I would be interested in Phillip Jenkin's comparison of the experience of persecuted Christians in the Near East and the persecution of the Mormons in America, which involved official government persecution by the State of Missouri, which drove the Mormons to Illinois, then of Illinois, which drove the Mormons to Utah Territory, and then thirty years of persecution by the Federal government. The Federal persecution included an Army campaign in 1857-58, the last major military action of the Army before the Civil War, and culminated in laws that disincorporated the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, confiscated its church buildings, and took away the civil rights of Mormons. Mind you, all of the people who attacked the Mormons thought they were being good Christians while doing it, as is still the case today. Intolerant Christians are not in a good position to complain about intolerant Muslims.

Interesting article. However, one solution is to have lots of babies and bring them up with a solid faith formation, which is something I don't see in superficial American evangelicalism. Look at Ireland: you Proddies tried to literally exterminate the Irish Catholics for hundreds of years yet the Faith emerged stronger than ever because the Catholics had a spiritual perspective, not a materialist one. In Northern Ireland, Catholics will soon outnumber their Protestant oppressors because the Prods worship birth control while the Catholics have bigger families.

Thank you, Pete Benson for declaring the Truth. We do not need man's explanations (Robert in Amman) when we have the guidance from the Holy Scriptures. Yes, Revelation 2 and 3 stand forever more. We can find blames everywhere if we look for them and not look at His word.

This is an interesting topic, but I think blaming church collapse on persecution (which seems to be the general gist of the article) is a mistake. Ironically, Christianity in Iraq, though certainly in the minority, was relatively stable until the the US invasion. World events and shifts in power play a huge role. In this vein, Jenkins needs to study the growth of Islam in the Near East and Africa in the 9th and 10th centuries a little more closely. His approach, if I understand it, would be something akin (though not an exact analogy) to blaming the growth of Islam in contemporary England on persecution of Christians. Christianity and Byzantine rule of Africa and the Near East was on the wane long before the Arabs came along. The muslim conquest took advantage of a spiritual vacuum and hatred of foreign rule, resulting in the spread of a religion not seen since fourth century Rome.

The greatest and latest shameful culprit in destroying Christianity worldwide, and even in America itself, and of recent, was none other than the man whose hero he claimed was Jesus and said that he prays and reads the Bible daily, is none other than George W. with the full support of his cronies close by plus the thousands if not millions of the most Conservative American Christians. Yes, historically speaking, Satan always used Christianity to wipe out Christianity, and he did a master piece as now America and even in full violation of the US Constitution, has fully converted itself into the most abusive and far-reaching Empire the world has ever heretofore known, and does so by constantly demanding of God to bless America. Yes, of late wiping out Christianiy in Iraq for the sake of oil, nothing else period. Yes, the mass graves of Saddam, oponed up while at the same time, America is the mass grave of around 50 million of unborn babies, as the butcher shops remain open!