Welcome to Evangelical 360. I'm Brian Stiller, your host. This is the second in a two-part series with Dr. Paul Marshall. It's on the issue of Christians in public life, how we relate to the public sphere of politics as evangelical Christians. Paul Marshall is a Brit raised in Canada, living in the US, professor of political theory at Baylor University in Texas. His insights into what it means to be a Christian in today's world is particularly helpful and this is the second in that series. Thanks for joining us. And now Paul Marshall. Paul, let me just change subjects here for a moment. You have an enormous history in following and understanding persecution of Christians in the world. You've had a major relationship with Muslims and especially in Indonesia. Reports have shown the numbers of people who are being killed. Nigeria being one of the countries of I think more Christians have been killed in Nigeria in the last year than in years before. How would you define the state of Christian freedom as it relates to persecution today?
There is increased persecution of Christians. But I would add there's increased religious persecution across the board and that's increased deterioration of human rights and democracy. You know, there are particular trends with Christians, but they're also part of a larger trend where democracy, using the term broadly, of more free and open collective societies, they're getting weaker and weaker and authoritarian societies, China, Russia, Iran are getting stronger. So there's an overall breakdown here. So that affects Christians, but you're seeing now with the reassertive China increased crackdowns on Christians and you know just last week one of the largest mass arrests of Christians in years. So China's getting more repressive again. Also Russia domestically. If you're not Russian Orthodox, if you're a Christian other than Russian Orthodox, you have a rough time in Russia right now. Catholics and evangelicals, even dissident Orthodox, the very courageous Russian Orthodox priests who denounce the war in Ukraine, they end up in prison. So, those things are getting worse. Radical Islam is also worsening. You know, other countries have been getting better. The Gulf States, the United Arab Emirates and so on, places like Kuwait, Qatar, Jordan, even Saudi Arabia. There's been opening up though. But there's a tendency here I'm talking about westerners who think about al-Qaeda attacking the United States. It's present in Afghanistan or the Islamic State, ISIS in the Middle East. Those seem to have vanished off our radar screen. They've gone. No, they've moved to Africa. And al-Qaeda now has more members and followers than it ever has. ISIS does, but they're operating in Nigeria. They're operating in Mozambique, way down in the southeast next to South Africa, even into South Africa, in Kenya, in Uganda, in Chad, the places where the two big death tolls in conflict right now Congo and Sudan. And in Sudan you have a civil war and at least they both can be pretty radical but also one is backed by a radical Islamist faction and they're now operating even in the Congo and the deaths you mentioned in Nigeria. Some are by Fulani and northern Muslim tribe herdsmen not necessarily part of a terrorist organization but they're killing Christians but ISIS is operating there. Al-Qaeda's there and the death toll amongst Christians and moderate Muslims is in the tens of thousands. So we've got the resurgent authoritarian powers, including, you know, communism hasn't gone away. There's still China, there's still North Korea, there's still Vietnam, but that's been easing up. And radical Islam and then you get religious nationalism, which you now find strongly in India with the BJP and its supportive elements. That much more wanting to make this a Hindu country and that means the repression of Muslims and Christians. I was in India, one of my colleagues at the Hudson Institute who's also a columnist of the Wall Street Journal, Walter Russell Mead, who I suggest everybody read, he writes about foreign affairs international relations also very committed Christian, I mean he's not writing about this all the time in his columns he's doing foreign affairs but strong Christian sensibilities but he led a group to India to talk with Indian officials and the background here is India and the United States are going to need to be very strong allies because they both have problems with China. But American academics, foreign policy types, a group of 10 or 12 senior influential people went to India to be briefed by the Indians on their point of view of many issues on China and other things. This is but the first thing and one of the meetings the Indian officials raised was the matter of Christian conversion in India. And foreign missionaries. Now I would say you know foreign missionaries Christian foreign missionaries in India are usually professionals. They teach in seminaries and so on. They're usually not evangelists because Indians people who know the culture are much better. And but this is a huge issue in India enough that they would raise it with an American delegation as the first thing and so what happens is when you get Hindus becoming Christians in India there's violence there's widespread violence there are hundreds probably thousands of incidents a year so too much but in India there's religious nationalism becomes a problem for any religious minority. Sri Lanka's form of Buddhism similarly and Nepal. So I'd mentioned sort of radical forms of Islam as one major thing. The authoritarian countries including the remaining communist ones and then religious nationalism mainly in South Asia. These are the major sources of persistence. So those are three global trends that you see. That ultimately impact the rights of people to make their own religious choices. Yes, it is. A few others, Latin America's been getting worse. You've got Venezuela, you know, Nicaragua has been closing down churches, kicking out Catholic bishops and so on. And Venezuela's repressive Colombia more so Latin America has been the last 40 or 50 years one of the most religiously free places in the world. But some of the countries are now getting much more repressive. They're returning to the old dictatorial methods of the strong man who will squash anything which opposes his rule.
And in the face of those three major trends that you've noticed what is the strength of the gospel message in those places and during this time?
Firstly you mentioned there is another king. Christianity has always emphasized the independence of the church from the state. They use different words, sacrosanctum and so on. Sometimes they want to take over the church and Christians have messed this up all the time. But in principle the church would be independent of the state. It would make its own decisions. It would choose its own leaders. When you get an authoritarian state, it wants to control everything. So, China demands the right to appoint Catholic bishops or at least co-appoint them. But when you get a church, a strong church, may be good citizens, peaceful and whatever, but say no, we do not accept the final authority of the state over what we do within the church. We have another king. And if there's anything an authoritarian president or king or party chairman doesn't want to hear is the citizens talking about another king. Even they say no you're not going to bring an army. He's not going to bring tanks in here but there's another authority. It has an authority that we cannot disobey. That brings reaction the confession that there is another king and the independence of the church. A second thing is more so emphasized by evangelicals is change. One of the reasons people a lot of people in India or other societies worry about Christianity is it changes things. It undercuts traditions. So give an example. Let's take Indonesia. I do mean Indonesia this time. 200 years ago. You're a villager living in a village in Java. You don't wonder about what you're going to be when you grow up. You're going to be a peasant because your mom and dad are peasants, your grandpas, everybody. You live in a village. You plant, you grow things. That's it. You're not thinking about being a doctor. You've never even heard of a university. So, you don't wonder about where you're going to live. Where you going to live here? There's probably no roads there. Just paths. You don't worry about what religion you're going to be. You're a Muslim. Everybody you know is a Muslim. I don't know anybody who isn't a Muslim. So it's a traditional society. You're born into it. You become what you're born into. Then life changes. What we call so modernization or globalization or whatever. But a road comes into the village. And then there may be printing pamphlets, things you can read from somewhere else. Then there's a radio and then there's a TV and you become more and more aware of other things outside your village of other options. You could be something else. You could go through a high school and get a job as a technician or maybe even university. There are different religions. So what before you could just take for granted it wasn't an issue. Life it's like the weather. It's what it is. And now you're faced with the question of choice. You could be something else. And one of the essence of modernity brings it is choice to be something else. And that's this produces two things. One is if you're an imam in such a village or you're a pastor in a Christian village, certain things could be taken for granted. You weren't really challenged. But now there's other options. Your flock could be aware that there could be something else. So whereas beforehand shift the metaphor, there's new winds blowing through and you've got to push back against them. And one reason for the sort of more milit stronger militancy in religion including radicalism is to push back against the corroding effects of modernity to stay where you are. You got to push back more strongly against these forces. So you're getting stronger religion. But the other thing particularly with monotheism is traditional society says you will be what you were born to be and then someone says to you you can be born again you don't have to be what you were born to be so evangelicalism I don't think by choice fits in with this modernity of where people are facing more options than they ever had before and with evangelicals, Catholics as well, but much more central and with evangelicals. You have this choice we could put before you. You could come to know Jesus Christ and there could be changes in your life. This becomes an opportune moment here. So but that also means people more accustomed to a more traditional way of life see conversions, see evangelicals as very much a threat to that. It's as much a fear of modern currents as it is of Christianity itself. But the two sometimes get equated.
Paul, your description of Canada, the US relationship and the dynamics, especially as it relates to faith and the evangelical community is very much a part of that. But as I travel to other countries, for example, in Brazil, El Salvador, you've had very small evangelical community, mainly Roman Catholic, but now the evangelical community is growing. In some cases, in some of the Latin American countries, it's now the dominant Christian faith. So they look at their country, they look at the way it's been ruled, they look at the morality and they say, 'We would want our country to be more Christian, more religious, but Christian at best.' And then so they look at the gospel. We have a gospel in our tradition, in our the message that you the community you and I have been raised in. We come to Jesus. Our lives are saved. We are born again. We are transformed by his spirit and we are promised eternal life. But then I look at my world around me and I see the kinds of things that are going on that I find either disturbing or abhorrent and I say I would like my country to be more religious or even more Christian. So we have 2,000 years of history where Christians were persecuted in Rome. Then they took over Rome. Somewhere in between there is our understanding of the creation and God's concern for that creation. Us coming to faith in Christ, being transformed by the spirit, growing in the church, being salt and light, and wanting our country to somehow have a stronger or a greater affinity towards Christian values and vision. So, I kind of muddled it all up for you. Help us make sense of that.
