Earlier this year David Curry, CEO and president of Open Doors USA, spoke with Drew Griffin about persecution against Christians globally and his organization’s annual World Watch List, which ranks China 23rd.
Rough Transcript
Drew Griffin
Welcome to the ProvCast a regular podcast of Providence, a Journal of Christianity and Global Affairs. I’m Drew Griffin. The beginning of every new year is full of milestones. We look forward and we look back assessing the world we live in. And as we look back at 2019, one of the stories that we covered frequently at Providence, that is the most heartbreaking, is the rise and an increase in religious persecution and specifically Christian persecution across the globe.
It is estimated that close to 260 million, or more than 260 million Christians are currently being persecuted for their faith in countries across the globe. And so my guest today, I think, is situated uniquely to speak into this pending crisis. His name is David Curry. He is the President and CEO of Open Doors, which is an organization that over 60 years has supported persecuted Christians across 60 countries. Curry is a frequent guest on Fox News, a regular contributor to the Huffington Post, frequently testifies before Congress and in various levels of government informing our lawmakers on the state of religious persecution across the globe. David Curry, thank you for being a guest on the ProvCast.
David Curry
Hey, thank you for having me on. I appreciate it.
Drew Griffin
So you recently, and Open Doors released your latest World Watch List, which is the top 50 countries where Christians are persecuted. You released the list for 2019. And I want to dig into this report a little bit. It’s something that you’ve been doing for a number of years, tracking the kind of persecution and using certain metrics in order to assign a ranking to nations, based on the level of persecution. I want to talk a little bit about that metric. Like, how do you decide what countries make the top 10 make the top 20? You talk a lot about pressure and violence in assessing both of those. Just for our listeners as they’re looking and they’re reading the list or they’re hearing about this World Watch List, talk to us a little bit about how you arrive at the determination that you arrive at?
David Curry
Well, obviously, the data and how you accomplish any survey of this kind is terribly important. What we do is we want to measure it across all parts of people’s life. So there are situations where the government itself persecutes Christians. That’s not the case everywhere. But you have to measure national life. Does the army, does the police force, is there an intelligence force that’s monitoring Christians? This kind of thing. And of course, you have places like North Korea, where all of these things are present. But then you want to get down to the very personal as well, the private part of life, your family life. Many people will be aware that in some cultures, if you become a Christian, become a follower of Jesus, your family will view that as a betrayal of their family faith, and won’t accept it, won’t accept you. And you can either lose your rights within the family or sometimes even be killed in some extreme cases. But certainly, it’s very hard. So we measure across everything from the national sphere to the private, personal family life, community, culture, these kinds of things, and give them a score. And then of course, you mentioned violence, we have to really assess what kind of persecution is it, because it’s different everywhere. Let me give you a couple of examples. In Nigeria, there are 10s of millions of Christians. They’re all often in the south of the country. In the north, there are 12 Sharia law states, and this clash of faith between extremist Islam in the northern part of the country, and a lot of Christians there means there’s a high degree of violence. But you go to Saudi Arabia, and there’s not a lot of violence in Saudi Arabia. But that’s partly because there’s a lot of what we call pressure, a squeeze. There, you’re not going to have violence because there’s no church because there’s no ability to act freely in public. And it’s all sort of underground, very difficult if you are a Christian. And we just got to determine then, I mean, how do these rank. To get the data it’s not easy to sort of figure out how to interpret it and all that. But every year we come up with what is I think, generally agreed, is the most dependable grassroots survey of Christian persecution in the world.
Drew Griffin
So some of the countries that are listed here, that are numerated on the top 50 list, I think make sense. No one would be surprised. Some of them I think maybe we would be surprised. I want to look at the list a little bit. And let’s talk about number one. Let’s talk about North Korea. North Korea has been number one on the list for a number of years, there’s been a large amount of diplomatic activity between the United States and North Korea since Donald Trump took office. There’s been back and forths and different bilateral summits and meetings and all of that. Talk a little bit about maybe the state of Christian persecution in North Korea, why it is so frequently, number one, and then maybe, have you seen any changes in the status for Christians, based off the amounts of new diplomatic efforts that the United States is engaging in with North Korea?
David Curry
Well, personally, I view these discussions with North Korea as a positive. I was there in Singapore, not in the meetings themselves, but there in Singapore during the summit, and certainly praying that those things come to fruition making the world a little bit more peaceful place. The reality is that, to this point, these kinds of discussions have not eased the pressure on Christians and the pressure on Christian faith in North Korea is extreme. You have all of the use of the government, Christians are considered the number one enemy of the state for any number of reasons. But that makes it very difficult. So in a practical sense, that means you can’t have a Bible, if you do have one hide it. Your life depends upon no one ever finding it. It also means that when you’re sharing your faith, it’s very dangerous thing. Many parents hesitate to talk with their children if they’re too young, for fear that then when the children go to school, they’ll be bribed by their teachers with food-‘course, hunger is a major issue-there to reveal whether mom or dad are Christians or have Bibles. So many heartbreaking stories of kids unknowingly saying, “Yeah, we’ve got one hidden” and telling their teacher and then that person, that mom or dad being hauled away and never seen again. So very difficult. There’s a lot of things we know about North Korea, there’s some data that we cannot afford, because of just the opaque nature of how many people, for example, died for their faith in labor camps. We know there’s around 50,000, up to 60,000 in labor camps, for their faith, for owning a Bible, for being a Christian. We don’t know how many die every year. So even though we don’t… we only report what we can document. Even though we don’t have a lot of data, it’s still number one, which gives you a real insight into how dangerous it is there.
Drew Griffin
When we look at other countries on the list. Let’s take India, for example. Now India for many years has been kind of a pluralistic country: you’ve got Hindus, you’ve got Muslims, you’ve got Buddhists, you’ve got Christians, kind of situated in different areas of the country. I remember I visited in 2003 and there were areas that were a little bit more hostile, or it was very difficult to, you know, be a Christian or have a church. But then there were other areas where Christianity was far more accepted. We’ve seen India rise on your list, and currently it occupies the 10th slot. To talk a little bit about some of the dynamics that go into the increased persecution that we’re seeing in India. Is it, you know, based off of the rise of nationalism? Is it based off of just ethnic unrest? Help us kind of make some sense of why India seems to be becoming less and less hospitable to Christians?
David Curry
It’s a great question because it’s risen over 200% over the last few years and that’s due to Prime Minister Modi is a member of a extremist nationalist Hindu party, the BJP party. They have an agenda to Hindu-ize all parts of Indian culture. And it has created an environment where Christians are in the crosshairs in many cases. So many situations where pastors are arrested and held, detained without trial, attacks on churches, these kinds of things. And the government is not, at a minimum they’re not creating a culture that’s pluralistic, but in reality, they’re passing laws and doing things that make it very difficult for Christian service. Now, it’s hard for people to imagine a shift from Gandhi or these kind of peaceful existence that we associate with India, to the fact that it’s number 10 on the list. Iran is number nine. So people, pause for a second and get your mind around that. Syria is number 11. So India is a very difficult place for Christian ministry. And we are very concerned about their 64 million, possibly more, Christians there. So there’s a lot of folks affected by it.
Drew Griffin
One of the countries that’s on the list that you talked about in India-fication, you know, this idea of increasing Hindu nationalism in India… one of the other nations on the list where we kind of see that prevalent nationalism, the sinification, is in China. And China’s made the news recently, more and more. We’ve covered it frequently kind of in Providence talking about the persecution of Uyghur Muslims and Xinjiang, Muslims that are interned in reeducation camps, quote, unquote, and the increase in surveillance and video surveillance and persecution. And yet Christianity and on your list with Christian persecution, China falls around number 23, which I think to many people might sound maybe potentially low, considering the horrible record of human rights that China has. Maybe describe a little bit of why China doesn’t rank higher. You spend a lot if people go to your website, Open Doors, they can download the the world watch list, and you spend a lot of time a lot of ink talking about China, even though it’s still at number three. So why is China kind of as low as it is? And where does Christian persecution kind of fall there?
David Curry
Sure. It’s a great question. And even though China is number 23 on the list, I’m highlighting it as the greatest threat to human rights right now, and it’s for a bunch of different reasons. First of all, the reality is not just that it’s 23, but that it’s moved up from the mid 40s in 2018, or so. So in two years, it’s leapt up the list and it’s going to keep leaping in here is why. They are implementing a surveillance program. They have massive surveillance and artificial intelligence using facial recognition on the streets of Beijing, all over the place, not just owned by restaurants or the individual businesses, but by the Chinese communist system. So they’re watching people on the street, and over the last 24 months, they’ve implemented monitoring in churches. Now then this last year they’ve escalated it to where now they’re forcing house churches to either take surveillance cameras-not to watch the pastor now but to watch the congregation-or shut down. And they’ve shut down somewhere roughly 5,500 churches that refuse to comply, arrest the pastors, sometimes put them in solitary confinement really shaking down the church.
The added step to it that it’s going to be brought in online has begun to be brought online, but will be implemented with the monitoring, is their social scoring system, which you’d be familiar with, many of your listeners as well, that you get points for how you comply with their dogma and their systems. If you’re a member of the party, more points. If you go to church, here’s the thing, you’re deducted. So it seems like the artificial intelligence is, the key to that is the assumptions you build into it. So now, if you go to church too often, or if you take a child under the age of 18, to church, that is a withdrawal on your credit system, and you may not be able to travel freely, you may not be able to get your kids into the best school. So we’re calling it out because it is escalating so fast, because they are selling this system to Iran and others. And because they now have the ability to efficiently oppress all Christians and minorities. You mentioned that they’re doing it to the Uyghur Muslims, they could certainly do it to Jews, they’re doing it to Christians, you could just see where this is headed. So it won’t be number 23 next year, it’s escalating greatly. And it’s not clear if anybody has a good idea on how you would reverse it. The only thing we can do is call out this kind of systematic oppression and ask for very real clear guidelines on how these assumptions are being built into the facial recognition of the social scoring system. You can imagine… let’s create a scenario whereby you’re in World War Two and you had these kinds of technologies to monitor the Jewish population, a Christian population, a group that maybe wasn’t going to fall into those Nazi systems. It would have been much, much, more horrific than it already was. These are the kinds of things we could see if China fully implements this system, if they sell it to an Islamic regime like Iran, that would then have the capacity to monitor the movements effectively of house church leaders. So we’re calling it out as significantly because of this blueprint for persecution.
Drew Griffin
It’s truly troubling and I want to shift a little bit to some questions about how Americans in general view this persecution. A lot of us, we watch the news, we see about China, we see about the Uyghurs. We read reports like the the World Watch List that Open Doors releases. And I’ve been working in the Christian space for years, either in journalism or in ministry, or in politics, in one realm or another and I’ve often been shocked and surprised at how little it seems like American Christians seem to really care about global persecution or Christian persecution. And I’d love to hear you kind of address what makes religious persecution and Christian persecution unique. I mean, a lot of people say, there are no shortage of problems in the world. There’s homelessness, there’s hunger, there’s famine, there’s political strife, there’s, you know, refugee crisis. There are health crises and HIV/AIDS in Africa. I mean, there are any number of worries that can occupy our radar screen, when we look at the world. What makes religious persecution unique, what makes Christian persecution unique? And why should let’s say, if I’m a non-Christian, or whether I’m a Christian, why should I care?
David Curry
Let me sort of take that in pieces. I’m going to start on the on the global scale. I think this is critical for secular people, people with a liberal agenda, conservative agenda, any sort of agenda you have, to recognize that religious liberty is the fundamental right of conscience for you to decide for who gets to decide what texts he wants to read: if he wants to read the Bible, if he wants to read a Torah, he gets to decide that in America. And then decide what he thinks about it. Any system-and there are so many of them, this is the point-that tries to control what you think and your access to decide for yourself what you read, what you think, that we’re taking away that right of conscience, it is in direct contrast to free and civil society.
So you have Islamic regimes that want to control what you have access to, and what do you think and you can’t change your mind. If you were born into the extremist point of view, you’re going to die there, you don’t get to decide. And they are essentially forcing compliance to their faith through… that’s the concept of ISIS and Al Qaeda and the Taliban. They’re forcing you through Sharia law to obey. So all manner of problems flow out of that conceptual miswiring. That’s why it’s important to the secularist world. Secondarily, because where you have situations like this, it’s the signal that something is about to tip over into major chaos for the larger population. So you had ISIS that was attacking churches on Christmas, on Easter for some period of time leading up to the time. And [I was] talking about it, we had some very significant attacks by ISIS, leading up to the the May-June scenario where they took over an entire region, destroyed large swaths of culture, and murdered thousands of people and brought all this trauma onto the world. When you have these hotspots, where there’s that much intolerance, it will tip over into greater humanitarian issues. And it’s happening now in Sub Saharan Africa, where Boko Haram is now not contained. In northern Nigeria, they’re going into Cameroon, Burkina Faso is now on the list. It wasn’t on the list a year ago, but Boko Haram is killing people in Burkina Faso now in Niger, in Chad. So this will tip over into a giant humanitarian issue even perhaps much bigger than it is now. And it’s significant now. So I think that’s important. But to your first part of your question, Christians are asleep on this issue, by and large, because we’re so focused, we got all this bad news, how do you sort it out? And it’s really somewhat of a theological problem where we see all these things and sort of like, well, I guess we knew this was coming. If Jesus was persecuted, we’re going to be persecuted too. And they take it one verse and sort of spin it off into a whole conceptual thing to give them the freedom to sort of not pay attention. The reality is this is a big issue and there’s a theology behind it, which essentially says, “Hey, if one part of our body suffers, we’re all suffering and that we are all called to pray for people who are persecuted for Jesus’ name, or in prison for, in chains for the name of Jesus, as if it were our own family.” That is what I would call a universal calling. It’s not for one or for the other. It’s not that some are evangelists and some are administrators, it’s not in that context. It’s basically saying, “this is your family, please care.”
I think there’s a side to it that people forget in that there’s a blessing and a beauty to it that is beyond really tough headlines. Because for example, in Iran, you have Iran as number nine on the list. You’ve got all kinds of drama and a couple of weeks ago, everybody thought we’re in world war three. But within Iran, there’s a young church an excited church, they love Jesus, their house-church movement is strong, it’s growing. And when you meet with these people and you see the passion of their faith, I feel good about Iran. And I feel good about what’s happening there. I don’t like that the regime is trying to crush the house-church movement, I’m doing everything I can to draw attention to it. But I can tell you, wherever Jesus is talked about, he does very well. And that’s what… that’s amazing. And he is healing people and speaking to people. And so from a Christian faith point of view, it’s not all bad news. We can learn a lot from people in Iran and North Korea who are practicing their faith at great cost. It’s going to inspire our faith, it’s going to deepen our faith. And I think that’s one of the reasons why we need to intersect with it.
Drew Griffin
So you raise an interesting kind of dichotomy that I want to tease out a little bit. And it is that kind of feeling among many Christians that there is a blessedness, or there is some kind of positive kind of spin on Christian persecution, which I think is very difficult for non-Christians to understand. And maybe just secular people, or even other Christians, perhaps if they look at this situation, it’s like, “Alright, wait a minute, you’re listing these countries out, you’re telling us all the people who are being martyred, and all the people being killed, this sounds horrible. This sounds awful, we should do something about it. You’re trying to kind of advocate that we do something about it.” But then in turn, there’s this like, “well, but it’s also a good thing, and good things are coming of it.” So it’s like there are kind of pacifist and different Christians, they’re like, “Just let it happen. Let them be martyred, let them be killed, we know that the gates of hell will not prevail against the church, and we’ll just kind of let it happen.” But then there are others that are saying we should arm Christians in these areas in Kurdistan or in northern Iraq and help equip them to carve out and then protect their own space and their own towns. Like how do you balance that out? And kind of what perspective could you give to that kind of dichotomy that we see in American Christian dialogue?
David Curry
Yeah, it’s intellectually lazy to say, wherever the church is persecuted it grows. That’s not true. And I know you’re not suggesting that, but you’re referring to those that do. And it happens all the time, you might imagine I hear that, if not daily, certainly weekly.
Drew Griffin
Right.
David Curry
The reality is, when the conditions are right, it can grow in persecution, because of a number of dynamics. But here’s an example: when the church is isolated, and often, the tactic of the enemy is isolate Christians, that’s what they’re trying to do in North Korea. That’s what they’ve tried to do in China. They’re trying to break us into individual units, and then isolate us and crush our faith. It sometimes happens that way. The church shrivels in persecution as well, sometimes, where there’s great trouble. As Syria and Iraq have different stories, the Iraqi church seems to be shriveling, the Syrian church seems to be having a revival of faith. Not saying that individual Iraqis are struggling, but that church is a million, less than 200,000 people now and it’s because of a mass exodus. But it’s also been very trying for their faith over the last 15 years. So we need a United Church. So therefore, when we go into places like Iraq, we want to help keep the church in community, keep the church growing, keep the church and create conditions whereby beautiful things can happen.
Another example would be if the church is isolated from Scripture, it’s sometimes can die, because they’re separated from the truth from the Word that’s given to them. That’s why Scripture is so central to what we’re doing. But there is a reality that the truth of Scripture when in community when the Bible is taught and read, and people are struggling through the hard truths of it, it’s transformative. And it’s transformative in Iran, it doesn’t matter how much control the dictator might have in North Korea. When people read the transforming words of Jesus and his life, and have opportunity to experience and intersect with it, it’s gonna change people’s lives. So that’s the balance of it in my perspective.
Drew Griffin
So, another kind of dichotomy I wanted to tease out briefly, as we can move maybe towards a close in the discussion is just there seems to be a lot of concern on the part of American Christianity and people within evangelicalism on the idea of quote unquote “persecution of Christians” except it’s persecution of Christians in America. There’s, you know, there are cultural fights and wars on Christmas, so to speak, that kind of thing of saying Happy Holidays versus Merry Christmas and different liberal agendas that are pushed back against that are seen as a threat and seen as being kind of persecution. I mean, how do you square what is going on kind of in the United States with that sort of appropriation of that language, when you see it through your work, and you report and you release these reports, elucidating the level of true persecution, martyrdom, churches being burned down, and families being split apart, and people losing their lives and their heads and their livelihoods, because of their faith and square that to what happens in the United States, when Christians complain about being uncomfortable in maybe their country club or whatever they’re kind of facing? Not to minimize the realities of the cultural struggle that we know exists in America. But the language that is often used is the same language that you’re using in terms of persecution, and almost willing to be kind of a martyr for the faith by putting it in a Christmas tree in my front yard or town square or whatever, as opposed to what they’re faced overseas. Can you bring any kind of perspective to that? What would you say to American Christianity and evangelicalism as they try and balance that out and discern what true persecution is?
David Curry
On one hand, I recognize and we are seeking to study the factor of aggressive secularism on persecution in countries in the West, and so forth. And that’s a very real thing. And this is kind of the terminology that you might assign to all of the cultural pressures, this idea that there’s a push to make life very difficult, to paint Christians as intolerant, to certainly strip us of tax benefit, of any sort of position in culture, that’s associated with faith. Now that is very real. And I think we can take some cues, though, from the persecuted church around the world that is at a higher level of intensity. So that’s my way of saying, “Yeah, I think that clearly the culture is intolerant of faith, right now. That’s not the same thing as what’s happening on the World Watch List but that doesn’t mean we can’t learn from and take inspiration from the believers who are suffering in places like Iraq, or Syria, or Nigeria, or elsewhere. But I think we just need to broaden our horizon. And it’s always good, I think, mentally and emotionally and spiritually, to look around and say, there are people who have it worse, count my blessings, here’s where we’re gonna go, and then come back to what I said earlier, which is let’s not get isolated. Let’s not let the enemy do to us what he’s trying to do to others, which is isolate us, get us separated from Scripture, get us so concerned with our own divisions that we’re not looking at what’s connecting us, across denominations, when you see all of the infighting in the US, between denominations and churches and that kind of sickness does not help in intense persecution.”
It’s interesting, sort of what our theological issues might be. But the reality is, if you’re a follower of Jesus, you’re my brother, you’re my sister. We can debate all those kinds of things but the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus is the central part of this faith. So let’s find a way to work through these issues without the intense pressure and really sort of count our blessings and then pivot to saying what can we do to support an indigenous church movement in North Korea and Iraq and Syria? And that’s what open doors is all about?
Drew Griffin
Have you seen… since 2016, there’s been a marked shift, at least rhetorically on the part of the Trump administration to maybe focus more specifically in speeches and statements in terms of religious persecution, on Christians facing persecution abroad. And yet we’ve also seen the Trump administration retard the number of people that they’re allowing into the country as refugees and asylum seekers, many of whom may be Christians fleeing persecution, a regime, trying to gain access and seek asylum in the United States. Can you assess a little bit of this somewhat of a mixed record that the Trump administration seems to kind of be offering us? Is it a net positive? Is there still room for improvement? Help us maybe from your vantage point, since you work on the ground with many persecuted Christians across the world, kind of where is the United States in terms of policy and foreign policy right now vis a vis religious persecution, Christian persecution?
David Curry
Well, I always like to let people know I’m taking this a la carte. I don’t feel like we have to associate or agree with everything to say what’s working. And on this point, Trump administration has been exceptionally good on religious liberty for all manner of faiths. The reality is, the data is, Christians are the most persecuted group. You’ll see media outlets-and it’s puzzling-talking about, you know, smaller Yazidis, the Muslim population in China, these are very significant human rights issues. But in sheer numbers of people, that pales to what is happening to Christians in Nigeria, we’ve had millions of Christians dislocated in the north of Nigeria over the last seven or eight years. So things happening and another way to look at it is why isn’t everybody talking about it? Why is it only now in this administration, that people are willing to admit it? I think the data pushes them towards talking about Christian persecution, because there’s just so many of them. The issues as to how the immigration thing affects Christian populations from Iraq and other places, is a significant one and we’ve talked about it, we’ve spoke out on making sure that whatever we do, it needs to have the language that does not mimic other countries’ rationale for why they want to get rid of Christians. I think, the truth of the matter is, we need Christians in Iraq to stay, if they’re so called to do so, in Iraq and build the church there. We need believers to stay in Syria, if they can feel called to do so and then have a modicum amount of safety. And they want to stay by and large, in Syria. So we want these churches to stay and to grow and to be salt and light, because I would not be as effective living and working in Syria as a Syrian believer who is passionate about the faith, knows that culture, and who’s life is a very testimony to the Muslims and others around them, Kurds and so forth. So I think that’s another way to look at it. But I definitely think that the Trump administration needs to be given credit for what they do well, and this has been exceptionally… they’ve been very good.
Drew Griffin
So David, you’ve been President and CEO of Open Doors since 2013. And I’d love just as kind of a last closing question to get your perspective in the last seven years as we’ve progressed through this decade, and we’re rounding out the decade of the teens or the 10s, or whatever we call this last decade and head into the 20s. What has been maybe some of the biggest encouragements or biggest disappointments or surprises that you’ve experienced, kind of in your tenure as you have monitored religious persecution over the last seven years? Are there things that are disheartening? Are there encouraging signs, signs of hope, or glimmers of hope in areas that weren’t the case in 2013 when you started this? What’s your perspective in the last seven years?
David Curry
Yeah, the problems signs are that these trends behind the World Watch List-the spread of extremism, the issues around nationalism, rogue dictators-all of those things are in place. So the discouragement is, I’ve seen this rise for seven years and I can look at it and kind of say, “without the retardation of the extremist movement, this is going to continue to be a problem.” And that there’s a number of factors there, you need moderate Muslim speaking out, you need civil society protecting churches and these kinds of things. So that’s, that’s something in the back of my mind, which is troubling. The encouragement is I think the West is starting to wake up to this. I think the church is starting to be more prayerful about it and understand their responsibility and how they can play a role. I still think there’s a long way to go. I am greatly critical of the Christian leaders and pastors in general for avoiding this issue or treating it as just another topical thing in a 52 week rotation, when I really think every church every Sunday needs to be praying for this. This needs to be something that’s the highest order of concern for any number of reasons. So I think, you know, it’s starting to wake up, I’m optimistic about that scene. There are some key leaders and pastors who are supportive of it, we just need to see more. So it’s it’s definitely a mixed bag. But let me close on a good note and it’s what I said earlier, that wherever I talked to believers-I was just in China-I’ve been all over the world talking in Middle East and everywhere else, North Africa, met with Libyan believers. In the most chaotic places in the world, Jesus is real. He’s doing very well. Wherever people talk about him, study his words and have a relationship with him, good things are happening.
Drew Griffin
Well, that’s a good note to end on. A hopeful note and a prayerful note for all of us. David Curry is the President and CEO of Open Doors, you can go on to opendoorsusa.org to download their World Watch List for 2019 which lists the top 50 countries where Christians are persecuted. David, we appreciate your work, appreciate the conversation and thank you for your time.
David Curry
Thanks Drew, I appreciate it.
