What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save them? Suppose a brother or a sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,” but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it? In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead. (James 2:14–17)
The American church — the strongest, wealthiest, most powerful body of Christians in the world — has failed. We’ve not only failed to stop the slow-motion religious cleansing of Christians from the Middle East and other Muslim lands, we’ve often failed even to speak about it. We’ve persisted in the bizarre belief that if we don’t join in a religious war, then a religious war isn’t being fought. And we’ve done worse than forget the martial valor of the medieval and Renaissance church, we’re actually ashamed of its defensive struggle against Islam — a struggle that saved our civilization.
I thought of all these things, filled with shame, as I read The Independent’s profile of Canon Andrew White. An Anglican priest known as the “vicar of Baghdad,” he is one of the most courageous Christian leaders in the world. ISIS has placed an enormous price on his head, and his Baghdad church, which once numbered 6,500, has lost 1,200 parishioners to jihadist violence, including four boys beheaded and one boy sawed in half in front of his own father.
Iraq once housed almost 1.6 million Christians. Now there are barely a quarter million, a loss that happened largely on America’s watch. White has been kidnapped, he’s lived through civil war, and now he’s living through the horrific barbarism of ISIS. Here’s what he says about the Islamic State:
You are asking me how we can deal radically with ISIS. The only answer is to radically destroy them. I don’t think we can do it by dropping bombs. We have got to bring about real change. It is a terrible thing to say as a priest.
You’re probably thinking, “So you’re telling me there should be war?” Yes!
His anguish as a priest calling for war is palpable:
It really hurts. I have tried so hard. I will do anything to save life and bring about tranquility, and here I am forced by death and destruction to say there should be war.
Talk to virtually any politically aware Evangelical, and he’ll mention the plight of the persecuted church. They may know a few facts about the Christian flight from Mosul or the burning of churches in Egypt, or about the American Christian hostage in Iran (pastor Saeed Abedini), but few will take the long, necessary look in the mirror and ask if there’s anything the American church could have done to help save their brethren from unspeakable anguish. Few will rethink long-held assumptions that the church cannot — must not — demand decisive military action. And fewer still will think to enlist in the military as part of a holy calling. It all sounds a bit too “Crusader-y,” doesn’t it? And everyone knows the Crusades are the church’s great shame.
#share#So we do nothing. Oh, we may send a few shekels to World Vision or other Christian relief agencies in Kurdistan or one of the few Christian safe havens remaining in the Middle East. But mostly people just pray, if that, and hope that the violence abates. In other words, with their brother in need, they commit the sin of James 2. They take no meaningful action, fearful of triggering a “holy war.”
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Yet holy war is upon us, even if we don’t wish to fight, and the church is terrified of perceiving the truth. When we should learn our own church’s history — and the wisdom of popes and church leaders of the past who faced this same relentless hate — we’re instead cowed by political correctness into a bizarre form of not-quite pacificism that accepts the use of force, but only for national, not religious, ends. And so a majority-Christian people marched off to the Middle East, seized a nation in its heart, and then largely stood by as Christians found more safety in Muslim Kurdistan than American-held Baghdad.
#related#Far be it from Christians to inject their faith into foreign policy, so our nation enthusiastically does business with oppressive regimes and makes deals with jihadists while leaving pastors in prison — facilitating the jihadists’ holy war while forsaking the Christian faithful.
It’s time for a sea change in the Christian response to persecution. Prayers and charity are not enough. Christianity is being wiped out in its birthplace, and it’s time for American Christians to lead, to demand a response and — crucially — to participate in the conflict. Andrew White is correct. Destroy ISIS. Not just for America, but also for the church. There is a time for peace, and there is a time for war. Now is the time for war.
— David French is an attorney, a staff writer at National Review, and a veteran of the Iraq War.