"Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction."
--Blaise Pascal
It's a different kind of sea crossing these days. You'll not find a Moses standing over His chosen people, parting the sea. Instead, the persecuted fleeing death and slavery are using boats and planes. The lucky ones are, anyway.
There was an interesting opinion piece by Eric Metaxas and Stan Guthrie in the Religion section Saturday. Their observations have gone mostly under-reported in the mainstream media: Christians are being run out of the Middle East. By the millions.
Fleeing terrorist attacks like bombings and mass shootings, or maybe just fleeing old-fashioned oppression, Christians are going through their own Exodus, looking to Europe or the Americas for succor and shelter. Those who keep up with these things say today there are more Arab Christians living outside the Middle East than in it. The Center for the Study of Global Christianity says that in 1910, 13.6 percent of the population of the Middle East were Christians. Soon, that number will be closer to 3 percent.
At this point, somebody is bound to ask: So what?
Let the Christians flee. Would you want to live there?
OK, maybe. But some of us think the problems of remaining Middle Eastern Christians are our problems, too. Lest we forget, the Middle East is the birthplace of Christianity. It's a holy place.
But besides that, there are more pragmatic reasons to be worried that Christianity might not survive where it began. One of the goals of the jihadists is to drive out any views different from their own. For now, that might be limited to Iraq and Syria. Tomorrow maybe Lebanon and Jordan. The next day, on to Tours! Where the jihadists will liberate us from our folly, property and lives, O unbelieving ones. It was once said if we'd just stop defending ourselves, the jihadists would stop killing us. And they certainly will stop. Eventually.
Diversity isn't just a boardroom buzzword in America's meeting rooms. It really does soften radicalism. Before George W. Bush ordered the invasion of Iraq in 2003, that country had about 1.5 million Christians. Now it has about 300,000. Syria's population of Christians has been halved. You'll notice the ongoing civil wars in those countries.
Experts say it will be easier for al-Qaida and ISIS to recruit young Middle Easterners for jihad against unbelievers if those young Middle Easterners don't know anybody outside their religion. Every day these Middle Eastern countries have fewer and fewer religious minorities. And every day the recruiting gets easier. One preacher who has spent years in the Middle East, the Rev. Andrew White of the Anglican Church, put it this way: "We are an Easter people, but we are living in a Good Friday world."
We, as Americans specifically and Westerners generally, ignore the changing demographics of the Middle East at our peril. If we think the Middle East is radicalized now, imagine how it could look in 10 years without the peaceful influence of Christian teaching in scattered neighborhoods, churches and schools.
That's enough to keep us awake at night.
Editorial on 06/13/2017