Craig T. Owens

Yesterday I shared some eye-opening statistics from The Global War On Christians by Jeff L. Allen, Jr. Below are some of the quotes which especially stood out to me. If you want to read my full review of this book, please click here.

“Spectacular outbreaks of violence are often produced by less intense incidents, such as believers being harassed on the streets, slurred in the media, shunned in the workplace, and hassled as they gather to worship. The usual cycle is for complaints to be made about these incidents, which are then ignored or dismissed. That failure to act usually serves to emboldened the perpetrators, who then may become more likely to move on to even more lethal assaults, in effect testing the limits of official tolerance.”

“The bottom line is that the global war on Christians will never be won as long as the myth persists that nobody’s really responsible for it.”

“Perpetuating the idea that Islam is by far the primary threat facing Christians in the early twenty-first century also stokes the idea of a ‘clash of civilizations’ between the two faiths, adding fuel to the fire of those who long for a new holy war. That doesn’t do justice to the complex reality of the situation, as there are examples of both conflict and coexistence, and for every virulent and dangerous current in the Islamic world there are also movements and individuals devoted to peace.” 

“Politically correct silence does no one any good, and arguably insults the dignity of those who run risks to life and limb on a daily basis to keep the faith alive.”

“Politics distorts perceptions of the global war on Christians in another sense. Ideological bias tempts observers in the West to see only part of the picture. Those on the political left may celebrate martyrs to corporate greed or to right-wing the police states, but fear to speak out about the suffering of Christians behind the lines of the Islamic world. Conservatives may be reluctant to condemn the situation facing Christians in the state of Israel or in regimes that are presently in fashion on the right has allies in the ‘war on terror.’ Either way, the result is a reductive reasoning of the true score of anti-Christian persecution, and a double standard when it comes to engaging its protagonists. If we want to see the global war on Christians clearly, we have to stop looking at it through the funhouse mirror of secular politics.”

“Historically, waves of persecution have fueled major advances for Christianity. … Today, it’s no accident that zones where persecution of Christians is the most intense… are also the places where Christianity is growing the most dramatically.”