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• Never to commit the sin of silence whenever we learn of bombings of houses of worship and random killings of believers like those visited this year against Christian communities in Indonesia and Pakistan and against synagogues in France and Tunisia.
  
  
• Never to commit the sin of silence by failing to condemn, and failing to become determined and prayerful agents for change in countries such as Burma, Iran, Iraq, Laos, Saudi Arabia, and Turkmenistan, identified by the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom as present and consistent practitioners of systematic religious persecution.
  
  
• Never to commit the sin of silence over the torment of ministers and practitioners of many faiths, and the torment of tens of millions of house church Christians, all now subject to pervasive persecution by a regime in China that believes its survival depends on suppressing the call of Providence to a vast population that now strains to hear, preach, and practice the Word of God. The hope that the world of the 21st century will be spared the rivers of blood that flowed so freely in the 20th depends in no small part on solemn compliance with those vows by the American government and its people.
  
  

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This article is the first part of a debate inspired by two "Speaking Out" articles written for ChristianityToday.com:

The USCIRF Is Only Cursing the Darkness | The increasingly irrelevant U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom seems intent on attacking even those countries making improvements. (Oct. 16, 2002)

USCIRF's Concern Is To Help All Religious Freedom Victims | The chair of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom responds to Robert Seiple's claims that it is "only cursing the darkness." (Nov. 7, 2002)

For more articles, see Christianity Today's Persecution archive.

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March 2003, Vol. 47, No. 3