Resigning Ourselves to a Middle East without Christians

U.S. Christian leaders sign “Pledge of Solidarity Call to Action” on behalf of persecuted Christians in the Middle East.

, Pope Francis has insisted that  the Church 

will not be resigned to think about the Middle East without Christians.

So what is to be done, in practical terms, to reverse the departure of Christians from Egypt, Syria and Iraq?  That question raises the broader problem of how Catholics and Christians across the globe can effectively defend the rights of believers who want to stay in the region, but are forced to leave because their fundamental rights have been ignored or even undermined by their own governments.

Mindful that the pope's visit will draw fresh attention to this problem, U.S. Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant  leaders, legislators and church-affiliated organizations, like Aid to the Church in Need, have mounted a campaign of education and advocacy  to address the plight and flight of Christians in the region. The immediate goal is to gather signatures for a Pledge of Solidarity & a Call to Action" for Christians in Egypt, Iraq and Syria. A link to the Pledge is here. 

The Pledge warns that 

for the Church in the Middle East, the Arab Spring has turned into a Christian Winter. There are now grave questions about the long-term survival of Christianity in the Middle East, its ancient heartland. All faith communities have suffered, but Christian communities have proved more vulnerable than most and have been disproportionately affected by violence and turmoil.

The Pledge calls for prayer, humanitarian assistance,  and common action to influence U.S. foreign policy, and includes.action points culled from an address of New York’s Cardinal Timothy Dolan. It calls for 

 a Congressional initiative for the appointment of a Special Envoy for Middle Eastern Christians and other minorities. It emphasises the need for greater American support for religious tolerance and freedom and for “equal rights of individual citizenship” for all.

Reps. Frank Wolf (R-VA) and Anna Eshoo (D-CA) have backed the Pledge and called on U.S. Christians to join forces and organize a "stronger involvement in support of Christians and other religious minorities in the Middle East" on Capitol Hill, in the White House and in churches across the nation. Aid to the Church in Need, which helped to draft the Pledge, reports that

Events of recent days, weeks, months and even years in Syria, Iraq and Egypt have revealed an increasingly blatant and violent campaign of Christian religious targeting and persecution that has provoked an unprecedented exodus of faithful from the region. 

But, thus far, Christians in the U.S. have not effectively organized to spread the word about the problems facing their fellow believers, nor have they demand that the U.S. governemnt do more to defend the rights of Christian minorities.  .

 Drafters of the Pledge include Nina Shea, a leading advocate for persecuted religious minorities across the globe, and the director of the Center for Religious Freedom at the Hudson Institute, who warns that the Syrian civil war has already resulted in a shocking rise in violent attacks against Christians. For Shea, the recent killing of a Dutch Jesuit offers an a disturbing example of the targeting of Christians by Islamiic extremists in Syria:

On the morning of April 7, Dutch Jesuit priest Frans Van Der Lugt was most likely in meditation, as was his custom, when gunmen burst into his monastery in the old part of the Syrian town of Homs. They grabbed the 75-year-old clergyman, beat him, dragged him outside and shot him twice in the head. The assassins were probably jihadis who then controlled Homs. The rest of that story, and Shea's report, can be read here.

So let's get going. Let's circulate the Pledge. Let's raise the issue in Sunday homilies and in high school and university classrooms. Let's write the White House to demand that President Obama appoint a special envoy to address the plight of religious minorities in the MIddle East and also address the issue in bilateral talks with governments in the region, especially those who receive U.S. aid. And if you're not sure you want to get involved, consider this recent remark from  Iraq’s Catholic Chaldean Patriarch Louis Sako:

We feel forgotten and isolated. We sometimes wonder, if they kill us all, what would be the reaction of Christians in the West?