We therefore curtailed the list and made this representative of all who are persecuted for their faith in our own day. Standing in the East Chapel, some visitors for the first time understand martyrdom not as isolated acts in history but as a pattern in contemporary faith. The list would spotlight countries that have made it a crime to convert to Christianity or to disseminate religious publications, and tally individual stories of suffering countenanced by governments in North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Vietnam, Nigeria, Indonesia, and India. In the Lion s Den , Nina Shea, director of Freedom House s Puebla Program on Religious Freedom, chronicles contemporary men and women persecuted and martyred before an unknowing, indifferent world, and a largely silent Christian community. The atrocities they suffer include torture, enslavement, rape, imprisonment, forcible separation of children from parents, killings, and massacres.
Few observers expect the persecution to diminish.
Evangelical and Catholic communities in the Third World are acutely vulnerable, writes human rights advocate Michael Horowitz, who adds that the mounting persecution of Christians eerily parallels the persecution of Jews, my people, during much of Europe s history. Today, minority Christian communities have become chosen scapegoats in radical Islamic and remnant Communist regimes, where they are demonized and caricatured through populist campaigns of hate and terror. Reached at the Hudson Institute where he is a writer in residence, Horowitz laments the indifference to the level of persecution. I am in such despair, he says, his voice strained and passionate, from trying to get Christians in the West to deal with their fellow believers who are suffering in ways they can t even begin to contemplate. The most frequently cited figures come from the World Christian Encyclopedia , a massive reference volume edited by David Barrett and Todd Johnson of the World Evangelization Research Center in Richmond, Virginia.