March 1 1999

ARTICLE TOOLS

Find similar articles E-mail this page

"God sent a Jew into the world for the Gentiles to know God and be at peace with God," said Charles Colson, introducing Michael Horowitz at the annual William Wilberforce awards dinner the night before the National Prayer Breakfast two years ago. "He sent a Jew into our midst in 1996 to awaken us, a sleeping church."

Horowitz is a man of paradoxes, so much so that though a committed Jew, he was once mistakenly named to a magazine's list of the top ten Christians of the year. Some see him as a brusque PR machine who has latched onto an unlikely cause. Others, like Colson, see him as a person appointed by God for such a time as this. However he is regarded, everyone agrees that in recent years Horowitz has had an explosive impact in motivating the church to advocacy on behalf of its persecuted brothers and sisters around the world and in pushing Congress to pass the International Religious Freedom Act this past fall.

Horowitz became concerned with Christian persecution when he and his wife hosted an Ethiopian Christian refugee, named Getaneh, in their home. They learned Getaneh's story of being beaten and hung upside down while hot oil was poured over his feet because he refused to stop preaching about Jesus. Horowitz began to research the subject, and in a July 5, 1995, editorial in the Wall Street Journal, he denounced a half-dozen cases of Christians being persecuted around the world.

A tireless advocate since, Horowitz has found a ready reception among evangelical Christians, who in turn have organized such activities as the International Day of Prayer for the Persecuted Church and successfully lobbied for the passage of antipersecution legislation.

Michael Cromartie of the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C., ...