In recent years much attention has been given to the persecution of Christians, initially behind the Iron Curtain and more recently in the Middle East, Asia and Africa. This research is invaluable because it brings to notice abuses that could otherwise be hidden, and helps their alleviation.
But in popular discussion the persecution of Christians is often compared with that undergone by other groups, like Muslims. The discussion takes on a competitive and proprietorial edge. This has unfortunate consequences.
In the first place it encourages an exclusive focus on the religious reasons for persecution. In fact religious belief is only one of many complex factors in persecution. Hazaras in Afghanistan, for example, have often suffered persecution on the grounds that they are Shiite, but this is only one reason among many which masks the tribal difference that underlies their persecution.
Similarly, the recently appointed Cardinal John Onaiyen has often cautioned against seeing the violence directed against Christians in the Obujan region as primarily religious. It reflects a wider tribal and economic conflict.
The real, if periodic, persecution of Christians in China also needs to be seen against a broader context. Chinese rulers fear small, committed groups that they cannot control. The memory of the catastrophically destructive Taiping rebellion, whose origins lay in a sick man's chance reading of texts from Isaiah, lingers. The persecution of Christians today needs to be set alongside the even more implacable hostility to the Falun Gong.
In the Middle East the position of Christians is particularly parlous. They have often suffered violence and discrimination in the name of intolerant forms of Islam. But the recent violence and dispersal of these churches have been provoked in no small measure by the reckless Western invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq. After many Muslims identified the armies of the West with Christianity, local Christians were easy targets.
These complexities are likely to be lost when the persecution of Christians is made part of a comparison between religions.
Those with a competitive focus will also be more likely to associate serious persecution with the subtle forms of prejudice, discrimination and limitation of religious freedom experienced in Western societies. The broader context lends these experiences a gravity and and significance that they would not have when studied in isolation.
When seen as part of international persecution, discriminatory attitudes and action become part of a large and grandiloquent story in which Christians see themselves as the victims of real or imagined enemies, whether they be large forces such as secularism or ecofeminism, or their representatives, such as politicians, the media or educated elites.
That in turn leads away from engagement in the task of building a fairer society for all citizens to an attempt to redress the wrongs suffered by the victimised group.
These are the risks of focusing on the persecution of Christians in a competitive way.
But it is right to focus on the reality and wrongness of persecution wherever it is found. The persecution of Muslim groups are as abhorrent as violations of the human dignity of Christians. All persecution is an offence against our shared humanity, and so to be deplored and its victims embraced. That is the insight that led an earlier and more generous generation of Australians to endorse the UNHCR Convention on the Status of Refugees.
It is also right for Christians to have a special care for their fellow members who are persecuted elsewhere. This will naturally express itself in sympathy for their plight, advocacy for them, and in practical help.
It would be also decent for them to recognise that the military actions undertaken by their own governments have contributed to the persecution of Christians, and to deplore them.
The temptation to weave public prejudices, laws and regulations in Western societies into a wider pattern of persecution against Christianity should be resisted. Each regulation, attitude and action should be looked at on its own terms, the issues at stake considered coolly, and unjustified discrimination opposed.
This piecemeal approach may suggest that the causes of discrimination are wider than hostility to Christians. In particular, the tendency of all Western governments to try to act outside the rule of law, as has been egregiously evident in the Australian treatment of asylum seekers, will infringe on religious freedom as on other freedoms.
This has nothing to do with secularism but with the abuse of power. If Christians were drawn into a crusade, this might be an appropriate cause.
Andrew Hamilton is consulting editor of Eureka Street.
Image credit: Tayo Fatunla