According to Bob Fu, founder and president of the China Aid ministry and perhaps the world's leading advocate for religious liberty in his homeland of China, multiple churches are being demolished across the country. The growth of Christianity is causing Chinese political leaders no end of heartburn; in an internal document obtained by Pastor Fu, government officials were told:
You should . . . correct the phenomenon that religion has grown too fast, there are too many religious sites and there are too many activities, and promote the healthy, orderly, standardized and reasonable growth of the religions in our province. . . Cadres in charge of ethnic and religious affairs at various levels should see clearly the political issues behind the Cross.
The only "political issue" behind the Cross is that Christians affirm a truth that terrifies oppressive rulers: No one -- no government, no leader, no state -- is Lord; only Jesus is.
Of course, faithful believers make the finest citizens in the world. But that's not good enough for tyrants for whom retention of absolute political allegiance is of supreme importance.
As Pastor Fu notes, at the February National Prayer Breakfast, President Obama said he would make international religious liberty a priority for his Administration. Yet the President has left the State Department's top position on the issue, Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom, open for about nine months. As Liberty University's Johnnie Moore writes, "Up to this point, it seems questionable whether the Obama administration really cares about these issues at all. Despite statements like the one made during the National Prayer Breakfast, it appears there has been little concerted effort to make religious freedom a priority."
Christians are being persecuted, sometimes murdered, tortured horribly or held in ghastly prison camps, in places as diverse as Nigeria and North Korea. When America defends religious liberty abroad, it stands not only with people of faith but advances her vital interests. When we take rank with those persecuted for their religious convictions, we gain swaths of friends in troubled regions and bolster the credibility we desperately need with our adversaries and friends alike.
President Obama needs to appoint a vigorous, brave, and experienced Ambassador to fight for those oppressed due to their faith. That he has not done so for so long raises serious doubts about his earnestness in protecting those who live under the Cross which so frightens the Chinese leadership and whose message is transforming lives from the smallest village in the most impoverished country to those in the highest levels of government, academia, and business in the world's capitals.
Pastor Fu shared his own testimony of imprisonment and persecution when he was still in China when he spoke at FRC last year. Listen to his moving remarks and call for American Christians to remember with their brothers and sisters in Christ suffering for their faith -- remember them in prayer, in giving, and in calling on the federal government to live up to its commitments to work for their liberty.