De-Christianization

In USA Today , Jody Bottum reminds us of the suffering of Egyptian Christians: “About 10% of the Egyptian population (and declining, down more than half over the past century ), these people have suffered discrimination under 30 years of rule by the now-embattled president, Hosni Mubarak. And they’ve seen that discrimination ratcheted up into open persecution during the current unrest, which began with a car bomb in Alexandria killing 21 at a Coptic church on Jan. 1 and continued through the massacre of 11 Christians in the village of Sharona on Jan. 30.”

He adds that the US’s and Europe’s attention to persecution of Christians has been declining steadily for some time: “For a decade now, Western nations have done little to help. Up to 1.4 million of Iraq’s Christians have fled since the war began in 2003, and without some kind of aid, there will be no native Christian population—none, not a single practicing Christian community—left in the Islamic countries of the Middle East by 2050.”

International pressure can alleviate Christian suffering in Muslim countries, as recent developments in Sudan indicate: “The voting in Sudan last month overwhelmingly favored secession by the oppressed populations in the oil-rich south. Assuming all goes as planned, the Christian-majority nation of Southern Sudan will be created this July . . . . The 2011 independence of Southern Sudan is a fruit of that effort—proof that, though it might take decades, international pressure can succeed.”