By John Stonestreet
On September 22, suicide bombers connected to the Pakistani Taliban entered All Souls Anglican Church in Peshawar during services. The resulting explosion killed 78 men, women and children.
It was only the most recent attack on Pakistani Christians, who make up just 2 percent of the country’s population. Apparently, even that tiny percentage is too high for some there.
What’s happening in Pakistan is, in turn, part of a larger global pattern. As we’ve said on BreakPoint, Christians around the world are often “harassed, arrested, jailed, tortured, raped, beaten and killed.” Christian “churches and homes are bombed or burned to the ground.” Children are even “taken from their Christian parents lest they become too tainted with faith in Jesus.”
Yet the vast majority of Americans, and American Christians, would be surprised to hear we’re living in what’s been called “the age of martyrs.”
Kirsten Powers of the Daily Beast has had enough of what she calls the “deafening silence” on this issue, especially from American Christians. The lead to her recent column reads like an indictment: “Christians in the Middle East and Africa are being slaughtered, tortured, raped, kidnapped, beheaded, and forced to flee the birthplace of Christianity. One would think this horror might be consuming the pulpits and pews of American churches. Not so.”
Read more at http://www.religiontoday.com/columnists/breakpoint/christian-persecution-why-we-must-not-remain-silent.html