Volume 4 Number 3 September 2005

National polls indicate strong American support for international human rights. However, that support consistently ranks below national self-interests, appears strongly influenced by current events, and wanes as the cost of supporting human rights increases. SAM McFARLAND and MELISSA MATHEWS argue that although most Americans express agreement with the ideals of human rights, a willingness to commit American resources to promote and defend human rights is much weaker. Americans who are committed to human rights are likely to be ìglobalistsî whose other concerns are international rather than nationalistic, high in principled moral reasoning, empathetic, and optimistic about creating a better world. They are low in ethnocentrism and its root dispositions of social dominance and authoritarianism. Greater education strengthens endorsement of human rights principles, but does not appear to increase a willingness to commit the United States resources and troops to promote and defend human rights.

In the last decade, a burgeoning Christian activist movement in the United States has devoted itself to a range of local and global initiatives on behalf of "the persecuted church." ELIZABETH CASTELLI explores the historical genealogies of this movement, its engagement with the language and analysis of human rights and identity politics, and its efforts to transform everything from grassroots piety in local churches to U.S. foreign policy around the world. The analysis brought to bear here pays particular attention to the rhetoric of the movement as it emerges in a wide range of sources from policy papers, congressional testimony, political polemics, devotional handbooks, and other popular Christian literature. The essay also raises questions about the rhetorical power of the accusation of religious persecution to stifle dissent in domestic U.S. political debate.

Focusing on a very small fraction of the Dadaab camp population consisting of those from Sudan and Ethiopia who also happen to be Christian, HOWARD ADELMAN will proceed by first providing a demographic analysis of the population of the Dadaab refugee camp in northeastern Kenya, the physical conditions under which they live, and the political context of Kenya as well as the source countries from which the refugees have come, namely Somalia, Sudan and Ethiopia. The second section of the paper will document and analyze the persecution to which these refugees are subjected and will attempt to answer the question whether they are persecuted because they belong to a minority - Sudanese and Ethiopian - or whether it is because they are Christians. The third section will explore how it is that a camp that is formally run under the auspices of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, an organization dedicated to protecting refugees and insisting on their protection by state regimes, is unable to protect refugees under its own jurisdiction. The fourth section will analyze why countries like the United States and Canada have opted to resettle those refugees in Canada and the USA rather than ensure their protection in the camp. Thus, after documenting the existence and modes of persecution, the focus of the paper will not be so much on the persecutors and the reasons for or causes of that persecution - though there will be a brief excursion into a summary of that analysis - but on the failures as well as successful methods of providing protection by their ìprotectorsî and ìbystandersî. This essay will not speculate on whether the growth of Christianity will affect the dynamics of persecution, discrimination, and tolerance in the future, but will confine its analysis to the case at hand.

In November 2002, the Vatican offered $400,000 (U.S.) to the Palestinian Christian community in order to improve their lives and thereby convince them to stay in their ancestral residences. This unusual offer was provoked by a massive wave of emigration from formerly Christian-dominated areas in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, endangering the very future of Christianity in the Holy Land. According to one striking statistic, for centuries the majority in the Bethlehem district, Christians currently make up only 30,000 of its 130,000 residents.

The product of seven years of research, including scores of interviews with members of the various Christian denominations, this article endeavors to better understand the Christian exodus by evaluating the human rights conditions of the Christian minority living under the Palestinian Authority (PA). JUSTUS REID WEINER also analyzes the PAís adoption of Sharíia (Islamic law) in its Constitution, the increasing influence of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, and the PAís ineffectual and corrupt administration. He documents that, contrary to international law, Palestinian Christians are subject to systematic abuses of human rights including employment discrimination, extortion, the theft of real property, rape and sexual harassment, attacks by PA police officials, as well as arbitrary imprisonment and torture.

The enactment of the International Religious Freedom Act by the U.S. Congress in 1998 prompted yearly reports on religious freedom in the Palestinian territories. Issued by the U.S. State Department and the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, these reports either cursorily mention the issues that are raised in this article or ignore them altogether. Unfortunately, the predicament of the Palestinian Christians has been overlooked or, worse still, intentionally subordinated by the international community. As various governments furnish financial resources to the emerging Palestinian state they should reflect upon their complicity in the human rights abuses that have emerged.

By examining the context in which Christians are being intimidated and persecuted, including denials, explanations, and the phenomena of Christian self-blame, the author attempts to shred light on the evident silence that surrounds the predicament of this endangered community. The authorís Conclusion offers five practical suggestions aimed at ameliorating the grave circumstances that the Palestinian Christians find themselves living in today.

The Christians in Jerusalem, once a prosperous large community, have been declining since 1948. They have been found in a precarious position due to the continuous Israeli-Palestinian conflict and particularly the struggle over Jerusalem most obviously since the outburst of the second Palestinian al-Aqsa intifada in 2000. DAPHNE TSIMHONI discusses several issues that have had an accumulative effect on the decline of the Christians in Jerusalem:

         - The lack of clear government policy regarding the churches in Jerusalem and the fragmentation of the treatment of Christian affairs among numerous departments and consultants.
         - Encroachment of Muslim institutions into Christian church properties and the lack of sufficient government protection.
         - The harassment of Christian religious processions and churches by ultra orthodox Jews.
         - Regulations to limit the stay of foreign Christian clergy in Jerusalem.
         - Temporary suspension of entry and stay visas of Christian clergy and laity from Arab states.
         - The construction of the separation wall around Jerusalem which cuts the contacts between the churches headquarters in Jerusalem and the Christian communities in the West Bank.

The future existence of the Christians in Jerusalem is very much dependent on the solution of the Israeli-Arab conflict and the change of the Israeli governmentís attitude toward them.

Although much has been written about discrimination against religious minorities and religious conflict in many areas of the world, little attention has been paid to discrimination and/or repression of Christians by other Christians. ADAMANTIA POLLIS looks at Russia, Serbia, Bulgaria, Greece, Romania and Ukraine, all of which are Eastern Orthodox states, and analyzes their discriminatory or repressive policies towards other Christian denominations, such as Protestants, Catholics, Evangelicals and Jehovah Witnesses. These policies, she contends, are largely the consequence of the fact that religion - eastern Orthodoxy - is one of the markers of ethnicity. Hence all those of another religion, even if Christian, are not authentic ethnics. In all these states the Eastern Orthodox church is privileged in one form or another. She discusses legal and administrative hurdles faced by non-Orthodox Christians as well as incidents of physical violence.