When Christmas Is Deadly

Normally, I wait until I finish a book before I write a review of it...so this isn't a review, but a perfectly timed opportunity for me to bring to light something I just learned in a book. The Global War on Christians: Dispatches from the Front Lines of Anti-Christian Persecution taught me something about which I was unaware, having spent most of my last three years sequestered in my white-bred Western isolationist culture: There are Christians around the world that are systematically attacked at Christmas services each year.

Granted, I don't watch a lot of U.S. news because the corporate propaganda that calls itself "news" infuriates me, but why is no one in our churches calling attention to this? I'll have more about the book in a review when I've finished it, but for now, I simply wanted to ask believers around the world to pray for fellow believers around the world who will be persecuted in this season that should be filled with happiness, joy and wonder.

If you'd like the details, here's what author John L. Allen, Jr. has shared: "For the the record, 2012 marked the third consecutive year that Boko Haram launched a bloody wave of attacks on Christians during the Christmas season." (p. 59)

Boko Haram is a "jihadist militant organization founded by Mohammed Yusuf in 2001" in Nigeria. Lest we think too poorly of the Muslim community of Nigeria, they too have suffered losses when suicide bombers have been denied through gated entry points to churches. One such occurrence on Christmas Day 2011, during a "coordinated series of assaults...which left at least fifty people dead and hundreds injured," took place in "Madalla, a satellite town on the outskirts of the national capital, Abuja, where a bomb went off outside St. Theresa's Catholic church that killed forty-four and left an additional eighty people injured, including both Muslim bystanders and Catholics exiting the Christmas mass, which had just ended when the blast occurred." (pp. 56-57)

People of other faiths have recognized these acts as targeted persecution of Christians. "The Simon Wiesenthal Center, among the world's leading Jewish human rights organizations, urged the United States and the European Union to do more to protect embattled Christians around the globe: "As Jews, we recognize all too well when those who want to beat down a group add humiliation and contempt to their murderous violence" it said in a December 28 statement. "Picking Christmas Day to murder women and children on the steps of their church was calculated to intimidate all other Nigerian Christians.'" (p. 57) Yet, I do not ever recall hearing any mention of this among any local congregations, nor in any U.S. media to which I have access.

I'm not trying to be all "gloom and doom" at Christmastime. I simply see a lot of "concerned Christians" getting very excited (as they do every year) about Nativity scenes in public areas, Christian Christmas carols not being played in stores and the coup de grace, cashiers being forced to wish "Happy Holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas". Maybe this year, instead of becoming incensed the next time someone unintentionally offends us...we could, instead...whisper a prayer of protection and God's Presence for our brothers and sisters around the world who risk their very lives by being Christians on Christmas Day.

Sort of puts all of the shopping and other nonsense in perspective, doesn't it?