The Chinese government’s demolition of churches and removal of crosses over the past couple of years are a run-up to a much more systematic, nationwide clampdown, a New York Times piece reports today.
Here is how the piece describes the coming change:
But people familiar with the government’s deliberations say the removal of crosses here has set the stage for a new, nationwide effort to more strictly regulate spiritual life in China, reflecting the tighter control of society favored by President Xi Jinping.
Photo
In an image from video, a Catholic church’s cross was toppled by a government worker in Zhejiang Province last year. Over the past two years, officials and residents said, the authorities have had crosses from 1,200 to 1,700 churches torn down.CreditDidi Tang/Associated Press
In a major speech on religious policy last month, Mr. Xi urged the ruling Communist Party to “resolutely guard against overseas infiltrations via religious means,” and he warned that religions in China must “Sinicize,” or become Chinese. The instructions reflect the government’s longstanding fear that Christianity could undermine the party’s authority. Many human rights lawyers in China are Christians, and many dissidents have said they are influenced by the idea that rights are God-given.
In recent decades, the party had tolerated a religious renaissance in China, allowing most Chinese to worship as they chose and even encouraging the construction of churches, mosques and temples, despite regular crackdowns on unregistered congregations and banned spiritual groups such as Falun Gong.
Hundreds of millions of people have embraced the nation’s major faiths: Buddhism, Taoism, Islam and Christianity. There are now about 60 million Christians in China. Many attend churches registered with the government, but at least half worship in unregistered churches, often with local authorities looking the other way.
But Mr. Xi’s decision to convene a “religious affairs work conference” last month — the first such leadership meeting in 15 years — suggested that he was unhappy with some of these policies. People familiar with the party’s discussions say it intends to apply some lessons from the campaign in Zhejiang to rein in religious groups across the country.
This blog has given much attention to the religious freedom of Christians. A human right, religious freedom is for everyone. Dignitatis Humanae, the Second Vatican Council’s Declaration on Religious Liberty — whose 50th anniversary was celebrated in December in Rome at the conference of Under Caesar’s Sword — teaches that religious freedom arises from human dignity.
Today, the religious freedom of Muslims merits attention. U.S. politicians direct angry rhetoric against Muslims for political gain. Donald Trump has called for an end to Muslim immigration into the United States. He extolled an early twentieth century incident where an American general summarily executed Muslim prisoners in the Philippines with bullets “dipped in pigs’ blood.” 31 governors have refused to allow Syrian refugees into their state, often appealing to anti-Muslim sentiment. In 2009, Tennessee residents sought to block the building of a mosque in Murfreesboro, Tennessee on the grounds that Islam is a violent philosophy, not a religion (while others supported the Mosque). The list goes on.
Two recent pieces are worth reading on this issue. One is by Chad Bauman, professor of religion at Butler University in Indianapolis, one of our Under Caesar’s Sword scholars, and an expert on the religious liberty of Christians in India. Writing for Religion Dispatches, he recounts an incident at a backpacker’s hostel where a Hindu proprietor, seeking to elicit solidarity, said to him and his friends, “Americans hate Muslims, too.”
Bauman explains:
Still today, when I travel in India, Hindus presupposing my agreement frequently make off-handed and derogatory comments about their Muslim neighbors. For those concerned about the effectiveness of the United States’ advocacy for religious freedom around the world, the perception that “Americans hate Muslims, too” should be a matter of great concern.
As I have writtenelsewhere, India’s Christians suffer from various forms of social and legal discrimination, and are vandalized, kidnapped, or attacked (occasionally even fatally) about 250-350 times a year. This is a serious problem, and one deserving international approbation. However, the repression and persecution of India’s Christians pales in comparison to that of its Muslim minority.
The perception that “Americans hate Muslims, too” helps to feed the view that American advocacy of religious freedom is little more than Christian advocacy:
In fact, Indians are also widely aware of the problem of hate crimes committed against Muslims in America, where, according to FBI statistics, and proportional to the respective national populations, they are roughly as common as attacks on Christians in India. (One of the reasons that this problem is of particular interest in India, of course, is that those intending to attack Muslims in America often mistakenly attack Indian American Sikhs or Hindus, as reported in this Times of India story.)
All of this, of course, simply serves to confirm the impression of many Indians that “Americans hate Muslims, too,” and that our advocacy for religious freedom is really just Christian advocacy. Overcoming this impression, so that the United States might become a more effective, credible advocate for religious freedom in India will require consistent, intentional work.
In my view, it is worth stressing that U.S. religious freedom policy is not just for Christians. By law and in practice, the U.S. government offices that promote religious freedom cover all religions, everywhere, and do a remarkably thorough job of it. The annual reports of the U.S. State Department Office of International Religious Freedom and of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom are the best reports of international religious persecution and discrimination that one will find anywhere. Bauman’s point is well taken. For the U.S. to merit an international reputation that matches the balance of policy, it must publicly denounce the curtailment of the religious freedom of Muslims — and of everyone — with focused effort.
The other piece, by Laurie Goodstein in yesterday’s New York Times, details the efforts of imams in the West to teach a theology that counters that of ISIS. At a time when so much attention is focused on ISIS and when such attention reinforces a view held by many that Islam is hard-wired for violence and intolerance, the piece documents intensive and courageous efforts by imams to offer a different voice. The imams have suffered death threats from ISIS:
It is a religious rumble that barely makes headlines in the secular West since it is carried out at mosques and Islamic conferences and over social media.The
Islamic State, however, has taken notice.
The group recently threatened the lives of 11 Muslim imams and scholars in the West, calling them “apostates” who should be killed. The recent issue of the Islamic State’s online propaganda magazine, Dabiq, called them “obligatory targets,” and it said that supporters should use any weapons on hand to “make an example of them.”
The danger is real enough that the F.B.I. has contacted some of those named in the Islamic State’s magazine “to assist them in taking proper steps to ensure their safety,” said Andrew Ames, a spokesman for the F.B.I.’s field office in Washington.
It is critical that we hear all Muslim voices and encourage those who take risks for peace. To do so will not hurt, but rather will give credibility to, the cause of persecuted Christians. And, on account of human dignity, it is just the right thing to do.
The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom has just issued its new annual report, dated April 2016. See here. Its first six pages are a colorful and stark account of the vast endangerment of religious freedom around the world. It covers repression against people of a wide variety of religions committed by governments and non-state actors of a wide variety of religions. One of the pernicious myths that the report puts to rest is that religious freedom is little more than a manifestation of the new “cold war” aka “clash of civilizations” between the Christian West and a stylized Muslim enemy. Violations of the religious freedom of Muslims themselves are widespread, the report shows, sometimes at the hands of other Muslims, sometimes at the hands of secular governments, sometimes at the hands of governments of other religions.
The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops has come out with a new video on religious freedom. It stars Tom Farr, Director of the Religious Freedom Program at the Berkley Center at Georgetown, a partner in the Under Caesar’s Sword project with Notre Dame, as well as my colleague here at Notre Dame, Rick Garnett of the Law School. It is short, sharply made, and worth watching.
I am pleased to share this video report of the conference Under Caesar’s Sword: Christian Response to Persecution. It’s 12 minutes and is on Vimeo. I present it on behalf of the conference’s two hosts, the Center for Civil and Human Rights at the University of Notre Dame and the Religious Freedom Project at the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs, Georgetown University.
Today Secretary of State John Kerry designated ISIS’s violence against Christians, Yazidis, and Shia Muslims as genocide. Nina Shea of the Hudson Institute captures it well:
Secretary of State John Kerry officially recognized that ISIS is waging genocide against Christians, Yazidis, and Shiites in the areas under its control. This is only the second time the U.S. government has condemned an ongoing genocide: In 2004, Secretary of State Colin Powell designated what was going in Darfur as genocide. And today’s declaration, as I wrote yesterday, almost didn’t happen — owing to resistance from some quarters. Kerry’s announcement was a surprise, one that defied deliberately lowered expectations. There was a State Department notice just yesterday that any such designation required longer deliberation and wouldn’t be made in time to meet the March 17 congressionally mandated deadline. But at 9 a.m. Eastern, Secretary of State Kerry took to the podium and asserted: “In my judgment, Daesh is responsible for genocide against groups in areas under its control, including Yazidis, Christians, and Shia Muslims. Daesh is genocidal by self-proclamation, by ideology, and by actions — in what it says, what it believes, and what it does.” This official American genocide designation is a critically important step. Genocide is internationally recognized as the most heinous human-rights offense. Legally, it is known as the “crime of crimes.” And while the Genocide Convention does not prescribe specific action to “prevent and protect” against genocide, the conscience does. RELATED: Witnessing the Genocide in Iraq This designation will not only lift the morale of these shattered religious groups, it also has the potential of serving justice through the prosecution of those who aid and abet ISIS as fighters, cyber recruiters, financiers, arms suppliers, and artifact smugglers.
Other good pieces on why the designation is rightly deserved have come out in the past couple of days by Anne Corkery and Kirsten Powers.
Christians in the Middle East are suffering genocide. This is the compelling conclusion of a report issued this past Thursday by the Knights of Columbus, written in collaboration with In Defense of Christians. The report arrives on the eve of a deadline for the U.S. State Department to issue a finding about whether ISIS is committing genocide and which groups are victims. This past October, officials at State suggested that their department might make a genocide determination on behalf of Yazidis but not of Christians.
Yazidis are suffering genocide, no doubt about it. So are Christians, though: the Knights report leaves little doubt about this. Intrepid journalist John Allen agrees. The same conclusion has been voiced by Pope Francis, the United States Commission on Religious Freedom, the European Parliament, the Government of Iraq, the governing authority of Kurdistan, German Chancellor Angela Merkl, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. Let’s hope Secretary of State John Kerry joins his voice to this chorus.
But would a genocide determination change U.S. policy? Would a resolution declaring genocide being passed by the House of Representatives make a difference? John Allen posts again today on what real hope for genocide victims would look like.
Following up on my last post on Donald Trump’s dictatorial inclination, I appreciated The Washington Post‘s Dana Milbank’s piece voicing the same theme. I was also happy to see a common letter signed by prominent Catholics urging Catholics not to vote for Trump, citing his promises to carry our torture and reprisals against terrorists’ families. But a poll of Michigan voters, where primaries are being held today, shows Catholic Republicans favoring Trump disproportionately. Let’s hope they will read the letter and listen to their church.
Of all Donald Trump’s calculated braggadocio, the part that most augurs his presidential lawlessness are his words on torture, which he restated starkly in last night’s Republican debate in Detroit. When asked to comment on CIA Director Michael Hayden’s averral that members of the military could defy orders asking them to commit unlawful acts like killing civilians and torture, Trump had this to say:
[Waterboarding is] fine, and if we want to go stronger, I’d go stronger too. Because frankly, that’s the way I feel. Can you imagine these people, these animals, over in the Middle East that chop off heads, sitting around talking and seeing that we’re having a hard problem with waterboarding? We should go for waterboarding and we should go tougher than waterboarding.
He insisted that members of the military would have to obey his orders as president and that he also supported killing members of terrorists’ families.
Torture blatantly contradicts both the domestic law and the international treaty commitments of the United States. While waterboarding was used during the administration of President George W. Bush, it elicited great controversy and was argued widely to constitute torture. That Trump would “go stronger” shows that he is perfectly willing to engage in methods that unambiguously constitute torture and that he has little regard for the law.
Today, he clarified that he would obey the laws as president. But how can we trust that? He has made so many reckless statements, performed so many reversals, and ranted so often about undertaking lawless acts that his backtracking can be regarded as little more than another ephemeral zig zag.
To break international and domestic law with abandon, to order subordinates to carry out crimes, to carry out torture and crimes of war – these are the quintessential deeds of a dictator. All those who would vote for Trump and who simultaneously exude their love for American democracy will have no excuse for not having known better should Trump be elected and disregard the law flagrantly.
Not least among the culpable are Christians who vote for Trump. He is polling strong among evangelicals regardless of the National Association of Evangelicals’ denunciation of torture as incompatible with the gospel. Likewise, the Catholic Church teaches that torture is an intrinsic evil – not to be done under any circumstances. Christians – and all people of good will – not only ought not to countenance voting for Trump but are compelled to raise their voice against him.
