Threat to Christianity is a threat to civilisation

We must do more to help persecuted communities targeted by terrorists and totalitarian governments

Among the carols sung at services across the country on Christmas Day was “Christians, awake, salute the happy morn”. But for countless other fellow believers across the globe, the joy at the birth of Christ will have been tempered with dread; dread at the constant harassment they experience for being Christian, and dread that they even might be targeted by a terrorist attack.

On Palm Sunday in 2017, at least 45 died when an Egyptian cathedral and church were attacked by suicide bombers. Last Easter, hundreds were killed in Sri Lanka as churches were bombed. This Christmas, churches on the island were warned by the police to be on special alert in case there was another atrocity. Meanwhile, in Iraq, Cardinal Louis Raphael Sako of the Chaldean Church asked Christians to have muted celebrations because of the tensions in the country. Kurdish and Western intelligence officials were reported this week as saying that Islamic State is regrouping there, with its attacks increasing. Both Muslims and Christians have been their targets in the past.

Christian persecution has become part of the landscape of 21st century belief. The International Society for Human Rights estimates that 80 per cent of acts of religious discrimination are targeted at Christians. It is particularly tragic to see how Christianity is being driven out of the Middle East, the very place where it was founded. In Iraq, for example, there were 1.5 million Christians in 2003, and now the population is estimated as being as low as 120,000.

Even when terrorists are countered in one place, the persecution moves on. Islamists are making their way from some parts of the Middle East to Africa. Poverty, joblessness and lawlessness make such places a fertile breeding ground for terrorist organisations looking to dominate new territories.

But Christian persecution in the modern era is not just about the religious hatred of terrorist groups. It is also part of the armoury of governments who scapegoat minority faiths, or wish to control religion. In some African countries, Islam is the only accepted religion. In places like North Korea and China, communist regimes target faiths they see as a potential threat to their overarching hold over the population.

And for some Christians, the struggle continues even when the immediate threat to life has lifted. Some weeks ago I spoke to Archbishop Bashir Warda of Erbil in Iraq, who described the life of Christians returning to the Nineveh Plains after Isil forces retreated. With little support forthcoming from the Iraqi government, they are dependent on aid from abroad. Archbishop Warda is intent on building not only new homes but also schools, hospitals and a university as part of reconstruction. The new institutions, he says, must be open to all, for otherwise different faith communities will never mix and learn to respect one another.

Here in the West, individuals can help by supporting charities that in turn help Christians elsewhere. But that is not enough. Last Christmas, in these pages, the then foreign secretary Jeremy Hunt announced a review into the plight of Christians and later welcomed the findings of that review, undertaken by the Bishop of Truro, Philip Mounstephen. The review acknowledged the desperate lives of many Christians, and recommended providing financial aid for the persecuted and imposing sanctions on the perpetrators of religiously driven human rights abuses.

In his Christmas message this year, the Prime Minister vowed to defend Christians’ right to practise their faith, and it is welcome that the Government has indicated that it wants to take a lead on this issue around the world.

But as part of that, a rethink is needed on the welcoming of Christian refugees to this country. Former archbishop of Canterbury George Carey has launched a judicial review of the low numbers of Christians among Syrian refugees coming to Britain – just 1.6 per cent of the total. I recall Christian refugees who have made it telling me that few are accepted here because they mostly don’t come via UN refugee camps where they fear harassment. This rejection by the UK is another trauma piled upon trauma.

The notion that the Bishop of Truro’s report highlighted – that Christians are ignored because of some misguided post-colonial guilt about their faith being an imposed Western religion – must also be combatted. Christianity never was a Western religion. It emerged from the Middle East – the place where it might now be wiped out – and it belongs to the world. Its universal values of compassion, love and forgiveness resonate with people on all continents.

As historian Tom Holland points out in Dominion, his account of the spread of Christianity, it brought those civilising values to the world and we must not take them for granted. Every time a church is bombed, what began in a manger – the faith whose values have been so transformative – comes just that bit closer to being destroyed as well.