Hungary Steps Up To The Plate

The Gatestone Institute posted an article today about Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. Prime Minister Viktor Orbán is the only European leader who is willing to protect the persecuted Christians fleeing the Muslim onslaught in the Middle East. Please follow the link above to read the entire article. It gives detailed information about what is currently happening to Christians in the Middle East.

The article reports:

  • “Those we are helping now can give us the greatest help in saving Europe. We are giving persecuted Christians what they need: homes, hospitals, and schools, and we receive in return what Europe needs most: a Christian faith, love and perseverance”. — Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, Daily News Hungary, November 28, 2019.
  • “Our estimation is that more than 90 percent of Christian have already left Iraq and almost 50 percent of Christians in Syria have left the country”. — Ignatius Aphrem II, Patriarch of the Syrian Orthodox Church.
  • European leaders, rather than being embarrassed, should make the condition of Christians under Islam the starting point of their conversations with Muslims.
  • “The fate of Eastern Christians and other minorities is the prelude to our own fate.” — Former French Prime Minister François Fillon, Valeurs Actuelles, December 12, 2019.

The article notes that western countries are not reacting to the plight of Christians in the Middle East.

The article reports:

In Europe, however, there is a solitary defender of persecuted Christians: Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, whom the mainstream media love to peck at and attack. No other European government has invested so much money, public diplomacy and time on this topic. Writing in Foreign Policy, Peter Feaver and Will Inboden explain that aid to Christians come from “a few international relief organizations like the Knights of Columbus and Aid to the Church in Need, and the Hungarian government”. The Knights of Columbus alone raised $2 million to rebuild the Christian Iraqi town of Karamlesh.

“Those we are helping now can give us the greatest help in saving Europe,” Orbán recently said at an international conference, On Christian Persecution 2019, that he organized in Budapest. “We are giving persecuted Christians what they need: homes, hospitals, and schools, and we receive in return what Europe needs most: a Christian faith, love and perseverance”. “Europe is quiet,” Orbán went on. “A mysterious force shuts the mouths of European politicians and cripples their arms.” He said the issue of Christian persecution could only be considered a human rights issue in Europe. He insisted that “Christians are not allowed to be mentioned on their own, only together with other groups that are being persecuted for their faiths.” The persecution of Christians “is therefore folded into the diverse family of persecuted religious groups”.

According to Tristan Azbej, Hungary’s State Secretary for the Aid to Persecuted Christians, Orbán’s is the first European government to have a special State Secretariat “which has only one duty: To look after and monitor the destiny and the situation of the Christian communities all over the world, and if there is a need, we help.”

All western nations need to take part in saving the Christians that are being killed or marginalized in the Middle East. Some of the world’s most ancient Christian communities have been destroyed in the past few years. Western countries need to give these endangered minorities priority status in their refugee programs.

Sad News From Nigeria

On Thursday, Open Doors USA reported:

They came at night. And they came with death on their minds. On Monday, April 29, around 8 pm, Boko Haram fighters invaded the Christian community of Kuda near Madagali in Adamawa State in northeastern Nigeria. The terrorists surrounded the community and went door to door, killing as many as 25 people.

The next day, they returned.

As security agents and community members prepared for the burials of their loved ones, Boko Haram members were spotted approaching for a second attack on the grieving community. As a result, funeral preparations were abandoned as bereaved believers, those from neighboring communities and security agents fled.

Since the attack, many more villagers have fled the town. Christian leaders in the area told Open Doors, “We are in danger, we have no one to fight for us to end this killing of our people.”

The incident is the latest in a long line of attacks by Boko Haram in the area–a stronghold for fighters loyal to Abubakar Shekau (known to be the leader of Boko Haram) and they operate from hideouts in the forests nearby, stealing supplies, killing villagers and attacking security forces.

More than 27,000 people have been killed in the decades-long bloody insurgency and 2 million others displaced by Boko Haram.

Religious persecution is a problem. In October 2017, Townhall reported:

Anti-Christian persecution is at an all-time high world-wide, according to a recent report from the international Catholic charity, Aid to the Church in Need. The report, which tracks worldwide persecution from 2015-2017, found that 75 percent of religious persecution was directed at Christians.

The report also found that “in 12 of the 13 countries reviewed, the situation for Christians was worse in overall terms in the period 2015-17 than within the preceding two years.”

“In almost all the countries reviewed,” the report says, “the oppression and violence against Christians have increased since 2015 – a development especially significant given the rate of decline in the immediate run-up to the reporting period.”

John Pontifex, the report’s editor commented that “in terms of the numbers of people involved, the gravity of the crimes committed and their impact, it is clear that the persecution of Christians is today worse than at any time in history.”

Pray for the Christian church. Persecution of Christians is happening around the world. In America it is more subtle–Christians are attacked verbally or with lawsuits when they take a stand that reflects Biblical values. Christians are mocked when they express Christian principles–remember the attacks on Mike Pence when he stated that he would not be seen in a restaurant with a woman other than his wife. In America, Christians are still free to practice their faith, but there are no guarantees. All of us need to protect the freedom of religion and the freedom to express our religious views in public.