The Politics of Persecution

John Allen tries to knock down the assumption that today’s widespread persecution of Christians, perhaps the most pressing issue in global religious freedom, should be a matter of indifference to the American left:

One thinks, for instance, of the famous martyrs of the liberation theology movement, such as Archbishop Oscar Romero, or the six Jesuits and two women murdered in El Salvador in 1989. There’s also Guatemalan Bishop Juan José Gerardi, beaten to death in 1998 two days after releasing a report on his country’s civil war that heavily criticized the army and right-wing paramilitary groups. More recently, there’s American Sr. Dorothy Stang, murdered in Brazil in 2005 for advocacy on behalf of poor and indigenous Amazonians; or Indian Sr. Valsha John, slain this past year for defending members of the tribal underclass against expropriation of their land by coal mining companies.

More here . All this underlines the final silliness of describing the body of Christ in political terms. There is no right or left in martyrdom—-just the cross.