200 Million Christians Denied Human Rights

Stephen Harris
Journalism Major at Multnomah


Joseph Hovsepian found his father nearly two weeks after he disappeared; he had been stabbed in the chest 26 times. Haik Hovsepian, a prominent Christian leader in Iran during the early 1990s, was martyred after advocating for the release of a Christian convert sentenced to die for his faith.

The Hovsepians faced many troubles for their faith and evangelistic zeal. At the time of his father’s murder, Mr. Hovsepian’s military commanders stationed him in the worst locations, only allowing him a few hours sleep each night. “It was like an exile,” he said. He said the military also threatened his sister’s academic career and his brother’s life.

Christians worldwide face unprecedented mistreatment: 200 million suffer some form of oppression for their faith, according to the World Evangelical Alliance.

In a report given to the Geneva Convention in 2002, the World Evangelical Alliance wrote that Christians are the victims of progressive levels of malevolence, ranging from discrimination to persecution, and represent the world’s largest group denied human rights simply because of its beliefs.

“The gates of hell will not prevail, but there are gates of hell,” Karen Fancher, Multnomah University dean of students, said. Dean Fancher’s doctoral studies focus on equipping the church in war-torn Sudan.

Twenty-one years of civil war between the Muslim North and the Christian South have wreaked havoc on the Sudanese people. Two million people have died, and four million have been displaced.

Once, as Dean Fancher was preparing to fly home from a visit to Sudan, she talked to a commander from the army in the South. She asked him whether he favored the proposed splitting of the country in 2011, which would give the South independence and protection.

Dean Fancher said: “He said, ‘It would be easier for us if we seceded and became our own country, and we would be free to worship God in our [own] way, but we would never reach the Muslims in the North. How would they ever know Jesus?’”

“God clearly uses persecution to advance his church,” Rick Elzinga, a pastor from Beaverton, Ore., said. He said Christians in persecuted countries such as North Korea provide the church in the West with healthy models of spirituality. “The church there is a model of what it is to take up the cross of Christ.”

Mark (who asked that his last name be omitted), an Iranian Christian who came to the United States shortly after his country’s Islamic Revolution in 1979, said more people in Iran came to salvation after they were cut off from Christian witness than before the revolution.

As a child in pre-revolution Iran, Mark was once handed a Christian tract from a blond Western man. Mark ran home to inform his mother, who told him to throw it away and wash his hands. “Because there was freedom, people were not excited to hear about Christianity,” he said.

Now things have changed. Before the revolution, only about 300 Christians were from Muslim backgrounds, but today there are at least 70,000, according to Iranian Christians International.

Dean Fancher said that glamorizing persecution is a dangerous proposition. She said, “Persecution can be devastating to the church, and we see that historically. There can be unique places with unique individuals who would rather die than deny Christ and who do it with love and passion. I don’t think that’s the norm, though. Persecution isn’t a formula [for church growth].”

Mufdi (whose name has been changed to protect his identity), an Egyptian man with a broadcast ministry in the United States, said that his native land is rife with persecution. Although Egypt’s constitution technically ensures religious freedom, in practice discriminatory laws based on Islamic teachings keep Christians from enjoying that liberty, according to the U.S. State Department’s 2008 Religious Freedom Report.

This document reports that one of the country’s lower courts issued a ruling, now under appeal, that Muslims are not allowed to change their faith. Mufdi said Egyptian authorities often leave Christians vulnerable to harassment from Muslim extremists and even attempt to shift the blame from the Islamic offenders to the Christian victims.

Pastor Elzinga said, “We [Americans] live in an abnormal time when we can live our Christian lives and not experience much if any persecution, but that’s quickly changing.” He said that American Christians should prepare for persecution by learning from and praying for the persecuted church.

However, during a prayer session for the persecuted church at Multnomah’s 2008 missions conference, he found only one student present. He decided to take action by forming a prayer group at Multnomah with his son, Andrew, during the fall of 2008. Andrew, now a freshman at Multnomah, leads the ministry. In addition to weekly prayer meetings, the group also holds monthly gatherings in which guest speakers present overviews of persecution in countries such as Egypt, Iraq and North Korea.

Dean Fancher said, “We don’t want to glorify the persecuted church, but those men and women that we see faithfully serving Jesus in very difficult circumstances should be our teachers. I want to be that faithful even if I’m not being persecuted. [We should ask] God to prepare us to be more fully surrendered to him today, in freedom.”