Their Brothers' Keepers: The conservative shade of human-rights activists

National Review, June 30, 2003 by Kate O'Beirne

In early May, the Institute on Religion and Democracy sent a letter to President Bush, prompted by South Korean president Roh Moo Hyun's visit to Washington. The letter -- spearheaded by Christian conservatives -- issued a plea in behalf of Roh's suffering neighbors: "We call on you to give voice to desperate cries for freedom from the tormented people of North Korea."

The Christian Left is also concerned about abuse in North Korea -- by the United States against the Pyongyang regime. The National Council of Churches received a very different letter, concerning its work in North Korea: The head of a North Korean government-approved Christian church group thanked the Council for siding with the "international solidarity movement for peace" and condemned America's "high-handed and imprudent acts."

North Korea's widespread famine, its vast system of gulags, and its cruel treatment of dissidents and religious believers are not the only human-rights catastrophes to escape the condemnation of most of the mainline churches that worship with the Christian Left. Liberal religious groups, which once enjoyed a monopoly on the issue of human rights, are largely silent about the abuses of many other repressive states, including Cuba, China, Sudan, Nigeria, and Iran. In recent years, religious conservatives have become the most effective international human-rights crusaders.

The Christian Left has always been a bit deaf to the cries of certain political dissidents and religious minorities. In the 1970s, President Jimmy Carter's human-rights crusades enjoyed the support of the mainline Protestant community, liberal evangelicals, and left-wing Catholics, whose collective moral indignation echoed the selective outrage of secular liberals. Thus, right-wing regimes were roundly denounced for repressing political liberties, while left-wing ones were gently encouraged to "dialogue" about their troubling shortcomings.

In the 1990s, a different crew took up the cause of global human rights: religious conservatives. Their first successful campaign, for which they built a broad alliance of believers, highlighted the widespread incidence of religious persecution. It resulted in the 1998 International Religious Freedom Act, establishing an independent commission to monitor violations and a State Department office responsible for an annual report to the president. Two years later, religious conservatives led the effort to enact landmark legislation to combat international sex trafficking. (The Clinton administration opposed both laws. In the case of the International Religious Freedom Act, their opposition was a combination of liberal suspicion of Christian activism and State Department resistance to congressional meddling. The sex-trafficking legislation got caught up in the feminist debate over whether or not prostitution is a legitimate career choice.) This year, conservatives lobbied successfully to secure billions of dollars for the global battle against AIDS.

Recent events show that the Christian Left is up to its old tricks. The sympathy and support religious liberals have extended to Havana and Beijing was also extended to Saddam Hussein. In early May, about 150 activists, including the Rev. Jesse Jackson and representatives of Pax Christi, the United Methodist Church, the United Church of Christ, and the Unitarian Universalists, placed an ad in the New York Times. They declared, "We, religious leaders, stand firmly in support of the United Nations," and praised the leadership of Secretary-General Kofi Annan. Earlier this year, the Rev. Robert Edgar, general secretary of the National Council of Churches, reported that the "highlight" of a visit by American church officials to Baghdad was the opportunity to pray with Tariq Aziz, Saddam's notorious deputy. During the visit, any concerns about Saddam's brutal repression were raised in private. Public concerns focused on Iraqi victims of the 1991 Gulf War and American plans "to use its imperial power to crush a small nation."

A "pilgrimage of peace" to the Middle East last April followed the same pattern. No moral distinction was made in the condemnation of Israeli and Palestinian "acts of violence," except that only Israel's behavior was specifically criticized. Mark Tooley, director of the United Methodist committee at the Institute on Religion and Democracy, explains that because the mainline Christian community generally can't bear to criticize any Marxist or Muslim regimes, its outrage is highly selective: "The only country they criticize on human rights is Israel."

Even as Christians and other religious believers risk rape, torture, enslavement, and death in scores of countries, religious liberals direct their attention to alleged American atrocities. The National Council of Churches has mounted a campaign against SUVs and is promoting an initiative to help Florida's farm laborers. The World Council of Churches is waging a war against the use of most forms of energy worldwide.

Persecution of Christians has increased due to global population trends. Prof. Allen D. Hertzke of the University of Oklahoma, author of the forthcoming book Freeing God's Children: The New Faith-Based Movement for International Human Rights, describes "an unheralded demographic revolution -- a tectonic shift of the Christian population away from the West toward developing and non-democratic countries." Because about 60 percent of the world's Christians now live outside of Europe and North America, an estimated 200 million Christians are at the mercy of hostile governments in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East.