Deceived, Deceiving Protest Too Much

When free men and women accept their privilege of fighting for the persecuted in distant tyrannies they undertake three obligations:

To do everything in their power to pressure the persecutors to loosen oppression of victims chosen for their faith or political beliefs. No dictatorship grants human rights in a sudden attack of compassion.

To keep the names and suffering of the persecuted before the public, whether it wants to hear or not.

To spot, track and expose denials of persecution - the subject of this column.

Denials to my columns on Christian persecution have come, of course, from diplomats and propagandists of persecuting countries like China and Egypt. They are quite hysterical, knowing that persecutors leave a trail of paper, witnesses and blood.

Denials also arrive from some American Christians. So far they have been few, nothing nearly approaching the growing American awareness of Christian persecution, and of Tibetan Buddhists and other victim-religions of local choice.

More awareness will bring more denials, for a bagful of motives - turf, sympathy with China’s “anti-imperialism,” fear of boat-rocking or endangering profits, political cowardice or meanness of soul. The time to confront them is now, before by repetition they gain any credence.

Freedom’s religious charge against China is that the Communists began persecution of Christians from Mao’s early days, slackened somewhat when he died, but cracked down hard during the reign of Deng Xiaoping and the current president, Jiang Zemin.

The thousands of Christians imprisoned or disappeared include four present Catholic bishops. The most important Protestant leader, Peter Xu, was arrested in March. He has not been heard from since; his friends fear for his life.

China prohibits Christians from worshiping in any churches except those “patriotic” ones that submit to the Communist Party’s religious-domination apparatus - registration, regulation, control of clerical appointments and censorship reaching into altar and pulpit, like forbidding preaching the Second Coming.

The huge majority of China’s Christian population of 40 million or more do not submit. They worship in “house churches” - at home, in the fields or high hills, an offense punishable by imprisonment.

Now here’s a letter, printed in The New York Times, from Van Harvey, professor emeritus of religious studies at Stanford. He says my accounts of arrest and torture of Christians who try to worship openly and freely are exaggerated.

The reports of Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, the Puebla Program on Religious Freedom of Freedom House and the official human rights accounting of the State Department show him wrong. They show that China uses torture as an instrument of control in prisons and labor camps where Christians worshiping as their consciences command have been sent, for decades.

Professor Harvey writes that Christians can worship “publicly.” What he does not write but said when I called him was that he was referring to worship in the government-regulated churches, not “house churches” where worship is hidden, hounded and punished. The omission in his letter strikes me as evasion, at best.

He also told me he had sympathy for Beijing’s sensitivity toward Christianity’s “Western” roots in China. That’s nice.

Along comes Jude Wanniski, economist and commentator, in a letter to me distributed on his fax list, holding as follows:

China is on a steady positive course on human rights, including religious worship. Yes, financial costs are assessed for those who want more children than the government permits, but that cannot be considered a human rights violation. Catholic priests are arrested but that’s because they belong to the underground church that wants to be treated as if Beijing and the Vatican had relations with each other. This is an area where Jesus would say render unto Caesar. If Christian congregations just register with the government and agree not to hold “political rallies” they are not impeded.

Yes, Jude Wanniski, the same who has been the close adviser of Jack Kemp for many years, the same who has been plugging Louis Farrakhan.

Kemp deserves better. So does Farrakhan.

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