The US Commission on International Religious Freedom, a bipartisan, independent agency within the federal government, today issued its annual report on religious freedom violations around the world. The International Religious Freedom Act authorizes the Commission to study violations of religious freedom around the world and name “countries of particular concern” (CPCs) — those countries that have practiced or tolerated “particularly severe” violations of religious freedom, including systematic torture and other human rights violations. This year, the Commission named 16 CPCs: Burma, the Democratic People‘s Republic of Korea (North Korea), Egypt, Eritrea, Iran, Iraq, Nigeria, Pakistan, the People‘s Republic of China, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Tajikistan, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Vietnam. The problems of Christians in the Middle East are extensively discussed, but so are violations directed at dissenting Muslim and other communities. This annual “naming and shaming” process has drawn criticism as another example of American overreaching, but the designation of CPCs does not always have an impact on American foreign policy. Although IFRA generally requires the President to take action in response to the designation of a country as a CPC, the statute also allows the President to waive this requirement if circumstances warrant, and Presidents often do so — an pattern the Commission criticizes in its report.
Neocons, Christians, and Syria
Robert Wright has an interesting post in the Atlantic on an emerging split between Neocons and Christians over American intervention in Syria. Although Neocons and conservative Christians joined in supporting a war to oust Saddam Hussein in 2003, he writes, this time, conservative Christian journals, both Evangelical and Catholic, have been running articles warning of the danger to Syria’s Christians if the Assad regime should fall. Wright wonders whether Christian solidarity — “are we really ready to go to war against two million Christians?” – will stop conservative Christians from supporting American intervention this time. It’s a very interesting point. One should never discount the role that Christianity plays in American foreign relations, including America’s relations in the Middle East. And Syria’s Christians are definitely in danger. I’m not sure how much fellow-feeling there is, though. American Christians do not typically identify with the Christian communities of the Middle East, most of which, like the Copts in Egypt, are Orthodox rather than Catholic or Protestant. And fellow feeling for Iraq’s Christians did not stop conservative Christians from supporting the Iraq war, which has led to a catastrophe for Christians in that country. I’m sure that Christian solidarity plays some role, as Wright argues, but conservative Christian wariness about an incursion in Syria likely has much more to do with alienation from the current American President — with whom they certainly don’t identify.
Christianity Today on KONY 2012
Yesterday, I was chatting with a student here at St. John’s who told me about the KONY 2012 campaign that has gone viral, receiving tens of millions of hits in just a few days this week. KONY 2012 is a campaign by a non-profit organization called Invisible Children to arrest and bring to trial Joseph Kony, the leader of the so-called Lord’s Resistance Army, which has been terrorizing Uganda. In particular, the campaign alleges, Kony has been involved with the abduction of tens of thousands of children to serve as soldiers in the LRA. The campaign wants Kony prosecuted for war crimes.
One reason the campaign has gone viral is that Invisible Children has targeted Christian activists in America, who have been promoting KONY 2012 on their blogs. (Although Invisible Children is not a sectarian organization, its founders are apparently Christians whose zeal derives at least in part from their Christian convictions). According to Christianity Today, however, these activists have begun to have second thoughts. Apparently, Invisible Children has a mixed record for transparency and truth-telling. Critics also point out that Invisible Children backs the Ugandan army, which itself has been accused of human-rights violations. The story is here.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali on “The War on Christians”
In this week’s Newsweek, human rights activist and commentator Ayaan Hirsi 
Ali documents the persecution directed at Christians in many Muslim-majority countries, often with state support, or at least indifference. She argues that concern with appearing “Islamophobic” has caused Western governments and media to avoid covering the crisis, and that Western governments must “get their priorities straight” and tie foreign aid to recipients’ willingness to protect the rights of Christians and other religious minorities. (For reasons CLR Forum has discussed, it’s not clear that Western pressure would actually help Christians living in Muslim-majority countries, who are vulnerable to the charge of being Western agents). Hirsi Ali, an ex-Muslim and present atheist, is a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
Sixth Circuit Rules in Favor of Christian University Student in Religious Discrimination Case
A Sixth Circuit panel has ruled unanimously in favor of a Christian university student who claims that Eastern Michigan University expelled her from its graduate counseling program because of her religious beliefs. Julea Ward told the university that as a Christian she could not affirm same-sex relationships (as well as non-marital heterosexual relationships); when a client in her counseling practicum sought counseling about a same-sex relationship, Ward asked that the client be referred to a different counselor. As a result, the university commenced a disciplinary proceeding and eventually expelled her from the program, ostensibly because the university had a blanket policy against students referring clients to other counselors. When Ward sued the university under title VII, claiming the university had dismissed her in violation of her free speech and free exercise rights, the district court granted summary judgment for the university.
Today, the Sixth Circuit reversed. Writing for the panel, Judge Sutton held that a jury could reasonably find that the “no referral” policy was merely a pretext the university had manufactured after the fact. Even worse, a jury could find that it was a poor pretext: there was evidence that the university allowed students to refer clients to other counselors for certain “secular” reasons. A jury could thus find that the no-referrals rule was not neutral with respect to religion; as a result, under Employment Division v. Smith, the university would have to show a compelling interest to justify the rule – which, on the record, seemed very unlikely. The Sixth Circuit distinguished last month’s decision by the Eleventh Circuit in Keeton v. Anderson Wiley, which CLR Forum discussed here. Today’s case is Ward v. Polite (6th Cir., slip op. Jan. 27, 2012).
The Holy Sepulcher as a Collective Action Problem
Inspired by last month’s announcement of an agreement to repair the Church of 
the Nativity in Bethlehem, over the break I read an interesting recent book on the church’s sister shrine, the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem, which many Christians believe to be the site of Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection. Like the church in Bethlehem, the Holy Sepulcher is shared among monks from three different Christian communities, Armenian Apostolic, Greek Orthodox, and Latin (Roman Catholic), according to something called the “Status Quo,” a kind of customary law dating to Ottoman times, which governs possession and use of the church in minute detail.
It is not an entirely harmonious relationship. Monks from the rival communities not infrequently come to blows in disputes about use of altars. Only a couple of weeks ago in Bethlehem, monks got into a fistfight about who had authority to clean parts of the Church of the Nativity in preparation for Christmas celebrations. You might think these fights are driven by theological differences, but those are somewhat secondary. Under the Status Quo, cleaning an area is an assertion of possession. So communities bitterly resent unauthorized attempts to tidy up. Similarly, because paying for repairs likewise indicates possession, the communities often block each other’s attempts to repair common areas of the church, like the roof. This can lead to delays in necessary maintenance that place the church in danger of collapse.
From a Christian or even conservationist perspective, all this is very disedifying. From the perspective of a secular lawyer, however, the Status Quo is fascinating. In Saving the Holy Sepulchre: How Rival Christians Came Together to Rescue Their Holiest Shrine (Oxford 2008), Hebrew University Professor Raymond Cohen describes the decades-long process by which Armenian, Greek, and Latin monks negotiated an agreement to make essential repairs to the Holy Sepulcher, which had reached a terrible state by the middle of the last century. Working within the Status Quo, the three communities, each of which distrusted the other, somehow worked out a modus vivendi that allowed them to save the shrine. (One important prod: the communities’ fear that if they didn’t reach agreement on saving the church among themselves, secular authorities would intervene and upset the Status Quo in a way each would find unpleasant). The process led, if not to affection, then to a kind of mutual regard among the monks – at least some of them. Cohen’s story is one of the triumph of rationality over a massive collective action problem: inspiring, no matter what one’s religious commitments.
Jerusalem Post on Israel’s Christians
From the Jerusalem Post, an interesting article on Israel’s small Christian minority. Christians, the Post says, who comprise about 2% of the population, are both “thriving” and “beleaguered”: their level of unemployment is lower, and their test scores on national matriculation exams higher, than the general population, but they are also subject to acts of “petty discrimination.” The majority of Israel’s Christians are Palestinian Arabs, but there are also Armenians, Copts, Ethiopians, Greeks, and Syriacs. A new and growing “Hebrew Catholic” community exists are well — Catholics who have grown up in Israel and attend Mass in Hebrew.
Egypt’s Copts Fear Western Support Will Backfire
An interesting piece by Reuters’s religion editor Tom Heneghan
explains why Western support for Egypt’s Coptic Christians may cause more harm than good. Although well-meaning, Western support tends to associate Copts with foreigners and make Egyptian Muslims suspicious. For example, when Pope Benedict expressed outrage at a suicide bombing that killed 23 Copts in a church in Alexandria earlier this year, the rector of the most important Islamic seminary in Egypt, Al-Alzhar, suspended interfaith dialogue with the Vatican in protest. The Copts are Egyptians, the rector complained, and not the Vatican’s concern. The idea that Christians are disloyal foreigners surfaces periodically in the history of the Muslim Middle East and has led to retaliation against them. To give just one instance, suspicion that Christian communities were collaborating with the Empire’s European rivals contributed to widespread massacres in Ottoman Turkey in the nineteenth century. Heneghan’s piece makes clear how bad things are for Copts today: even expressions of sympathy can place them in serious danger.
11th Circuit Rules Against Christian Student in Religious Discrimination Case
Last Friday, the 11th Circuit dismissed a lawsuit a graduate student had brought against Augusta State University in Georgia, arguing her expulsion from the university’s school-counseling program violated her constitutional rights. The student, a Christian, had expressed skeptical views about homosexual identity and conduct, and the university required her to participate in a “remediation plan” to make sure that her views did not affect the counseling she would provide clients in the program’s clinical practicum, particularly clients from the “gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and queer/questioning (GLBTQ) populations.” When she refused to do so, the university expelled her. The 11th Circuit ruled that her expulsion violated neither her free speech nor free exercise rights. Briefly, with respect to the former, the court noted that the student would be advising clients in a university-sponsored clinic; the university thus could require her to conduct herself in accordance with the American Counseling Association’s code of ethics, which forbids counselors from imposing moral views on clients. The university was not disciplining the student for her religious views, in other words, but for failing to agree to put them aside in accordance with her professional responsibilities. With respect to the student’s free exercise claims, the court held that school’s requirement that students abide by the ACA code, notwithstanding their own religious convictions, was neutral and generally applicable, and rationally related to the university’s legitimate interest in maintaining its accreditation. The case is Keeton v. Anderson-Wiley (Dec. 16, 2011).
Iraq’s Christians: Those Who Remain
The US pulled its troops out of Iraq this weekend, ending the 9-year long Iraq war. The ultimate consequences of the war — for Iraq, the Middle East, and the United States itself — remain to be seen. We won’t really know for generations. One thing that seems clear at the moment, though, is that the US-led invasion was a catastrophe for Iraq’s Christians. Before the war, Iraq had about 1.5 million Christians. The fall of the secular Ba’ath government left them exposed to killings, threats, and intimidation by radical Islamic elements. About a million Christians have fled the country. This LA Times piece offers a sad reflection on the state of those who remain.