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When living your faith means risking death(Hartford Courant, The (CT) (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Apr. 13--As Christians in the United States happily prepare for their holiest holiday, elsewhere in the world, in incidents reminiscent of Christianity's earliest days, some Christians are risking their safety and even their lives for their religious faith. Abdul Rahman, an Afghan Christian, recently faced possible execution for the crime of conversion from Islam. Tom Fox, a member of the Christian Peacemakers Team in Iraq, was kidnapped and murdered there for trying to live his beliefs. Miroslav Volf, director of the Center for Faith and Culture at Yale, says the safety and ease of worship that most Christians experience in Western nations isn't universal. "The fact is that most Christians in the world do not live in America," Volf said. "Christianity is really a Third World religion today." In places where Christians are a minority, Volf said, "they are powerless and suffer persecution. It's very difficult to be Christian in some Middle Eastern countries, in certain places in Africa, or to be a Christian in China." Rahman, 41, converted to Christianity more than a decade ago, when he was living in Peshawar, Pakistan, and working for a Christian aid group helping Afghan refugees. He later lived in Germany but returned to his home country after the fall of the Taliban. While he was embroiled in a custody battle with his daughters' grandparents, a relative who knew of his conversion apparently reported him to authorities. A Bible was discovered in Rahman's home, and he was charged with apostasy, a crime under Afghanistan's Sharia law. As Rahman sat in a maximum-security jail, demonstrators called for his execution. But he said he was a Christian and would always remain one. Under international pressure, the Afghan Supreme Court ultimately dropped the charges against Rahman, saying he was insane and mentally unfit to stand trial. The Italian government offered him asylum, and Rahman secretly left Afghanistan. "In Kabul, they would have killed me, I'm sure of it," Rahman said when he arrived in Italy, where officials praised him for his courage. "There is such a contrast between what people are willing to do," said Volf, who founded the center at Yale to study how faith can affect people's daily lives -- and how it sometimes doesn't. "Some go to church every Sunday, yet their faith doesn't seem to have much impact on the rest of their lives," Volf said. "Then there are others whose lives embody a fairly aggressive form of Christianity." The Christian Peacemakers -- an organization sponsored by the Mennonite Church USA, the Presbyterian Peace Fellowship and Friends United Meeting -- is dedicated to pacifism and alternatives to war. It places volunteers in places of conflict like Africa, Iraq, Colombia, Haiti and the Palestinian West Bank, as well as along the border between the U.S. and Mexico. Unlike missionaries, the group does not attempt to proselytize or convert. Fox, a 54-year-old Quaker who had been in Iraq for 18 months, was the first Christian Peacemaker to be killed since the organization was founded in 1984, says Claire Evans, delegation coordinator for the group, based in Chicago. "If soldiers are willing to put their lives on the line for violent peacemaking, we believe we are called as non-violent peacemakers to put our lives on the line for peace," says Evans, who also has spent time in Iraq. Fox was one of four Christian Peacemakers kidnapped in November and held hostage by a group calling itself the Swords of Righteousness Brigade. He was found murdered in March, but U.S. and British forces rescued the other three -- Canadians James Loney and Harmeet Singh Sooden and 74-year-old Norman Kember of Great Britain. Some of the Peacemakers' critics are war supporters who view the group's peacemaking efforts as interference, but the Peacemakers don't run from that charge. Part of their motto is "Getting in the way." In Iraq, the group's members live outside the Green Zone and work with Iraqi partners to find detained relatives and otherwise help families affected by the war. "Tom knew he was risking his life. He was definitely someone who was willing to take that risk," Evans said. "Jesus said, 'Take up your cross, and follow me,' and when you do that, sometimes it leads to crucifixion and death." The organization has not yet decided when another peacemaker team will be sent to Iraq, she said. Volf, a Croatian who grew up in Yugoslavia, said he recalls meeting Christian Peacemakers during the war in Bosnia. Years earlier, he said, he had been beaten and threatened with imprisonment because of his faith. "I was very much a pacifist, and [Yugoslavia] had compulsory service; I was interrogated for months and threatened with years in prison. "But the call of the Christian faith, properly understood, is to love one's enemies," he said, "to resist evil in such a way that the humanity of the other is redeemed and understanding can be established." |