UK, EU and UN solidarity with persecuted church

Written by David Fletcher 21 Feb 2020
UK, EU and UN solidarity with persecuted church

UK Christian politician Jeremy Hunt read Brother Andrew’s book ‘God’s Smuggler’ in his youth. This gave him a lifelong prayerful concern for the persecuted church. When he was appointed foreign minister, he looked into what the foreign service was doing to help persecuted Christians worldwide. What he discovered made him uncomfortable: there had been very high-profile interventions supporting Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar, Bahai in Yemen, and Yazidis in Iraq - but little UK and international diplomatic assistance for suffering Christians, even though NGOs and churches were advocating on their behalf. Mr Hunt identified possible blind spots for persecuted Christians by his staff: awkwardness about bringing God into politics, post-colonial guilt, and fearfulness of being seen to impose our faith on others. He called it ‘misguided political correctness’ in his independent review. Now Boris Johnson has appointed a special envoy on freedom of religion or belief to head up the process of dealing with Christian persecution. The UN and the EU have similar envoys.

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