Religious persecution.

Murder, enslavement, torture, imprisonment of Christians have been in the news. In places like Sudan (see, Commonweal, "For Sale: People," January 17,1997) and China (Richard Madsen, "China's Catholics: Devout and Divided," April 25, 1997), governments are the perpetrators. Elsewhere, Christians are the special targets of Islamic mobs or rebel forces attempting to overthrow their governments, for example, in Algeria and Egypt. And Christians - Orthodox Serbs and Catholic Croats - have persecuted each other.

On July 22 the State Department issued a report, "United States Policies in Support of Religious Freedom: Focus on Christians." The report, covering the state of religious freedom in seventy-eight countries, did not just happen. Organizations like Freedom House and the National Association of Evangelicals, individuals like Michael Horowitz, a former Reagan administration official now at the Hudson Institute, and Congressmen Frank Wolf (R-Va.) have prodded and politicked to get the issue of persecution of Christians on the public agenda. The Clinton administration and the Republican Congress have finally responded. In November 1996, then Secretary of State Warren Christopher named an Advisory Committee on Religious Freedom Abroad. This past June, there were congressional threats to revoke China's trade status, in part, because of its persecution of Protestants and Catholics. And now, there is the State Department report.

All of this is to the good. The international human-rights movement has traditionally focused on political prisoners, not persecuted believers. Because Christianity has been the dominant faith of the West, more likely to be in league with power than its victim, the persecution of Christians around the world often goes unnoticed; when pointed out, it is not often forthrightly acknowledged; when acknowledged, it is rarely protested.

Will this new attention to a very real problem be lasting? The current campaign, still in a formative phase, has to become a long-running effort, which may not be easy. The State Department report has the virtue of conveying the complexity of "religious freedom" in the real world. American responses - both government policy and the mobilization of public opinion - must be equally complex. That suggests some caveats:

First, the merits of focusing on one group, or claiming, as some advocates do, that Christians are the most persecuted group in the world is debatable. Religious communities should assist and support persecuted members abroad. But when the government of a pluralist society is called to act, the picture gets more complex. And what is the point of making claims that threaten to minimize the tragedies of others? Tibetan Buddhism, long persecuted by the Chinese government, lies on the brink of extinction. So do the religious practices of indigenous people around the world. A narrow focus on Christians obscures the links that must tie religious freedom to the protection of human rights overall. The National Association of Evangelicals, in its "Statement of Conscience" on the topic, wisely matched its legitimate concern for Christian persecution with protection for "all those suffering from religious persecution," and noted how anti-Christian policies often serve to intimidate dissenters of all sorts.

Second caveat: Having achieved a degree of public notice and political momentum for the cause of persecuted Christians, advocates should think carefully about future strategy. Some of the conservatives leading the current effort seem unable to resist the impulse to make the issue a political football in America's culture wars. They seem as interested in settling scores with the National Council of Churches and the United States Catholic Conference as in exerting effective pressure on persecuting governments. Some advocates, relatively recent converts to the issue, appear ready to treat approaches other than their own as signs of moral pusillanimity. Vatican initiatives on behalf of the church in Cuba and China have been dismissed as too soft. The suffering of religious believers overseas has been rhetorically assimilated to the grievances of conservative Christians against liberal elites in the United States. But competing in the contest of victim politics can hardly serve the long-run needs of real victims be they Christians, Jews, Hindus, Muslims, or Baha'i. Building broad religious and political coalitions might actually end their persecution.

Final caveat: The State Department report describes conditions in some countries that are not persecution but discrimination - an important distinction. When Americans speak of religious freedom, we operate with the assumptions of the First Amendment: in principle and in practice our government favors no particular religion and is broadly tolerant of all.

Not so in many other nations. England supports one established church. Islam is the official religion of Saudi Arabia, and all of its citizens must be Muslim. Austria recognizes only thirteen religious organizations, which must meet specified religious criteria. The Orthodox church holds a privileged position in Russia; other Christian groups are restricted. And more or less, the same situation of virtual establishment prevails in Roman Catholic Poland. Some Islamic countries tolerate indigenous Christian groups but prohibit their growth. Where they are the majority population, Buddhists and Hindus limit the activity of other traditions. This is not the American tradition of religious freedom, but we should not act as if all restraints and limits on religious groups are the same as murder, imprisonment, and torture. Ending these should be the first priority.