U.S. Christians don’t feel pains of persecution

Faith McDonnell addresses guests on the persecution of Christians during a luncheon hosted by an ecumenical alliance near the Fort Worth (Texas) Convention Center, site of General Conference. A UMNS photo by John C. Goodwin.

By Kathy L. Gilbert*

FORT WORTH, Texas (UMNS) — Christians in the United States “have had an epidural” and are not feeling the birthing pains the rest of the world feels, said Faith McDonnell, an expert on religious persecution.

Citing Mark 13:8, McDonnell said Jesus warned Christians they would suffer for their faith.

“We’re starting to get a taste of it,” she said. “We don’t feel the birth pangs quite the way that our brothers and sisters around the world who are being persecuted for their faith feel them.”

McDonnell shared pictures and told the stories of those around the world who have been tortured and killed for standing up for their faith. She said the testimony of the persecuted is a “warning cry to the world to be ready -- Jesus Christ is coming.”

McDonnell was the keynote speaker at a luncheon sponsored by the Institute on Religion and Democracy. The United Methodist Church is meeting in Fort Worth to decide policy for the denomination during its top legislative session.

“The persecuted church today is still asking God for boldness,” she said.

McDonnell told the story of a young Soviet soldier named Ivan Moiseyev who was punished for talking about God during the Soviet era. He was forced to stand in his summer uniform all night, in temperatures reaching 13 degrees below zero, she said.

“For 12 nights he stayed there, and God miraculously intervened,” she said. “The account of his life says that he wrote back to his parents that an angel had appeared to him and he began to feel supernatural warmth in freezing temperatures.”

In Hebrews 11 and 12, God says “the world is not worthy of them,” McDonnell said of those persecuted for their faith.

With the 9/11 attacks, the United States started feeling some of the pain felt by Christians in other parts of the world, she said.

“When I look at the e-mails I get, my first response is to get very angry and feel hatred toward those who are the persecutors. But then I go back to the promises that God makes that He is going to make things right.”

McDonnell is the director of religious liberty programs and of the Church Alliance for a New Sudan. She is author of Girl Soldier: A Story of Hope for Northern Uganda’s Children. She is a member of Church of the Apostles, Anglican, and serves on the church’s international missions committee.

*Gilbert is a news writer for United Methodist News Service.