Andrew Bolt: Why do the deaths of Christians not cause international scandal?

The number of Christians killed in Nigeria last year is more than 4600. How is this not evidence that Christians, not Muslims, face the worst religious persecution?

The constant murder of Christians in Nigeria is evidence Muslims aren’t the most religiously persecuted group in the world. Picture: AP

Dead Christians don’t count. Sure, if they were live Christians, killing Muslims, there’d be plenty of protests and endless media reports of Christian bigotry.

But the other way around?

Yes, there were scattered reports here of the slaughter on Sunday of between 38 and 50 Christians – including children – who were worshipping in their Nigerian church at Pentacost.

Terrorists armed with guns and bombs stormed the St Francis Xavier Catholic Church and then slipped away, leaving a horror that the world gave one look at and then turned away.

Just who slaughtered these Christians is unknown, but it’s reasonable to suspect this was another attack by Islamists who have killed so many other people in Nigeria’s churches.

In fact, Nigeria leads the world in one bloody index: the number of Christians killed last year for their faith: 4650, up from 3530 the year before.

How is this not an international scandal? Why are these thousands of martyrs not repeatedly cited as evidence that Christians, not Muslims, face the worst religious persecution?

That is confirmed by a 2019 report commissioned by Britain’s foreign secretary which found “the overwhelming majority (80 per cent) of persecuted religious believers are Christians”.

Open Doors, an international NGO advocating for persecuted Christians, says 309 million Christians in the year to September 2020 were living in countries where they might suffer very high or extreme persecution: “That’s one in eight worldwide, one in six in Africa, two out of five in Asia, and one in 12 in Latin America.”

The US State Department says “countries of particular concern” are Myanmar, China, Eritrea, India, Iran, Nigeria, North Korea, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Vietnam, because their governments are doing the persecuting or tolerating it. Not surprisingly, many are authoritarian regimes threatened by a faith which insists every individual life is precious.

So why aren’t Christians known for being the persecuted faith, and admired for why? Why is it not an international scandal that China last month arrested even Cardinal Joseph Zen, Bishop Emeritus of Hong Kong?

I’m not a Christian, but find this remarkable – and sad.

It seems dead Christians don’t count because they don’t fit the self-hating narrative of the West’s cultural elite: that Western society, inspired by Christianity, is uniquely evil and uniquely responsible for colonialism, slavery, capitalism and the oppression of minorities everywhere.

To admit they’re actually the most oppressed – and for noble reasons – would spoil that wicked fantasy.