The Global War on Christians (a book review)
Just as Bishop Umar Mulinde pulled up to his church in Uganda for a Christmas Eve celebration in 2011, two Muslim extremists attacked him, pouring acid over his head and back. He’s left blind in one eye and scarred. In 2009, Asia Bibi was sentenced to prison after being falsely accused of blaspheming the Muslim prophet Muhammad under Pakistani law. A mullah in Pakistan has placed a $10,000 price tag on her head for anyone willing to kill her. At least 10 million Pakistanis say they’d kill her for the money, out of their religious convictions or both. Tudor Marin, an Orthodox clergyman in the Romanian city of Focsani, was 69 years old when he was stabbed to death inside his church. That morning, his would-be murderer set out to “kill a priest.”
Each of these men and women are profiled as victims of the Christian faith in the book The Global War on Christians, Dispatches from the Front Lines of Anti-Christian Persecution written by John L. Allen, Jr.
From page 1 to page 300, Allen packs his book with stories of people who have suffered—and have even been killed—in “the global war on Christians” for their faith in Jesus Christ. He defines the “global war” as “violence and overt persecution directed at individual Christians as well as their churches and other institutions on the basis of their religious faith, the works of charity they perform, or the virtues they exhibit.”
As soon as I began reading the first few pages of this book, my heart throbbed with excitement—despite the sobering topic. The plight of persecuted Christians around the world has often been a topic of interest and deep compassion for me. Working at a ministry that serves Christians in South Asia, we sometimes get urgent prayer requests from the field about our brothers and sisters in Christ who are experiencing persecution in some form, even threats upon their lives. Thinking about it now, I don’t think I’ve read a report that doesn’t include some sort of persecution element against believers in Jesus; they are either being harassed, mocked, excommunicated, threatened or demoralized.
Persecution, in its various forms, is very real and is happening all across the globe, as Allen identifies throughout his book. There is no central place where this war on Christians is taking place. Rather, battles against believers in Jesus Christ are being fought in Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Latin America .
Allen starts off by saying in the very first paragraph of the introduction, “This book is about the most dramatic religion story of the early twenty-first century, yet one that most people in the West have little idea is even happening: the global war on Christians. […] Christians today indisputably are the most persecuted religious body on the planet, and too often their new martyrs suffer in silence.”
Allen often mentions how the reality of men and women dying or being persecuted for their faith in Jesus goes ignored by those in the West because it’s happening in lands too far away from us. He says, “the war on Christians remains the world’s best-kept secret.”
Allen quotes Francesa Paci, who wrote the Italian book Dove muoiono I Cristani (Where Christians are Dying), as saying, “Christian are dying in Orissa, in Iraq, in the Brazilian Amazon, but above all they’re dying in the indifference of so many who, not wanting to seem clericalist, simply minimize what’s happening.”
The fact that many Christians are dying or literally fighting to protect their lives while their Western brothers and sisters in the faith go about their days never giving so much as a second of thought or prayer to their plight is a concern that should be raised and brought to attention, which Allen does very well.
Allen divides his book into three parts:
1. Anti-Christian Persecution Around the World
In this section, he takes the reader through various parts of Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Middle East and Eastern Europe, showcasing what Christians have to endure in their communities.
2. Myths About the Global War on Christians
Allen takes five of the most popular misperceptions, or false assumptions, on the war against Christians and dissects each one, giving examples as to why they are truly myths and “toxic” to believe.
3. Fallout, Consequences and Response
This section has three chapters designed to bring further awareness and practical applications to help those suffering for their faith in Jesus.
All in all, Allen kept his book well balanced in portraying all the aspects of the global war on Christians, even talking about the persecution being done to Christians by other Christians. This is a book that brought me to my knees many times to pray for my persecuted family in Christ. It kept them in my mind and deepened my love for them. It gave me a sense of solidarity among the denominations despite the differences in doctrine. We are all one in Christ, living—and dying—for His glory.
In the last chapter of his bookAllen talks about his encounters with a group of Syrian Christians who had fled their country’s bloody civil war and sought refuge in Lebanon. Allen says, “They described losing family and friends, hearing anti-Christian slogans shouted by the Free Syrian Army, watching Christian churches and shops being bombed, and being afraid to take their children to services on Sunday.” When Allen asked them what he and others could do, he said the most common response was, “Don’t forget about us.”
After reading The Global War on Christians, forgetting about them will be difficult.
Learn more or read chapter one of The Global War on Christians.
Disclaimer: I received this book for free from WaterBrook Multnomah Publishing Group for this review
