Conservative commentator Douglas Murray’s criticism of the Church of England and the Roman Catholic Church for failing to talk up for persecuted Christians deserves widespread attention.
The associate editor of the Spectator magazine and creator of The War on the West devoted his Douglas Murray Direct Address, posted on X, to the Islamist persecution of Christians within the Middle East and Africa.
He said: “In recent weeks in a single incident alone in Congo 70 Christians were abducted and beheaded by Islamist militia … In newer days in Syria the traditional Christian Churches of that country have once more been under attack.”
He posed the query: “Why is there so little attention to this? Why is there so little news or response to atrocities like those I even have just described?”
He developed his answer: “You may not have noticed but there isn’t actually an Archbishop of Canterbury in the intervening time … But if you happen to do go to the continued social media threads of Lambeth Palace and so forth, you’ll find the standard pabulum.
“You will find loads of interfaith stuff, you’ll find a little bit of green stuff thrown in, in fact, but next to nothing in regards to the persecuted Christians of Syria, of Congo, and elsewhere. It’s a really strange thing to my mind. It’s an odd thing to skip.”
He continued: “There is a Pope in the intervening time. He’s not well and could possibly be forgiven for not being more outspoken perhaps in the meanwhile. But it’s still fairly striking to me that the Roman Catholic Church also stays relatively silent in regards to the killing and persecution of members of its own faith community.”
The reason for the failure to talk up, he said, is “very straightforward”.
“They’re very scared and arguably they’ve some right to be,” he said.
Murray cited the furore after Pope Benedict’s famous Regensburg Address in 2006 when he quoted a 14th Century Byzantine emperor who “said something disobliging in regards to the way through which Islam had been spread as a faith from the start, noting by the way in which that Islam had fairly often been spread by the sword.”
This reference produced a violent response, which Murray satirically described as brought on by people all over the world, who were offended by the Pope’s remark, stating: “You’ve got to say my religion is peaceful, otherwise I would kill you.”
Murray said: “There were attacks on Christians within the wake of the Regensburg Address all over the world. In the West Bank and Gaza, Palestinian Muslims attacked Christian churches. In Iraq Assyrian Christians were also attacked and kidnapped and in Somalia a 65-year-old nun was killed by some brave jihadists who again were trying very hard to prove the peacefulness of their particular faith.”
This violent response led to “Pope Benedict and indeed many of the Western Churches deciding to not tread into this terrain again” in a bid to forestall further attacks on Christians in Muslim countries.
Nevertheless, Murray argued, “the silence of so many leaders of the Western Churches in regards to the situation of Christians within the persecuted Churches is a subject which is deeply, deeply troubling”.
He observed that “so long as Christian leaders within the West remain so silent when Christians are being chased out of nations, massacred, beheaded, butchered of their places of worship” many individuals all over the world will proceed to say: “If the Church doesn’t speak up for its own, why should we speak up for it?”
He concluded: “It would begin to unravel the issue if the heads of the Churches within the West remembered their persecuted brethren and truly said something on their behalf and for them.”
Murray’s point is unquestionably valid. When, for one example, the leaders of the Church of England, which is the established Church and whose bishops have a platform within the House of Lords, fail to talk up in regards to the Islamist persecution of Christians, news organisations are much less more likely to cover the stories.
Furthermore, if the leaders of the Western Churches don’t highlight the problem, the members of those denominations are also much less likely to focus on it in their very own local churches. This in turns feeds right into a culture of comfortable, compromised, socially respectable Christianity within the Western Churches, a watered-down version of the religion which fails to affect on the nations these Churches are presupposed to be transforming through the Gospel.
So, for their very own spiritual well-being in addition to for the sake of their suffering brothers and sisters in the religion, the Western Churches have to be highlighting the fact of Islamist violence against Christians.
Douglas Murray has done Western Christianity an amazing service. But will the Churches listen?
Julian Mann is a former Church of England vicar, now an evangelical journalist based in Lancashire.
