The decision in 1950 of France, Italy, and other western European states to incorporate Germany into the embryonic form of what is now the European Union can be seen as an act of forgiveness.  A recent book by political scientists Brent Nelsen and James Guth documents that Christian notions of forgiveness were much in the mind of the statesmen, mostly of Christian Democratic parties, who supported federation most strongly and helps to explain why they took a path quite different from the punitive approach towards Germany that Europe took after World War I.

Forgiveness may be rare in politics but it is not absent and has become more common in the past generation. It thus depicts one response in the political realm to Pope Francis’ call for mercy.

Pope Francis and the Catholic Church’s History with the Armenian Genocide

This past Sunday, Pope Francis spoke of the Armenian genocide of 1915-1916.  His use of the g-word drew the ire of Turkey, which officially denies that genocide took place and thus withdrew its ambassador to the Vatican in protest. Pope Francis showed bravery in speaking up in this way.  So did the pope at the time of the killings, Benedict XV.  The fascinating story is told here in an interview with German historian Dr. Michael Hesemann that just appeared in Aleteia.

In a new book entitled, The Armenian Genocide [Völkermord an den Armeniern], Hesemann reveals for the first time the content of never-before-published documents on “the greatest crime of World War I,” and how Pope Benedict XV and Vatican diplomacy tried to stop the deportations of the Armenians into the Syrian desert, save the victims and prevent the massacre of an entire people.

In this interview, Hesemann shares his findings, which include evidence of Masonic involvement, and expresses both his admiration for Pope Francis for drawing attention to the genocide of Christians and ethnic minorities, and his disappointment over the absence of the German Ambassador to the Holy See at Sunday’s commemorative Mass.

Cuba to Explode?

A writer who travels regularly to Cuba for humanitarian work reports on a growing sense of unrest in Cuba.  This is taking place while religion grows even as it still faces repression.   This paragraph captures the author’s spirit well:

While Evangelical and some Catholic churches are seeing new growth, Cuban society is disintegrating. Cities are seeing a growth of gangs and chemical addictions. Cuba has the highest rate of divorce in Latin America, and grinding poverty drives thousands of young women into prostitution. A female physician who doubles as a Pentecostal pastor told me that the biggest problem facing Cuba is philosophical—nihilism and relativism, which produce a sense of hopelessness. The result is a birthrate under replacement level. With fewer babies being born, and one of the highest abortion rates in Latin America, Cuba’s population of 11 million is declining.

 

A Dissident Comes to Notre Dame

In fall 2003, the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame hosted a talk by Norwegian scholar and peace activist Johan Galtung.  Famous for founding the discipline of peace studies, Galtung has coined enduring concepts like “structural violence,” the distinction between “positive” and “negative” peace, and other notions that, for the last several decades, have undergirded activism against war and against, well, The System.  Wearing a Hawaiian shirt, Galtung looked the part as he addressed his large Notre Dame audience, giving them a tour of violence around the world.

Doubtless, though, some in the audience were surprised when Galtung identified the greatest episode of violence in the world.  Was it U.S. imperialism in the Middle East?  No.  Colonialist exploitation of one kind or another?  No.  Galtung fingered sex selection abortion, carried out by the Chinese government through its “one-child policy,” as the world’s top form of violence.

Galtung is on my mind as I contemplate what I believe will prove a historic moment in Notre Dame’s witness for social justice, namely its hosting of the world’s greatest human rights dissident, China’s Chen Guangcheng, which will take place today, Tuesday, April 7.  Chen has stood for many causes in China, including women’s rights and land reform, but his most famous advocacy is against the one-child policy.

Not only is Galtung on my mind as I anticipate Chen’s address, but so is the recently deceased great president of Notre Dame, Fr. Theodore Hesburgh, who did so much to establish Notre Dame’s witness for social justice.  It was under Hesburgh’s leadership, for instance, that President Jimmy Carter gave a famous address on human rights at Notre Dame in 1977, establishing human rights as a major theme of his presidency that would endure long after his tenure in office.  Because of Hesburgh, Notre Dame continues to draw upon its Catholic roots in advocating human rights passionately.  (See my earlier post on Fr. Hesburgh’s civil rights legacy written just after Hesburgh’s death on February 26, 2015.)  Such a legacy finds a fitting exemplar in Chen Guangcheng.

Blind from childhood, known as the “barefoot lawyer,” Chen cinematically escaped house arrest in April 2012, climbing over the wall of his house, swimming across a river, and reaching the U.S. embassy, where he found refuge. In May 2012, the Chinese government allowed him to leave for New York University to take up a visiting scholar position. More recently, he has held positions at the Witherspoon Institute and The Catholic University of America. Now he gives lectures, has recently finished his autobiography, The Barefoot Lawyer, and continues to speak against the one-child policy.

First enacted in 1980, the policy has resulted in over 400 million abortions, according to the Chinese government. Many, if not most, of these abortions are forced or at least performed under heavy state pressure. Horrific stories abound of women brutally coerced into giving up their babies, even in the late term of their pregnancies. True, the policy is enforced unevenly, contains many exceptions, and was relaxed in 2013 to allow more births to take place. Still, the scale has been gargantuan.

One of the policy’s worst perversities is the one that Galtung identified: “sex-selection” abortion, in which parents abort girls far more often than boys, who are culturally preferred. In addition to taking the lives of girls en masse, the policy has created sex ratios that leave tens of millions of men in China without mates, resulting in an enormous market for sex trafficking, mail-order brides, and prostitution.

For those who hold, as I do, that the unborn child is a complete person with full dignity from the time he or she is conceived, the one-child policy deserves to be ranked among the genocides of the past century. Opposition to the one-child policy is also a cause around which diverse advocates can coalesce. Among harsh critics of the policy are Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen and journalist Mara Hvistendahl, a pro-choice feminist whose book, Unnatural Selection: Choosing Boys Over Girls, and the Consequences of a World Full of Men, is an excellent account of sex-selection abortion around the world. The brutal coercion of women combined with sex selection make the one-child policy a quintessential women’s issue.

Accompanying Chen in his visit will be another heroic human rights advocate, a rare activist who devotes herself almost solely to the one-child policy, Reggie Littlejohn, who will be showing her film, It’s a Girl, earlier on the day that Chen will speak.

All of this comes to Notre Dame thanks to the visionary leadership of the Institute for Church Life and its Director, John Cavadini.  Let us hope that as a result of Chen’s and Littejohn’s witness, more will join the ranks of those who oppose a human rights violation which, as Galtung rightly argued, has no parallel.

Updated: Tuesday, April 7

Shaun Casey’s New, Impossible Job: Help us Talk about Islam

What follows is an insightful guest post by Dennis Hoover, who is Vice President for Research and Publications at the Institute for Global Engagement, an innovative think-tank that promotes religious freedom through a methodology of friendship and engagement.  Dennis is also executive director of the Center on Faith & International Affairs (CFIA) and edits CFIA’s journal, The Review of Faith & International Affairs, a lively journal that serves as a forum for thought and practical ideas in religious and international affairs.

America has an Islam crisis which is centered, in a very basic way, on how to even talk about it. Nowhere was that more clear than in the controversy surrounding last month’s “White House Summit to Counter Violent Extremism.” In the weeks leading up to the Summit, the Administration was subjected to withering criticism—mostly from the right, but also from some formidable voices on the left—for refusing to describe as “Islamic” any terrorism committed by self-declared Muslims. Although this rhetorical posture has a long and bi-partisan history, in the current context patience is thin for anything that smacks of political correctness.

Enter the new “Office of Religion and Global Affairs” at the State Department, led by the widely respected Shaun Casey. Can Mr. Casey help rescue the debate? The daunting challenge will be to find the sweet spot of constructive candor.

The Office of Religion and Global Affairs is in some ways a continuation of the State Department’s prior Office of Faith-based Community Initiatives. But more than the name has changed. Several religion-related entities are now consolidated under the Office of Religion and Global Affairs: the Special Envoy to the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, the Special Representative to Muslim Communities, and the Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism.

Plenty are calling the changes welcome news. Institutional capacity and strategic coherence are improved, not to mention branding clarity (“faith-based” has always been a clunky, if not constitutionally suspect, modifier to use in a governmental context). However, having raised the profile of religious engagement in U.S. foreign policy, the bar is now also raised in terms of the rhetoric employed in religion-focused diplomacy—most especially in engagement of Muslim leaders, organizations, and movements.

What is or isn’t said about Islam is going to be minutely scrutinized (not least by the Obama Administration’s many critics in the Fox News echo chamber). Tough topics will need to be raised. Treading too lightly risks wasting everyone’s time on polite inter-faith platitudes of peace. Yet an overabundance of name-shame-blame “candor” about Islam can be not only time-wasting but acutely counterproductive—it unnecessarily confers religious legitimacy on violent extremists, and alienates Muslim allies in the war against them.

And the office will need to say something: Two of the three envoys now reporting to Casey are explicitly about engaging Muslim actors, and the third is focused on combating Anti-Semitism, which of course involves confronting Muslim Anti-Semitism alongside all the other growing forms of Anti-Semitism (many of them Christian).

What to say? And how to say it? There are no easy answers, but a helpful point of rhetorical reference is President Obama’s own speech at the White House Summit to Counter Violent Extremism. Although most of the news media missed it completely, Obama’s oratory did in fact reach a new level of constructive candor:

Al Qaeda and ISIL do draw, selectively, from the Islamic texts. They do depend upon the misperception around the world that they speak in some fashion for people of the Muslim faith, that Islam is somehow inherently violent, that there is some sort of clash of civilizations. … [T]here’s a strain of thought that doesn’t embrace ISIL’s tactics, doesn’t embrace violence, but does buy into the notion that the Muslim world has suffered historical grievances—sometimes that’s accurate—does buy into the belief that so many of the ills in the Middle East flow from a history of colonialism or conspiracy; does buy into the idea that Islam is incompatible with modernity or tolerance, or that it’s been polluted by Western values. … So just as leaders like myself reject the notion that terrorists like ISIL genuinely represent Islam, Muslim leaders need to do more to discredit the notion that our nations are determined to suppress Islam, that there’s an inherent clash in civilizations.

Here’s hoping the newly reconfigured and renamed Office of Religion and Global Affairs will be similarly deft in its diplomatic truth-telling in the challenging years ahead.

The Strange Silence Towards the “Real War on Christians”

An excellent piece in Foreign Policy — significantly, a highly mainstream forum — documents the strange silence in the U.S. about violence towards and displacement of Christians in the Middle East.

Here is a preview:

Last August, President Barack Obama signed off on legislation creating a special envoy charged with aiding the ancient Christian communities and other beleaguered religious minorities being targeted by the Islamic State.

The bill was a modest one — the new position was given a budget of just $1 million — and the White House quietly announced the signing in a late-afternoon press release that lumped it in with an array of other low profile legislation. Neither Obama nor any prominent lawmakers made any explicit public reference to the bill.

Seven months later, the position remains unfilled — a small but concrete example of Washington’s passivity in the face of an ongoing wave of atrocities against the Assyrian, Chaldean, and other Christian communities of Iraq and Syria. The Islamic State has razed centuries-old churches and monasteries, beheaded and crucified Christians, and mounted a concerted campaign to drive Christians out of cities and towns they’ve lived in for thousands of years. The Iraqi city of Mosul had a Christian population of 35,000 when U.S. forces invaded the country in 2003; today, with the city in the hands of the Islamic State, the vast majority of them have fled.

Every holiday season, politicians in America take to the airwaves to rail against a so-called “war on Christmas” or “war on Easter,” pointing to things like major retailers wishing shoppers generic “happy holidays.” But on the subject of the Middle East, where an actual war on Christians is in full swing, those same voices are silent. A push to use American aircraft to shield the areas of Iraq where Christians have fled has gone nowhere. Legislation that would fast-track visa applications from Christians looking to leave for the United States never even came up for a vote. The White House, meanwhile, won’t say if or when it will fill the special envoy position.

“It’s been difficult to get the attention of the previous administration, or the current one, when it comes to the urgent need to act,” said Rep. Anna Eshoo, the California Democrat who drafted the visa legislation. “The classic definition of genocide is the complete annihilation of a group of people. The Islamic State is well on its way. It keeps me up at night.”

Islam and Jihadism Continued

Several of our posts have dealt with the hot question of how deeply rooted violent jihadism is in Islam.   An excellent recent piece in The Economist looks at debates on the question that are now unfolding within Islam itself.   It is well worth reading.