Waving branches and dancing rhythmically, the children chant, "He is risen, he is risen." They bang drums and rattles; their small black bodies glisten in the African sun. These are Sudanese Christians, and from their Easter celebration you would never know that weeks earlier they were driven from their homes by soldiers, that they are celebrating in a refugee camp--and that their memories are still raw with scenes of rape and murder.

The Muslim government in Sudan has made it a crime to convert to Christianity--a policy enforced brutally. As the Khartoum government troops move south, where most Christians live, believers are given three options: convert, flee, or be killed. Thousands of children have been snatched from Christian families and many sold as slaves to buyers in Sudan, Libya, and other Islamic countries. Thousands of women have been raped, others sold as servants or concubines. There are even reports of men being crucified.

Sudan is not alone in its hostility toward Christians. Michael Horowitz of the Hudson Institute has collected evidence of widespread persecution throughout Africa and the Middle East. In Ethiopia last year, government troops raided the largest evangelical church, arresting most congregants. Many died in jail, their bodies thrown out to be scavenged by animals.

In Pakistan, Christian evangelization is outlawed by a blasphemy law that prohibits speaking against the prophet Muhammad, punishable by death. A 12-year-old child was recently sentenced to death and freed only by international pressure.

In Egypt, both converts and ethnic Coptic Christians are being persecuted, their businesses looted, their churches burned. In Saudi Arabia, the government offers rewards of up to $8,000 for information about secret worship services, which are then raided to arrest believers.

In Iran, three prominent evangelical pastors were abducted and assassinated last year. Many Christians have been arrested and tortured; others have lost their homes, jobs, and businesses. All ethnic Armenian and Assyrian Christian schools have been closed or taken over by Muslims.

Despite the gruesome evidence, the U.S. government inexplicably refuses to recognize what is happening. According to Horowitz, the Immigration and Naturalization Service often denies asylum to victims of anti-Christian terror. The ins even returns them to the countries they have fled--where they face imprisonment, torture, even death--in clear violation of U.S. laws granting asylum to religious refugees. Horowitz writes that current ins policy is "a shameful blot on America's historic traditions." Our nation was, after all, founded by religious believers fleeing persecution.

Haven't we learned anything from history? For years, American leaders resisted acknowledging religious persecution by Communist governments. It wasn't until Solzhenitsyn's books were smuggled out of Russia that many grudgingly accepted the horror of the gulag. What will it take for our nation to wake up to Islam-inspired terror?

Moreover, the fall of the Iron Curtain did not end Communist-inspired terror. Columnist Mona Charen describes a Chinese evangelist, 22-year-old Lai Man Peng, who was seized by secret police and beaten. On the way home, he collapsed and died. Amnesty International reports cases of Christian women hung by their thumbs from wires and beaten, denied food and water, shocked with electric probes.

Today Christians are more widely persecuted than believers of any other faith, says John Hanford, aide to Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Ind.). Does that startle you? "On a worldwide basis," Hanford explains, "Christians are the most persecuted major religion in terms of direct punishment for practicing religious activities--public worship, evangelism, charity." Yet these tragedies have received scant notice in the press--even the Christian press. Horowitz and Charen, who are Jewish, seem more sensitive than Christians to the problem of persecution.

It is time for us to use our pulpits and publications to cry out in defense of fellow believers. Each of us can write our political leaders, demanding that they reform ins policy and make persecution of Christians a priority when negotiating with other countries.

We can also minister to the suffering church. Last year's recipient of the Prison Fellowship's Wilberforce Award was Baroness Caroline Cox of Britain, who brings food, medicine, and hope to persecuted Christians around the globe. Her missions of mercy are made possible by Christian Solidarity International, a group that deserves our support, along with International Christian Concern and Voice of the Martyrs.

Finally, let us keep the suffering church in prayer. In a cable to the State Department, an Ethiopian mission officer wrote that Christians fleeing from Sudan were "naked but for rags around their waists; all had the dull concentration camp stare of the starving." Yet, astonishingly, the church is thriving. As Paul Liben reports in "First Things," "Evidence abounds that within all Christian groups, genocide has brought not abandonment of faith, but renewal."

This Easter, as we celebrate in comfortable churches, let us determine also to remember the persecuted church, both in acts of mercy and in spiritual solidarity.

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