Around the world, atypical Christian women are suffering and being mistreated for no other reason than their faith. Christian Today speaks with Henrietta Blyth, CEO of charity Open Doors, to listen to concerning the unshakeable faith of the persecuted Christian women they serve and the way God has been working through the organisation.
How has God been using Open Doors to achieve out to persecuted women?
Open Doors exists to strengthen the Church within the places where Christians face essentially the most severe persecution and discrimination. We do trauma counselling to assist individuals with traumatic experiences they might have had. We also connect the persecuted Church with churches in less persecuted countries just like the UK and Ireland and we ask people here to talk out on behalf of our persecuted brothers and sisters to bring pressure to bear on our own MPs. The MPs in turn can influence and produce pressure to bear on their peers in other countries. We also pray because this can be a spiritual battle and it’s going to be won through prayer.
The women Open Doors support are being persecuted for his or her faith. Has their faith even been shaken given their circumstances?
There is a simple option to stop the persecution – just stop being Christian – and a lot of these women are really pressured to offer up Jesus. My experience from the ladies I even have met is that despite what they’ve faced, it has actually strengthened their resolve to follow Jesus, and a lot of them have had a unprecedented personal experience of his presence as well.
What is the best need?
Often once I travel ask my persecuted brothers and sisters ‘what can I do for you?’ they usually say ‘please pray for us’ and ‘please encourage other people to hope for us’. They ask that we do not pray for the persecution to stop, but somewhat pray that they are going to stand firm within the face of persecution. They also ask that we pray for his or her persecutors, that they are going to come to know Jesus for themselves.
When the Taliban took over in Afghanistan in 2021 we knew they were going door to door to search out Christians, and if Christian men were found they were executed on the spot. If Christian women were found they were often raped, sometimes trafficked. Sometimes the young girls got to Taliban fighters. At the time Afghanistan was essentially the most dangerous country on the earth for Christians. Our brothers and sisters asked that we pray for them to stay faithful to Jesus and for those Christians which have left Afghanistan, that they continue to be faithful to Jesus even once they reach the comfort of other countries. I assumed that was amazing.
Asking not to hope for the persecution to stop is kind of profound.
What they know is that God is achieving His purposes through the persecution. Jesus was really clear with the disciples. He said, “Blessed are you when people persecute you for my sake … because great is your reward in heaven.” And he also said, “You are the salt of the earth. What use is salt if it loses its saltiness?” If you concentrate on it, Jesus himself was falsely accused and convicted under anti-blasphemy laws after which he was executed. As he said, if it’s happened to me, it is going to occur to you.
We are speaking on the Tears of Gold exhibition of portraits by artist Hannah Rose Thomas, who powerfully depicts female refugees and persecuted women – an exhibition that has been sponsored by Open Doors. What are your thoughts on Hannah’s portraits?
I believe they’re extraordinary and I believe they’re powerful because a lot of the persecution of girls happens behind closed doors. And often due to the shame and stigma, women don’t need to speak about it. Lots of these women think nobody knows about it. We began the See Change campaign at Open Doors because we would like these women to know that we see them, we value them, and we’re doing the whole lot we will to assist them achieve their God-given potential.
The portraits help us to actually see them. Their self-portraits I believe are only so touching, the best way they reveal their inner world and the way they feel consequently of what has happened to them. I believe it is basically powerful that in Hannah’s book she has painted women from everywhere in the world, demonstrating the universality of the feminine experience. That is awfully powerful.
