They dress the wound of my people as though it were not serious. ‘Peace, peace,’ they say, when there is no peace.
— Jeremiah 6:14
With his Iran deal rightly under withering fire from right and left, President Obama is shedding his professed reluctance to mix church and state and is calling on faith groups — including the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and a collection of liberal religious groups — to make his case. Al Sharpton has called on black pastors to preach in favor of the deal, Quaker groups favor the deal, and more than 300 rabbis signed onto a letter favoring the deal.
With all due respect to the bishops, pastors, and rabbis, this is absurd. By supporting a deal that even President Obama acknowledges can strengthen terrorist groups such as Hezbollah — a deal that won’t even stop Iran’s nuclear program — American religious leaders are choosing to fund and strengthen the world’s foremost terror regime, to enable its ongoing campaign of terrorist violence, and to enrich a nation that is even now persecuting Christians, including by imprisoning and torturing an American pastor.
First, let’s dispense with the notion that the Iran deal means peace. There hasn’t been peace with Iran since the mullahs took power in 1979. Iran’s war against the United States has been amply documented. Iran has not merely armed our enemies and placed bounties on the heads of American soldiers, but has also engaged in direct action against American soldiers and civilians. Yet its war against the U.S. is only one aspect of its ongoing jihad in the Middle East and abroad, where its crimes are too numerous to mention.
The Iran “deal” will do nothing to stop Iran’s reign of terror. Indeed, with $150 billion in new economic activity and with eventual lifting of the arms embargo, Iran will grow exponentially more dangerous. Here is the astounding reality: In the name of “peace,” religious leaders are backing a deal that will explicitly increase the flow of weapons into a known terrorist state — a terrorist state that is not backing down one inch from its ongoing jihad.
American religious leaders aren’t just choosing a false peace, they’re choosing to strengthen the enemies of Christ.
Moreover, Iran persecutes Christians — relentlessly and savagely. A pastor, Saeed Abedini, is one of the four American hostages the Obama administration left behind. Abedini journeyed to Iran — with Iranian government permission — to help build an orphanage, to help care for the “least of these.” Yet Iran arrested, tried, and convicted him in a kangaroo court merely because of his Christian faith. And now he suffers in his cell, abandoned by his country. Ever since the Obama administration clearly and unmistakably signaled that Abedini was expendable, the pastor has reportedly faced even worse treatment at the hands of an empowered jihadist regime.
And it’s not just American pastors who suffer in Iran. Open Doors, a ministry to Christians in oppressive regimes, has declared that Iran is the seventh worst nation in the world for Christian persecution. Dozens of Iranian Christians (from the tiny Christian minority) were arrested last year, and only an international outcry saved Christian pastor Youcef Nadarkhani from being hanged for apostasy — for converting from Islam to Christianity.
RELATED: Appeasing Iran Ignores the Lessons of History
A deal with Iran will strengthen the regime that’s at war with the United States, that’s slaughtering innocents across the Middle East, and that’s persecuting Christians. This is not peace. It’s appeasement. The “deal” is so horrible — so plainly against not just American national interests but also against any meaningful conception of human rights, individual liberty, and international security — that one can’t help but find in decisions by religious groups to support it symptoms of the disease of decline that is gripping much of mainstream American religion. Men without chests cannot conceive the courage to confront evil, so they vainly attempt to placate a vicious and evil enemy from (for now) safe shores while other people suffer and die.
#related#I have immense respect for the Catholic Church, but it has forgotten how to confront jihad. For centuries, the Vatican was indispensable in motivating and sustaining the Christian forces in the field, those who held the line against militant Islam and saved Christendom. Now its American leaders aren’t just choosing a false peace, they’re choosing to strengthen the enemies of Christ.
God has given Christians and Jews a choice, declaring it clearly and unequivocally: “I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live.” The Bishops, the Quakers, and all those who support the Iran deal are choosing the curse of jihad over the blessings of liberty and the death of terrorism and persecution over the life of religious freedom. Given their political influence, their choice will harm us all.