Persecution: Hype or Help?

by A. Scott Moreau and Mike O’Rear

Interest in persecution of Christians, symbolized by the annual International Day of Prayer for the Persecuted Church (most recently held on November 15), continues to grow. The Web should be an ideal place to look for up-to-date, relevant, and important information.

Interest in persecution of Christians, symbolized by the annual International Day of Prayer for the Persecuted Church (most recently held on November 15), continues to grow. The Web should be an ideal place to look for up-to-date, relevant, and important information.

In this article we have two goals. First, we introduce you to a new “master” Web page we have developed which makes it easier for you to access all of our previous tables (and more). Second, we provide a new table of links focused on resources related to the persecution of the church.

WEB LINKS FOR MISSION
Our aim in developing this new master table is designed to help make your goal of productive Web browsing easier. The table is our “Web Links for Mission” and can be found at http://www. wheaton.edu/Missions/Moreau/Links.htm or http://www.gmi.org/research/links.htm. Our new format takes advantage of a feature called “frames,” which allows us to display two (or more) Web pages simultaneously, each in its own frame (or box). As you can see in the diagram on the following page, when you first log onto Web Links for Mission, the left frame is a Table of Contents and the right frame is a blank. We have designed this site so that you can click on any of the Table of Contents items and see what you have requested in the other frame. You can also change the width of the frames by clicking on the border in the middle and dragging it to a width you prefer.

There are two major categories of links available: (1) General Web Resources and (2) Christian and Mission Resources (the “Other” category brings you to Scott Moreau’s home page). The General Web Resources section includes links to African news, libraries, news gathering resources (see EMQ, July, ’98), maps, phone numbers, and e-mail address helps, publishers, search engines (see EMQ, October, 1998), and video distributors. The Christian and Mission Resources section provides links to mission agencies and organizations (see EMQ, January, 1998), church Web pages, missiological research, people groups resources (see EMQ, April, 1998), the persecution of the church, and world religions. Many of these tables are relatively new and still under construction; bear with us as we continue to update them. As we find new categories to add, we will change the Table of Contents (check the day of the most recent update below the Table of Contents).

THE PERSECUTED CHURCH
Over the last few years many books have been published about persecution, but some are outdated as they are printed. It is certainly possible to use our search engine table to look for “persecution of Christians,” but using Alta Vista the search yields almost 2,500 hits. An easier way to get direct access to some of the best information is to click on “Persecution of the Church” under our Table of Contents. In the right frame, a small table appears.

In it, we provide links to three main types of Web resources: 1() Christian organizations actively working with the persecuted; (2) news reports gathered by respected Christian cooperative groups; and (3) secular organizations working among refugee populations. Obviously there are many more groups working with the persecuted than presented in this table, but these give you representative places you can go to get information which is both timely and accurate.

In the Christian Organizations section, the first organization is Brother’s Keeper (http://members.aol.com/brskeeper/). This Web site includes links to similar organizations and recent news from Iran, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and Vietnam. Christian Freedom International (http://www. christianfreedom.org/), founded in 1983, is an interdenominational organization committed to advocacy and assistance on behalf of the persecuted. The “Be Informed” section gives reports from Sudan and Burma (Myanmar); it also includes a very brief section of world news. International Christian Concern (http://www. persecution.org/), founded in1995, lists dates and recent news and events as well as a country list (at the time of writing, thisincluded only a list of countries with known problems; it was anticipated that country reports would be linked to this page in the future). The International Day of Prayer for the Persecuted Church (http://www. persecutedchurch. org/home.htm), founded in 1996, organizes churches to pray annually for the persecuted church. This site provides, among other things, a photo gallery, latest news, and resources to order. The information is good, but downloading graphics from the site is slow—be ready for long waits. At the time we checked, the site provided synopses of 15 countries. Open Doors, Brother Andrew’s organization (http://www.gospelcom. net/od/), founded in 1955, provides a “Watch List” of situations of particular concern. The “Current News” section gives a good overview. Project Open Book (http://www.domini.org/openbook/home.htm), founded in 1995, focuses on the Islamic world. It provides access to papers, articles, and research on specific incidents, as well as other documents on the World Wide Web.

In the News Updates section, the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada Religious Liberty Commission site (http://www.efc- canada.com/pchurch/persec.htm), founded in 1964, provides numerous recent stories culled from news reports around the world. The World Evangelical Fellowship (http://www.WorldEvangelical.Org/noframes/2persec.htm), founded in 1951, also posts several articles of recent events. These sites give current events for prayer and help focus on issues for possible action.

Finally, in the Other Resources, we list four secular information resources. All have agendas much broader than the persecution of the church, but they provide information that puts the persecution in context.

Amnesty International (http://www.amnesty.org/index.html), founded in 1961, focuses on human rights and has many ongoing campaigns (e.g., Rwanda, women’s rights, the death penalty).

Human Rights Watch (http://www.hrw.org/index.html), founded in 1978 is dedicated to stopping governments from violating citizens’ rights. The last two links are to the United Nations. One is to Refworld (http://www.unhcr.ch/refworld/index.html), which provides “a collection of full- text databases representing the most comprehensive and reliable refugee information resource available, drawn from the most current and authoritative sources.” The other is the U.N. country listing (http://www.unhcr.ch/world/alpha. html), which provides mini-reports on the number of refugees and the U.N. activities of most of the countries of the world.

Do you have sites you’d like to see included? Or perhaps categories to add to our “Web Links for Mission” table? If so, let us know via e-mail, and we’ll try to incorporate them in our ongoing revisions.

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A. Scott Moreau is editor of EMQ and chair of Intercultural Studies at Wheaton College (Wheaton, Ill.). His email address is A.S.Moreau@wheaton.edu and the Wheaton Missions Department web address is www.wheaton.edu/intr

Mike O’Rear is the president of Global Mapping International (Colorado Springs, Colo.), which is dedicated to providing access to information for church and mission leaders, especially in the Majority World. He also serves as Lausanne senior associate for information technology. His email address is mike@gmi.org and the GMI web address is www.gmi.org

Copyright © 1999 Evangelism and Missions Information Service (EMIS). All rights reserved. Not to be reproduced or copied in any form without written permission from EMIS.

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