The Christian Persecutions No One Will Talk About

President Biden is at it again – requesting tens of billions of dollars (that we don’t have) to spend in support of the wars engaged in by our ‘close allies,’ the Ukraine and Israel. But what if those countries weren’t really that friendly towards the United States and the things we hold dear? Would that change people’s minds about supporting them?

Let’s have a look at the Ukraine first. We mentioned before some of the ways that the Zelensky government is persecuting Christians there. Now the national legislature is taking it to another level: it is nearing the passage of a bill that would completely outlaw the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, the largest church in the country. It was no close vote in the first round, either – 267 For, 5 Against (a second round is required before final passage):

Without clearly defining the concept of this “affiliation,” the mentioned bill empowers the State Service of Ukraine for Ethnopolitics and Freedom of Conscience, led by a person who is hostile towards the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, to judge in each particular case. This body, guided by criteria unknown to anyone, will conduct a so-called religious study, based on the conclusion of which a judicial decision will be made. One doesn’t need to be a lawyer to understand that the proposed scheme opens the door to all sorts of abuses…

Initiators and supporters of the adoption of this bill in Ukraine—senior government officials, deputies of the Verkhovna Rada, radical politicians, and public figures—do not hide that the bill is directed against the largest religious community in Ukraine and aims to eliminate the Ukrainian Orthodox Church as a centralized structure, as well as all its dioceses, parishes, and monasteries individually…

The adoption of this bill was preceded by a whole set of measures directed against the canonical Church in Ukraine: a slanderous anti-Church campaign in the national media, seizures of churches with the use of gross violence against clergy and believers, initiation of numerous fictitious criminal cases, pressure on the episcopate by special services, attempts to seize the cradle of Russian monasticism—the Holy Dormition-Kiev Caves Lavra, and other major monasteries with the forced eviction of their residents, as well as a wave of forced closures by local authorities of churches of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, a ban on its services, the seizure of land plots occupied by its monasteries, churches, and shrines.

There is also the Ukrainian legislature’s proposal to legalize pornography, Zelensky’s push to legalize same-sex ‘marriage’, as well as his public support for legalizing prostitution and gambling and for making abortion a free service for any woman (the latter three are mentioned in this article). Such things will only make life for Christians much more difficult than they are at present in the Ukraine.

Does this kind of behavior warrant large-scale financial and moral backing from the peoples of the States and their federal government? Things haven’t been much better in Israel for Christians. The Jerusalem Post reported:

So far in 2023, there have been dozens of attacks by extremist Jews on Christians or Christian sites, ranging from the merely unpleasant to vandalism and assault. “Definitely there has been an increase—in the last year, a very high increase—in all types of violence, spitting, attacks on sites, provocations,” Farid Jubran, general counsel of the Catholic Church’s Custody of the Holy Land, told The Media Line. Jubran said the recently created Religious Freedom Data Center lists 20 incidents in July alone, and that he knew of incidents that were not reported, either because the victims were unaware of the center’s hotline or because they had grown accustomed to such incidents and did not bother reporting them. In January this year, almost 30 graves at a Protestant cemetery on Mount Zion in Jerusalem were vandalized. Two Orthodox Jewish teenagers, one aged 18 and the other 14, were arrested based on surveillance camera footage. Since then, in Jerusalem alone, further incidents have included: A mob of at least a dozen Orthodox Jews overturning tables and throwing chairs at the Taboon Armenian restaurant; a Jewish American tourist toppling a statue of Jesus at the Church of the Flagellation; two Jewish men attacking a bishop and two priests during Mass at the Church of Gethsemane; two Jewish passersby pepper-spraying a young man outside the Armenian convent; and a window in the Cenacle or Upper Room on Mount Zion, where Jesus and the apostles are believed to have held the Last Supper, being smashed by a Jewish man.

Readers can also watch a parade of Orthodox Jews spitting at Christians carrying a Cross in Jerusalem.

But one of the worst incidents happened on Friday, 20 Oct., when an Israeli bomb hit the ancient St. Porphyrios Orthodox Church in Gaza:

The Holy Orthodox Order of St. George the Great Martyr reports:

We have just received confirmation from multiple sources in Gaza that Saint Porphyrios Orthodox Church has been bombed today. Archbishop Alexios appears to have been located and is alive, but we don’t know if he is injured. We have no word on the condition of any other of the more than 500 people being housed at the church and monastery, including the person who has been our source for most of our information.

The bombs hit the two church halls where the refugees, including children and babies, were sleeping. Presently, survivors are searching the rubble for other casualties. Our source at the scene says that they estimate that 150-200 people are dead, and that number is expected to rise as more people are found in the wreckage.

Sadly, this isn’t the first time Israel has bombed something that many in the U.S. would consider highly valuable. Dr. Paul Craig Roberts sheds light on the mostly unheard of Israeli attack on the USS Liberty in an essay of his, which includes a timely warning on allowing any country to unduly influence U.S. foreign policy:

It was June 8, 1967 when the USS Liberty, a surveillance ship stationed off the coast of Egypt was attacked by Israeli fighter aircraft and torpedo boats.  The Israelis were unable to sink the Liberty, but managed to kill 34 American sailors and wound 174. Seventy percent of the crew were casualties of the Israeli attack.

The White House, fearing the Israel Lobby, prevented the US Navy from going to the defense of the Liberty, thus sacrificing American lives, and further dishonored the US Navy by ordering Admiral McCain, father of the former US Senator John McCain, to orchestrate a cover-up.  The surviving crew were threatened with court-martial and imprisonment if they spoke about the event.  It was 20 years before one of the surviving officers wrote a book about the greatest act of shame the US government ever inflicted on the US military.

In 2003, 36 years after the Israeli attack on the Liberty, Admiral Tom Moorer, former Chief of Naval Operations and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, convened the Independent Commission of Inquiry into the Israeli Attack on USS Liberty, the Recall of Military Rescue Support Aircraft while the Liberty was Under Attack, and the Subsequent Cover-up by the United States Government. The Commission consisted of Adm. Moorer, Gen. Raymond Davis, former Assistant Commandant of the US Marine Corps, Rear Adm. Merlin Staring, former Judge Advocate General of the US Navy, and Amb. James Akins, former US Ambassador to Saudi Arabia.

You can read the report online, here for example: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Moorer_Report 

The report is devastating.  Among the report’s conclusions, these stand out:

 . . . “That a danger to our national security exists whenever our elected officials are willing to subordinate American interests to those of any foreign nation, and specifically are unwilling to challenge Israel’s interests when they conflict with American interests; this policy, evidenced by the failure to defend USS Liberty and the subsequent official cover-up of the Israeli attack, endangers the safety of Americans and the security of the United States.”

Returning to the Church, things get worse when looking at the plight of Christians in the Holy Land over a longer period of time, however. Since the Israeli state was established in 1948:

• Christians in Jerusalem have gone from 50% of the population to under 4% (around 10,000);
• Christians in all of Palestine have gone from 13-25% of the population to less than 2% (60,000 at most);
• 3,000 Christians have left Bethlehem since 2000;
• The Ascension Church on the Mount of Olives was bulldozed by the Israelis in 1992;
• 1979 and 1995 witnessed the martyrdom of Christians at the hands Israeli Jews; and
• In 2012, many Christian holy sites were attacked by the same (Saint Herman Calendar 2013: Orthodox Saints of Palestine, St. Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, pgs. 6 and 77).

Can it really be said that Israel is a true friend of the U.S. with this kind of a record?

Because of the tragedy of the Holocaust and the false teaching of Dispensationalism that many in the U.S. have swallowed, there is a knee-jerk reaction to dismiss any criticism of what the Israeli government does in the name of defending the Jewish people. We cannot afford to be so uncritical today, with the specter of a catastrophic world war hovering just off to the side. Civilian blocks of Gaza already look like Charleston, South Carolina, and other Southern cities after Sherman and his Yankee goons burned them to the ground.  One would think this would elicit at least a little caution from Southerners vis-à-vis unquestioning support of all Israeli actions.

But if that will not, let us remember how the Ukraine war opened. In the emotionalism of the moment, if one did not offer 100% support to the Zelensky regime, he was said to be ‘unpatriotic’, a ‘Putin stooge’, and all the rest of it. Only now, after much carnage, corruption, lies, and so on, are people beginning to repent of that overreaction.

The same thing happened with the 2003 invasion of Iraq: hyper-patriotic bravado followed by disillusionment, with the destruction of Iraq’s ancient Christian communities a sad consequence of the U.S.-led war.

Unfortunately, all that irrational emotionalism is now being transferred to the war in Gaza: If one doesn’t fully support Israel, if one offers the slightest criticism of her government, he must be shunned, labeled an ‘anti-Semite’, etc. After enough time has passed, however, and the emotions give way to more rational thought and reflection, people will likely see that as a mistake as well.

But it doesn’t have to be that way; there doesn’t have to be remorse and regret. Folks in the States can still take a step back and make a more calm and reasoned judgment. Or has the Lincoln/Sherman/Grant/Yankee spirit totally obliterated our ability to judge soberly?

Tom Riley’s poem “Beautiful Loser” makes us wonder:

(In memoriam Robert E. Lee, d. 12 October 1870)

Against civilians Lee would not make war.
The Yankees didn’t follow his example.
On people in the South they rained far more
than just a single helping, hot and ample,
of anguish as instruction. Where they went–
not by mere carelessness, but by intention–
they left a waste no heart could circumvent.
The details are too monstrous here to mention.
Oh, and they won! The Union! Hip, hurray!
Still dignified, the General surrendered.
The pattern was established, I would say,
for future forays that the Empire tendered.
The undiscriminating bombs today fall loud.
Of them the Yankee nation waxes proud.

There is a rich Christian history and heritage in Gaza and all across the Holy Land. Many heroes of the Church have hallowed those places with their prayers and other works. The reader is invited to see for himself:

–St. Porphyrios of Gaza;

–St. Gerasimus of the Jordan;

–St. Theoctistus of Palestine;

–St. Hilarion the Great;

–St. Euthymius the Great; and

–St. Savva the Sanctified.

A short overview is also available in the book The Desert a City.

U.S. and Israeli policies are putting this Christian heritage at risk. That will make the Wokies happy, but it should greatly trouble the Christians in the States. If they are really the bastions of Christianity they claim to be (the Red States, at least), shouldn’t their foreign policy as represented by DC officials reflect that?  Shouldn’t it benefit, rather than harm, Christians overseas?

That is not the way things are presently going.

President Biden repeated a statement of President Obama’s a couple of times in his address of Thursday, 19 Oct., requesting the new military spending – that the United States are “the indispensable nation in the world.” But simply repeating something doesn’t make it true, and that is especially true in this case. For the only thing in this world that is truly indispensable is the Church established by Jesus Christ. If the States will align their policies at home and abroad with that great truth, the world would likely experience a respite from war as U.S. hubris subsides.

The request of President Biden for more war spending in the Ukraine and in Gaza should therefore be met with a resounding No by Christians and their representatives in DC.

-By Walt Garlington