It has been more than nine months since Joe Biden, the president of the United States has been inaugurated, but still he has not raised awareness to Christian persecution, which is one of the world’s most urgent crisis. As it was mentioned in our previous article, according to the Open Doors USA organization, 309 million Christians live in countries, where there is severe Christian persecution and 13 Christians are killed every day worldwide because of their faith, which means one out of eight Christians is persecuted in the world. As Biden still remains silent on this issue more and more American Christians urge the president to speak up and help Christians in need.
On 25th September 2021, hundreds of Christians attended the second annual March For the Martyrs aimed at raising awareness to the global crisis of Christian persecution. Gia Chacon, the president of the group For the Martyrs said to the Christian Post that even though Joe Biden made an important move by recognizing the 1915 Armenian genocide first among American presidents, still he should act much more to help the dozens of Christians who are persecuted every day. Chacon also emphasized that it was important that this year’s march was held in Washington because it sent a message to the president that he should also deal with the crisis, which should be his responsibility as the Afghan Christians face even more oppression under the Taliban regime since he withdrew the US military troops from Afghanistan.
Dr Ben Carson former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development under the Trump administration also urged the president in his recent Washington Examiner’s article that he should not forget about the approximately 10,000 Afghan Christians in need. In his article he stressed that Biden had not given permission to the oppressed Afghan Christians to get the special status that is required for them to migrate into the USA, while he had given it to others who are not even persecuted in their home country. Evangelical leaders even wrote a letter to the president that the resettlement of vulnerable people should be an ‘utmost moral urgency’, since religious persecution is heavily increasing in the country. As Biden withdrew its military presence from Afghanistan he showed that he only cared about evacuating Americans but he did not care about what was happening to the Afghan civilians, who supported the mission of the United States government and Christians who are left behind in the country.
The already strong Christian persecution became worse in Afghanistan as the Taliban took over the country and for many Afghan Christians there are two possibilities left to survive: secrecy or fleeing the country
Though the Biden administration made it really hard or even impossible for the Christians to escape the country; therefore, many of them have to hide in places where the Taliban cannot find them. According to an opinion piece published in The Hill’s article, the Taliban are keeping track of those Christians who are hiding and they are regularly sending them threatening calls that they know where they are and know what they are doing. That is why many Christians had to turn off their phones and move to undisclosed locations. Turning off their phones became a survival technique for them as many Christians were killed just because they had the Bible on their phones. Apart from other obvious reasons, the Taliban wants to hunt down Afghan Christians because many of them converted from Islam to Christianity and conversion is considered a crime under the Sharia law, which is punished by death. Though it did not stop Afghans to convert from Islam to Christianity, according to the Afghan American Church leader who adopted the name ‘Mike Christian’ many Afghans—especially women—started to feel disenchanted with Islam after the Taliban takeover. Mike Christian said to Christianity Today that he received ‘tons of text messages, emails, WhatsApp, and phone calls from Afghanistan’ that more and more people want to convert from Islam to Christianity and they need his help.
On September 21, Biden gave an aprroximately an hour-long speech to the UN, in which he basically listed many of the current crises in the world, but somehow he forgot to mention the increasing persecution of Christians. Biden speech was heavily criticized. According to The Heritage Foundation’s opinion article, the president only aim with his speech was to show that he is not Donald Trump. While Hungarian Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade Péter Szijjártó’s speech was only 15-minute-long, he still managed to raise awareness to the fact that Christianity is the most persecuted religion of the world. Hungary for years has been playing an important role in helping the persecuted Christians insomuch that it was the first country that established a special administrative organ, the State Secretariat for the Aid of Persecuted Christians and the Hungary Helps international humanitarian programme. Since its founding, it helped more than 250 thousand persecuted Christians around the world.
Regarding the crisis of Christian persecution, Biden showed again that he is not like Donald Trump the former president. While Trump famously dealt with this worldwide crisis as a priority and helped persecuted Christians, Biden still has not said a word about whether or not he plans to help Christians in need during his presidency.
