As iron sharpens iron,
one person sharpens another. (Proverbs 27:17)
“The USCIRF’s 2024 annual report highlights a series of laws — such as the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act, Foreign Contribution Regulation Act, and the Citizenship Amendment Act — and governmental actions that have systematically targeted religious minorities, including Christians” - CPost
“Despite a lack of evidence, Jones observes that the tradition concerning Domitian’s persecution persists: ‘From a frail, almost non-existent basis, it gradually developed and grew large.’ Thus the alternative facts sown by these ancient historians grew to a truism of Christian history.” - Biblical Archaeology Society
“Article 25 of India’s constitution guarantees freedom of religion, affirming ‘Freedom of conscience and free profession, practice and propagation of religion.’ In practice, however, there is significant religious persecution…” - Providence
“The Russian government’s decision to invade Ukraine and to target Baptists and other evangelical Christians in Ukraine has been a tragic hallmark of the war.” - Baptist Press
In my previous post I introduced the subject of persecution and how the early church responded to it. As explained there, I’d like to take this post to summarize and extend an excellent discussion of Paul’s teaching on the subject in 1 Thessalonians by Michael Martin in the New American Commentary volume on Thessalonians.
There’s been a lot of talk lately about persecution of Christians in America. I suppose it’s true that there’s more than there used to be—there’s been some name-calling and a lawsuit about wedding cakes, though the defendant won that one.
“This is the second consecutive year North Korea has been named the world’s worst country to be a Christian ….Others in the top 10 include Somalia (2), Libya (3), Eritrea (4) Yemen (5), Nigeria (6), Pakistan(7), Sudan(8), Iran (9).” - Baptist Paper
Related:
“Global Christian Relief finances the database maintained by the International Institute for Religious Freedom (IIRF), which will collect, record and analyze publicly sourced reports of persecution for the database” - BPNews
“Over the past 25 years, I’ve had the opportunity to be a part of a growing cooperation of churches in China that faces lower-level persecution. By ‘lower-level’ persecution, I mean that the authorities have…relaxed their hold on churches in comparison to a previous era.” - 9 Marks
“The report, titled ‘Closed Doors,’ found the number of Christians coming to the U.S. from countries named on a prominent persecution watchlist dropped from 32,248 in 2016 to 9,528 in 2022 — a decline of 70%.” - RNS
Discussion