Christianity's Impact On World Politics

CHRISTIANITY’S IMPACT
ON WORLD POLITICS
Major Concepts in Politics
and Political Theory
Garrett Ward Sheldon

General Editor
Vol. 24
PETER LANG
New York y Washington, D.C./Baltimore y Bern
Frankfurt am Main y Berlin y Brussels y Vienna y Oxford
Kurt W. Jefferson
CHRISTIANITY’S IMPACT
ON WORLD POLITICS
Not by Might, Nor by Power
PETER LANG
New York y Washington, D.C./Baltimore y Bern
Frankfurt am Main y Berlin y Brussels y Vienna y Oxford
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Jefferson, Kurt W.
Christianity’s impact on world politics:
not by might, nor by power / Kurt W. Jefferson.
p. cm. — (Major concepts in politics and political theory; vol. 24)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Christianity and politics. 2. World politics— 20st century.
st
3. World politics— 21 century. I. Title.
BR115.P7 J44 322’.1— dc21 2002075708
ISBN 0-8204-6116-4
ISSN 1059-3535
DIE DEUTSCHE BIBLIOTHEK-CIP-EINHEITSAUFNAHME

Jefferson, Kurt W.:
Christianity’s impact on world politics:
not by might, nor by power / Kurt W. Jefferson.
−New York; Washington, D.C./Baltimore; Bern;
Frankfurt am Main; Berlin; Brussels; Vienna; Oxford: Lang.
(Major concepts in politics and political theory; Vol. 24)
ISBN 0-8204-6116-4
Front cover photograph of Yasser Arafat at a Christmas Eve service in Jerusalem
(December 2000). Source: Independent Catholic News.
Front cover photograph of George W. Bush campaigning for president (October 2000).
Source: Columbia Daily Tribune (Columbia, Missouri), photo by Ed Pfueller.
Cover design by Joni Holst
The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability
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of the Council of Library Resources.
© 2002 Peter Lang Publishing, Inc., New York
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Kurt W. Jefferson: Christianity’s Impact on World Politics page v
For Lori
Who can find a virtuous woman?
For her price is far above rubies (Proverbs 31:10).
This page intentionally left blank

Kurt W. Jefferson: Christianity’s Impact on World Politics page vii
We believe that the most scientific view, the most up-to-date and rational conception, will find its
fullest satisfaction in taking the Bible story literally. We may be sure that all these things happened
just as they are set out according to Holy Writ. We may believe that they happened to people not so
very different from ourselves, and that the impressions those people received were faithfully re-
corded, and have been transmitted across the centuries with far more accuracy than many of the
telegraphed accounts we read of goings on today. In the words of a forgotten work of Mr. Gladstone,
we rest with assurance upon ‘The Impregnable Rock of Holy Scripture.’ Let men of science and
learning expand their knowledge, and probe with their researches, every detail of the records which
have been preserved to us from those dim ages. All they will do is to fortify the grand simplicity and
essential accuracy of these recorded truths which have so far lighted the pilgrimage of man.
—Sir Winston Churchill on the Bible
I was created by God just like everyone else. There is no way I can live my life without Him. My
life must be founded on Him. I must read my Bible consistently, for it is my basis for living. God
has proved to me that He alone is in charge of all things.
—Frederick Chiluba, President of Zambia (1991–2002)
Kurt W. Jefferson: Christianity’s Impact on World Politics page ix
Contents
Preface xi
Chapter 1 Introduction: The Resurrection of Christianity

as an International Political Force 1
Chapter 2 The Arab-Israeli Conflict 22
Chapter 3 Africa: The Wind Bloweth Where It Listeth . . . 57
Chapter 4 America: Christianity, Politics, and the
GOP Revolution in Congress 80
Chapter 5 Russia and the Soviet Successor States:
Life Without and with God 115
Chapter 6 The Persecution of Christians Around the World 132
Chapter 7 Christians Continue to Make a Difference in Politics 166
Notes 177
Index 203

Kurt W. Jefferson: Christianity’s Impact on World Politics page xi
Preface
Colossians 3:23—And whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord, and not unto men
As a college professor, I have always wanted to take some of the material that I
have lectured on over the years and write a book that would be interesting to the
general public. However, because of the general saturation of books on interna-
tional relations and world politics in the academic market, I did not want to au-
thor just “another” college textbook. Because of my profound belief in the risen
Christ, Jesus of Nazareth, as the Savior of mankind, I felt a thorough delineation
on world politics from a Christian vantage point was needed. As an evangelical
Christian faculty member at a small liberal arts college (where I realize I am defi-
nitely a different breed of academic!), I wanted to bridge my faith with the con-
tent of the courses that I teach. As a result, I wrote a book that is unlike most other
books found in academic, Christian, or popular bookstores today. My father al-
ways told me, as I was going through college: “One must write to inform rather
than to impress.” With this in mind, I have attempted to write an informative, yet
interesting book that will help students, academicians, and the general public,
Christians and non-Christians alike, to understand the nature of politics in the
world today. Indeed, my use of the term Christian usually connotes evangelical
Christianity and the literal application of the Word of God, that is, the Holy
Bible, in the pages below.
The idea for this book occurred first after speaking with numerous friends, es-
pecially fellow church members who constantly wanted either “updates” or my
professional opinion on politics and events facing the world today. On a weekly
basis, I would hear friends at church, or I would get calls from people (both
Kurt W. Jefferson: Christianity’s Impact on World Politics page xii
xii Christianity’s Impact on World Politics
church and non-church friends, usually family members or boyhood friends) who
wanted to be educated on some current event or happening such as international
terrorism or the situation facing American troops around the globe. During elec-
tion years, I would be asked to appraise everything from ideologies to stances on
issues of major candidates. As a layman who has perused the Bible many times
over, I was also asked for my opinion as to how current international events, such
as the Arab-Israeli peace process, relate to the scriptures. Although I have always
known that the general public is not fully informed on foreign affairs, and this has
been verified time and again in sophisticated empirical studies in my discipline, I
also realize that my fellow church friends and other Christians, like Americans
and Westerners in general, are quite uninformed on world events and their rele-
vance to American politics and society in general.
As a result, this book seeks to fill an important niche in the academic, Chris-
tian, and popular trade literature today; that is, a discussion of how Christianity
affects politics in numerous contexts globally. This is not a book on Bible proph-
ecy. I am not a trained minister, nor am I a scholar of Bible prophecy. It is not my
purpose to start arguments in the Christian, academic, or secular communities,
but rather to provide empirical evidence that underscores events occurring in
world politics today. As mentioned above, as a practicing Christian, I seek to dis-
cuss and interpret events through a biblical perspective. This allows me to com-
ment on the events and developments of the age, and, hopefully, fellow academ-
ics, Christians, and others will find this work interesting and illuminating.
I thank the Lord Jesus for His mercy and guidance in this project and I also
thank my wonderful wife, Lori, and our beautiful daughters, Kelly, Megan, and
Nicole for their patience, love, and support in completing the drafts of this book.
I also thank my parents, Dr. Robert W. and Sally Ann Jefferson, for their love,
prayers, and support through the years. Dr. Jefferson is dean of the Gordon Ford
College of Business and professor of marketing at Western Kentucky University.
Mrs. Jefferson is lecturer emeritus in business communication at Western Illinois
University and Illinois State University. I thank them for constructive criticisms of
the manuscript. I thank all other family members as well for the love they have
shown me over the years and for supporting my professional development as a po-
litical scientist. I also thank my Christian brothers and sisters in Columbia, Mis-
souri for their prayers and love.
As for my colleagues, I thank the following for helpful comments on the
manuscript: Dr. Raymond Crownover (theology, Urshan Graduate School of
Theology), Dr. Daniel Egbe (political science, Lincoln University), Dr. Sam
Goodfellow (history, Westminster College), Dr. Bill Guinee (anthropology, West-
minster College), Dr. Rick Hardy (political science, University of Missouri), Pro-
fessor Peter Kim (political science, Westminster College), Dr. Victor Leuci (clas-
sics, Westminster College), and Dr. Bill Young (religious studies, Westminster
Kurt W. Jefferson: Christianity’s Impact on World Politics page xiii
Preface xiii
College). Each of these individuals made important contributions in keeping me

intellectually honest and my mind open during the book project. Any errors of
fact or otherwise are solely my own and are no reflection upon the aforemen-
tioned professionals. I also thank Jennifer Johnson, Graphic Design Coordinator
at Westminster College, for her help and professionalism with the photos on the
book’s cover. I thank my students and friends at Westminster College, the former
Presbyterian men’s college in the middle of Missouri. May God lead you to per-
sonal fulfillment on life’s great journey.
Last, I want to pay tribute to the men, women, and children who perished on
our shores on September 11, 2001. I also want to recognize their families. We will
never know your pain and suffering. But the Lord can restore faith and hope.
America and the world can be a brighter place if we let Him guide us as we seek to
understand the challenges that now confront this generation. As we begin the
twenty-first century, let us wait patiently, yet resolutely, for His second coming.
Sir Winston Churchill said, “In war: resolution. In defeat: defiance. In victory:
magnanimity. In peace: goodwill.” If we follow the advice of Sir Winston we may
see what he proclaimed over half a century ago, just a football’s throw away from
where this preface is being composed, when on March 5, 1946, he stated in the
Westminster College gymnasium during his now-famous “Iron Curtain” speech:
“The high roads of the future will be clear, not only for us but for all, not only for
our time, but for a century to come.” May Churchill’s words ring true for all of us
in the years ahead.
Kurt W. Jefferson
Fulton, Missouri, USA
March 2002
Kurt W. Jefferson: Christianity’s Impact on World Politics page 1
 
Introduction
The Resurrection of Christianity as an

International Political Force
Psalm 86:9—All nations whom thou hast made shall come and worship before thee,
O Lord; and shall glorify thy name.
The terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon awakened
America and the world to a new era of insecurity and uncertainty. With the
deaths of perhaps as many as 3,900 people in the single worst terrorist attack in
the world’s history, and the single worst attack on American soil in United
States history, Americans cried for revenge and justice. Despite the range of
emotions that many throughout the world felt on that terrible day (September
11, 2001), one certain conclusion from the attacks was that God was still relevant
to Christians in their time of calamity. Immediately, in the evening hours of
September 11, millions of Americans attended prayer services in their home
churches. In cities, towns, villages, and rural areas, the churches were packed to
the brim. Most commentators said that nothing had been seen like it since
World War II. Somehow, out of America’s painful tragedy, unity and patriotism
began to emerge as the nation turned to the Lord during the great time of na-
tional suffering.
Columnist Peggy Noonan said that God had produced a miracle in a time of
national devastation as people sang Irving Berlin’s famous, “God Bless America,”
President George W. Bush spoke of prayer from the heart, and Americans of all
Christian denominations, and faiths came together to respond to the tragedy with
the hope that God would lead them to a better day.
Scriptures found throughout this book are from the Holy Bible, King James Version, the
Thompson Chain-Reference Bible, 5th ed. (Indianapolis, IN: Kirkbride, 1988).
2 Christianity’s Impact on World Politics
Noonan also said, “In 1964, Time magazine famously headlined ‘God is
Dead’ . . . I hope now . . . they do a cover that says ‘God is Back.’”1 Unfortunately,
it took a national tragedy to get Americans and others around the world focused
on the Lord, but we now know that the Lord has not forsaken His people. He is
still relevant today for all the peoples of the world, and He is affecting politics and
society in many unforeseen ways. This book will attempt to explain how God is
affecting politics around the world today.
Since the days of the apostles, the growth of Christianity has continued un-
abated in most parts of the world. Contrary to some scholarly assessments, Chris-
tianity has continued to grow, especially evangelical forms of the great monothe-
istic religion.2 According to journalist Kim A. Lawton, evangelical Christianity
has developed into a worldwide phenomenon since the 1960s. Originally concen-
trated in the West, today the surge of the Holy Spirit has engulfed non-Western
areas, and 70% of the world’s 400 million evangelicals are found in “Africa, Asia,
Oceania, and Latin America.”3 As a result, Christianity’s impact on politics in
both Western and non-Western countries continues to be pronounced. From the
politics of the “Religious Right,” or, to use the former director of the Christian
Coalition Ralph Reed’s term, “Religious Conservatives,” in the United States to
Christians fighting for their very lives in war-torn Sudan in Africa, Christianity is
leaving an indelible mark on the surface of global politics today. Some pundits
and scholars believed that with the end of communism in Europe after 1989 that
history was more or less over due to the seeming demise of one of the world’s great
ideologies: Marxism-Leninism.4 However, with the end of the bipolar world order
and the advent of a multipolar one, the ethnic and spiritual challenges that lay in
the wake of international change after the collapse of the communist bloc con-
tinue to manifest. The rise of evangelical Christian leaders in secular politics in
Africa (see chapter 3 below), the attempts at a profound and historic peace
between Palestinian Arabs and Israelis in Israel (see chapter 2 below), and the role
of Christianity as a new system of belief for those who formerly adhered to the
atheistic and purposely secular visions of Marx and Lenin in Russia and the lands
of the former Soviet Union (see chapter 5 below) all display the rather salient role
religion, and namely Christianity, plays in world affairs. This book attempts to re-
view the important political developments around the world and explain where
Christianity has affected politics and society.
Unlike most academically related books or popular trade books on interna-
tional politics, this book explains political history and contemporary events
through a Christian lens. It attempts to be objective and nondenominational in its
focus. It combines an evangelical Christian perspective to international politics
and events with an empirical examination of how Christianity affects politics in
various countries around the world. Hence, it is not a work of prophecy or bibli-
cal hermeneutics. The author uses numerous case studies in which Christianity
Introduction 3
(leaders, principles and movements/political parties) plays a major role in specific

countries from Namibia to Armenia and from Russia to the U.S. The intention of
the author is to inspire the reader and to generate reflection in various settings,
from the classroom to the pulpit, on the major thesis of the book: that Christian-
ity is on the move and affecting world politics in ways that most Americans (and
Westerners) have not realized. The Lord is truly pouring out His Spirit on all flesh
at the dawn of the twenty-first century, and governments and leaders are pro-
foundly affected by the Christian message (see Joel 2:28).
The role of religion in politics in general, let alone Christianity, is vastly mis-
understood by most students of politics today. Moreover, the average person does
not usually comprehend Christianity’s impact on world politics. Academicians are
not immune to this general trend as well. Many academics have “written off ” the
importance of religion, and Christianity, in various conflicts and sociopolitical con-
texts around the world. As political scientist Barry Rubin has noted, “Religion as the
prime communal identity has, until recently, been too often neglected.”5 The under-
estimation of religion’s importance has led to analytical discrepancies among schol-
ars. For example, in Sudan, the civil war between Muslims controlling the Khar-
toum government in the north and Christians and animists in the south is usually
reported as “racial, regional, or colonial” and, hence, a misunderstanding of the real
reasons for the conflict—which are religious—occurs (see chapters 3 and 6 below).6
Though religion as a variable in international politics is at times overempha-
sized (as in the case of the “troubles” in Northern Ireland) the rise of Islamic fun-
damentalism, the rise of evangelical Christianity, and the virulent anti-Christian
rhetoric of some states suggests that educated people ought to have a better aware-
ness of the new role that religion, and especially Christianity, plays in world affairs
today.
According to political scientist Ronald Inglehart, an interesting phenomenon
has developed in Western societies. That phenomenon is known as “cognitive
mobilization.” Cognitive mobilization occurs when the aggregate educational lev-
els of individuals (nonpolitical elites) increases and these individuals, in turn, see
an increase in their access to and participation in the political system.7 Hence, the
electorate in countries like the U.S. and even developing democracies in underde-
veloped states may see a greater increase in political participation as educational
levels and access grow. This has been clearly borne out in the case of the rise in the
role of religious conservatives in American politics. Evangelicals are not only a
growing segment of American society, but an increasingly educated group as well.
This book attempts to provide both a popular and academic synthesis of the po-
litical developments that are being affected by the rise in Christian identification
and the increased importance of Christianity around the world. Hence, this book
is for laypeople, students, teachers, preachers, theologians, scholars, politicians,
college students, and the general public.
In the following pages I will examine and explain an amazing, real-life story.
That story is one of the pervasiveness of Christianity and its impact on political
change and development in numerous contexts around the globe. In describing
his epic, yet folksy “On-the-Road” interviews, the late CBS newsman Charles Ku-
ralt said that his stories “covered the news that did not receive front-page head-
lines,” but they (his accounts of life in America) told more about America and
what was occurring in it.8 This book does much the same thing on the world
stage.
You may not hear much about the information in this book as it is presented
in the secular press, which is dominated by financial news, news about the presi-
dent of the U.S., and so on. However, the empirical data is real, and it depicts
the role of God and religion in political affairs as is occurring today. Some may
be surprised, but the Lord is on the march in affecting politics in the new mil-
lennium. Below you will become familiar with the following areas: (a) the Mid-
east; (b) Africa; (c) the United States; (d) countries of the former Soviet Union,
and (e) the persecution of Christians around the world. In the first context, we
look at the historical and biblical roots of today’s vacillating peace process in Is-
rael. In the next four contexts, we look at how Christianity affects various
nations’ political institutions, political discourse, and leaders. In the fifth section
(chapter 6) we look at Christians who are dying and being persecuted today for
the cause of Christ in communist China, Indonesia, India, Pakistan, and Sudan.
As a result, the book traces the force of Christianity and the sweeping effects it
had on the world in the latter part of the twentieth century and its impact in the
new millennium.
Christianity: Its Rise and Politicization
Christendom as an historical movement began on the day of Pentecost nearly

2,000 years ago. Pentecost, the time-honored Jewish feast of the harvest, was an
annual religious holiday. It was a celebratory period of thanksgiving to Jehovah for
His mercy and provisions during the annual agricultural yield. It so happened
during this religious season and on the very day of Pentecost that the Lord sent
His Spirit to dwell in the hearts of the men gathered in the upper room in Jerusa-
lem. As theologian Harvey Cox has described:
The Holy Spirit filled them, tongues “as of fire” crowned their heads, and to their amaze-
ment each began to understand what the other was saying even though they came from
“every nation under heaven” and spoke many different languages. It seemed that the an-
cient curse of Babel—the confounding of languages—had been reversed and that God
was creating a new inclusive human community in which “Parthians and Medes and Ela-
mites and residents of Mesopotamia” could all live together.9
Introduction 5
With this gathering of followers of a young carpenter from Nazareth, a man

named Jesus, God’s promise that His Spirit would come following the death and
resurrection of His Son (Jehovah Himself in flesh, i.e. Jesus) was manifested (see
John 15:26). Moreover, the ancient Hebrew prophet Joel’s prophetic statement
had come to the fore: that God would pour out His Spirit on all people in the last
days (see Joel 2:28). Thus, the Apostle Peter’s command was made on that very
day to “Repent, and be baptized, every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for
the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost,” and the Ap-
ostolic era had begun (Acts 2:38).
The advent of Christianity and its transformation through the years is im-
portant to review not only for religious or doctrinal purposes, but for political
purposes as well. The unification of lands controlled by Rome under the Chris-
tian banner in .. 325 at the Council of Nicea proved to be more political than
religious. However, the resulting religious settlement would have disastrous po-
litical effects. Though Constantine, the Roman emperor, called the meeting of
Christian bishops at Nicea (not far from the Roman Empire’s capital at Byzan-
tium, by .. 330, Constantinople, and modern-day Istanbul, Turkey), the even-
tual rift within Christendom, fully manifested by .. 75410 between the West-
ern Roman church and the Eastern Orthodox church, helped fashion a long
division in politics and society that is still felt today. This historical fissure is seen
in today’s rancorous politics in the former Yugoslavia among Catholic Croats
and Orthodox Serbs or the problematic relationship between the Russian Or-
thodox Church and evangelical missionaries from the United States (see chapter
5 below).
Christianity has continued to be a powerful political force throughout his-
tory. As has been verified empirically, at its beginning, Christianity as a social and
religious movement was quite small (see chapter 3 for details). As it grew, it be-
came powerful as it was politicized by nations in Europe during the Middle Ages.
From the eleventh to the thirteenth centuries, Christianity began its epic con-
frontation with the world’s third great monotheistic religion, Islam. Islam had
grown from its humble origins on the Arabian peninsula: From its founder Mu-
hammad, who was born around .. 570 into a family of Arabs who eventually
become the Hashemite kings of Jordan and Iraq in the twentieth century, the
great religion had grown into a major political force in world politics. Muslims
believe that Muhammad was a direct descendent of Ishmael, the firstborn of
Abraham, the father of the faithful (see chapter 2 below). This is argued in an
eighth century book, the Sira;11 however, according to historian John B. Christo-
pher, “Modern scholars reject the genealogy of Muhammad and many other de-
tails of the Sira as extravagant embellishments in the story-telling tradition of Ar-
abic literature, but they accept its broad outlines as sound in the main.”12
According to Islamic tradition, Muhammad received his revelation from Allah
(“God” in Arabic) around .. 610. At the very time of Muhammad’s life in what
is now Saudi Arabia, the Sasanid dynasty from Persia (modern-day Iran) and
Christendom’s Byzantine empire (Eastern Orthodox kingdom) were warring in
the Middle East. The Sasanids resurrected the ancient Iranian religion, Zoroas-
trianism. This religion evolved from the ideas of a sixth century .. Iranian holy
man and indigenous prophet, Zarathustra (or the Greek equivalent, Zoroaster).
Zoroaster, like many non-Christian spiritual men, sought to get Iranians to
lessen their pantheistic tendencies and emphasize one of their gods more than
others. That deity was Ahura Mazda. Eventually, by the fourth century .., Ira-
nians had embraced Zoroastrianism and maintained a general pantheistic way by
placing Ahura Mazda above the religion’s lesser gods. Minor gods were seen as
manifestations of Ahura Mazda. Though the religious elements were somewhat
different, the Persian-Christian conflict would replicate itself as wars of religion
between Arab Muslims and European Christians by the eleventh century .. in
the form of the Crusades.
The Crusades began in 1096, when in the aftermath of Pope Urban II’s en-
dorsement at the Council of Clermont in France, thousands of men from the
areas that comprise the modern-day countries of France, Germany, and Italy
gathered to represent Western and Eastern Christendom in their quest to take Je-
rusalem from the Muslims. Jerusalem had been controlled by non-Christians
since the 600s. The Eastern emperor, Alexis I, felt vulnerable given his exposure
to advancing Muslim armies; so the Western crusaders were sent to Constantin-
ople to protect the eastern half of Christendom’s outer flank. By 1099,
Christendom’s crusaders had smashed the Islamic Seljuq Turks and taken Jerusa-
lem. Three other Crusades occurred; but, in the long run, Muslim control of the
Holy Lands returned. By 1187, the king of Egypt and Syria, Saladin, had retaken
Jerusalem, and despite a brief Christian interregnum in the thirteenth century,
Muslims controlled the Holy Lands until the nineteenth century. If the Middle
Ages were the pinnacle of religious, and specifically Christian, zeal in Europe, the
Reformation period was a pronounced addendum to that period. Moving away
from collective Christian action against religious and political threats to physical
security, the focus shifted more to the individual liberties and rights context
within Christianity itself. As was argued by many great political thinkers in the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries, including President Woodrow Wilson (see
below), America’s first Ph.D. in political science from Johns Hopkins University
in 1886, the Reformation brought religious liberty to Christendom and, in turn,
allowed various political systems to progress with the manifestation of demo-
cratic tendencies in various contexts including the English Civil War
(1642–1647) where the Puritan Roundheads, led by Oliver Cromwell, sought to
empower the English citizenry vis-à-vis the monarchy. The development of dem-
one line short

Introduction 7
ocratic tendencies, which include manifestations of political and religious liberty,

equality for individuals, and the toleration of various denominational differences
within Protestantism are the Cromwellian period’s greatest legacy to the Anglo-
Saxon democratic heritage. Cromwell’s austere and, at times, brutal (when deal-
ing with Catholics in Ireland) legacy caused historians and political scientists to
rethink politically driven conquests made in the Name of the Almighty. How-
ever, to minimize the political and spiritual nexus between ideals and ends in this
case is problematic given Cromwell’s ultimate positive impact on government in
England and future Anglo-Saxon democracies, such as the U.S. For this reason,
his statue proudly stands outside the House of Commons in London today as a
symbol of the people’s challenge to invidious political absolutism. Robert S. Paul
argues that the English civil war’s political and social impulses eventually rose to
the fore again and successfully led to the democratic revolution in the American
colonies a generation later. “Puritanism provided not only the common biblical
basis for the ‘free church’ ideal in both countries, but perhaps more significantly
it lies at the root of the Anglo-Saxon political democracies,” Paul states.13 It is
through the views on spiritual freedom of individuals like Martin Luther that
much of the impetus for democracy, as we know it in the capitalist West today,
were sprung.
The manifestation of opposing views to Rome came to the fore in the writ-
ings and teachings of many individuals during the Reformation period. The
Roman Catholic cleric Martin Luther is credited with beginning the landmark
split between Catholicism and Protestantism with his eloquent defense of indi-
vidual liberty and freedom of conscience at the Diet of Worms in April 1521.
However, most of his ideas replicated similar themes of earlier martyrs for the
cause of Christ. These include the fifteenth century Czech professor and cleric
Jan Hus, who argued against the legitimacy of sacraments that had been per-
formed by immoral priests, and Englishman John Wycliffe, who had questioned
the Catholic priesthood’s zealous attempt to keep the masses from reading the
Bible for themselves in their own languages instead of Latin.14 In general, Luther
had exposed a radical side to his beliefs that threatened the established church-
state order of the day. He had openly questioned the legitimacy of a church that
would allow “indulgences”15 to be sold for absolution of sins, when according to
the Bible this practice was not only unscriptural but forbidden (see I Peter 5:2
and Mark 2:10). After nailing the 95 theses on indulgences to the church door at
Wittenberg on October 31, 1517, he became a national hero among the duchies
and provinces of the Germanic areas of the former Holy Roman Empire. After a
papal bull of excommunication was issued following the Diet of Worms, Luther
was forced into internal exile, hiding in various locales. The verdict at Worms
also called for Luther’s execution as a heretic. Habsburg emperor, Charles V, was
one line short

disgusted with the fact that one lonely monk had had the audacity to challenge
1,000 years of Church tradition. Eventually, as a source of controversy, Luther
authored numerous books and tracts while in exile in Wartburg cathedral, his
“Patmos,” as it were. Among these writings was his magisterial translation of the
New Testament into German.
By 1522, various German princes began seizing church property, and hence,
legal and political authority, in the name of spiritual (Lutheran) freedom. These
events led to the Peasants’ Revolt. The rebellion spread across southern Ger-
many. Ambivalent about the peasants’ animosity toward the Catholic princes,
Luther said nothing at first. He then supported the peasants in a tract aimed at
getting princes to recognize the peasants’ claims. However, Luther was opposed
to the armed violence associated with the peasant struggle. In 1523, he authored a
tract, Against the Robbing and Murderous Peasant Gangs, in which he called for
the extermination of rebellious and bellicose peasants. He was unwilling to sanc-
tion thuggery, anarchy, and brutality in the name of spiritual freedom. As a re-
sult, Luther felt reform in Christendom should occur incrementally and hierar-
chically rather than by revolutionary means. He had failed to envision how
radical his ideas really were and to what extent they would take root and then
manifest themselves in Germany on the whole. By 1525, the rebellion was
stanched. However, the Peasants’ Revolt left an uneasy feeling among Germans
and affected the Reformation period from that point on. The eventual settle-
ment of the Church-state rift in Germany manifested in the Peace of Augsburg
of 1555. Through this peace a tenuous truce allowed Catholics and Lutherans in
Germany to coexist for an additional 63 years until 1618 when the Thirty Years
War broke out. Again, a battle for the souls of Europeans between Catholicism
and the so-called heretical views of Protestants, who followed the likes of Luther,
Hus, and John Calvin, occurred.
The quest for spiritual freedom led to a new political order and, in an ironic
way increased the politicization of religious and territorial politics under princes
and kings, who used their newfound Protestant allegiance as a source of power in
the face of the established Catholic force, the Spanish Habsburg dynasty. The Ref-
ormation period gave the impetus to much of the intellectual and political power
behind the Enlightenment of the seventeenth century and the revolutionary dem-
ocratic developments in Europe and the United States. The radical breaks with
tradition, monarchy, and the status quo all helped change the political order of
the day as seen in England in 1688, America in 1776, and France in 1789. Although
the latter marked a pronounced break with the established (Roman Catholic)
church and the social and moral dictates of Christianity in general, the American
Revolution blended spirituality and secular enlightenment thinking (the latter
mainly due to Thomas Jefferson’s agnostic/deist preconceptions), and the roots of
American democracy were sown.
Introduction 9
Democracy and Christianity
The forces of Christianity have marched throughout history at times in line with
democracy and at times at odds with the great ideology of the modern era. Histor-
ical expressions of institutionalized religion did not use democracy as a tool of re-
ligious or secular governance. Moses’s actions at the base of Mount Sinai after
finding the Israelites involved in various abominations were not only undemo-
cratic; they were not predicated on a democratic system of justice. Moses’s system
of justice was purposely God-given, or what modern scholars of jurisprudence
would refer to as emanating from “divine law”—law derived from the Will of the
Lord and applied in a temporal setting. Moreover, the divine law with which
Moses was charged with enforcing was codified in the newly pronounced Decal-
ogue (or Ten Commandments) which God had revealed to him during his forty
days on the mount. Of course, he smashed the tablets of the Decalogue at the base
of Mount Sinai after seeing the pagan developments that had evolved in the Israe-
lite camp during his absence. As a result of his people’s waywardness in his ab-
sence, Moses applied a swift retaliation and retribution to those who violated
God’s commands. In doing so he ordered the Levites to execute around 3,000 dis-
obedient souls and he made the people drink liquefied gold as a reminder of their
sin before God (see Exodus 32). These actions caused the famous fifteenth century
Florentine political philosopher, Niccolo Machiavelli, to state that Moses was the
penultimate “prince” (i.e leader in the modern political sense of the term) because
of Moses’s vision in realizing that his people would have difficulty conforming to
the new political order that God was establishing for them in the postbondage era
away from Egypt. Machiavelli believed that humans were inherently opposed to
new political orders because they would not “believe in anything new until they
have had actual experience of it.”16 Political scientist Aaron Wildavsky argues that
Moses was a great leader because he could change as a leader to adapt to different
and complex situations. He also believes Moses provides the supreme example for
leaders in modern democracies because he led by example. Further, Wildavsky be-
lieves Moses’s leadership was one of history’s best because he prepared the Israe-
lites to govern themselves without him.17
Interestingly, it was Moses, who has been referred to as the “Law Giver,” who
borrowed from Hammurabi’s earlier model in handing down the Decalogue,
which provides a basis for the legal systems found in Western democracies today.
The Decalogue provided a basis for the standardized code of morality and ethics
found in societies predicated on the Judeo-Christian promise. That promise en-
capsulates the hope that men and women would love the Lord their Creator with
all their hearts, soul, and strength and apply the legal and social truths of the De-
calogue in their affairs with fellow humans. It is interesting to note that in a 1997
survey of 200 Anglican vicars (ministers of the Church of England) nearly two-
thirds in the sample of clergy could not name most of the Ten Commandments.
When asked why he could not name them one vicar said, “They are very nega-
tive.”18
Hammurabi, the ancient Amorite king of Babylon, was responsible around
1792–1750 .. for creating a legal code for the governance of his kingdom and the
semitic peoples of ancient Mesopotamia. It is widely believed that Hammurabi
was a contemporary of Abraham and it is possible that the two knew each other.
Hammurabi’s law delineated the nature of the social, class-based order in the Old
Babylonian empire, and it had a pronounced set of punishments for those who vi-
olated its principles. Justice was to be meted out by the king, whose authority was
given to him by the gods he followed. Hammurabi’s code is often seen as the intel-
lectual and historical forerunner to the Mosaic code and to the interpretation of
God’s Will by Moses for the nation of Israel.
Although not democratic, the Mosaic law has been described as the precursor
of today’s democratic legal heritage in the West. According to Gutenberg Award-
winner and Bible scholar Henry H. Halley, “much of the Law is pre-Mosaic, in
the same sense that much of the Lord’s Prayer is pre-Christian. No originality in
the narrow sense of the word is claimed for either.” However, as a forerunner for
modern day democracies and the manifestation of justice and due process,
Moses’s code, Halley contends: (a) is “more humane” in its punishments (b) does
not have the pagan qualities of its forerunners (c) provides a divine model for a
proper theocracy (both literally and figuratively), and (d) “sets a higher value on
human life and relates all to God, the love of God, and love for one’s neighbor.”19
Hence, the Decalogue provides us with the historic underpinning for the West’s
time-honored commitments to democracy and justice in the legal realms of soci-
ety. In the March 1997 debate in the U.S. House of Representatives on whether
the Decalogue should be allowed in public buildings (see more on this issue in
chapter 4), Representative Donald Manzullo (R-IL) said; “The reason for the pic-
ture of Moses in the Chamber of the House of Representatives is to give credence
to the people speaking here that all of the laws that we enact have as their moral
basis the Ten Commandments. In the Supreme Court itself, there are two versions
of the Ten Commandments up on the walls.”20
The importance of the Ten Commandments as a legitimizer of democracy
had not changed from the time God gave them to Moses around 1450 ..21 until
March 1997.
As a form of politics, democracy is an ancient form of political expression and
institutionalization. The Greeks brought the world democracy in the fifth century
.. with the creation of the demos. The Greek legislature represented its citizens
with male property owners who were allowed to vote on matters of importance to
the polis, the Greek city-state. Women and slaves were not allowed to participate,
but a general majoritarian philosophy inspired the demos, and it was this rule by
Introduction 11
the “masses” that inspired the great political thinker, Plato, to castigate this system
of government and politics in both of his famous Socratic-style works, the Repub-
lic and the Statesman.22 In these dialogues he states that democracy, as pro-
pounded in his general “theory of political decay,” was the second worst form of
government just ahead of the worst form of government, tyranny. Unfortunately
for Plato, his ideas have been misconstrued and misunderstood as seen in the
thought-provoking book, The Open Society and Its Enemies (1945) by Sir Karl R.
Popper, the Viennese-born philosopher.23 Popper argues that the world can thank
Plato for providing the intellectual blueprint for Adolph Hitler’s Nazism and his
concomitant heinous regime.
However, a clearer reading of Plato allows students of politics to realize that:
(a) Plato’s critique of democracy is more about the threats of extremism and the
excesses of “mob mentality” in a political system, and (b) his views are as much
about ordering one’s life to bring about what his student Aristotle called “the
mean.” Finding the mean in one’s life could bring about eudaimonia (the Greek
word for “happiness” or the human good). Hence, the commitment to a balanced
soul and, hence, an even-keeled life can be found in Plato’s views. Some have
argued that the Apostle Paul (as Saul of Tarsus) had read Plato’s writings and that
they most likely affected his views on life apart from the Holy-Ghost-inspired
scriptures that he penned. Paul’s call for moderation and temperance in the post-
Crucifixion society were examples of a kind of Platonist or Aristotelian caution
against extremes, especially when it came to governing the affairs of mankind. Al-
though democracy to Plato was a pejorative phenomenon, the extent to which de-
mocracy is applied to various societies and governments varies historically. From
the parliamentary democracy of states like the United Kingdom to limited de-
mocracy in developing states, the concept has been applied in varying ways
throughout history. The Bible, in both Old and New Testaments, tells of various
degrees of democracy that people today may not view as democratic given their
experience with modern democracy.
In the Old Testament, God led the people through His prophets until they
clamored for a political ruler. As seen in I Samuel, the Lord appeased His people by
anointing Saul as King of Israel.24 Although this was not a democratic gesture, nor
was democracy part of the political equation in Israel at the time, God chose to give
the people what they wanted in order to evince the problems inherent in worldly
wisdom and populistic conceptions of governing without the divine direction of
the Lord. Hence, democracy, although a great and time-honored method of gov-
ernment, came from the Lord’s giving of a king to Israel. As a result, man from that
time on got more political and social autonomy as the torch was passed from the
Old Covenant to the new dispensation found in His New Covenant with the com-
ing of the Messiah, Jesus Christ. Does this mean that increased rule by individuals
in both nondemocratic environments, like ancient Israel, or modern democracies
is inherently flawed and anti-God? By no means. The Lord has poured His mercy
out on His creation and the keepers of His creation, the peoples of the world, in
this latter dispensation of grace. As a result, the modern-day conception of de-
mocracy has helped provide a justification for spiritual and political liberty in
many parts of the world. After all, though God foreordained Saul as king of Israel,
He chose to place him among a group of Israelites at Mizpeh from shoulder to
shoulder in order to underscore His commitment to fairness and to evince Saul’s
greatness (literally—because he was taller than his fellow Israelites—and in a nor-
mative sense as well due to his sagacity and wisdom) vis-à-vis his fellow tribesmen
(see I Samuel 10:23). In a sense, this should be interpreted as a quasi-democratic
gesture by the Lord. Democracy is also seen in the New Testament when the
church faithful selected seven leaders within Christ’s first century Church at the
behest of the apostles (see Acts 6). The contradictions of the Platonic conception
of democracy and the views of many of America’s great leaders on democracy are
reconciled in the difficult bridge between democratic theory and practice.
Thomas Jefferson, the third president of the United States, was well-known as a
champion of minimalist government, laissez-faire economics, and the application
of individual liberties. In practice, however, he was not as absolute about these
principles, given his expansion of the U.S. government with Louisiana Purchase,
his military intervention in the Mediterranean to extirpate the threat of the Bar-
bary pirates, and his ownership of numerous slaves. Woodrow Wilson, one of our
most erudite presidents, was known for his championing of Christian ideals and
virtues as a form of political reform. The son of a Presbyterian minister, Wilson
began his professional life as a college professor. Moving to Princeton University
in September 1890, he had led a distinguished life in academe during his long ten-
ure as a political scientist. Married with three daughters, Wilson gave stirring lec-
tures to his classes at Bryn Mawr College (Pennsylvania women’s college), Wes-
leyan College (now Wesleyan University), and Princeton. At Princeton, he often
lectured to 400 undergraduates in his introductory political science courses. One
of his students recalled a lecture that left a strong impression in his mind and
heart:
I still recall the vividness with which [Dr. Wilson] described the scene in Greyfriars
churchyard, when on a grim, forbidding Sunday morning in February 1638, under the
shadow of Edinburgh Castle, the stern and determined citizens of Scotland signed their
names to the Covenant on a flat tombstone just outside the door. Years afterward, with his
description of this event still in my mind, I took my daughter to Greyfriars churchyard,
just to let her see where the event occurred. To Wilson it was one of the outstanding events
in the long struggle for liberty. It was here that freedom of conscience took its root . . .25
It is not by accident that Wilson used this particular political event with Chris-
tian overtones to underscore his belief in the Christian roots of democracy in the
Introduction 13
modern era. Although democracy was not necessarily a Christian concept or

found as an integral component of the scriptures, the moral and intellectual
force of scripture infused a lifeblood into democracy that Wilson believed in;
and he believed dearly in the nexus of the two. Wilson was not an adherent of
the social gospel movement of his day, like the venerable Democratic congress-
man from Nebraska (and Wilson’s first secretary of state), William Jennings
Bryan, but he was a died-in-the-wool Protestant with a Calvinist predisposition.
He was not ultra-devout, but he believed in the power of the Word and the im-
portance of relying on Christ’s words as a source of hope and strength. As
Wilson’s biographer, historian Arthur S. Link, has noted, Wilson felt the Bible
was “the people’s book of revelation” and Link quotes Wilson in a speech given
in 1911 in Denver, Colorado that would make the future president sound like an
Israelite prophet of old:
And the man whose faith is rooted in the Bible knows that reform cannot be stayed, that
the finger of God that moves upon the face of the nations is against every man that plots
the nation’s downfall or the people’s deceit; that these men are simply groping and stag-
gering in their ignorance to a fearful day of judgment and that whether one generation
witnesses it or not, the glad day of revelation and of freedom will come in which men will
sing by the host of the coming of the Lord in His Glory.26
Wilson himself is a contradictory figure in the annals of American history. Al-

though held in high regard by most academicians as a virtuous and idealistic fig-
ure, his unwillingness to compromise with a Republican congress after 1916
doomed his administration, and his failed attempt to ratify the Versailles peace
treaty, and hence guarantee America’s entry into his League of Nations, shows that
his lack of pragmatism in the governance of international affairs was less than dip-
lomatic or democratic. As a result, his health failed and he left office after two
terms a defeated president.27
Wilson’s views reinforce the importance of the nexus between democracy
and Christianity. Christianity provides an impetus to democracy and the histor-
ical forces of liberty, and the liberating tendencies of scripture have breathed an
historic lifeblood into nations that have sought to throw off the shackles of po-
litical and spiritual repression. Today, this is nowhere more evident than in Af-
rica. As will be seen in chapter 3 below, a land rife with postcolonial authoritar-
ianism, Africa is now burgeoning with democratization and pluralist change. It
may not be by coincidence that the rise of evangelical Christianity on the vast
plains of that great continent is generally synchronized with the rise of democ-
racy from South Africa to Malawi and from Zambia to Namibia. Moreover, the
defense of the democratic ideal politically and the Western culture that helped
nourish it and give it life has become a renewed source of debate in the wake of
the Cold War.
The West Versus the Rest?
Political scientist Samuel P. Huntington provoked serious reflection and political

and scholarly debate in 1993 with his article in Foreign Affairs, “The Clash of Civ-
ilizations?”28 By 1996, Huntington’s argument that the West must defend itself, its
institutions and, above all, democracy, against the growing tide of Islamic funda-
mentalism and Chinese power, was expanded in book form. With his many crit-
ics, Huntington breaks his general thesis into one “theme” with five parts. He be-
lieves that in the wake of the post–Cold War order a new multipolar order has
evolved and that “culture and cultural identities” will now shape “the patterns of
cohesion, disintegration, and conflict in the post–Cold War world.” From this
thesis come five ancillary suppositions. First, that a multipolar, or “multiciviliza-
tional” (or one based on many cultures), world order has evolved for the first time
ever and that it will continue to challenge the post–World War II Western as-
sumptions of the world’s political and social development. Second, the world’s
balance of power is shifting, with the West’s influence declining and Asian cul-
tures ascending. Though Islamic cultures are growing as well, they are not in a po-
sition to dominate politically, but because of the militant aspects of some forms of
Islam and the rapid pace of their growth, a major influence will continue to be felt
in world affairs due to radical Islam’s role in various parts of the world. Third, a
world order based on at least nine distinct cultures (or as he misapplies the term,
“civilizations”) is occurring. Fourth, the West’s tendency to influence other cul-
tures is causing a profound “clash” with other cultures, namely, Islam and Chinese
cultures. Fifth, the West’s survival is based on “Americans reaffirming their West-
ern identity” to keep challenges from non-Western cultures from enervating the
West’s culture, institutions, and worldviews.29
Huntington’s interesting and cogent thesis is not without its problems. His
first assumption is problematic historically given the multipolar great power order
that controlled the fate of the world from Europe between 1815–1914. Another
problem with his theory is the role of Russia. Although he acknowledges Russia’s
place as part of the Eastern Orthodox civilization, he also recognizes its role as part
of the West at times during its existence. Viewing Russia as a Western nation is du-
bious given her historic championing, in the modern era, of the Eastern Orthodox
cause within Christendom and, hence, the East’s political position vis-à-vis the
West. For example, Russia fought the Crimean War with England from 1853–1855
over the Holy Lands for control of the region by their respective cultures (East ver-
sus West), and because of England’s break with Rome in 1509, a war fought 340+
years later was not as much about the religious superiority of Western Christen-
dom over Eastern Christendom, as it was about the politically “progressive” West
over the “backwards” East. Analytically, viewing Russia as one of these two civiliza-
tions can be problematic depending on the contexts and issues under investigation.
Introduction 15
A third problem with his theory includes his use of the term “civilization.” It
seems problematic to use this term as a label for groups of peoples. The term civ-
ilization implies a longitudinal component that is misused in his analysis. The
term “cultures” seems more logical since we are talking about characteristics of
peoples and their sociological milieus rather than geopolitical domains and his-
toric timeframes alone.
A fourth problem relates to Huntington’s skepticism over the role of Christi-
anity as a force in the conflict between the West and its two major challengers:
Sinic (Chinese) and Islamic cultures. This is problematic given the continued in-
crease in both Christianity and Islam (see chapter 3). Like other scholars in politi-
cal science today, he argues that Islam will supplant Christianity as the dominant
religion in the not-too-distant future. The empirical evidence is available to chal-
lenge this claim. Moreover, to discount Christianity as a major influence in the so-
called “clash of civilizations” is problematic given the increased persecution of
Christians around the world (and most intensely in both Sinic and Islamic cul-
tural contexts) and the documented great evangelical revival occurring around the
world in places like Africa, where by .. 2000 the continent was projected to be
50% Christian (see chapter 3 below). Moreover, the important geosocial and geo-
political role that Christianity plays in unifying groups of peoples from various
cultures today cannot be overlooked. Despite the divisions within Christendom
along denominational lines today, much unification has occurred over cultural,
social, and political issues, as seen in the U.S. within the Religious Right, and in
Africa, where Christians have mobilized to affect political change in such coun-
tries as Namibia and Mozambique.
On the other hand, in fairness to Huntington, his thesis is quite fascinating
from an historical and cultural perspective. It is analytically profound in its will-
ingness to explain the post–Cold War milieu. His arguments are tenable in their
emphasis on the rift between Islam and the West, and it seems as though this is
manifested in the increased suppression of Christianity in Islamic areas (see the
section on Sudanese politics in chapter 3 below and chapter 6 below). What’s
more, the September 11, 2001, terrorist attack on the World Trade Center and the
Pentagon by radical Islamic terrorists, which cost several thousand innocent lives
in New York and Washington, clearly evinces the salience of Huntington’s thesis.
Other scholars attribute the chaotic world order to the outbreak of nationalism
and ethnic fury that followed the collapse of communist regimes in central Eu-
rope. According to former U.S. Senator and political scientist Daniel Patrick
Moynihan, after 1991, ethnic tribalism and savagery returned to the European
continent, making political development and change difficult at best in the
blood-soaked regions of the former Yugoslavia, to name one example.30
Political scientist Vojislav Stanovcic of the University of Belgrade, has stated
that into the twenty-first century at least 5,000 nation-states could evolve due to
the national self-determination of peoples occurring in various countries today.31

The tragedy of the idea of the national self-determination of peoples is that it has
provoked numerous ethnic and regional conflicts since 1989. Unfortunately for
numerous ethnic minorities, groups, tribes, and so on in developing parts of the
world from Europe to Africa to Asia, wars and conflict abound and the rate of
centrifugal change in some areas (such as the former Soviet Union) has oftentimes
been bloody and unnerving to the seemingly satiated Western societies. Renewed
and expanded warfare around the world from Georgia in the former Soviet Union
(see chapter 5) to Sierra Leone in Africa continues to manifest the great political,
social, and economic discord afoot in the world today. As a result, the move of
Christianity and the Lord’s Spirit has coincided with the great and tumultuous
volcanic geopolitical and military activity that have served to rend the world into
a broken and somewhat disjointed post–Cold War order.
The Cry for Peace and Safety: Disorder at the

Dawn of the New Millennium
“For when they shall say, Peace and safety; then sudden destruction cometh upon
them as travail upon a woman with child; and they shall not escape.” (I Thess. 5:
3). From 3600 .. to .. 1960, the globe had only 292 years of universal peace.
The remaining 5,268 years saw 14,513 armed conflicts taking 1.24 billion lives.32
World War I killed 8 million soldiers and 1 million civilians while World War II
killed 17 million soldiers and 35 million civilians.33 As has been documented, the
twentieth century was mankind’s most violent. Since .. 1100, 148 million people
have died as a direct result of warfare around the world. Of that number, 75%
died in the twentieth century,34 thus making it the most bloody.
The paradox of war and death in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries has
been studied and the empirical data suggest the following: According to political
scientist Quincy Wright, from between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries up
to the nineteenth and twentieth centuries the frequency of war declined.35 How-
ever, he argues that the intensity of war increased due to technology, wider swaths
of land involved in war, and so on. Political scientist Hans J. Morgenthau affirms
the latter corollary to Wright’s study by empirically providing the four major addi-
tions to warfare in the age of increased technology and the advent of atomic war-
fare since August 1945. According to Morgenthau, the “four major innovations in
the technique of warfare” include (a) the use of the submarine (b) the use of the
tank (c) tactical and strategic use of air forces in concert with ground and naval
forces, and (d) the possession and potential use of nuclear weapons.36 Hence, the
potential for great destructiveness was applied by the end of the Second World
War. The world had reached a plateau where less conventional weaponry and
Introduction 17
forces buildup was needed to engage in more costly warfare, both in terms of
human and economic damage. As a result, fewer wars were fought, but greater
costs, both in terms of manpower and financial losses, occurred when nations did
engage in warfare due to the increased applications of new technologies.
Despite the rise in the importance of nonconventional weapons (e.g. nuclear
weapons) and the seeming erosion of importance in conventional weapons, the
post–Cold War era has not seen the end of the potential destruction of conven-
tional weapons. Hence, II Thessalonians 5:3 is a salient biblical passage for today’s
world as, paradoxically, “disarmament is arming the world.” According to Michael
Renner, “More than 500 million military-style hand-held weapons provide mas-
sive firepower for criminals, vigilantes, people trying to defend themselves, private
armies and other civilians who might be less heavily armed without military disar-
mament.” Seventy percent of war casualties between 1945 and 1990 and 90% from
1990–1997 were civilians. Since 1988, the number of soldiers in the armies has
shrunk by 20%. Police and private security forces have grown, however. In the
U.S., South Africa, and Australia the total number of those found in private se-
curity and police forces outnumber those in national armies. In the late twentieth
century, over $50 billion was spent on private security in the U.S. each year. This
outstripped the total amount of money spent on the combined budgets of all po-
lice forces in the U.S. and every army around the world with the exception of the
U.S. army. Linked to the decentralization of weaponry around the world is the
proliferation of land mines in global affairs. Some 120 million mines are now
found in 71 countries.37 These findings suggest a supply and demand problem in
weaponry that adds a new and highly volatile variable into the evolving post–Cold
War global milieu. The world has continued to become scarier in terms of con-
flicts after the Cold War.
In 2000, according to a study done by the National Defense Council Founda-
tion, the number of countries where conflicts were occurring grew from 65 to 68.
That was almost twice the number of conflicts worldwide seen in 1989, the year
the Berlin Wall collapsed; however, the number was not as high as the 71 conflicts
in 1995. The Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict found that
between 1989–1997 more than four million people died in “violent conflicts.” The
commission also found that “one in every 200 people in the world is a refugee or
is displaced, usually by local conflict.”38 Terrorism continued to take its toll on the
world at the end of the twentieth century and dawning of the twenty-first century
as more people died due to senseless acts of terror. In 1998, a record 741 were killed
and 5,952 injured in global terrorist acts according to the U.S. state department.
In the same year, there were 273 terrorist attacks, down from 304 in 1997. In 1998,
40% of the attacks (111) were focused on U.S. targets.39
With warfare escalating in the post–Cold War world, the study of the reasons
for war has at times been misconceived. It is often misleadingly argued in college
classrooms and other forums including churches across America, that religion is
the chief cause of wars. Although religion, as seen above in the various holy wars
of the Middle Ages, has been a cause of wars, it is not the major cause of a major-
ity of wars. According to political scientist Herbert K. Tillema, a majority of the
wars in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries were caused by “border disputes.”
Tillema studied wars in the Cold War period and found that between September
2, 1945 and December 31, 1988 that 269 international armed conflicts occurred.
Some of these were “major wars, small wars and armed engagements short of
war.”40 Tillema looked at the multifarious causes of war, which included civil strife
and external forces aiding insurgents against established governments (e.g., the
U.S. aid to the UNITA rebels who challenged the Marxist government in Angola
in the 1980s). Assessing the causes of war is difficult because states may enter con-
flicts for different reasons and the lines of warfare may get blurred. Classic exam-
ples of trying to gauge the various reasons for conflict include the first recent Che-
chen war in Russia (1994–1996) and the prolonged struggle between republicans
and loyalists in Ulster. Both are seen by analysts as domestic and international
conflicts simultaneously. Reasons for these wars may be multifaceted, including
political, economic, and religious justifications by various parties to the conflicts.
Tillema’s study ends almost exactly at the beginning of the post–Cold War era
(1989–1991). With the literal collapse of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989, the
succeeding wave of democratic change in central and eastern Europe infused new
energy into those peoples in areas historically controlled by Roman Catholicism
(central Europe) and the Eastern Orthodox Church (eastern Europe/the Soviet
region).
The violent clashes among peoples in the former Yugoslavia suggest that some
aspects of Christianity play a role in that troubled part of the world. However, reli-
gious identification is oftentimes equated with national (or racial) identification
among the Catholic Croats, Orthodox Serbs, and Bosnian Muslims. According to
Huntington, the clash of what he calls civilizations was accentuated by increased
amounts of warfare perpetrated by Islamic states. His research suggests that
between 1992 and 1994 Muslims were involved in more conflicts around the world
than any other group of peoples or civilizations.41 According to one study, Muslims
were involved in nine out of twelve intercivilizational conflicts with non-Muslims.
Another study found that in 1993–1994 Muslims were involved in twenty-six of
fifty ethnic conflicts around the world. Finally, in 1993, the New York Times found
Muslims fighting with other Muslims and non-Muslims in forty-eight locales
where fifty-nine ethnic conflicts were underway.42 These data cause Huntington
to argue that Islamic societies are among the most violent on the globe, with Mus-
lims engaged in two-thirds to three-fourths of the intercivilizational wars in the
early to mid-1990s. Moreover, he argues that Islamic states are the most “militar-
ized” with a higher soldier-to-citizen ratio than other countries, including what
Introduction 19
he calls “Christian countries”—that is, primarily Western nations.43 Although

many Muslim states, such as Iran, have posed a serious threat to U.S. security
since the rise of Islamic fundamentalism in the late 1970s, the diverse nature of
Islam and its various manifestations politically and socially serve to lessen its per-
ceived “monolithic” character (see chapter 6). Huntington’s thesis about Western
and Islamic civilizations clashing over ideological principles seems logical. How-
ever, minimizing the role of Christianity in its evangelical forms in that clash is
problematic given the proselytizing qualities of the latter, which conflicts with
militant forms of the former. This is where the real clash of civilizations is occur-
ring. The lack of analysis on how Christianity, as a spiritual force politically, and
its links to Western democracy as a kind of supra-ideology conflicts with Islam is
painfully manifest in most discourse in American and Western academe and gov-
ernment. Huntington avoids serious discussion of evangelical Christianity in the
clash of various cultures (as opposed to Christianity in general). As in Islam, a se-
rious intra-civilizational clash is occurring, at least politically and socially (not
necessarily militarily) in some Western nations, like the U.S., and in Latin Amer-
ica. Hence, both Western and Latin American cultures (or as Huntington calls
them, “civilizations”) have been affected by the fissure between evangelical Chris-
tianity (primarily dominated by Protestants, but not without some evangelical
Catholic influence, too) and mainline Christianity (such as the older, established
Protestant denominations). He does, however, acknowledge the “resurgence of re-
ligion in America” in the 1990s as a by-product of the growing trend toward clash-
ing civilizations based on cultures rather than the standard political ideologies of
the post-WWII bipolar world order.44 It is with this in mind that the manifesta-
tions of Christianity as a resurgent force in world politics comes to the fore. Hunt-
ington identifies the numerous problems that have evolved in the post–Cold War
era. They include: (a) increased ethnic conflict and “ethnic cleansing;” (b) new
patterns of conflict and alliance between nation-states; (c) the end of law and
order; (d) the rise and increase in intensity of fundamentalism in various religions
around the world; (e) recrudescence of neo-fascist and neo-communist move-
ments; (f ) increased problems for the U.S. and the United Nations in dealing
with regional and localized conflicts; (g) increased tension between Russia and the
U.S. in the post-Soviet era; and (h) the rise of a bellicose and aggressive China in
world politics.45 These all contribute to the uncertainty of our age and to the
newly enhanced role of Christianity on the world stage. The post–Cold War era
has seen tensions and existential anxieties in Western and non-Western states rise
to the point where people began to look to various nonmaterialist solutions for
answers. Of course, the 1990s brought an increase in political and ethnic trouble in
the international global milieu, as seen above, but it also brought an internecine
cultural struggle over values, religion, and politics to the domestic environments of
Western and non-Western states alike. Nowhere was this more evident than the
U.S., where the forces of evangelical Christianity took on the secular domestic en-
vironment and their contest was manifested politically in many different arenas
from the Supreme Court in Washington, D.C. to the school boards of America
(see chapters 4 and 7 below). However, at the commencement of the new millen-
nium, the empirical evidence suggests that Christianity as a force in secular poli-
tics around the world has made a pronounced mark on governments the world
over.
Conclusion: The Resurgence of Christianity in World Politics
As warfare has raged in various parts of the world since 1989, the concomitant in-
crease in the participation of Christians in politics around the world occurred as
well. Jesus said in Matthew 24:6, “And ye shall hear of wars and rumors of wars.”
The increase in post–Cold War bloodshed has also seen the rise in Christianity as
manifested both politically and socially. As indicated in the pages below, Christi-
anity’s newfound importance in politics as seen in America and other parts of the
world continues to underscore the ongoing role of Christian churches in helping
to solve social and political problems. From evangelical Christians actively partic-
ipating in leading governments in America (see chapter 4 below) to peoples beat-
ing literally their swords into plowshares in Mozambique (see chapter 3 below),
the Holy Ghost is affecting politics in new and important ways. Moreover, the
debate that has empowered Christians to get involved in discussions related to
health and society in Western and non-Western states alike, which includes issues
such as abstinence, elementary and secondary education, and prayer in schools
evinces the importance of Christianity in the political lives of peoples around the
globe. Finally, as a powerful ideological force, Christianity has affected the devel-
opment of the world’s great political ideologies. Although the term “ideology” is
a concept defined as a coherent and systematic set of beliefs that one has about
politics, Christianity, to some political scientists, can be conceptualized as an
ideology in its own right. It seems the term is too broad and diffuse in its mean-
ings to be seen as an overt political ideology, but rather as a belief system (or wel-
tanschauung) that affects or tinges one’s ideology (or expressed political beliefs).
Given this assumption, Christianity has imbued both left and right on the old-
fashioned partisan political scale and now transcends the old political divisions in
Western industrialized societies and nonindustrialized, developing societies as
well. Given its pronounced impact, as the pages below suggest, the manifestations
of Christianity in the politics and institutions of the world are occurring at such a
great pace that few analysts, academic and otherwise, have identified the signifi-
cance of Christianity and how it affects the globe’s politics today. As the Lord’s
Spirit moves, the monumental transformation of international politics and the
Introduction 21
growth of Christian involvement in politics seems minute given the lack of cover-
age in the secular press and academic literature. Yet, as the secular press seems to
give less attention to Christianity and its role in world affairs, Christians are play-
ing a greater role in politics around the world. This book will attempt to evince
empirically the scope and magnitude of Christianity’s impact on the world stage.
As a result, in His unique way, the Lord has told the post–Cold War generation
that He controls the world’s changing political milieu. Again, He is saying, “Not
by might, nor by power, but by my spirit!” (Zech. 4:6).
 
The Arab-Israeli Conflict
Psalm 122:6—Pray for the peace of Jerusalem: they shall prosper that love thee.
Abraham: The Father of the Faithful
The modern-day conflict over the territory that the state of Israel now controls, is
rooted in the biblical history and account of the “Father of the Faithful,” Abraham.
In c. 2000 ..,1 the events of Genesis chapters 12–25 occurred. Indeed, Abraham’s
legacy is more than the spiritual one that Christians, Jews, and Muslims recognize.
Abraham was the progenitor of the three great monotheistic religions of the world:
Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. As seen in Genesis 16:16, Abraham was respon-
sible for a son, Ishmael. Ishmael, the son of Hagar, Abraham’s servant and concu-
bine, became the father of the Arab people. It is through the line of Ishmael that
Arabs and Arab Muslims trace their ethnic roots. Through his first wife, Sarah,
Abraham perpetuated the race of peoples that become the nation of Israel. With
the birth of Isaac, to a disbelieving Abraham and Sarah at 100 and 90 years of age
respectively, the Jewish line was created and the ethnic and spiritual seeds of the
nation were sown (see Gen. 21). Finally, Christendom drew its spiritual roots from
Abraham, via Isaac and his offspring, the 12 tribes of Israel and King David (c.
1000 ..), as Jesus of Nazareth, the Messiah, was born through the ethnic and
spiritual line of the nation of Israel.2 It is interesting to note that both Jews and
Arabs are Semitic peoples from a general caucasoid ethnic background that differs
from the other two major world races: the negroid and mongoloid races (which in
modern parlance are known as African and Oriental/Asian ethnicities). Abraham
had migrated from his home in the Chaldees, which is in modern-day southern
The Arab-Israeli Conflict 23
Iraq, near the seedbed of Western civilization between the Tigris and the Euphra-
tes rivers. In terms of politics, Abraham’s progeny and their lines have important
ethnic and political significance throughout history. To understand the modern-
day Arab-Israeli conflict we must look at the advent of Zionism and the quest for a
Jewish national home in Palestine and its origins in the late nineteenth century.
Zionism: the Quest for a Jewish National Home in Palestine
Zionism has political, religious, and cultural ramifications. In its original form, it
was overtly political and derived from its founder Dr. Theodore Herzl, an Aus-
trian Jewish journalist, who dealt with widespread anti-Semitism in Europe in the
late nineteenth century. As a reporter at the trial in France that would yield “the
Dreyfus Affair,”3 Herzl was inspired to write a book, The Jewish State (1897), advo-
cating a Jewish national home in Palestine. In this work he called for the repatria-
tion of Jewish workers and farmers to the land of their Hebrew forefathers. With
immigration to Palestine increasing, especially from Russia and Poland, where the
harsh treatment of indigenous Jews at the hands of the czarist regime had in-
creased, European Jews felt that a place they could call home was needed. Indeed,
60,000 Jews had immigrated from Russia to Palestine between 1881–1914.4 In
looking for help from Europe’s most politically and militarily powerful govern-
ment of its day, Britain, Jews sought support for Zionist claims. At first, the Brit-
ish wanted to help persecuted Jews find solace in the White Highlands of Kenya
in eastern Africa; however, this did not work out.5
By November 1917, at roughly the same time that the Bolshevik Revolution
(see chapter 5 below) was occurring in Russia, the British government recognized
the Jews’ right to self-determination in Palestine. With its famous “Balfour Declar-
ation,” Britain moved diplomatically one more step toward the realization of bib-
lical prophecy, as seen in the Old Testament in a number of verses; e.g., from the
Book of Zechariah, “And I will strengthen the house of Judah, and I will save the
house of Joseph, and I will bring them again to place them; for I have mercy upon
them: and they shall be as though I had not cast them off: for I am the Lord their
God, and will hear them” (Zech. 1:17). The declaration was made thanks to the ef-
forts of the British Jew, scientist, and ardent Zionist, Chaim Weizmann, who suc-
cessfully lobbied Britain’s foreign minister, Lord Arthur James Balfour, to make the
terse, yet unequivocal statement. As a result, the future of the Middle East and the
politics in the region would never be the same again. Interestingly, Prime Minister
David Lloyd George, a Welsh Methodist, had agreed somewhat emphatically to
his government’s promise and pending policy due to his own studies of the Bible
and interest in Old Testament history. He had developed a passionate pro-Zionist
position in his enthrallment with the plight of the “underdog” Israelites as they
rode out the storms that man had brought on them, as seen in the 400 years in
bondage in Egypt (see Acts 7:6 and Num. 20:15) and the subsequent problems
that they had brought upon themselves, as evidenced by 40 years of wandering in
the Sinai wilderness (see Deut. 29:5).
Britain’s control of Palestine and parts of the Middle East assumed new im-
portance after World War I (1914–1918). With the end of the Ottoman Empire,
Britain took control formally of Palestine. Of course, Britain had controlled Pal-
estine through Egypt since the early 1880s due to Turkish deference in the region.
With geo-political alterations in the Mideast, due to the Sykes-Picot agreement in
19146 and the Balfour Declaration, Arab-Israeli relations seemed to continue in a
friendly manner. Despite the purchase of 100,000 acres of commercial land by
Jews in Palestine by 1914, tensions did not become as salient as they did by the
1920s.7 However, the religion scholar Chris Hauer has argued that Jewish-Arab re-
lations in Palestine were somewhat poor prior to the 1920s, contrary to popular
lore on the subject, and that the migration of more Jews to the region after WWI
exacerbated already heightened tensions.8 Much of Palestine’s problems lay in the
official policies of the British government which insisted on espousing a policy of
telling both sides what they wanted to hear. To the international community the
U.K. claimed to be pro-Jewish. Domestically, in Palestine, Britain was pro-Arab.
The latter policy was underscored when Weizmann said that Colonial Secretary
Winston Churchill claimed that the British government did not want to “make
Palestine as Jewish as England was English.”9
In 1922, Britain assumed control of the League of Nations’ mandate for Pales-
tine. In April of that year Palestinian Arabs revolted, killing Jews and damaging
property. Jews complained that Britain did little to punish the Arabs. Prior to the
hostilities, Britain had promised to protect the rights of non-Jews in Palestine (ap-
proximately 93% of the area’s population at the time).10 Indeed, the Arabs felt
betrayed since the Balfour Declaration had led Britain to zigzag in its official pol-
icy of creating a national home for Jews in Palestine. As a result, restrictions on the
immigration of Jews were put into effect. Despite these restrictions, the English
civilian governor overseeing the mandate, Sir Herbert Samuel, sought to create a
peaceable and civil context for Jewish-Arab cohabitation in Palestine. As had been
the policy of the United Kingdom within its empire, a systematic attempt to edu-
cate about, and transfer democratic processes and institutions to the locals was at-
tempted. Developing political parties and social organizations that fostered a
stable system of pluralism and democracy, along with encouraging both sides to
start a dialogue on the creation of shared institutions of governance, occurred. For
Samuel, the unfortunate appointment of a pan-Arab nationalist, Hajj Amin al-
Husayni, to the office of chief mufti (head Muslim legal official) of Jerusalem was
a mistake. Al-Husayni’s ostentatious personality alienated many and his divisive
politics led to his deportation in 1937.11
No other event symbolized the growing tensions between Arabs and Jews in
Palestine than the infamous “Wailing Wall incident.” In August 1929 at the West-
ern Wall of the ancient temple of the Israelites, which partially encloses a part of
the Dome of the Rock and the al-Aqsa mosque, two of Islam’s holiest sites, a
minor civil struggle was sparked by Arab attacks on Jews seeking to reassert their
rights to worship at Judaism’s most sacred shrine. Eventually the conflict spread to
the ancient biblical city of Hebron (20 miles to the south). In the end 133 Jews
were dead and 339 wounded.12 Indeed, Palestine’s fortunes seemed destined for
perpetual confrontation between the two peoples who claimed to be the sole in-
heritors of the land.
In 1937 the United Kingdom’s Peel Commission issued its recommendation
that Palestine be partitioned. Two years later a British government White Paper
(an official executive policy statement) called for the end of British control of Pal-
estine by 1949 and a free, independent, multi-ethnic, and multireligious Palestine.
The policy also called for Jewish immigration to be limited to 15,000 per year
until 1944.13 Further immigration would have to have Arab consent. This in-
censed the Jews who knew the plight of European Jews facing the specter of anti-
Semitism and indiscriminate thuggery in Hitler’s Germany and continued anti-
Jewish hatred in Western Europe.14 Arabs continued to articulate their
disenchantment with the mandatory government in Jerusalem. According to his-
torian Michael J. Cohen, Arabs had borne the brunt of serious social and eco-
nomic change in Palestine. “A community that had been relatively stable for gen-
erations suffered great social fragmentation.” Though the Palestinian Arab
population increased, the Jewish population grew too due to increased immigra-
tion. The infusion of Jewish and foreign monies also undercut the traditional
hold that Arab landowners had on the country. All of these served to tear at the
growing rifts in an economically developing, but socially and politically collapsing
country.15
The Civil War in Palestine: The First Arab-Israeli War
Following the end of the European phase of the Second World War, roughly a
month before the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the defeat of Winston
Churchill’s Conservatives at the polls in Britain in July 1945 led to the triumph of
the Labour party and a socialist government bent on the nationalization of indus-
tries. Under Clement Attlee, the new premier, Britain decided its empire was too
costly and problematic. With the decision to turn over the crown jewel of its co-
lonial holdings, India, came the decision to withdraw itself from Palestine. Arab
outrage at British waffling on territorial issues and the rise of Jewish extremism in
the form of groups like the Irgun Zevai Leumi (National Military Organization)
and the Fighters for the Freedom of Israel (a.k.a. the Stern Gang), hastened the
inevitable bailout. Violent terrorist actions such as the bombing of the King
David Hotel in Jerusalem in 1946 seemed to hurt the Zionists’ cause abroad. The
terrorism did not stop there. In April 1948, a sleepy little Arab village near Jerusa-
lem, Deir Yassin, was attack by Sternists and the Irgun. Two-hundred and fifty-
four Arabs were massacred, including 145 women.16 This led to a widespread emi-
gration into safer lands outside of Palestine. What’s more, the decisions by the
British to keep Jewish immigration to a trickle and to return a European steam-
ship, the Exodus (contrary to the victorious conclusion of Leon Uris’s novel and
subsequent 1960 movie), which was packed with survivors of the Nazi holocaust,
back to Germany in 1947 agitated the Jewish populace in Palestine.17
Events of this nature ended up leading to the seemingly inevitable confronta-
tion that marked the beginning of the modern-day Arab-Israeli wars. With the
United Nations (UN) involved, under the auspices of the United Nations Special
Committee On Palestine (UNSCOP), a recommendation was put forth that ad-
vocated the partition of Palestine into Jewish and Arab sectors. A step toward the
realization of UNSCOP’s recommendations occurred when on November 29,
1947 the UN General Assembly legitimated the claims of Zionists as the body
voted 33 for, 13 against and 10 abstentions in approving of the plan to partition
Palestine into two separate states: one Arab and one Jewish.18
Despite the vote, Arab states were not convinced a UN legitimation of a Jew-
ish state and the enervation of the Arab one would keep them from forcibly main-
taining Palestine as an overwhelmingly Arab state in the absence of colonial over-
sight. Within one month, the Arab states were meeting in Cairo to discuss the
prevention of the partition of Palestine. The members of the Arab League (Leba-
non, Yemen, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Transjordan, Iraq, and Egypt) pledged to pro-
vide at least 3,000 volunteers for military struggle; give indigenous Palestinian
Arabs 10,000 rifles; provide £1 million sterling to finance guerrilla-fighting against
the Jews; and to preserve the territorial integrity of an indivisible Palestine.19 All
hope for a peaceful settlement seemed lost despite a last ditch effort by Jewish
leaders and the King of Jordan, Abdullah (the grandfather of Jordan’s late great
leader, King Hussein). In one of the most ironic, if not overtly political moments
in the Old Testament, the future king, David, visited Achish, the king of Gath,
hoping to cut a political deal with him in avoiding the wrath of King Saul. This is
an early biblical example of the time-honored adage in international politics: “My
enemy’s enemy is my friend.” However, David, fearing the retribution of the Phi-
listines, pretended to be crazy by scribbling jibberish on the king’s palace gates
while allowing slobber to roll off of his beard. This confused the sentries and Ach-
ish, and David was free to escape.20
The use of masquerade and stealth returned to King David’s people when on
one line short

May 11, 1948, Jewish envoys, Mrs. Golda Meyerson, better known as Golda Meir,
and Ezra Danin secretly crossed the borders of Palestine and entered Transjordan.
Meir was born in Kiev (the capital of modern-day Ukraine) in tsarist Russia, and
as Golda Mabovitz, lived much of her early life in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. In 1917,
she married Morris Meyerson and they moved to Palestine in 1921. She eventually
became Israel’s first minister of labor and social security, its first ambassador to the
Soviet Union, its future foreign minister during the tenuous days of the Suez cri-
sis and, most importantly, the nation’s prime minister by 1969. Meir, dressed as an
Arab woman complete with black veil, and Danin, an Iraqi Jew, who was dressed
in Arab garb which included a khaffiya (the historic headdress of the Arab male),
were driven through numerous checkpoints in Jordan. No one suspected that two
Jewish leaders were masquerading as Arabs in order to seek a midnight-hour peace
with King Abdullah. In Amman, the two spoke for 45 minutes with the king and
neither side could agree on a solution. After the dinner meeting, Meir and Danin
were dropped two miles from the Palestinian border. They walked through the
hills and made their way through the barbed wire to return to the land that was
soon to become embroiled in a civil war.21
On May 14, 1948, David Ben-Gurion, the George Washington of Israeli poli-
tics, announced the creation of the state of Israel. Within hours the United States
and the Soviet Union had extended diplomatic recognition to the fledgling coun-
try. The British mandate expired the next day and so did any chance of a peaceful
transition to post-colonial coexistence between Arabs and Jews. That day, the
Arab nations of Syria, Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, and Jordan sent troops over the bor-
der into the Palestinian and Israeli lands in order to extirpate the embryonic Jew-
ish nation-state.
Against the Arab armies, which had 23,500 men and airplanes, tanks, heavy
artillery, and numerous munitions, the Israelis had 3,000 regulars in their army
and 14,000 recruits. Limiting the chances of repelling the Arab invaders were the
facts that the Jews had only 10,000 rifles, no tanks, 3,600 machine guns, and four
aged cannons of Mexican origin.22 Against these improbable odds, the prophecy
of Zechariah, “And the Lord shall inherit Judah his portion in the holy land, and
shall choose Jerusalem again” (Zech. 2:12) was relevant. As Christians look to the
reclamation of Israel by the Jews as a fulfillment of biblical prophecy, the events of
1948–1949 presaged problems for these two peoples that continue to manifest
themselves today.
With the American and Russian refusal to enter the fray, Jews and Arabs
fought until a four-week cease-fire was implemented in June 1948 by the UN’s ne-
gotiator, the Swede, Count Folke Bernadotte. Both Arabs and Jews rejected his
peace plan and fighting resumed. A second cease-fire sought to allow Jordan to en-
velop Arab Palestine, but Jewish extremists would have none of it and Bernadotte was
one line short

assassinated in Palestine attempting to make peace. The Israeli government

sought to make amends with the UN, due to the fact that Bernadotte had died at
the hands of Jewish terrorists. The International Court of Justice at The Hague,
Netherlands, eventually ruled in an 11–4 opinion that the UN, as a sovereign
international body, was entitled to reparations due to the damage its negotiations
team had undergone in the Bernadotte assassination. The Ben-Gurion govern-
ment complied with the decree.23
Following the assassination, the civil war resumed. Finally, the UN’s new
chief mediator, Dr. Ralph Bunche, the first black American to receive a Ph.D. in
the field of government at Harvard University and the founder of the Department
of Political Science at the historically black institution, Howard University in
Washington, D.C., helped bring the conflict to a close. In January 1949, the final
UN truce was put into effect and by February, Egypt and Israel had signed an
agreement. Fighting continued sporadically until July when the last of its adjacent
warring neighbors, Syria, signed the agreement ending hostilities. For Jews, their
national home had become a reality. Zionists were ecstatic. Arabs were bitter. The
price had been high for both sides. Indigenous Arabs, who had been 1.3 million
strong in 1947, prior to the end of British rule in Palestine, saw their numbers
dwindle due to the boundaries of the cease-fire. By 1949, 750,000 Palestinian
Arabs were in lands contiguous to Israel primarily in wretched refugee camps. An-
other 300,000 Palestinian Arabs were in the Gaza strip and 450,000 Palestinian
expatriates were in the West Bank which had been occupied by Transjordan’s
army. Only 170,000 or so indigenous Arabs were left in Israel and they became
citizens of the fledgling state.24
For Jews, the war cost 6,000 Israelis dead, about one percent of the citizenry.25
Despite the price, the new Jewish state began its march forward. “By 1948, when
the State of Israel was founded, the Jews had paid millions of dollars for 250,000
acres of desert land, had settled 83,000 Jews on the land, had founded 233 villages,
and had planted 5,000,000 trees on soil which but fifty years previous had been
barren.”26
The Embryonic Israeli State
Under the hawkish Ben-Gurion, Israel developed as a nation-state. Israel grew

from 700,000+ Israelis in 1948 to roughly 1.2 million in 1950 due to increased im-
migration from Europe and the Middle East. In those first two years Israel got
400,000 Jews, making the total number of Jews in the Jewish state one million.27
Politically, Israel was a European-style social democracy with a parliamentary
form of government and Westernized legal system. Constitutionally (in the Brit-
ish sense of the term, meaning the makeup of a state’s governing institutions),
Israel’s heritage of democracy stems from a unique political culture28 which in-
cludes elements of liberal democracy (i.e. Anglo-American individualism and
democratic governance) and collectivism (i.e. modern European socialism, a.k.a.
social democracy or bourgeois socialism). Interestingly, Israel failed to create a
written constitution (in the American sense of the term) after the creation of the
Zionist state in 1948. A rift in the Israeli parliament, the Knesset (the Hebrew term
for “assembly”), caused the pro-written-constitution faction to keep from achiev-
ing its dream.29
The modern Israeli government was an amalgamation of various organiza-
tions that came into being years before the realization of the Zionist state. With
organizations such as the Mapai (Mifleget Poalei Eretz Yisrael or transliterated as
Israel Workers’ party), the predecessor of today’s Labor party, the Histadrut (Ha-
Histadrut HaKlalit shel HaOvdim B’Eretz Yisrael or transliterated as the General
Federation of Laborers in the Land of Israel), and the Haganah (Irgun HaHaga-
nah or Defense), the Jewish defense organization formed voluntarily in 1919–1920
to protect Jews and their communities from angry groups of Arabs, the state de-
veloped into a kind of left-of-center socialist apparatus committed first to the de-
fense of Jews, their territory (Eretz Yisrael, i.e., the Land of Israel), and a commit-
ment to Zionism.30 The nexus between Zionism, Mapai (Labor party), and the
Histadrut (the nation’s top trade union) made the embryonic state of Israel a dem-
ocratic socialist state with a commitment to worker’s rights and promoting the
special “collectivist” path to Israeli democracy. No other institution in Israeli soci-
ety better exemplifies this path than the much vaunted Israeli Kibbutzim. The Is-
raeli Kibbutz, or collective farm, was a functional, but symbolic, part of the Israeli
national landscape and economy. Committed to the Platonic ideal31 of a commu-
nalistic modus operandi, the Kibbutz was a place where all owned things in com-
mon, toiled on the land, raised children collectively, and shared in the fruits of
each’s labor. This Israeli symbol, not to be confused with Judaism, became one of
a number of examples of the ways in which political socialization and heritage was
transmitted internally and to the outside world within the growing secular demo-
cratic republic. The role of the founding members of the Israeli republic and their
links to Mapai, the Histadrut, and the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF—the IDF
eventually replaced the Haganah as Israel’s standing army)—suggest a definite
focus on socialism, territorial unity, and a strong defense.
When the leadership of the nation sought to begin the development of legis-
lation that would help economy and society in the early 1950s, the one area that
has served historically as a source of incessant tension came to the fore: religion. Is-
rael, as a democratic state, is not a Jewish state religiously (or a theocracy) as many
Americans and others think it is. In fact, it is estimated that only 25–33% of the
Jewish populace in Israel practice their faith.32 Although a minority practice their
faith, the varieties of Judaism contribute to the political volatility of the “religious
card” in Israeli politics. With a very small minority of orthodox Jews who ques-
tion the legitimacy of Israel (precisely because it is a secular entity) and the large
number of secular Jews who do not identify with the religious aspects of Judaism
(they identify more with the ethnic aspect of being Jewish), one might expect is-
sues of religion and Jewish ritual to play a lesser role in the politics of the state.
However, “the opposite is true; traditional Judaism has been playing a more dom-
inant role since the 1960s and affecting more of the political and economic di-
mensions of everyday life.”33
The role of orthodox Judaism in Israeli life was first institutionalized follow-
ing the first elections for the Knesset in 1949. Mapai, hereafter referred to as
Labor, sought to find minority partners for a coalition government. Due to its rel-
atively hard-line stance on questions of workers’ rights, social democracy (includ-
ing a commitment to a mixed economy and nationalized industries), and so on, it
was felt a compromise on religious issues could be tolerated. Instead of seeking a
coalition with right-wing parties that questioned democratic socialism, Labor en-
tered into a coalition government with four religious parties—that is, Mizrachi,
HaPoel HaMizrachi (Mizrachi Workers), Agudat Israel, and Poalei Agudat Israel
(Agudat Israel Workers). The first two were linked to the Zionist cause and the
latter two opposed Zionism. By 1956, Mizrachi and Mizrachi Workers formed one
party for electoral purposes, the National Religious party. Agudat Israel and Agu-
dat Israel Workers were much more committed to religious orthodoxy in Israel,
with the latter more open to secularism in Israel. Ben-Gurion himself felt the con-
cessions on religious issues would not be as important in order to maintain Zion-
ism, democratic socialism and, most importantly, a strong and indivisible state in
terms of defense. Interestingly, the first major roadblock for the first Labor-led
government was the refusal by orthodox parties to support the proposed written
constitution. The feeling was that a written constitution may try to undermine
the role of religion in the inchoate Israeli state, and hence, a loss of influence by
the religious parties. Other issues, including the battle over the education of
Yemeni immigrants (from the Arabian peninsula), manifested a division in Israeli
society about the role of religion in the public education of Israeli children. After
a nasty confrontation in the Knesset between Members of the Knesset (MKs)
from the religious bloc and secular MKs, Ben-Gurion’s, and Israel’s, first govern-
ment collapsed. However, the Labor-Orthodox union brought a compromise ed-
ucation bill to the Knesset’s floor in the Fall of 1951 and passed a law creating a
two-tiered educational system with state “secular” schools and state “religious”
schools, with the latter having 25% of their daily educational fare focused on reli-
gious subjects and that part controlled and directed by an Orthodox council who
dictated staffing, curriculum, etc.34 Religion would continue to vex the Zionist
state, but external events would soon overtake domestic events just eight years
after Israeli independence.
The Suez Crisis of October 1956
In July 1956, the Egyptian military ruler, Gamal Abdel Nasser, nationalized the
Suez Canal Company. The company had been an Anglo-French multinational
and two years earlier the English had promised to give up the Suez Canal, its base
of imperial and economic power in the Middle East. Following the annexation of
the canal by Nasser, the British prime minister, Anthony Eden, compared Nasser
to Hitler and Benito Mussolini. As a result, the United Kingdom and France
threatened to invade Egypt to take back the canal. The British did not want to be
seen as appeasing Nasser and the French were upset with Nasser over his support
of indigenous Algerians in their uprising against the French in that north African
country. For Britain and France, the Middle East was vital in terms of strategic
positioning and resources: Both got most of their oil from the region. The United
States did not want to intervene for two reasons: First, it did not want a military
confrontation with Nasser who harbored anti-Israel and pro-Communist bloc
sympathies. Second, President Dwight D. Eisenhower was in the midst of a re-
election campaign, and his 1956 platform was based on “peace and prosperity.”35
Tensions began to mount. Britain and France had had enough of Nasser’s
cocky defiance and Israel was ready to rid itself of the fedayeen (militant Palestin-
ian guerrillas supported by Egypt) bases in Gaza and end the blockade of the Gulf
of Aqaba, which was crippling the Zionist state economically and socially (by pre-
venting fresh Jewish immigrants from arriving in the Holy Land). Ironically,
Egypt was running the canal with efficiency and Eisenhower had stated that “no
one could legally challenge Egypt’s right to nationalize the canal company and
that a solution to the quarrel must be peaceful.”36 Moreover, Eisenhower had
stated at a presidential press conference at the White House that he could not uni-
laterally send troops into a conflict of this nature because it was prohibited by the
Constitution. In other words, he would have to get Congress’s approval to engage
in limited warfare in the far-off region. This statement is ironic given the com-
plete inversion of this argument by America’s chief executives since the Lyndon B.
Johnson–led escalation of the Vietnam War in February 1965 and subsequent “po-
lice actions” implemented by both Republican and Democrat presidents. Despite
the UN’s attempts to head off the eventual confrontation, the Israelis attacked on
October 29, 1956. After bombing Cairo from the air, the Israelis pushed into the
Sinai up to the Red Sea. At that point, the UK and France issued a joint ultima-
tum to Nasser, who rejected it. As a result, the British and French bombed Egypt’s
airfields, they landed troops at Port Said and occupied the northern portion of the
Suez with the Israelis taking the rest. Militarily crushed, Nasser, the cunning yet
pragmatic leader of the pan-Arab movement in the Middle East, turned the defeat
into political victory. The United States and the Soviets condemned the attack.
Eisenhower and Secretary of State John Foster Dulles were livid with Eden and
the French premier, Guy Mollet, for invading without notifying the United
States. Anthony Eden was forced out of power by 1957 because of opposition to
the conflict in England.37
The Suez crisis resulted in some important global ramifications. Nasser was
not discredited as a political leader; if anything, his clout rose dramatically in the
Arab world as a result of his defiance against the seemingly hostile West. More-
over, Britain and France were allowed to control the canal. Unfortunately for the
Israelis, they did not get the recognition or peace from the Arabs despite their
four-month occupation of the Sinai and Gaza Strip. By November 6, 1956, the
events were finished when Britain stopped its assault in the face of a United
States–led resolution in the UN’s General Assembly. Moreover, the world body
created the United Nations Emergency Force (UNEF) to hold the tenuous peace
in the Mideast.38
Ironically, the events had occurred at the same time the Soviets were invading
Budapest in Hungary to stop the inchoate democratic movement by reform com-
munist Imre Nagy. The events of November 1956 in the Middle East inspired the
United States to develop one of its many foreign policy “doctrines.” The Eisen-
hower Doctrine was announced in January 1957.39 It called for American economic
and military aid to any country in the Middle East wanting to avoid communism:
The doctrine brought to the fore the importance of the Middle East in American
foreign policy-making. The reaction in the Middle East toward the doctrine was
mixed, with Iraq and Lebanon accepting American aid and Syria and Egypt reject-
ing it. As a result, most Pan-Arab leaders, like Nasser, saw the doctrine as a move by
Dulles to make the United States the new Middle Eastern “policeman” instead of
Britain.40 The Suez Crisis brought to light the importance of the Middle East in
American foreign relations and the need for America to play an active role in safe-
guarding resources and strategic points in the region. Despite the military victory,
Israel continued to attempt to gain greater legitimacy in the world’s eyes. Dealing
with the crimes perpetrated against it as a nation during the Second World War, Is-
rael was again foisted on to the world stage with the capture of the high profile Nazi
war criminal, Adolph Eichmann.
Eichmann in Jerusalem: Historical Justice and the

Challenge to a Nation’s Memory
Adolph Eichmann had been a Nazi bureaucrat working to carry out the “Final
Solution” against the Jews in Europe during the Second World War. By 1944, he
had reported to his boss, Heinrich Himmler, the chief of the Nazi SS, that ap-
proximately four million Jews had been exterminated in Nazi death camps and
that another two million had been liquidated by “mobile” German paramilitary
and military units.41 Wanted for crimes against humanity, he had been able to es-
cape the Allied occupiers following the war and make his way to Argentina where
that country’s military government provided amnesty and protection for ex-Nazis.
In a daring move, the Israeli Mossad (the Central Bureau of Intelligence and Secur-
ity, the Israeli equivalent of the American Central Intelligence Agency), kidnapped
Eichmann in Argentina in May 1960. Abducted on Garibaldi Street in Buenos
Aires, Eichmann was interrogated by his captors and shocked the fearless Israeli
spies. The first head of the Mossad, from 1952 to 1963, Isser Harel, tells of the chill-
ing account of Eichmann’s responses to Mossad agents immediately after his kid-
napping: “As soon as you told me to keep quiet, there in the car, I knew I was in the
hands of Israelis. I know Hebrew; I learned it from Rabbi Leo Baeck: ‘In the begin-
ning God created the heavens and the earth . . . Shma Yisrael [italics in the origi-
nal]. . . .’ When [the four Mossad agents] heard their holy words coming out of
[Eichmann’s] mouth they were horrified. The obsequious tone he used in address-
ing his captors was enough in itself to disgust them, but when he pronounced the
sacred words that millions of Jewish lips murmured three times a day and at the
moment of ultimate dread, they were shaken to the core.”42 Eichmann was then
taken furtively to Israel and handed to the police. On May 23, 1960, Prime Minis-
ter Ben-Gurion made a terse, yet unequivocal statement to the Knesset: “Adolph
Eichmann . . . is under arrest in Israel and will shortly be put on trial.”43
It was nearly a year later that Eichmann’s trial commenced. Eichmann’s indict-
ment included 15 counts of various criminal actions including war crimes, crimes
against the Jewish people, crimes against humanity, and membership in hostile or-
ganizations—that is, the SS (the Nazi Elite Guard which served as a kind of politi-
cal security force headed by Himmler), the Gestapo (the Nazi secret police), and
the SD (the intelligence branch of the SS). All counts were punishable according
to Israeli law under “the Nazi and Nazi Collaborators (Punishment) Law 5710–
1950.” Eichmann’s trial began on April 10, 1961. Israel had given Eichmann the op-
portunity to choose any defense attorney he wished. He chose Dr. Robert Serva-
tius, a German lawyer “who had served as attorney for the defense of several of the
accused in the Nuremberg trials of major war criminals.”44
Servatius made the following arguments on behalf of his client. First, could
Eichmann receive a fair trial from three Jewish judges who were Israeli citizens?
Second, Servatius contended that the trial itself was illegal because Israel had acted
illegally in taking Eichmann from his home in Argentina. Third, Servatius argued
that the actual statute outlawing Nazi activities and collaboration was created
after the fact and, hence, Eichmann should not be tried in Israel. Theoretically,
Servatius was claiming a kind of American-style “ex post facto” constitutional vio-
lation for his client. Finally, the defense attorney claimed that the alleged crimes
had occurred outside Israel before the state came into existence. Hence, no legal
claims to jurisdiction or legal legitimacy could be made, nullifying the charges.45
This final reason was precisely why many nations of the world objected to
Eichmann’s trial in Jerusalem. The UN had actually called for the trial to be held
in an international tribunal, such as the ICJ.46
Israel argued that Eichmann was legally culpable for the crimes he was
charged with. Moreover, Israeli Attorney General Gideon Hausner defended the
legality of the proceedings with a brilliant, yet unique set of legal arguments. He
argued that Eichmann was guilty of the crimes because of the fact that he was in-
volved in international piracy. Hausner argued that under international law, pi-
rates can be caught and tried though their crimes may not be specific to nation or
place. Eichmann’s defense also argued that he could not be found guilty for fol-
lowing orders. To this Hausner argued that Eichmann was guilty, even if he was
only following orders, because (a) the orders were illegal and should have never
been obeyed; and (b) that Eichmann’s methods in carrying out orders were exces-
sive in terms of the numbers of Jews he was responsible for murdering.47
In a last ditch effort to exonerate himself, Eichmann compared himself to
Pontius Pilate in sentencing Jesus Christ to death. Eichmann said he had done the
Jews a favor by seeking to attenuate the penalties placed on Jews in Germany.
Hence, he tried to argue that as a Pilate-like figure he had responded to the
masses’ cry to torture Germany’s Jews and he had then had doubts about the
Nazi’s policies and sought to ease the punishment on them to be more humane.
This ironic argument was strange given Eichmann’s typical Nazi belief that Chris-
tianity and its Lord, Jesus, were feckless and not heroic enough for the virile,
quasi-pagan state theology of Hitlerism. Moreover, to use this line of argumenta-
tion in a Jewish court in a Jewish state, among the nation, which according to the
Book of Matthew, demanded the death of a fellow Jew who claimed to be that
nation’s Messiah (Jesus) was all the more problematic.48 Of course, Eichmann’s
claims were to no avail.
As a result of Hausner’s efforts, the Jerusalem district court found Eichmann
guilty on all counts and sentenced him to death on December 15, 1961. The de-
fense appealed, and the Israeli supreme court upheld the lower court’s verdict on
May 29, 1962. At midnight between May 31 and June 1, 1962, Eichmann was
hanged. Capital punishment had never been used in any Israeli case before or
since. Only treason and Nazi war crimes are punishable by death in Israel. For all
other cases the death penalty is forbidden. The Nazis had sought to extinguish an
entire nation of peoples: the Jews. The ancient Hebrew psalmists described what
happened to the nation of Israel when the evils of man turned on it throughout
history,
. . . thine enemies make a tumult: and they that hate thee have lifted up the head. They
have taken crafty counsel against thy people, and consulted against thy hidden ones. They
have said, Come, and let us cut them off from being a nation; that the name of Israel may
be no more in remembrance. (Psalms 83:2–4)
With the Eichmann trial, Israelis had confronted historical justice head on. The
nation of Israel, a fledgling state filled with trepidation about its past and future,
had tried to come to grips with the haunting sounds of the past. The final judg-
ment of Eichmann at Jerusalem rendered in the summer of 1962 is but one exam-
ple of the historical fate of those who refuse to recognize the role of justice and
morality in God’s world. “Some men’s sins are open beforehand, going before to
judgment; and some men they follow after” (1 Tim. 5:24). “According to their
deeds, accordingly he will repay, fury to his adversaries, recompence to his ene-
mies . . .” (Isaiah 59:18). Again, the Jewish state had dealt with the animosity it
faced as a stateless nation in the 1930s and 1940s, and by 1967 its Arab neighbors
were ready to duel with them again.
The Six Days War: The Preemptive Strike
In the Spring of 1967, relations between the Syrians and Israelis on the border
between the two states deteriorated. The area between Syria and Israel, known as
the Golan Heights, had been under Syrian control since the cease-fire in 1948. Prior
to that year, the area contained numerous Jewish archaeological relics and was
home to many Jewish settlers in kibbutzim. During the civil war, the area had been
used by Arabs to perch atop the cliffs in the region and to shell Jewish settlements.
The Golan Heights was important to Christians as well because at its southwestern
corner was located the Sea of Galilee (or Lake of Gennesaret to the Israelis) where
Jesus had ministered.
In April of that year, the Israelis shot down six Syrian fighter planes. By mid–
May, El fatah (Arabic for “conquest”) commandos (the equivalent of the Palestin-
ian fedayeen) stepped up their raids into Israeli territory. Moreover, Syria claimed
that Israel was massing troops at its border with the Zionist state in order to
launch an invasion. Prime Minister Levi Eshkol denied the allegations and invited
the Soviets to inspect the beleaguered area. The Soviets refused. By late May, due
to Syrian goading, Nasser began to saber-rattle. He massed 60,000 troops along
the border with Israel in the Sinai. Syria “sent its tanks southward to back up
troops already massed along the Israeli border.” Nasser also “called up [his]
100,000-man reserves, drafted half a million students into a civil defense corps
and warned all doctors, hospitals and pharmacies to be ready for emergency du-
ties.”49 In preparing for war, the Egyptian leader called for a state of emergency re-
questing that the UNEF, stationed for 10 years in the Sinai peninsula, be with-
drawn. In Damascus, the Baathist regime prepared for the eventual showdown
with its relatively new enemy. Students were put into 150-man battalions to sup-
port the Syrian army and an untrained “Peoples Army” was mobilized to support
the nation’s tank units.50 Finally, after its virtual expulsion, the UNEF, with some
3,300 troops, left the region on the orders of the secretary general, U Thant of
Burma. Upon hearing of the removal of the “blue helmets” Israel’s ambassador to
the UN, Abba Eban, said “the umbrella was removed at the precise moment it
began to rain.”51
The buildup to war in the Mideast in 1967 had been a classic case of diplo-
macy and international saber-rattling gone awry. Some may argue that it was a
classic case of “misperception” in international politics.52 Thus, the Israelis may
have overreacted to Syria’s perceived threat in the early stages of the conflict, but
simultaneously the Arabs (viz. Syria and Egypt) may have done the same. The
conflict may also be viewed from another classic international relations vantage
point, that of the diplomatic politics of prestige. Hans J. Morgenthau, the late
political scientist from the University of Chicago, whose book Politics Among
Nations revolutionized the way political scientists thought about international
politics, especially from the “realist” school perspective, developed the ideas
around which the diplomacy of prestige was described and analyzed.53 As a fairly
simple concept, the diplomacy of prestige deals with a nation’s attempt to make
itself appear more powerful based on the symbolic use of power and imagery at
the political bargaining table or in the political limelight than it really is. For ex-
ample, the refusal by Nasser or Eshkol to seek mediation of the conflict, in gen-
eral, and the latter’s appointment on June 1, 1967 of General Moshe Dayan, the
hawkish, mercurial military victor at Suez in 1956, was seen as a move that war
was inevitable. Refusing to believe that their side was less than patriotic led to the
lack of any diplomatic solution in 1967. Of course, the Israelis benefitted, but
that would change somewhat seven years later. For Israel, Old Testament history
oftentimes repeats itself. The victory of 1967 seems miraculous and the stunning
triumph of Gideon against incredible odds is a forerunner to the modern era.54
The problems for Israel in the October War of 1973 again conjure up historical
biblical comparisons. Israel’s embarrassing setbacks against its brothers, the Ben-
jaminites, and eventual victory at Gibeah foretold the difficulties and hubris af-
filiated with the arduous, but costly, win against the Arabs in the Fall of 1973.55
Perhaps the diplomatic aspects were less important in the ancient biblical battles,
but the lesson is clear: the politics of misperception and the hubris associated
with the diplomatic politics of prestige clearly hurt both Arab and Israeli nations
in the 1967 and 1973 wars, with the Arabs burned in the former and the Israelis
hurt somewhat in the latter.
On May 22, 1967, the Egyptian closure of the Straits of Tiran inflamed an al-
ready caustic situation. Blocking the Israeli port of Elath, and hence hurting Is-
raeli shipping interests angered Israelis, and this led to the internationalization of
the conflict. Amid the Vietnam quagmire, the US was hesitant to get involved de-
spite its 1957 pledge to secure passage of Israeli ships through the Gulf of Aqaba.
“One of the oddities of the situation . . . [was] that many of those who [criticized]
Johnson for not having resorted to force at once in the Mideast [were] those who
also [attacked] him most bitterly for having used force at all in Viet Nam.” Two fa-
mous anti–Vietnam War intellectuals, the liberal American Pulitzer Prize–winning
historian Barbara Tuchman and the French Marxist existentialist philosopher Jean-
Paul Sartre, lambasted Washington for its unwillingness to intervene militarily on
behalf of the Israelis. Moreover, “[a] covey of Democratic doves in the Senate called
for swift action to reopen the Tiran Strait.”56
Unfortunately for the world, little hope for averting the conflict was seen. In
an amazing show of air superiority, on the morning of June 5 the Israelis attacked
Egypt’s airfields in both the Sinai and the Egyptian mainland. Two hundred of
Nasser’s Russian-made MIG fighters were instantaneously destroyed on the
ground. Israel simultaneously hit Syria, Iraq, and Jordan’s air bases as well. After
the war’s first day, 400 war planes from Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Iraq and Lebanon
were gone. Israel’s 400-plane air force had lost just 19 planes and pilots, largely cut
down by anti-aircraft artillery fire.57
Israel claimed to be reacting to Arab planes heading for the Holy Land: The
Arabs claimed an audacious, unprovoked assault by the Zionist state. Most polit-
ical scientists and historians would agree that Israel had struck first. What has
been called one of the world’s best military operations, the lightning first-strike
introduced a new concept to military warfare. That concept is known as the pre-
emptory strike or the doctrine of preemption. According to political scientists
Michael G. Roskin and Nicholas O. Berry:
When you are pretty sure your enemy is about to move, you hit him first. Is this not the
same as a sneak attack? A pure sneak attack comes without a buildup of tensions [à la
Hitler’s blitzkrieg in 1940 versus the Northern European states]. A preemptive attack
comes in a very tense situation that’s probably soon going to be war anyway. Israeli mili-
tary doctrine, based on Israel’s geopolitical vulnerability, has been to preempt when its
neighbors prepared for war. Israel did this brilliantly in 1956 and 1967. When Israel did
not preempt, in 1973, it suffered its worst losses.58
With 110 million Arabs encircling its 2.7 million citizens, one popular periodical
of the day stated that “Israelis could be forgiven for feeling a fearful itch in the
trigger finger.”59
In an amazing set of tactical developments, the Israelis amassed huge territo-
rial gains. “One by one, other Biblical towns fell to the advancing Israelis—
Jericho, Hebron, Bethlehem—until they had seized all of [the Jordanian king]
Hussein’s kingdom west of the Jordan River and the Dead Sea.”60 According to
Stoessinger, the Arabs lost 800 tanks and had 15,000 casualties. Israelis took
5,500 Arab soldiers and officers as prisoners. The Zionist state lost 40 airplanes and
676 soldiers in the conflict.61 After six days, it was over and the victorious Israeli
army had done something it had never thought it could: liberate the eternal city of
Jerusalem and reclaim it as the historical and religious capital of Judaism. Again,
inviting the ancient biblical prophecy from Zechariah, “And the Lord shall . . .
choose Jerusalem again” (Zech. 2:12). Not since 135 .. had Jews controlled the
Wailing Wall. The thought of Jews worshiping again at the Western Wall of
Herod’s temple was enough to make the most hardened Israeli soldier and secular
Jew moist in the eyes. The victory was sweet for Israelis—but another conflict
would come just seven years later.
The Yom Kippur War of 1973
Led by Egypt and Syria, the Arab armies caught Israel off guard as they attacked
the Jewish state on October 6, 1973. Attacking on one of Judaism’s holiest days,
the day of atonement (Yom Kippur), the Arabs forced Israeli retreats in the Golan
Heights and the Sinai peninsula. By October 11, the Israelis had mustered enough
counter force to retake the Golan Heights and advance six miles beyond the 1967
cease-fire line into Syrian territory. In the Sinai, Israelis were forced to abandon
their Bar-Lev line along the Suez canal due to the buildup of 60,000 Egyptian
forces in the area.62
Prime Minister Meir announced that Israel knew of Arab troops being
massed at its borders, but chose not to employ its time-honored strategy of pre-
emption. Defense Minister Moshe Dayan said that it had borne the attack in
order to get world opinion on its side. By October 17, a major tank battle was oc-
curring on both sides of the Suez canal. Over 1,000 tanks were used in the battle
as both sides sought to control the strategic waterway.63 By the time the cease-fire
was called, Egypt had agreed to a U.S.–USSR-led UN resolution on October 22.
However, the Israelis had over 100,000 Egyptian soldiers trapped in various pock-
ets along the Suez canal and in the Sinai peninsula.64 The fighting continued and
the U.S. army estimated that at least 15,000 Arabs had died or been wounded in
the war while the Israelis had 5,000 casualties. Arabs had lost 450 planes and 1,900
tanks while Israelis lost 120 planes and over 800 tanks and armored vehicles.65 At
the time the fighting ended, the Israelis had crossed the west bank of the Suez
canal and were some 30 miles form Cairo.
At that point, the UN and U.S. Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger got in-
volved to ensure peace. By November 9–10, 1973, Kissinger had brokered a six-
point peace plan between the warring sides. Kissinger sought a balance in trying
to bring about a diplomatic solution to the internecine struggle. As a Jew himself,
he was mindful of the skepticism that the Arabs had toward him and the percep-
tion that he might not be impartial. However, he was successful at incrementally
bringing about a negotiated settlement, replete with a new UN “blue helmet”
force of 7,000 men, to help keep the peace in the region. He also helped broker
separate armistices between Israel and its enemies, Syria and Egypt. By September
1975, he had gotten the crown jewel in his much-vaunted “shuttle diplomacy” in
Geneva, with the signing of the Sinai agreement between Egypt and Israel.66 This
was a first step toward the Camp David accords signed by Sadat and Israeli prime
minister Menachem Begin in 1978. Despite attempts at peace, calls for Palestinian
self-determination continued. And after the five year (1988–1993) Palestinian in-
tifadeh (“uprising” in Arabic) in the occupied territories, the ex-terrorist, now
world leader, Yasser Arafat of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), and
the aged Israeli premier, Yitzhak Rabin, were shaking hands on the White House
lawn in 1993.
The Post-1993 Peace Process in Israel
Following the historic signing of the peace accord between Israel and the PLO
on September 13, 1993 in Washington, D.C., the two nations began to work to-
ward a cooperative settlement on territorial and religious issues. The accord was
signed between the two peoples nearly 15 years to the day (September 15, 1978)
that the U.S. brokered successful talks between Begin’s Likud government and
Sadat’s Egypt. The accord called for the gradual transfer of power to the newly
created administrative and political unit, the Palestinian Authority (PA), which
would represent the Arabs in Israel and eventually devolve power back to the
Arabs in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. However, the specter of terrorism af-
fected the transition and both militant Islamic and extremist Jewish terrorism
undercut the move toward peace in Israel. The biblical verse that Christians may
have applied to Israel in the wake of the Oslo accords was, “For when they shall
say, Peace and safety; then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail
upon a woman with child; and they shall not escape” (1 Thess. 5:3). On February
25, 1994, an American-born physician, Dr. Baruch Goldstein, an orthodox Jew
and member of the Zionist extremist party, Kach, walked into the Ibrahim
Mosque in Hebron. It was an early morning prayer time for Muslims at the
mosque during the fasting period of Ramadan. As the faithful prayed, Goldstein
unloaded a series of clips from his machine gun. After 10 minutes of shooting the
result was 48 Palestinians dead and 300 wounded. Within minutes, Goldstein
was mobbed and killed by angry worshipers.67 The peace process was immedi-
ately paralyzed. However, the road to peace under Labor was not going to get
any easier. Along with the terrorism of Hamas (the Islamic Resistance Move-
ment), which was responsible for a number of terrorist acts in the spring of 1994,
the peace process took time to get going.
The first area to fall under Palestinian control was the Gaza Strip. The
withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza in May 1994 was greeted with cheers
from indigenous Palestinians, and the creation of a Palestinian police force to

supervise locals was seen as a victory for Arafat’s Palestinian Authority. After cross-
ing the border from Egypt into the Gaza Strip, Arafat “dropped to his knees and
kissed the sandy soil.”68 It was Arafat’s first steps on Palestinian land since 1967.
Bedecked in his trademark black and white checkered kaffiyeh and dark green
para-military tunic with holstered handgun at his side, the colorful Arafat pro-
claimed a new era in the PLO’s mission had begun. It was time to put away the
guerrilla image and begin the process of nation-building as a respected political
entity. Seventy thousand Palestinians cheered his presence and his rhetoric. The
64-year-old Arafat had appointed an 18–24 person transitional team to administer
the Palestinian Authority until elections could be held. He also counted on $2.5
billion in promised investment monies from other countries and wealthy Palestin-
ians abroad. However, Arafat’s personal politics were to play a major role in the
transition from occupation to PA control. “He is still their [i.e. the Palestinians’]
father figure, the single most important and unifying force in the P.L.O.,” Time
magazine reported in July 1994: “But they expect him to move from autocracy to
democracy, from revolution to construction. After spending a lifetime in the cause
of Palestine, he risks rejection if he cannot learn to share power with the people he
has led for a quarter-century.”69
Eventually, Hebron, the Old Testament city of the great patriarchs, was
turned over to Palestinian control, as was Jericho, famous for the Lord’s leveling
of its mighty walls. The Book of Joshua’s account (chapter 6) tells of the Lord’s
command to Joshua and his men to circle the city six times in six days (once per
day) and on the seventh day to circle the city seven times. On the seventh day
after seven trips around the city the Israelites were to sound their trumpets and
blast their rams’ horns (shofarot in the Hebrew). As a result, God delivered a
crushing blow to the city and a great victory to Joshua. However, the Lord ad-
monished the Israelites: “And Joshua adjured them at that time, saying, Cursed
be the man before the Lord, that riseth up and buildeth this city Jericho: he shall
lay the foundation thereof in his firstborn, and in his youngest son shall he set up
the gates of it” (Josh. 6:26).
By Christmas 1995, the birthplace of Christ was controlled by the PA. Arafat
even called for the placing of a Santa Claus in Manger Square to signify goodwill
between Christian pilgrims, indigenous Arab Christians, and the dominant ma-
jority, Arab Muslims. A year later at Christmas 1996, administrative snafus kept
the Palestinian Authority from issuing stamps for Christian Bethlehemites to mail
Christmas cards between Israel and Palestinian Authority areas. Most PA postal
carriers were delivering only mail stamped with official Palestinian Authority
postage which included pictures of Arafat with Pope John Paul II. Moreover, once
Israel turned control over to the PA in Bethlehem, it stopped paying for Christ-
mas festivities there, including events surrounding the traditional Protestant and
Catholic Christmas Eve services in the city. The Christian mayor of Bethlehem
and Palestinian minister of tourism, Elias Freij, said, “We are facing Christmas
without enough money to beautify the city.”70
The problematic development of PA areas, which included the lack of money
to stimulate economic growth and change the depressionary economic milieu for
Arabs in PA areas, led to increased tensions between Israel and Palestinians. More-
over, Arab terrorism in Israel, which increased in the latter three months of 1994,
hurt the peace process. By summer 1995, Arafat did have some success in Gaza
with the creation of 250 new classrooms for children, a new Palestinian TV net-
work, and some joint Palestinian Authority-private investor endeavors, including
the erection of 4,000 new apartments in the Gaza Strip.71 Terrorism did take its
toll, however. And by the Israeli parliamentary and presidential elections of late
May 1996, a razor-thin majority of the voters had deselected the much-respected
Prime Minister Shimon Peres’s Labor government and chosen Likud’s articulate
leader, American-educated Sabra (i.e., a Jew who is a native Israeli or born in Pal-
estine prior to Israeli statehood), Benjamin Netanyahu.
Unfortunately, the terrorism was not only brought in from the outside, but
lurked within Israeli society itself. For on the Jewish sabbath, November 4, 1995,
immediately after a peace rally attended by 100,000 people in Tel Aviv, a young
Orthodox Jewish law student, 25 year-old Yigal Amir, armed with a .22-caliber
handgun, approached the aging prime minister, and fired three times severing
most of Rabin’s major arteries, rupturing his spleen, and severely damaging his
spinal cord.72 Rabin’s assassination had major ramifications. Immediately, any
move toward peace was paralyzed. Like Ben-Gurion, Rabin had mellowed in his
old age. He had seen the large amounts of bloodshed that Israelis had given in de-
fense of their homeland over his lifetime. He was ready for a new beginning and
the idea of peaceful coexistence with Arabs in Israel seemed viable. However, the
events of November 4 set off a storm of controversy within Israel itself. Who was
responsible for the assassination? Why had the public discourse become so vitri-
olic? Was the polarization on the peace question that extreme? The answer to the
latter question is, most likely, yes. And the opposition Likud (meaning “Unity” in
Hebrew) bloc used the threat of a PLO trojan horse in Israel to its advantage.
They also used the increasing amounts of terrorism against Israelis by Hamas (see
below) to their advantage in the electioneering process. As a result, Netanyahu,
the ex-ambassador to the UN, was the biggest winner.
The 1996 Israeli Elections: The Right Returns
In Israel’s first direct election for prime minister, Netanyahu beat the incumbent
premier, 50.4 percent to 49.6 percent. The closeness of the elections evinced two
major conclusions: first, a small majority of Israelis were having second thoughts
about forging ahead with Labor’s peace with the PLO, and second, that Israeli
society itself was quite divided on the issue of peace, split almost down the mid-
dle. Interestingly, Netanyahu not only won the premiership, but his Likud bloc
took control of the Knesset away from Labor by coaxing other moderate and
right-of-center parties to join it in a minority coalition. After four years of Labor
rule, Likud had returned to govern Israel. In an interesting election twist, the di-
vision on peace was underscored statistically with both left and right-oriented
parties decreasing electorally. Labor went from 49.7 percent of the seats in the
Knesset in 1992 to 41.7 percent while Likud and other rightist parties got 27.1
percent of the seats down from 33 percent in 1992. Labor actually got the largest
slice of the popular vote with 26.6 percent to Likud’s 24.8 percent. It was the cen-
ter parties and religious parties who gained ground, with the former going from
no seats in 1992 to 10.2 percent of the seats in 1996 and the latter going from 13.4
percent of the seats in 1992 to 20.1 percent of the seats in 1996 (Shas and the Na-
tional Religious Party each got 8.6 percent and 7.8 percent of the popular vote re-
spectively, the third and fourth highest vote total in the election).73 Two impres-
sions seem most salient as a result of the voter push back to the middle. First,
Israeli voters told the two major blocs to find the middle ground on peace (and
hence governing the nation). Neither Labor’s ambitious devolution of major
chunks of Israeli territory to the Palestinian Authority was acceptable to the pub-
lic, nor was the total scuttling of peace seemingly acceptable. Second, the reli-
gious card seemed to be more important in light of the peace issue in Israel, and
perhaps as divisive as the politics over social and cultural issues in the United
States. Of course, it was the Labor government’s disdain for having to pander to
the religious parties for coalition support that led them to advocate a direct elec-
tion of the prime minister. Ironically, some pundits believe that the 1996 election
manifested an increase in the proverbial “horse trading” that occurs at election
time in order to guarantee portfolios and porkbarrel legislation for potential
center-right and center-left coalition partners. Despite electoral and parliamen-
tary changes, the job of creating a viable coalition to govern Israel fell on the
shoulders of Netanyahu.
Benjamin Netanyahu
Likud’s articulate, politically adroit, and intelligent leader, Netanyahu, was some-
what of an Israeli John F. Kennedy. Youthful and charismatic, the ex-Israeli army
officer was only 48 years old when elected prime minister. He was born in Israel in
1948, but moved to Philadelphia in 1963 where his father, a professor of Jewish his-
tory, took a teaching appointment. An excellent student, “Bibi” graduated from
high school in 1967 just prior to the Six Days War. Having missed active duty in
that conflict, he joined the IDF and immediately passed a series of psychological
and intelligence batteries in order to gain admission into the elite antiterror unit,
Sayeret Matcal (boarder reconnaissance), similar to the U.S. army’s Green Berets.
In training for this outfit he went through “80 mile forced marches, with 50-
pound packs and no stops for 24 hours; runs through waist-deep, freezing mud;
solo navigations without a map, in stinging sandstorms; never enough food, never
enough water, never enough sleep.”74
One of his first missions was the 1968 attack on the Beirut airport (see
below). Netanyahu recruited his older brother Jonathan into the elite counter
terrorist unit and also saw his younger brother, Iddo, later join them. He rose to
the rank of captain by 1972 when he left active duty. The brothers Netanyahu’s
status was the stuff of legend, as Peres said that the three brothers fought “like
lions.” In 1972, Netanyahu returned to the United States and began studying ar-
chitecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). In 1973, he
interrupted his studies to fight in the Yom Kippur War in the Sinai and Golan
campaigns. By 1976, he had a B.A. and M.B.A. from MIT in hand. As a man-
agement consultant in Boston, Netanyahu learned of his brother’s death in
July 1976 (see below). Hit hard by Jonathan’s death, he returned to his home-
town, Jerusalem, and founded the Jonathan Institute specializing in the study
of terrorism.75
From 1982 to 1984, he served as a diplomat in Washington, D.C. and from
1984 to 1988, he was Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations. As Israel’s spokes-
man on the Gulf War, he was known for his cool under pressure, being inter-
viewed live on CNN while Iraqi bombs fell on his homeland. A year later,
1991–1992, he represented Israel as its top spokesman at the Arab-Israeli peace
talks in Madrid. His parliamentary political career got started in 1988 when he was
elected as a MK from the Likud party. By 1993, despite his acknowledgment of an
extramarital affair, the thrice-married Netanyahu was elected Likud’s leader. As a
scholar, Netanyahu has published a number of books primarily on terrorism in-
cluding, Terrorism: How the West Can Win (1986), A Place Among Nations: Israel
and the World (1993), and Fighting Terrorism: How Democracies Can Defeat Domes-
tic and International Terrorism (1995). In his speech before the Knesset on June 18,
1996, as he presented his government to the nation, Netanyahu evoked biblical
imagery and talked about the future of Israel. But most important was the issue of
the nation’s security: “The test of peace agreements is security, and on this we shall
not compromise. We will not compromise on the security of Israel’s citizens, and
we will not countenance attacks on our children . . . The reality we are inheriting
is not simple. In the last years, the security situation has deteriorated throughout
the country and its borders. To stop this deterioration we will have to wage a con-
tinuous battle against terror.”76
Peace and the Aftermath: Trouble in the Holy Land
Much to the Clinton administration’s chagrin, the election of Netanyahu signaled

a direct change in the 1993-begun peace process. His opponent, Prime Minister
Peres, had tried the strategy of selling himself as a world statesman, à la President
George H.W. Bush in 1992, and it backfired. Like Americans, Israelis tended to
vote based on the perceived direct effects of domestic issues. Netanyahu had to
walk a tightrope politically in placating the polarized factions within the Israeli
government. He could not seem too hawkish, nor could he discount the efforts of
the Rabin-Peres governments from 1992. As a result, he slowly and cautiously
meandered up to the bargaining table with Arafat, not even sitting down with
him until September 5, 1996. The meeting at the Erez Checkpoint in Israel al-
lowed the men to commit to the continued peace process. “Netanyahu pledged to
raise the number of Palestinians working in Israel from 37,000 to at least 50,000
in the future.”77
However, within two weeks, Netanyahu was embroiled in a row with Arafat
over the future of the holy sites on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. On Septem-
ber 24, 1996, Israeli authorities opened a second entrance to a tunnel that ran
under the two mosques, Al Aqsa and the Dome of the Rock, all the way to the
Wailing Wall. The first entrance had been opened in 1987. The following year, vi-
olence erupted when Israel sought to open the new entrance and the project was
scuttled. Netanyahu a day earlier had given the okay for further excavation of the
site, which included delicate archaeological relics. Reminiscent of a scene out of
“Raiders of the Lost Ark,” in the middle of the night on September 23, 1996, Israe-
lis sealed off the Temple Mount area and dug through 10 feet of rock to complete
the new entrance, which was located in the Muslim section of Jerusalem’s Old
City. Netanyahu’s orders were seen as inflammatory by Palestinians. Seven years
before, Israeli police had killed 19 Palestinian protestors at the site and the recent
demolition of Arab homes, which had been built without government permits,
increased tensions. The announcement that Jerusalem’s unity was “nonnego-
tiable” upset Palestinians who wanted East Jerusalem as the capital of the Palestin-
ian Authority. Arafat said that “the excavation was ‘extremely dangerous’ and
called it ‘a big crime against our religious and holy places.’” As a result, fighting
broke out in the Palestinian Authority areas and by September 26, approximately
40 Palestinians and 11 Israelis had been killed.78 Overall, 79 people were killed in
violence over the controversy.79
The icy relationship between Netanyahu and Arafat did not get any better.
They bickered over Israeli control of the Jordan River valley that was part of the
occupied territory to be turned over to the Palestinian Authority, according to the
Oslo agreement of 1993. Netanyahu promised some 490 settlements in the occu-
pied territories to Jewish settlers. At the same time, on December 1, 1996, at a
meeting of the Arab League in Cairo, Arafat condemned the announcement. The
Palestinian representative to the League, Muhammad Soubeih said, “We are de-
termined to defend our land and to resist the racist politics of colonization by all
means possible.”80 This led to a storm of controversy, a chilling of Israeli-
Palestinian Authority relations, and the announcement by the Israeli government
that settlements would be constructed. On March 14, 1997, the Israeli cabinet de-
cided to begin construction of a settlement for up to 30,000 Jews in territory out-
side Jerusalem. The land had been controlled historically by the Arabs. The an-
nouncement came one “day after a Jordanian soldier killed seven Israeli
schoolgirls on an outing at the so-called Island of Peace in Baqura, Jordan.” The
unanimous decision by Netanyahu’s cabinet also came one day after the UN’s
General Assembly voted 130–2 for a resolution to urge “Israel to abandon the plan
to build 6,500 apartments on the site, which is called Har Homa in Hebrew and
Jabal Abu Ghneim in Arabic.”81 The U.S. and Israel voted against the resolution.
In the wake of these events, the rekindling of the passion of the intifadeh returned
to the West Bank. Within days, Palestinians were challenging troops in the West
Bank as they did in 1988 at the beginning of the intifadeh. On March 18, 1997, the
government began breaking ground in the Har Homa neighborhood in order to
start the development of the settlements. “Palestinian police held back the dem-
onstrators for several hours, and Israeli soldiers took the unusual step of bringing
in water cannons—more commonly used to quell demonstrators inside Israel—
before resorting to rubber bullets.”82 In Bethlehem, Israeli soldiers clashed with
Palestinians near Rachel’s Tomb. Like Yitzhak Shamir’s Likud government from
1988–1992, Netanyahu had moved farther to the right and away from the center in
wanting to build the Israeli settlements in the West Bank areas and this jeopard-
ized the tenuous peace process. Ironically, it was the administration of U.S. Presi-
dent George H.W. Bush (1989–1993) who threatened to withhold foreign aid
from Israel at that time if it continued to build settlements in the occupied terri-
tories. America’s aid to Israel is usually over $3 billion a year, one-fourth of its total
foreign aid budget for the entire world.83
In early 1997, Netanyahu’s government came perilously close to collapse with
a scandal of its own regarding cabinet members and influence peddling. The case
stemmed from Netanyahu’s decision to make a little known Likud party member,
Roni Bar-On, the nation’s attorney general. Bar-On was, in turn, allegedly sup-
posed to “end the corruption trial of Aryeh Deri, head of the Shas religious party”
while Deri “was to ensure in return that the Shas’s two Cabinet ministers gave Ne-
tanyahu the majority needed to approve the Israeli troop pullback from most of
the city of Hebron.”84 Bar-On resigned after one day on the job because of criti-
cisms from those who felt he was unqualified for the post. As a result, the prime
minister avoided an indictment for lack of evidence against him. As the peace
between Palestinians and Israelis fragmented, terrorism again became a concern for
the Netanyahu government. Israelis have had to deal with terrorism, as have mod-
erate Arab states, in greater measures since the 1960s.
Terrorism and the Israeli Response
As a nation amidst historical hostile enemies, Israel has typically responded quite
harshly to terrorism. The resurgence of religious-based terrorism has been felt on
the global scene from the problematic intrastate relations in Israel and PA areas to
the streets of New York with the 1993 World Trade Center (WTC) bombing and the
horrific 2001 WTC and Pentagon attacks by radical Islamic terrorists. Bruce
Hoffman’s research suggests that in 1968, none of the 11 terrorist groups operating
around the world were seen as religiously based. However, as a result of the Iranian
Revolution of 1978–1979, the first “‘modern’ religious terrorist” organizations
evolved. Yet, in 1980 only two of the 64 terrorist groups operating around the
world were religious in character. By 1992, “the number of religious terrorist groups
. . . increased six-fold while . . . the number of ethnic-separatist terrorist groups . . .
declined.”85 Hizballah (Arabic for “Party of God”), the militant Shia Islamic funda-
mentalist terrorist group, has been in an internecine struggle with the state of Israel
for a number of years. The organization is primarily sponsored by Iran and is com-
mitted to an Iranian-style, Islamic republic in Lebanon. It based itself in southern
Lebanon in order to attack Israeli troops in Lebanon between 1983 and 1985, attack
U.S. and UN forces in Lebanon who were seen as alien and to keep its operational
base close to Israeli territory. It was Hizballah that was responsible for the April
1983 suicide bombing of the American embassy in West Beirut that killed 49 Amer-
icans, and the October 1983 suicide bombing of U.S. Marine and French army bar-
racks which killed 241 Americans and 56 French soldiers. It also carried out the
1984 assassination of Dr. Malcom Kerr, president of the American University of
Beirut, former UCLA political scientist, and father of Portland Trailblazers (and
formerly champion Chicago Bulls) basketball player Steve Kerr.86
Another enemy of Israel, the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) has been
in an internecine struggle with the Zionist state since the start of the intifadeh in
1988. Prior to that, Hamas had sought to curry favor with Palestinians through ed-
ucational and spiritual means. After Rabin’s government began negotiations with
the PLO in 1992, Hamas stepped up its terrorist campaign. According to Robert
Slater, from 1987 to 1993, Hamas was responsible for the death of 161 Israelis.
Within six months of the Oslo agreement in September 1993, 123 Israelis were
dead primarily due to suicide bombs. By April 1995 only 45% of Israelis wanted
peace.87 Thus, Hamas had sabotaged the peace and simultaneously brought the
new right-of-center Likud government, under Premier Benjamin Netanyahu, to
power by March 1996.
Ironically, it was Netanyahu’s deceased brother, Jonathan, who factors in to

one of Israel’s mightiest counter-terrorism stories in its relatively young history.
On June 27, 1976, an Air France jet carrying 105 passengers from Athens to Tel
Aviv was hijacked by Palestinian and West German terrorists. The plane was di-
verted to Entebbe, Uganda where the dictator, Idi Amin, provided support for the
enemies of the Jewish state. The unbelievable outcome surprised everyone, in-
cluding the first-term prime minister, Rabin, who felt that any successful rescue
mission would most likely see the deaths of ten to twenty hostages at a minimum.
The terrorists demanded the release of fifty-three compatriots from Israeli jails.
The difficult decision to negotiate or stand firm fell on the shoulders of Rabin.
Agonizing over the potential of a massacre (and how that would play in the realm
of Israeli and worldwide public opinion), Rabin opted for negotiations, but those
bogged down. After an impasse, on July 2, Rabin agreed to the IDF plan to rescue
the hostages some 2,620 miles from Israel. The mission was successful. Only four
Israelis died during the rescue mission: three hostages and the operation’s ground
commander, Jonathan Netanyahu. One hostage, Mrs. Dora Bloch, an elderly
woman, had been hospitalized and presumed executed by the Ugandans. All the
terrorists involved were killed by the Israeli commandos. Rabin’s cabinet had sent
a stern message to the rest of the world: Israel refused to brook terrorism and ter-
rorist states. In honor of Jonathan Netanyahu, the government named the rescue
effort, “Operation Jonathan.”88 The “Victory at Entebbe” became part of Israeli
history and world popular folklore when in its immediate aftermath, a made for
television production by David Wolper chronicled the daring events of June–July
1976 with a Hollywood “cast of thousands.” The Oscar-winning actor Richard
Dreyfus played Jonathan Netanyahu in the 1977 film.
Another example of Israel’s position on terrorism is seen in an earlier display
of the Zionist state’s resolve to defend its borders and people. Nearly seven years
prior to the “Raid on Entebbe,” in the last week of December 1968 the Israeli gov-
ernment reacted with a vengeance to the hijacking of an El Al (Israel’s national
carrier) jet, once again in Athens. The New York–bound airplane (a Boeing 707)
had 41 passengers and 10 crew aboard when two members of a Palestinian terror-
ist group, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), strafed the
plane’s fuselage with bullets and tossed grenades at the aircraft. One passenger was
killed in the incident. From its base in Beirut, the PFLP released a bulletin taking
responsibility for the act by naming the terrorists who had done the work. Israel
then blamed Lebanon for harboring terrorists and the Jewish state’s response was
literally beyond belief.89
Within 48 hours, the IDF-sent commandos were landing their helicopters on
Beirut’s international airfield, setting up a blockade to the airport to keep
Lebanon’s troops from confronting the invasion force, and marshaling “the
stunned airport crowd” to safety in order to embark on their planned objectives.
Those objectives included placing explosives under 12–14 civilian airliners and de-
stroying each one methodically. “For good measure the commandos also set fire to
hangars and oil storage tanks.” Despite receiving the Arab world’s condemnation
and the rest of the world’s chagrin, Prime Minister Eshkol had effectively dis-
missed his nation’s actions when, before the strike, he claimed, “the mark of Cain
is on the heads of the perpetrators.”90 Given the existing state of affairs in Israel
over the past 50 years, it is difficult for Westerners to fathom the nature of the hos-
tility that has existed between these historical rivals (Arabs and Jews).
The Wye Memorandum
On October 23, 1998, Netanyahu and Arafat shook hands in Washington, D.C.
after a marathon, all-night session that sought to take the 1993 Oslo accord to its
final stages. The Wye Memorandum was hammered out at Wye River, Maryland,
about an hour’s drive from the U.S. capital. Netanyhu gave in to Arafat and con-
ceded territory to the PA, around 13% of the West Bank on the Jordan River. Ara-
fat agreed to fight terrorism more fervently and to erase the clause in the Palestin-
ian Authority’s charter that called for an end to the Jewish state. Netanyahu said,
“Today is a day when Israel and our entire region are more secure.” The agreement
called for: (a) the release of hundreds of Palestinian “political prisoners” from Israeli
prisons; (b) a “timetable” for the PA to arrest alleged terrorists with the help of the
CIA; (c) the creation of a joint Palestinian Authority–Israeli committee to discuss
troop withdrawls from occupied areas; (d) an IDF “pullback” from another 13% of
the occupied territories; (e) “Opening a Palestinian airport in Gaza;” and (f ) creat-
ing safe passage for Palestinians between Palestinian Authority–held areas.91
Within two days, the Knesset had voted against a vote of no-confidence in
Netanyahu’s Likud-led government. Due to the severe reaction against the agree-
ment by rightwingers in the prime minister’s own party, a number of political bat-
tles ensued. The Knesset’s law committee voted 9–7 to begin readings on a bill de-
signed to end the 1996 parliament and hold new elections within 100 days (by early
1999). “The bill was supported by both coalition hard-liners opposed to the West
Bank withdrawal and by dovish opposition legislators hoping to bring down the
prime minister.”92 Fortunately for Netanyahu, the no-confidence motion failed,
and his attempt at forging peace in the Mideast was moving forward.
The 1999 Israeli Elections: Netanyahu Out; Barak In
Netanyahu’s days as prime minister were numbered after the various attempts to
overturn his government in the Knesset. A hostile native press (extremely liberal
by Israeli standards), served to undermine his government and thus the way was
paved for Labor’s Ehud Barak to win the premiership in May 1999. Netanyahu
had walked the tightwire of toughness on security issues, but showed a willingness
to talk with Arafat on the Palestinian question. Unfortunately, the economy sput-
tered under Likud and the Israeli electorate was not very forgiving.
Barak, the former Israeli military chief of staff under Rabin, during Rabin’s
first premiership in the mid-1970s, soundly defeated Netanyahu by close to
400,000 votes (56% to 44%). As a result, the usual French style run-off was not
needed. In the Knesset, Barak’s Labor party, in coalition with the ethnic Moroc-
can Jew party, Gesher, which was part of Likud’s bloc in the 1996 elections, and
Meimad, a moderate party that favored changing the religious status quo away
from orthodox control of certain areas of Israeli life, presented a unified list to
voters known as “One Israel.” This list got 26 seats in the 1999 elections. Likud
got 19 seats, 13 less than in 1996. Although the sizable victory for Barak was a
definite sign that many Israelis felt religion should be downplayed in secular
life, the religious party Shas had the single largest gain from 10 seats in 1996 to
17 in 1999.93
The mixed messages that the Israeli electorate sent, one of pro-peace with
Barak’s win and One Israel’s win, yet an increase in Shas’s support immediately
sent the new leadership off on a precarious path of government coalition building.
Labor had to choose between the religious parties or a national coalition. As a re-
sult of the elections, Netanyahu resigned his seat in the Knesset and vowed to
leave Israeli politics forever, saying that he was going to the lecture circuit in the
United States. The brilliant politician who had risen fairly rapidly through the
Likud ranks had come back to earth and his vision of a secure Israel was now in
the hands of a tough, yet open-minded former general who would pick up Rabin’s
mantle and carry the peace process forward into the twenty-first century.
Can Peace Be Achieved?
Just four months after winning office, Labor, under Barak, renewed the peace pro-
cess that had been started by Rabin in 1993 and continued by Netanyahu in Ma-
ryland in 1998. On September 3, 1999, at the offices of Arafat in Gaza City, U.S.
Secretary of State Madeleine Albright announced that Israel and the Palestinian
Authority had agreed to complete the “land-for-security” deal signed a year earlier
at Wye River, Maryland. The agreement included the following: withdrawing
completely from 11% of the West Bank in stages by January 2000; the immediate
release of 350 Palestinian political prisoners; creation of a seaport and a safe pas-
sageway between Gaza and the West Bank for Palestinians; and a final date of Sep-
tember 2000 to sign a final peace agreement. The agreement was announced by
Barak and Arafat in Alexandria, Egypt, under the watchful eye of Egyptian presi-
dent Hosni Mubarak. For Arafat, securing PA control of the land in the West
Bank was crucial. For Barak, the agreement to finish the Wye accord was another
step toward “final status” talks that would shape a general Mideast peace which in-
cluded Syria and Lebanon, in theory.94 With the peace talks moving ahead, the PA
and Israel had to begin to address the more contentious issues within the frame-
work of the peace process. Those issues included: the status of Jerusalem, the fu-
ture of Jewish settlements, Palestinian statehood, and the rights granted to refu-
gees.95 On Monday, September 13, 1999, Israeli Foreign Minister David Levy
“insisted” that Jerusalem would “remain united under Israeli sovereignty” and
that no foreign armies would be allowed west of the Jordan river. He also said that
Jewish settlements in Palestinian Authority areas would not be forced to move.96
In response to Levy’s comments, Arafat’s deputy, Mahmoud Abbas, said, “We as-
pire to live within the borders of an independent Palestinian state on the June 4th,
1967 boundaries, with holy Jerusalem as its capital.” Dennis Ross, U.S. envoy to
the Mideast, was optimistic: “I believe the parties are not being too ambitious.”
However, a public opinion poll of 1,320 Palestinians found that 55.2% felt “an
agreement on the permanent status issues was impossible.”97 With tensions high,
peace was becoming more difficult to achieve.
A new round of Arab-Israeli violence broke out on September 28, 2000, when
the Likud leader, General Ariel Sharon, visited the Temple Mount area in
Jerusalem’s Old City. That area has been hotly contested by Arab Muslims and
Jews historically. On the one-year anniversary (September 28, 2001) of the start of
what was being called the “Al Aqsa Intifadeh,” 649 Palestinians and 177 Israelis
were dead due to the fighting between the two peoples.98 In fighting reminiscent
of the Palestinian intifadeh (1987–1992), Palestinians challenged IDF soldiers in
numerous towns and cities in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Amid the ongoing
conflict, the peace process ground to a halt, and Palestinians demanded that Israel
return to its pre-1967 borders. Unfortunately for Arab Christians, other Chris-
tians in Israel, and Christian visitors from outside the Jewish state, Bethlehem’s
leaders called off their annual Christmas celebration for 2000, due to the number
of violent acts in the West Bank town that was the birthplace of Christ. Limiting
travel in and out of Palestinian towns also figured into the decision. Bethlehem’s
economy was hit hard as a result of the travel restrictions placed on foreign guests
and others. As city spokesman Tony Marcos said, “Manger Square by this time
should have been filled with tourists, guides and visitors. Now it is empty.”99 Barak
came under fire for the domestic discord. The opposition Likud party tried to
bring down his government in order to get an early election in 2001. Sharon went
to the Israeli Supreme Court “to force Barak’s Labor party to allow for early elec-
tions if a simple majority of those present in Parliament ask for it.”100 On Decem-
ber 9, 2000, Barak resigned as prime minister and called for elections on February
6, 2001.101 In a showdown over the backslidden peace process, Sharon looked to

topple Barak in the premiership election and Likud hoped to regain the Knesset.
Former premier Netanyahu was drubbing Barak in the public opinion polls in
December 2000, but Labor got a legal injunction from the Israeli high court to
keep him from running again for prime minister because he was no longer sitting
in the Knesset. At any rate, the path toward peace had fallen utterly into a sham-
bles for Israelis and Arabs. U.S. President Clinton’s dreams of having a foreign
policy legacy crashed as various West Bank towns burned as well. Clinton left of-
fice on January 20, 2001, having to pass the torch to his successor, George W.
Bush.
On February 6, 2001, former U.S. president Ronald Reagan’s ninetieth birth-
day, the Israelis went to the polls to select a new prime minister and parliament.
The Likud leader and challenger, General Sharon, had a commanding lead in the
public opinion polls during the weeks running up to the election. The day before
the election Sharon led Barak with some 55–56% of the people favoring him to
Barak’s 36–38%.102 After just 21 months on the job, Barak was rejected over-
whelmingly by the Israeli electorate because he could not handle the renewed in-
tifadeh in Palestinian Authority areas and deliver peace as promised. On election
day, Sharon won with the largest landslide win in Israeli history, 62.5% to
37.4%.103 It was one of the poorest voter turnouts in Israeli history. In a country
where 78% voted in the 1999 elections, only 61% voted.104
Immediately, Sharon called for a national unity government, similar to the
government that led Israel from 1984–92. He also called for peace, but at terms
that were more acceptable to the Israeli right. As in 1996, Israelis swung back to
the right after tiring of terrorism and warfare on their own soil. Palestinians were
not happy and demonstrations and battles with IDF troops occurred throughout
the election day. It was a sure sign of displeasure with the move right by the electo-
rate in selecting Sharon.
Ariel Sharon: Israel’s Lion?
Sharon was Israel’s fifth premier in just six years. Like Rabin and Barak, he was a
career military officer. Like Netanyahu, he had served in various Likud govern-
ments, starting with the first one under Menachem Begin in 1977. The 72-year-
old, twice-widowed general earned a law degree at the Hebrew University of Jeru-
salem. A Sabra, he joined the pre-Israeli Haganah in 1942 and stayed in the Israeli
military until 1973, retiring as a major-general. He served in the Knesset for 26
years prior to his election as prime minister. Interestingly, he had only been
Likud’s leader for just over two years when he took control of the government.
Not as charismatic as Netanyahu, Sharon was depicted as both a warrior who
would not brook dilution of the Israeli state and its boundaries and as someone
who was relatively down-to-earth as a politician. One journalist said, “On stage,
he comes across as authentic and honest, sometimes too honest.”105 Sharon, who
“owns the largest private cattle ranch in Israel,” was put into power because of the
renewed intifadeh and because Barak had vowed to return 90 percent of Israeli ter-
ritory to approximate the pre-1967 borders. In 1999, on the election trail, Barak
had said Israel would not go back to the pre-1967 status quo. Sharon, who headed
an elite commando squad in the 1940s and 1950s, was accused by Palestinians and
Israeli doves of being a hawk interested in using war to bring political settlement
between Arabs and Jews. He was accused of indirectly guiding a Lebanese Chris-
tian militia to slaughter 800 Palestinians in refugee camps in Beirut in 1982.
Sharon was ousted as defense secretary, but was exonerated in the official inquiry
into the event.106 By February 2001, the uprising in Palestinian Authority areas
had all but dismantled nearly eight years of incremental peace talks and agree-
ments. Palestinians still believed little had been done to ameliorate their lives
under occupation in Israel. Palestinian Christian Hilary Rantisi, International Re-
lations Coordinator for the Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center in Je-
rusalem, said, “The peace accords have made our daily lives harder. They need a
longer term approach to what peace really means. You don’t divide people more, it
doesn’t lead to peace.”107
September 11 Terrorism and the Peace Process in Israel
After the September 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States, U.S. Secretary of
State General Colin Powell pressured Israel and the PA to move swiftly toward a
new round of peace discussions. On September 26, 2001, Israeli foreign minister
Peres, who had been the Labor premier from November 1995 after Rabin’s assassi-
nation until January 1996, was now General Sharon’s top diplomat in the national
unity government. Peres met at Gaza International Airport with Arafat in order to
work toward enforcing a cease-fire in the renewed intifadeh and bringing about
the end of security closures which had hurt Palestinians in terms of day-to-day ac-
tivities to allow them freer movement in Palestinian Authority areas. However, vi-
olence continued and always loomed as a threat to any peace initiatives from ei-
ther side.108
On October 16, 2001, Prime Minister Sharon told a group of Likud party
supporters that he would accept a Palestinian state, but with various limitations.
His suggestion that his government might be willing to move toward sharing
land with Palestinians came after days of diplomatic initiatives designed to move
Israel and the Palestinians closer to peace. In early October, U.S. president Bush
declared his support for a Palestinian state in theory. Unfortunately for Arabs
and Jews, on the very day of General Sharon’s statement, Eyad al Akhrass, a
leader of the paramilitary arm of Hamas, was killed when a bomb exploded in
the Gaza Strip. It was “the third Hamas militant to be killed in as many days.”
What’s more, the following day, on October 17, Palestinians assassinated the Is-
raeli tourism minister, Rehavam Zeevi, a right-wing Israeli cabinet minister in
Sharon’s cabinet. The Palestinian Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine
(PFLP) took responsibility for the assassination. Zeevi was the leader of the Na-
tional Union–Yisrael Beitainu bloc, a small “ultranationalist” party with seven
seats in the Knesset. Ironically, Zeevi had resigned his cabinet post two days ear-
lier in protest of the IDF ending blockades in Palestinian Authority areas and re-
moving troops from Hebron. Again, the peace process was thrown into a dither
as Sharon “suspended all contact with the Palestinians” due to the terrorism and
the Israeli government barred Arafat from using the airport in Gaza City.109 Al-
though the events of 9/11 forced the issue of peace between the rival nations in Is-
rael, extremism continued to malign the shaky peace process at the dawn of the
new millennium.
Christians in Israel Today
Today, there are roughly 1.94 billion Christians in the world.110 However, in Israel
there are approximately 150,000 Christians and they make up 3 percent of the
nation’s population. There are “more Christians in Fort Wayne, Indiana than the
Holy Land.” Christians, who are predominantly Arab ethnically, in Israel are per-
ceived as a kind of “double minority” in that they are seen as outsiders in the Mus-
lim Middle East and also Western-oriented and better educated than their Mus-
lim brethren.111
Interestingly, the Zionist state has two all-Christian villages, Mi’ilya and Fas-
suta, both found in the north in the Upper Galilee region. These communities
are the only ones like them left in the country. One other all-Christian village is
found in the West Bank at Zababida near Jenin in the occupied territories. These
towns are Arab villages where the populace embraces Christianity. The citizens of
Mi’ilya and Fassuta are members of the Melkite Church (a.k.a. Greek Catholic
Church). Hence, the religious and national identity of these Arab Christians is
quite complex and unique: “Religiously, they share their liturgy with the Greek
Orthodox Church, while joining the Roman Catholics in paying allegiance to
the pope. In their secular life, they are a bridge between Jews and Moslem
Arabs.”112
The village of Mi’ilya has ancient roots. Extending back to Byzantium and
the Middle Ages, the town was settled during the Great Crusades (c. eleventh
through the thirteenth centuries). However, Islamic counteroffensives drove
Christians out, and the current town’s heritage stems from Arab Christian families
who settled it in 1670. After 1948, Mi’ilya did not have to evacuate like every
other Arab village in Palestine. After surrendering to the Jews following an artil-
lery exchange in the civil war, the military “commander of the Jewish forces al-
lowed the villages to remain after he recognized Father Isador [the local priest] as
the man who had two years earlier saved him and his friends when they were
under attack.”113
As they centered around farming historically, Mi’ilya and Fassuta have seen
the effects of the postindustrial economy influence their residents. Many public
sector employees, such as teachers and physicians, and private sector workers,
such as businesspersons and lawyers, live in these tiny Arab towns today. As a mat-
ter of fact, Christian Arabs tend to have fewer children than Muslim Arab families
and the two villages had a higher proportion of young people continuing their ed-
ucation at the college-level. In Mi’ilya and Fassuta “1 percent of residents aged
twenty to twenty-nine are working toward bachelor degrees.” The figure is much
smaller in Jerusalem (0.05 percent) and Nazareth (0.04 percent). It is estimated
that as many as 90 percent of Mi’ilya’s students return to live in the village after
completing their college education in order to commute to work in larger cities in
the vicinity and to stay linked to the cultural and religious milieus of their
youth.114
The Christian identity, like many religious identifiers around the world, be-
comes for many Christian Arabs in these two villages almost an ethnic label.
Many Arab Christians in Mi’ilya and Fassuta only attend church on holidays.
Church becomes more of a social function for these people. However, the nature
of Christianity in Mi’ilya and Fassuta helps shape the unique “double minority”
identity in these historic towns. According to a Melkite nun, “As a Christian com-
munity, we try not to lose our identity as Christians, or as Arabs. It is the psychol-
ogy of all minorities; if they lose their existence. We are an inseparable part of Is-
rael. The problem is that most Jews in Israel think all Arabs are Moslem. As
Christians, we are against fanaticism. We are people who want friendship and
unity among the people in Israel.”115 In Israel, “the Peoples of the Book,” the Is-
lamic term for Jews and Christians, have cohabitated and gotten along together
for a number of years. Some problems have arisen, including an Arab Christian
demonstration prior to the construction of an Israeli settlement on part of
Mi’ilya’s property in 1972. The town council had sold the land to the government
without telling its citizens. Relations with Israel have been quite good since. The
Christians in Mi’ilya and Fassuta have had generally good relations with nearby
Arab Muslim villagers, but the worldliness of Jews and Arab Christians, what lit-
tle the latter exhibit as fairly conservative (socially) people in Israel, seem to be a
source of tacit tension at times. However, the story of these two Christian villages
underscores the importance of Christianity’s abilities to change people’s ways of
thinking about ethnic and political conflict and to broaden the meaning of what
Christ taught His followers and what Jehovah, in the Old Testament, taught His
people: that He was no respecter of persons (see 2 Chron. 19:7; Acts 10:34).
Conclusion
In modern times the Arab-Israeli conflict has led to numerous deaths and politi-
cal rancor affecting the international balance of power. It was a defining proxy
conflict between the U.S. and USSR during the Cold War. The American sup-
port of Israel and the Soviet support of the Arab states helped to fashion the re-
gion as a virtual military powderkeg. Despite the recent attempts at peace (1978
and 1993), the specter of extremist terrorism on both Arab and Israeli sides
undercut the trust and reconciliation that both sought prior to Rabin’s assassina-
tion in November 1995.
Another source of contention came to the fore in June 1997 when it was an-
nounced that a red heifer had been bred mysteriously in Israel. It was the first red
heifer born in the Holy Land in 2000 years. The heifer, “Melody,” was born to a
black-and-white cow who had been artificially inseminated. Melody’s father was
an anonymous Swiss bull. The red heifer had been used in ancient Israelite sacri-
fices. Its ashes were a source of purification for the priesthood in preparation for
the cleansing of the people (see Num. 19:9–10). Because of the call by many mes-
sianic and other orthodox Jews for the rebuilding of the Jewish temple on the
Temple Mount in Jerusalem, the birth of Melody proved to be not only a pro-
phetic and anomalous event, but a contentious one for Arab Muslims as well,
given the Muslim resistance toward increased Israeli control of the Old City of Je-
rusalem and the Temple Mount area.116
Though Christianity has had a long tradition and presence in the Holy Land,
attempts by some Israeli legislators to suffocate its role in the country have led to
a bitter fight over civil liberties and religious freedom. On February 19, 1997, the
Knesset heard a first-reading of a bill that was referred to as an “antimissionary”
law. The law was proposed following the mass mailing of one million Hebrew-
language Christian tracts by a U.S. television evangelist, Morris Cerullo, to Israeli
Jewish homes in the fall of 1996. The bill’s sponsor, Nissim Zvili, said he had “no
problem with Christianity.” However, the proposed law was aimed at limiting the
types of work foreign missionaries, especially evangelical Christians, could do in
order to proselytize Jews. Both messianic Jews and evangelical Christians were
working hard to keep the bill from passing, including lobbying the prime minis-
ter.117 It is clear that evangelical forms of Christianity can conflict with the Jewish
state given each’s divergent views on the Bible and the nature of who the Messiah
is and various views on salvation.
Despite problems like the political status of missionary activity in Israel today,
Christendom’s historic intervention and presence in the Holy Land continues to
manifest itself in ways that seek to bridge gaps between Jews and Arab Muslims.
Perhaps the admonitions of Christ in teaching all peoples to love thine enemies
and turn the other cheek (see Matt. 6:44) will come to pass if His Church, in its
various and sundry movements and denominations, continues to work toward a
greater peaceful coexistence between the followers of the other two monotheistic
religions in their historical holy land.
 
Africa
The Wind Bloweth Where It Listeth . . .
Matthew 5:5—Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.
Africa: A Continent on the Move
The African continent is vast and paradoxical. A land of beauty and blight, hope
and despair, blessings and curses, great wealth and immense poverty. Africa at the
start of the twenty-first century is home to a bewildering array of nations, lan-
guages, wildlife, and political and religious tendencies. With some 53 countries,
huge treks of land, and beautiful nature preserves, Africa is the world’s second
largest and second most-populated continent (after Asia). Christianity has taken
root in many of Africa’s nations. It pervaded society and politics as the continent
made its move toward a greater degree of democracy in the 1990s.
In the southern African nation of Mozambique, the democratic transition from
a terrible 17-year civil war allowed churches to spearhead a project to get former
members of the various warring factions to exchange their guns for consumer and
food-stuff items—trading “guns for butter,” as political scientists say. Led by the
Christian Council of Mozambique, weapons such as AK-47 rifles were traded for
“food, seed grain, clothing, tables, lamps, sewing machines, bicycles, hoes, and [old]
plowshares.” The project began in 1995 and acquired 817 weapons in two years. Am-
munition was turned over as well. Organizers sought to heed the biblical call to beat
their swords into plowshares literally, as was prophesied in Micah 4:3. However,
making new plowshares proved too costly and expensive. The technology to melt
the iron from machine guns and reformulate them as plowshares was not available
due to the lack of resources. One Christian Council representative said, “This has
been our dream [turning guns into plowshares], but you need engineering to do
that, and a lot of money.”1 As a result, the Lord marches on in Africa, affecting prob-
lematic social and political milieus with His Gospel of peace and reconciliation.
Another amazing aspect of the transition to greater acceptance of Christianity
as a means to develop nations politically and socially is the acceptance and appli-
cation of the Lord’s teachings in the lives of high profile leaders on the African
continent. Mathieu Kerekou, a long-time Marxist-Leninist dictator in Benin, be-
came a Christian, ended his dictatorial hold on power, and opened the politics of
his nation for democratic elections in 1991. He was defeated convincingly in 1991,
but made a stunning comeback in 1996 by gaining 52% of that nation’s vote.2 The
history of Zambian president Frederick Chiluba is similar. An avowed Marxist, he
shunned the politics of Marxism and repudiated the stale, socialist authoritarian-
ism of Kenneth Kaunda and as a born-again Christian brought his country into
the family of the world’s democracies in 1991 with a sweeping electoral victory (see
below). The rise of Christianity and the increasing democratization in various na-
tional governments in Africa signals one major theme: the Lord is truly affecting
peoples’ lives as has never been seen before in this great land, and the people see
Christianity as a viable solution to their problems. “. . . Not by might, nor by
power, but by my spirit, saith the Lord of hosts” (Zech. 4:6).
Christianity Versus Islam
It is the contention of a number of scholars that Islam is the fastest growing reli-
gion on the African continent. According to Samuel P. Huntington: “The per-
centage of Christians in the world peaked at about 30 percent in the 1980s, leveled
off, is now declining, and will probably approximate about 25 percent of the
world’s population by 2025. As a result of their extremely high rates of population
growth . . . the proportion of Muslims in the world will continue to increase dra-
matically, amounting to 20 percent of the world’s population about the turn of
the century, surpassing the number of Christians some years later, and probably
accounting for about 30 percent of the world’s population by 2025.”3
Another political scientist, John G. Stoessinger, argues that Africa has seen an
unprecedented explosion of Islamic growth. According to Stoessinger, “By the
1980s, Islam was the only one of the world’s great religions that was growing rap-
idly.”4 According to The World Christian Encyclopedia two seemingly contradic-
tory developments have occurred. First, Christianity is growing at 1.36% a year
while Islam is growing at 2.13%. Some sects of both are growing much faster. Sec-
ond, despite this seeming edge for Islam, Christianity is the fastest-growing reli-
gion in the world, adding 25.2 million new converts each year. Islam is the second
fastest growing religion adding 22.5 million converts per year. The rest of the
Africa 59
world’s religions add less than 13 million new members each year.5 The explana-
tion for the paradox is that the vast bulk of Christians, which stood at two billion
people around the world in 2000, continues to grow despite a relative decline in
the population in heavily Christian areas. Conversely, the rapid rise of Islam, with
its 1.19 billion plus adherents (by mid 2000), has seen its growth occur in parts of
the developing world (namely South Asia and the Middle East) where population
growth is rapidly expanding as well. This accounts for the rise in Islam.6
However, some argue that Christianity is not being usurped by Islam and that
the growth of Christianity worldwide is occurring at unprecedented levels as well,
even outpacing Islam. According to the Lausanne Statistics Task Force, “Christian-
ity is not only the world’s fastest-growing religion, it is actually growing faster than
the world’s population.” Moreover, the ratio of non-Christians to Christians has
shrunk from 220 to one in .. 100 to 6.8 to one in 1992.7 According to Peter Wag-
ner, the rate of growth in Christianity was phenomenal in the late twentieth cen-
tury. He argues that the faith sees 78,000 new Christians and 1,600 new churches a
week around the world.8 Moreover, Wagner argues that “the twentieth century is
witnessing the greatest ingathering of men and women into the Christian church
that history has ever known. What we read in the Book of Acts was a mere pilot
project in comparison to today’s unprecedented spiritual harvest.”9 These statistics
counter the statistics used by Huntington. Huntington contends that Islam is
growing faster than the overall percentage growth of people throughout the world.
“Between 1965 and 1990 the total number of people on earth rose from 3.3 billion
to 5.3 billion, an annual growth rate of 1.85 percent,” he states. However, in Islamic
societies the growth rates within the population were between 2–3%.10 Again, the
Lausanne Statistics Task Force concluded that evangelical Christianity was “grow-
ing three times faster than the world’s population.”11 Thus making Christianity
(and especially evangelical forms of it) one of the fastest, if not the fastest, growing
religions on the globe today. What’s more, specific sects of Christianity are growing
as well. According to Harvey Cox, pentecostalism is the largest growing movement
within Christianity accounting for 400 million adherents (one-fourth of all non-
Catholic Christians) and it is “increasing more rapidly than either militant Islam or
the Christian fundamentalist sects with which it is sometimes confused.”12
Nowhere is the increase in Christian believers more evident than the African
continent. Wagner offers evidence to suggest that Africa, which Stoessinger con-
tends has begun to return to its religious roots—that is, Islam, is not moving toward
Islam, but rather mainly evangelical forms of Christianity. With less than 10 million
Christians in Africa in 1900, he projected 324 million adherents to Christianity in
Africa by 2000. “This is an increase from 8% of the population to almost 50%.”13
Despite the move of Christianity in Africa, major impediments to social, political,
and economic development remain. Many of these impediments filter from the
spread of disease, witchcraft, and other virulent forces across the continent.
AIDS in Africa
Numerous social problems vex a continent that must deal with social blight, eco-
nomic underdevelopment, and exploitation. However, in recent years none has
haunted the continent like the vicious disease of Acquired Immune Deficiency
Syndrome (AIDS). An estimated 25 million of the 36 million people infected with
Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) around the world are found in sub-
Saharan Africa.14 Uganda has been hit hardest by HIV/AIDS. In Uganda, Demo-
cratic Republic of Congo, and Ivory Coast AIDS is the leading cause of adult
death.15 In Uganda, the AIDS virus is at epidemic proportions. Hit especially hard
were the governmental elite. In Uganda over half of the adult deaths in the 1990s
were related to AIDS. In the government-controlled Uganda Commercial Bank
244 of 390 employees who died between 1989–1996 were dead because of the dis-
ease. Since 1990, government workers have died at 2.5% per year from the disease.
The disease seems to be on the decline country-wide, but some regions are still
seeing an increase in various demographic groups. For example, in the rural areas
of the north, young women are still highly vulnerable. Despite the decline in the
terrible rate of infection, from 1980 to 1994 life expectancy dropped from 52 to 42
years of age. In a country of 17 million, nearly 1.9 million have been infected and
75% are still alive.16
In the most advanced African state, the Republic of South Africa, in 2000,
40% of adult deaths and one-quarter of all deaths were linked to AIDS. One
South African health organization projected that nearly four to seven million
South Africans would die from AIDS in the first decade of the twenty-first cen-
tury. Along with the problems related to AIDS in South Africa, life expectancy
dropped and was, according to one report, at 41 years of age for the average South
African. On average, according to the United Nation’s World Health Organiza-
tion, some 250,000 people were expected to die of AIDS in South Africa each year
as the twenty-first century began. Thus, AIDS was that nation’s top cause of
death.17 Worldwide, AIDS “was killing an average of 8,200 people each day” at the
twenty-first century’s beginning.18 AIDS notwithstanding, other pejorative ele-
ments are found in African society such as sorcery and witchcraft.
Witchcraft in Africa
Witchcraft has been a major part of the African continent’s religious heritage for
centuries. As recorded in the Bible, Satan made a blasphemous statement to
Jesus, as the Lord wandered in the wilderness: “All this power will I give thee, and
the glory of them: for that is delivered unto me; and to whomsoever I will I give
it. If thou therefore wilt worship me, all shall be thine.” Then Jesus rebuked
Africa 61
Satan saying, “Get thee behind me, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship
the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve” (Luke 4:6–8). Prior even to this
historic confrontation, indigenous Africans were worshiping familiar spirits and
strange gods. According to Greta Bloomhill, Africans are a kind of extra-spiritual
people who clamor for the metaphysical: “With the African it forms an integral
part of his daily life. The African’s earth, the African sky and fields, the African’s
stars—the very stones beneath his feet—are imbued with spectral meaning
through his primitive beliefs, in which the practice of sorcery mingles so closely
with his religion, that it is often impossible to separate them.”19
Over the centuries the colonial powers have dealt with the specter of witch-
craft and its impact on indigenous peoples. In 1899, the British colony of South-
ern Rhodesia (modern-day Zimbabwe) passed the Witchcraft Suppression Act.
This law sought to control and mitigate the effects of witchcraft in that African
society. In the statute, witchcraft was defined as “the throwing of bones, the use of
charms and other means or devices adopted in the practice of sorcery” and goes on to
lay down that “whoever imputes to any other person the use of non-natural means in
causing illness in any person or animal names indicates any other person as being a
wizard or witch . . . employs a witch doctor or witch finder . . . advises how to bewitch
. . . applies or advises the application of the boiling water test, that is to say the dipping
of limbs or part of a person’s body into boiling water in the pretence of discovering
whether or not a crime has been committed, shall be guilty of an offence . . .” [italics
in the original]. 20 In 1956, 110 people were convicted under this law and two years
later the number of convictions had dropped to 55. It is very difficult to get indi-
viduals to talk about necromancy, let alone get them to testify in court, due to the
fear of spiritual retribution by witch doctors. In the 1990s, black magic and witch-
craft were rising steadily in some parts of Africa. In Zimbabwe, the practice has
remained “as deeply-rooted [today] as the ‘practice’ was in pre-colonial times.”
Witchcraft continues to befuddle that southern African nation. A witch hunt in
Zimbabwe ended in the death of an older man thought to be the purveyor of
black magic in 1992.21 Yet we see God’s grace on the once “dark continent” has al-
lowed Africans to overcome some of their historical doom and gloom as we see
the profound expanse of the Holy Ghost across its vast savannahs, deserts, and
velds.
According to Barrie Reynolds, there are a number of reasons that prevent ob-
taining solid evidence against purveyors of witchcraft in Africa. First, the fear of
reprisal by those accused of witchcraft against their accusers; second, fear of re-
venge; third, the disparate nature of circumstances; fourth, mysterious deaths that
cannot be explained; and, finally, possession by the accused of physical parts of the
victim, such as the victim’s hair.22 Michael Gelfand, a physician, found that
between 1899 and 1930 roughly 5% to 6% of the causes for homicide, assault and
arson in Rhodesia (Zimbabwe today) were attributed to witchcraft. This cause
was not as large a percentage as “Beer” or “Quarrels” statistically. As a result, Dr.

Gelfand’s research suggests that between 1899 and 1930 and from 1959 to 1963,
roughly 20% of those who accused others of witchcraft were attacked or assaulted
for exposing them as purveyors of demonic activity.23
In his 1947 study, Witchcraft and Magic of Africa, Frederick Kaigh discusses
the role of magic, lycanthropy (the transmogrification of humans into animals via
demonic intercession),24 divination, ritual killing, and the role of witch doctors, to
name a few. Kaigh states that if religion has meaning for believers then the follow-
ing assumptions must be accepted: First, good and bad spirits exist; second, spirit
powers are real; third, the “Prince of Evil” exists in the spiritual and temporal
world; fourth, the devil’s powers are real; fifth, the dead will be resurrected and
judged, that is, there is “spirit existence after death”; and, sixth, the “spirit” can
possess the living. From this Kaigh defines an African witch as “one who also be-
lieves these six points: believes them completely. The witch then deliberately
chooses to worship evil and bond him- or herself to evil throughout corporal exis-
tence and beyond the grave. The reason for such is innate malignancy and avarice,
because the rewards of evil are more tangible than the rewards of good.”25
In the foreword to Kaigh’s study, Montague Summers confronts the meta-
physical challenge that African witchcraft and spiritism provide the secular, ra-
tional Western audience. Quoting the nineteenth century Cambridge University
historian and minister, Charles Kingsley, the one-time tutor to the future king,
Edward VII, Summers states: “One Sunday morning, mounting his pulpit at
Eversley Parish Church, without any stereotyped text, [Kingsley] leaned over, and
having surveyed his congregation for a full minute in silence, said in his most
stern and solemn tones, ‘My dear friends, all of you here profess your belief in
God but there is not one of you who believes in the devil. And yet, he exists, most
really and truly exists.’”26 Summers claims correctly that it is impossible to deny
the fact that evil exists in the world. Although evil does stem from Satan’s works (1
Peter 5:8), it is also rooted, as Zambian President Frederick Chiluba states below,
in the sinful nature of man due to Adam’s fall from the Garden of Eden (see Gen.
3:17). Interestingly, most people may believe that evil is real, but many do not be-
lieve in Satan’s power as the prince of darkness.
According to George Barna, president of the Barna Research Group, which
conducts surveys of views on Christianity in America and views of Christians on
spiritually-related topics, in 1997, 96% of Americans believed in God. However,
“nearly two out of three [American] adults” believed Satan “is not a living being
but is a symbol of evil.” Moreover, 52% of born again Christians did not believe
Satan was real and 72% of Roman Catholics did not believe in the “existence of
Satan.” Only 31% of Americans believed “Hell is a literal, physical place.” The
same survey by the Barna Research Group found that 61% of Americans believed
that the Holy Spirit was not real, but only a “symbol of God’s presence or power”
Africa 63
(55% of born-again believers shared this position). Thirty-nine percent of Ameri-

cans did not believe that the resurrection of Jesus from the dead actually occurred
(35% of born-again Christians did not believed Christ rose from the dead). What’s
more, 40% of Americans believed that Christ committed sins while on the earth.
Contradicting these findings was the fact that 58% of Americans believed that
“the Bible is totally accurate in all it teaches.” And 87% said religious faith was a
vital part of their lives. These paradoxical findings can be explained by the num-
ber of people who actually read the Bible. The Barna Research Group found that
only 22% of all Americans have ever read the Bible from cover to cover, despite
the fact that 91% of American households own a Bible and the average American
home has three Bibles. Moreover, church attendence declined in the 1990s. De-
spite the fact that around 115–120 million people of all ages attend religious ser-
vices weekly in the United States, 105–111 million of those attend Christian ser-
vices. In 1997, 43% of adults attended service in a typical week, while 58% of
adults attended services at least once a month (by 1999, the number of adults at-
tending services weekly had dropped to 41% down from 49% in 1991). In 1997,
only 6% of the U.S. population characterized themselves as evangelicals and that
translated into 12 million adults. Of those 12 million, only 6% attended mainline
Protestant churches and 0.5% attended Catholic services. The number of evangel-
icals went up slightly to 7% by 1999, but that is where it was in 1991.27 Under-
standing the wiles of Satan and how the Lord has dealt with him historically is laid
out in the scripture.
Kaigh discusses the indigenous African tribe the Bali who believe in conjuring
up dead spirits, as many Westerners have tried in seances that seek to mediate with
familiar spirits (something strictly forbidden in the scriptures—see Eph. 4:27, 6:
11, and 1 Tim. 4:1). Kaigh refers to King Saul’s conversation with the prophet Sam-
uel after going to the witch of Endor for help (see I Sam. 28). Kaigh states:
No apology is tendered for the very frequent references herein to Biblical authority. It is
suggested that they are so obvious and interesting, to say nothing of instructive, that they
really are called for. There is a further strong impulse towards their inclusion. It is this.
Whenever these subjects are discussed it is those who make loud public professions of be-
lief in the Bible, who are so agnostic as to pretend to be shocked at the very idea of the ex-
istence of spirits: the powers of spirits good and evil: the actuality of witchcraft: the pos-
sibility of psychic phenomena of any order . . . MUST predicate that there are potent
living spirits existing within psychic earshot of us all.28
The idea of witchcraft in Africa, and other parts of the world including the devel-
oped West, is a real, important phenomenon that must be understood through a
biblical framework in order for those studying politics to grasp its importance so-
ciologically in developing nations, such as Africa. Moreover, the Christian believer
must know the commands of Christ and how He taught His disciples to react to
the “wiles of the devil” in everyday life, by invoking His name, Jesus, in order to
cast Satan away.29
Witchcraft continues to affect political change in Africa. In Zambia, the ev-
angelical leader, Chiluba, and his ruling party, the Movement for Multi-Party De-
mocracy (MMD), barred candidates from taking part in local elections if they
threatened to cast demonic spells on opponents and others via witchcraft. The
MMD refused to allow candidates to be on the ballot for its party if they were not
“clean.”30 Although witchcraft has been a longtime nemesis of Christianity and
the Gospel of Jesus in Africa, political repression of some Christian groups and
problematic political development have also hurt the development of Christianity
and politics on that continent. However, the growth in Christianity in Africa and
the concomitant democratization process affecting the continent has given rise to
a new hope for the political future of Africa’s many nations.
Africa’s Chronic Political Instability:

The Shift Away from Authoritarianism?
Witchcraft, AIDS, famine, and so on all lend themselves to a picture of Africa that
is pessimistic at best. According to Stoessinger, the “new nationalism” that is syn-
onymous with governments in the developing world, includes the development of
authoritarian governments that seek to rule with an iron fist and maintain social
order through state control of the economic system.31 Many political scientists
argue that the democratic model of political development (as applied in the West)
may not be an ideal for underdeveloped nations such as those in Africa. Because
of the lack of technology, the economic exploitation by industrialized Western
states, and the lack of indigenous infrastructure, it is argued that developing Afri-
can states economically is difficult and then trying to develop them democrati-
cally is even more difficult.32
According to political scientist Richard D. Hirtzel, from the onset of the
postcolonial period in Africa in the late 1950s to the mid-1980s it was estimated
that a governmental coup d’état occurred every six months in one of Africa’s 50+
capitals.33 Ironically, although authoritarian regimes still persist, such as the mili-
tary regime controlling Algeria and the recent transition from the dictator Mo-
butu Sese Seko to a continued authoritarianism in the Democratic Republic of
Congo (formerly Zaire), democracy has broken out on the continent from Benin
to Zambia to South Africa to Namibia to Malawi.
Huntington’s 1991 book, The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twenti-
eth Century, looks at democratization in developing societies at the end of the
twentieth century.34 According to Huntington, democratization, the process
through which a state or group of states makes the transition from authoritarianism
Africa 65
to democracy, has occurred globally in three major waves. The first wave is rooted
in the revolutions of the Enlightenment era: 1776 in America and 1789 in France.
Thus, America was democratized by 1828 due to the enfranchisement of a major-
ity of adult males and the election of a president and national legislature by popu-
lar vote. France (and most other western European states) were democratized by
the end of the nineteenth century. The second wave of democratization occurred
in the 1950s. By 1960, this phase of democratization, largely coinciding with the
end of the British empire, petered out as authoritarianism began to take hold in
the developing world. Finally, the third phase of democratization manifested itself
in southern Europe in the mid-1970s and reenergized itself in 1989 as communist
Europe collapsed. According to Huntington, democratization around the world
has not been a fluid process, with a kind of “two steps forward, one step back” ap-
proach manifesting itself during each wave. As he remarks, “Overall, the move-
ment toward democracy was a global one.”35 But he is careful to point out that de-
mocratization in Africa during these phases (until 1990) was a problematic process
at best, due mainly to economic stagnation and military and authoritarian politi-
cal structures. However, it is ironic that in the years since Huntington’s study on
democratization, democracy has become part of what he might call a “fourth
wave” on the African continent. That vast continent may now be called the “light
continent” given the coalescence of The Light (Jesus Christ) and democracy.
According to political scientist Richard Joseph, “Democratization was not
supposed to happen in Africa.” However, democratization is part of a “broader
global transformation.” Joseph believes that Africa has settled into a kind of mid-
dle way where some of its states will continue to democratize and others will not.
However, the post-1989 democratic experiments in Africa may evince unique and
distinctly “African” models of democratization that “inspire other continents.”36
In line with the democratic political changes on the continent are the liberal cap-
italist changes in the economic development of democratizing and authoritarian
states alike in Africa. Political sociologist Seymour Martin Lipset’s contention
that capitalist economic development precedes democratic development may not
have occurred in terms of causality, but democracy has brought capitalism in de-
mocratizing areas of Africa. In 1996, direct foreign investment in Africa
amounted to $4.5 billion. This was triple the annual average for the periods
between 1990 to 1993. American companies put $1.2 billion into Africa’s develop-
ing economies in 1996, though this was only 1.5 % of the world’s $349 billion
total in foreign investment in developing nations for that year. However, foreign
investment has grown at unprecedented levels since 1989, roughly corresponding
with Africa’s newfound democratic spirit. U.S. investment in Africa south of the
Sahara (not including OPEC state Nigeria or the most powerful economy on the
continent, South Africa—due to its exorbitant mineral wealth) went from a rela-
tively paltry $18 million in 1990 to $235 million in 1996. These profound changes
in African economic development relate to these events: the rise in democratiza-

tion; the jettisoning of Marxism (and stale socialist approaches to economic con-
trol); and, the creation of indigenous stock markets since 1989 in countries such as
Botswana, Malawi, Swaziland, and Zambia.37
According to Joseph, “The student of democratization in Africa after 1989
does not have a ready-made explanatory framework or set of defining conditions
that can simply be tested in the African context.”38 Perhaps the Spirit of the Lord
is the missing variable that analysts have failed to place within their analytical
frameworks. As discussed above, the rise in the number of Christians on the con-
tinent may correlate with the economic and political changes on the continent.
The case of Zambia’s evangelical Christian president suggests the importance of
Christianity in the democratization of a number of African nations since 1989.
The increased movement toward greater democratization in Africa seems to
correlate with the greater move of the Holy Spirit across Africa. “If the Son there-
fore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed” (John 8:36). Hence, the transition
to democracy in Namibia and Zambia, two of the following case studies below,
seem to reconcile themselves with the pronounced effect Christianity has in those
countries upon democratization and racial and political reconciliation. The case
study of Sudan evinces the increased tension between Islam and Christianity in
national politics in parts of Africa. All three of the following contexts manifest the
heightened importance of Christianity in world politics today.
The Christian Gospel in National Politics: Namibia, Sudan, and Zambia
Namibia: Racial Reconciliation and Christianity
In 1992, the ethnically and politically fractured environment in Namibia began

to heal due to the decision to apply the Christian Gospel to political negotiations
and process of racial reconciliation. Namibia was a protectorate of South Africa
from 1920 until March 1990, when it declared its independence after a long and
arduous struggle with its dominant neighbor. Formerly known as South-West
Africa, Namibia was a German colony from 1884 until 1915. In 1920, the League
of Nations gave South Africa the mandate to South-West Africa, and five years
later South Africa allowed Europeans to have home rule in Windhoek. After the
creation of the United Nations (UN), South Africa sought to annex South-West
Africa, but in 1946 the UN rejected this attempt. Three years later South-West
Africa’s white voters were granted representation in South Africa’s legislature in
Cape Town. In 1950, the International Court of Justice ruled that South-West
Africa should fall under the control of the UN’s Trusteeship Council. South Af-
rica rejected the ruling and by 1966 the legal and political system of apartheid
Africa 67
(separation of the races) was applied to South-West Africa by its dominant neigh-
bor from Pretoria. In the same year, the African nationalist group, the South-West
African People’s Organization (SWAPO), which dated from 1957, began the
struggle for freeing the nation. From Angola and Zambia, the paramilitary arm of
SWAPO, the People’s Liberation Army of Namibia sought to extricate South Af-
rica from South-West Africa. SWAPO was led by Sam Nujoma from 1959 to the
present.39
Following the UN’s unilateral recision of South Africa’s mandate in October
1966, the world body established the UN Council for South-West Africa and in
June 1968 it changed the territory’s name to Namibia. By 1973 the UN had recog-
nized SWAPO as the legitimate representative of the people in Namibia. A year
later, South Africa was denied its seat in the UN because of its apartheid policies,
and it was not until 1991 that it got its seat back due to internal reforms in that na-
tion.40 In 1978, the UN Security Council’s five Western members (the United
States, the United Kingdom, France, West Germany, and Canada) agreed to bro-
ker talks with South Africa and SWAPO. The talks called for UN-sponsored elec-
tions, release of political prisoners, and lowering the number of South Africa
troops in Namibia. These goals were incorporated into the UN Security Council’s
Resolution 435 in September 1978. However, South Africa moved toward its own
internal democratization program in Namibia with semifree elections in May
1979. By January 1983, the indigenous National Assembly set up by South Africa
was discontinued, and Pretoria resumed its direct control of Namibia.41
Due to a border dispute between Angola and South Africa in Namibia, the
armed struggle between the two nations ceased in February 1984. Angola agreed
to keep Cuban and SWAPO forces from areas vacated by the South African mili-
tary, but Nujoma refused to halt the armed struggle with South Africa until it
had agreed to UN Resolution 435 and UN-supervised elections. After the failure
of a South Africa–led Multiparty Conference, which included several Namibian
groups (but boycotted by SWAPO), the move toward some kind of Namibian
self-government did not crystallize until December 22, 1988, when Angola,
Cuba, and South Africa signed a treaty calling for the implementation of UN
Resolution 435 on April 1, 1989. By February 1989 the UN Transition Assistance
Group was in place and the “blue helmets” were ready to supervise free elections
in the country. Despite some problems with the transition, the election was held
peaceably on November 7–11, 1989. Over 95% of the electorate took part and
SWAPO got 57.3% of all votes winning 41 of 72 seats in the Constituent Assem-
bly.42 It did not, however, get the needed two-thirds vote to impose its own con-
stitution on the nation.
Despite the transition to a free, multiracial political system, problems re-
mained. Namibia had to deal with political factionalism and social readjustment.
According to theologian Roy J. Enquist, “The concept of reconciliation, all agree,
has its roots in the region’s religious communities . . . But politics, as many in the
secularized West would say, is something else. We ordinarily think that democracy
cannot allow any particular religion (perhaps even religion as such) to participate
in public debate. Yet in southern Africa national political leaders use the language
of Christianity as the medium for cultural reconstruction.”43 When Namibian
president Sam Nujoma called for ethnic and political reconciliation utilizing the
country’s Christian churches as a starting point, many were amazed. Namibia had
had to deal with the Calvinist Reform Protestant church during its years as a col-
ony under South Africa. In this system, no separation of church and state existed,
and the church was used as a tool of political legitimation in linking the state to
the apartheid views of Afrikaners. Hence, after taking office, Nujoma sought to
firmly apply a secular label to the fledgling state’s constitution, but this was done
to “disestablish” the Afrikaner influence in the nation’s social and political mores.
Namibians are “overwhelmingly Christian and the churches’ impact on the cul-
ture is unmistakable.”44 So despite SWAPO’s Marxist tendencies, Namibian Prime
Minister, Hage G. Geingob, surprised foreign observers at the start of an October
1992 conference on implementing a reconciliatory politics by quoting 2 Corin-
thians 5:19 and Matthew 5:24. “He claimed that SWAPO finds in the New Testa-
ment the sources for its commitment to creating a national future sharply discon-
tinuous from the colonial past.”45
Much of the rhetoric of reconciliation has been criticized by students and
others who believe the government will use the rhetoric to maintain the status
quo, which includes widespread economic dislocation, ethnic fragmentation
(intra-African differences), and continued racial discrimination. Whether the
SWAPO government could mobilize the churches to help build on its rhetoric re-
mained to be seen as Namibia entered its second decade of independence.
Sudan: Christians vs. Muslims
Sudan is the largest country in Africa. It covers 976,750 square miles, stretching
1,300 miles from north to south and 950 miles from east to west.46 By 1998, Sudan
had 34 million people.47 Sudan is the area that was referred to in biblical history as
the “Land of Cush.”48 Ham was one of Noah’s three sons and he was the “father of
Canaan” (Gen. 10:8). From the seed of Ham, came a son Cush, who was the fa-
ther of the Canaanites. The Canaanites grew and eventually became a political
and military enemy to the Israelites, as seen in Judges 1:28–36. Sudan has been re-
ferred to as “the Sudan,” which was its official title upon independence in 1956. By
1976, “the” was removed and the state became “Sudan.” The Arabic term for
“the,” “al” was dropped as well. Another use for the word “Sudan” has caused se-
mantic problems for individuals interested in geography and politics. “Sudan”
also refers to the geographical placement of grasslands found in tropical Africa
Africa 69
from the Indian Ocean in the East to the Atlantic coast in the west. This use of the
term should not be confused with the country itself.
Politically, Sudan was conquered by the Ottoman Empire’s Egyptian governor,
Muhammad Ali, in the 1820s. Due to Turkish deference to Egypt in Sudan, the
nominal control of Sudan by the Ottomans maintained itself until the 1880s when
the Mahdist revolution occurred. Under the leadership of the Mahdi, Muhammad
Ahmad, the Mahdist government of Sudan wanted a stricter application of Islamic
principles to government and society. The Mahdist movement was at loggerheads
with the Turkic-Egyptian regime under the Ottomans, though both used Islam as
a mechanism for social and political legitimacy. In September 1898, the battle of
Omdurman began the removal of the Mahdist government from power in Sudan.
Under Lord Kitchener, the head of the Anglo-Egyptian army, the English prepared
for battle. The Mahdist regime, under the guidance of Abdallahi, also known as the
Khalifa (in Arabic, “the Successor” to the Mahdi), assembled his entire army of
52,000 men in the desert for the confrontation. After the battle, Abdallahi had lost
11,000 men while Kitchener lost 48 soldiers and had 400 wounded. Britain’s casu-
alties were mainly from the last modern-day horseback cavalry charge in history.
This deed was carried out by the Twenty-first Lancers, of which the future prime
minister, Winston Churchill, was a 24-year-old member.49 As a result, Kitchener
established Anglo-Egyptian control of the region. “In international law, the gov-
erning structure was an Anglo-Egyptian Condominium, but, in practice, Great
Britain controlled Sudan.”50 This arrangement continued until 1956 when Suda-
nese independence was declared. Actually, by the early 1950s democratization was
in full force as Sudan developed a parliamentary form of democracy.
Sudan was the first sub-Saharan African country to gain independence from
the colonial powers. Upon independence on January 1, 1956, a multiparty democ-
racy took hold. It held until a coup d’état occurred on November 17, 1958.
Between November 1958 and October 1964, a military junta governed the land.
From October 21, 1964 to May 25, 1969, democracy was restored to Sudan. In
May 1969, another coup occurred and a military government became a one-party
state.51 The third attempt at pluralist democracy lasted until 1989 when a military
coup replaced the democratic government with an Islamic fundamentalist regime.
Such is life in postcolonial Africa. With political, social, and economic instability
at all-time highs throughout the 1960s and 1970s in states like Sudan, the Western
ideal of democracy and capitalism was difficult to implement. Making Sudan’s
political development that much tougher was the long postcolonial history of civil
war and ethnic and religious fragmentation.
Sudan is a country with great ethnic diversity and linguistic differences.
“More than one hundred different languages are spoken in the country, and there
is an even larger number of distinctive ethnic and communal groups.”52 Islam
plays a major role in society for those in the northern part of the country. Around
75% of the nation adhere to Islam. Not all Sudanese Muslims share the same doc-
trines, but “virtually all practice the Sunni version of Islam.”53 However, Islam
does provide cultural and political solidarity for many in the upper two-thirds of
the country.54 Ethnically, the north is primarily Arab and the Arabic language is
spoken by 51% of the population.55 In the far northern part of the country, the
Arabs consist of many groups such as the Danaqla and Jaaliyin. Another group,
the Baqqara, are cattle-owning Arabs who have seen their culture change as in-
creased intermarriage with southern black Africans has occurred. Scattered among
the north’s predominantly Arab communities are a number of indigenous non-
Arab peoples, such as the Beja, who are the largest non-Arab group in the north.
These camel-owning Muslims have their own dialect, a Cushitic language. An-
other non-Arab, non-Muslim people include the Nuba, a black African group lo-
cated in the Nuba Mountains, west of the Nile River.
Like the northerners, the southerners are a diverse lot. Physically, just over
four million live below the Bahr el-Arab, the tributary of the Bahr el-Ghazal
River, which geographically separates the north from the south. Southerners are
black Africans; however, they are comprised of various indigenous tribes who
speak numerous dialects. The south is the Christian and animist region of the
country. It can also be viewed as the black African region as well where the Nilotes
have maintained the linguistic and cultural heritage of the region. The three
major black African tribes in the region include the Nuer, Dinka, and Shilluk.
The Dinka are the largest tribe in the entire country with one million people and
their language with its various dialects is spoken by 11% of the Sudanese popula-
tion.56 Arabs make up somewhere near 40–50% of the population. Black Africans
comprise of similar numbers.57 Hence, the ethnic differential seems fairly consis-
tent, split virtually down the middle, but the historic conflict is about more than
race. It manifests itself in many ways, but political power and the nature of Islam-
ization factor into the divisiveness in the country more so than other aspects of
the conflict. Hence, religion’s role, including the Christian minority’s role, in the
conflict are quite pronounced. Christianity accounts for just under 10% of the
population in Sudan, virtually all in the southern tier of the nation. In the south,
the most educated and the political elite tend to identify with Christianity, and
the Roman Catholic clergy play a major leadership role in that region.58 Roughly
7% of the population adheres to Catholicism (around 2.3 million people), an-
other one million are Anglican (Episcopalian), 1,500 are members of the Evangeli-
cal Church, and 67,000 are members of the Presbyterian church. Again, virtually
all of these churches are found in the southern third of the country.59
The roots of the civil war and repression in the south are found in the strug-
gle by the Mahdists to assert Islamic control over the opposition of the Turkic-
Egyptian regime in the 1880s. Religion and international affairs scholar John L.
Esposito and historian John O. Voll argue that Islamization, seen in the 1960s and
Africa 71
reawakened in a more fundamentalist form after 1989, helped make Sudan, first, an
independent state, and second, an increasingly democratic experiment (vis-à-vis
other nations’ experiments in postcolonial political development).60 This paradox
does not necessarily help us understand the multifaceted reasons for the ongoing
civil war or for the repression of Christians, but it will help explain the tension
between the various factors in the political struggle in Sudan which include: (a) re-
ligion; (b) ethnicity; (c) language; (d) geography; and (e) external intervention.
The elections for Sudan’s parliament were first held under British auspices in
November and December 1953. At that time, the two top parties were the Na-
tional Unionist party (NUP) and the Umma party. Neither of these largely Is-
lamic and northern parties attempted to incorporate southern Sudanese “at the
grass-roots level.” As a result, regional parties developed and the Southern party
became an important representative of the disenfranchised south. In the first elec-
tions the NUP got fifty out of ninety-seven seats in the nation’s legislature.61 After
the elections, the relations between north and south grew worse. The Southern
party changed its name to the Liberal party in order to lessen the regionalist tenor
of the party. Moreover, the party hoped to broaden its appeal to all Sudanese citi-
zens in order to challenge the governing NUP. Along with some Umma party
MPs, the Liberal Party publicly castigated the government for going back on its
word to southerners. First, the NUP government had not kept its promises to
help the south after the election; second, economic exploitation by northern mer-
chants was attacked by Liberal party MPs; and, third, many Liberal party MPs de-
manded that southerners in the NUP leave that party.62 The process known as Su-
danization was also underway by the nation’ s first democratic Arabic-speaking
leader, Isma’il al-Azhari. This process sought to place northerners, who were seen
as the real Sudanese, into the newly vacated colonial administrative posts of the
British. This irked the southerners and they were especially livid when only six of
them got 800 of the newly Sudanized administrative posts.63 For the most part
“southerners generally were debarred from senior government post by lack of ed-
ucation and by not being able to speak and read Arabic.”64 Interestingly, this dis-
crimination was manifested in that in 1942 the first southerner sat for the civil ser-
vice exam and in 1944 only one southerner was selected. By 1948, only 12
southerners were civil servants in Sudan.65
This kind of asymmetrical political development led to a backlash against the
Khartoum government. After tensions escalated by August 1955, southern troops
mutinied, fearing that their assignment in the north might get them killed. On
August 18, 1955, the southern soldiers of Sudan’s Equatorial corps “ran amok and
killed any Northerners they could find, including some of their Northern Suda-
nese Army officers.” As a result, “8,000 Arab troops were air lifted in British Royal
Air Force planes to the South where they opened a violent and brutal campaign of
repression which was to last for seventeen years.”66
From 1958 to 1964, Sudan was controlled by a military government under the
leadership of Ibrahim Abboud. The October Revolution of 1964 ousted Abboud
and Sudan’s second democratic experiment occurred as the nation returned to
parliamentarism and the party system that had evolved prior to independence.
The May Revolution of 1969 ended Sudan’s second democratic era and ushered in
another military dictatorship under Jafar al-Numayri. During Numayri’s reign,
which ended in 1985, a truce occurred in Sudan’s sectarian civil war in 1972. As the
ideological, ethnic, and religious forces continued to segment the fractured politi-
cal system in the country, a genuine act of Christian kindness spurred the Khar-
toum government to come to the peace table in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The war
had dragged on for sixteen years and the government’s Islamization program had
exacerbated tensions. However, when a civilian plane carrying northerners
crashed in Christian territory in the south in 1972, twenty-nine survived. Two
weeks before the crash, the Sudanese military had attacked a village in the south
and burned down a church, killing Christians inside it. The leader of the southern
rebel forces, Joseph Lagu, immediately thought about carrying out a vengeful act
of retribution; perhaps, executing the remaining Muslim passengers who had sur-
vived the plane crash. In sparing the lives of the travelers, Lagu’s instincts were in-
fluenced by the Holy Ghost, and his response would help further the cause of
peace:
“What would Christ have me do?” In response to this question, he had several thoughts.
His first was of Christ feeding the multitudes when they were in need. His second was of
the scriptural admonition concerning the number of times that one should forgive one’s
enemy—70 times seven. His last thought was of some advice a chaplain had given him
when he was a young man: “If I ever had a thought in the cool hours of morning, I should
act on it and not dilute it by consulting others. God was talking to me, not them.”67
Because of this magnanimous act, the warring sides got to the bargaining table.
The World Council of Churches and the All Africa Conference of Churches
helped broker talks and supply humanitarian aid to both sides. Through func-
tional means, both sides agreed to talk and felt it would be in their interests to
turn their “swords into plowshares.” According to Douglas Johnston, “it was
Lagu’s transformational thoughts and actions that helped establish the level of
trust needed to facilitate the later breakthrough to peace.”68 Unfortunately for the
people of Sudan, the Addis Ababa accord was violated by Numayri in 1983, and in
that year the civil war resumed. Despite the recrudescence of sectarian war in
Sudan, Johnston feels that the kind of role played by Christian churches as “peace-
makers” in conflicts (like the one in Sudan) can help effect peaceful change in
international diplomacy and politics. Moreover, Christian churches and organiza-
tions have not been seen as serious political actors that help “humanize” conflicts
and get warring parties to look more objectively at the nature of conflict.69
Africa 73
Unfortunately, these events did not leave the indelible mark Christian leaders
in Sudan and the West thought they would. By 1977, as the Middle East under-
went a strong revival of Islamic activism, beginning with the anti-Western and
antimonarchical uprising in Iran, Islam’s place in Sudanese politics was reevalu-
ated and intensified. Within two years, food problems, the end of International
Monetary Fund aid, World Bank subsidies for food, and riots stirred the internal
political pot, and Numayri tried to fend off challenges from an assortment of so-
cial and political Islamic groups. He authored a book, Why the Islamic Way?, and
pushed for a renewed Islamization policy. Christians in the south felt threatened.
In 1978, Numayri agreed to work with various Islamic groups, and this pushed
Sudan ever closer toward becoming more of an Islamic-style republic, like Iran
after 1979. The appointment of Dr. Hassan al-Turabi to the attorney general’s post
consolidated legal power in the hands of the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamic
fundamentalist organization comprised of mainly professionals and college grad-
uates in urban settings. Turabi had been dean of the University of Khartoum’s law
school and was educated at the Sorbonne in Paris. By late 1983, the strict applica-
tion of the Shari’a (Islamic law) was in full force.70 As Esposito has stated, “Tradi-
tional Islamic legal punishments such as flogging for alcohol consumption, ampu-
tation for theft and death for apostasy were implemented. In contrast to Libya
and Pakistan, where Islamic punishments were legalized but seldom carried out,
amputations for theft became common in the Sudan.”71
Within a year, Western-style dancing was forbidden and one nightclub
owner got 25 lashes for allowing couples to dance at his establishment. These
things alarmed the United States, and its government threatened to withhold
aid if the stringent regulations were not relaxed. Sudanese politicians felt the
United States was acting in an anti-Islamic fashion and that a double-standard
was applied to them and not to other anticommunist authoritarian govern-
ments, like the Philippines under Ferdinand Marcos. In 1985, Vice President
George Bush visited Khartoum to encourage Numayri to jettison members of
the Muslim Brotherhood from his government. Numayri did just that; but in
April 1985, while visiting Washington, D.C., his government was toppled in a
military coup d’état.72
In 1986, the third democratic era in Sudan’s history began. The elected gov-
ernment was led by Prime Minister Sadiq al-Mahdi, the great-grandson of the
Mahdi who had ousted the British in the 1880s. Sadiq al-Mahdi had been impris-
oned by Numayri after 1984 for arguing against the implementation of Islamic
laws. Mahdi felt that the time was not right for the Shari’a to be applied strictly,
given the lack of social development in the country. As prime minister, Mahdi
lessened the attention paid to Islamization, but he was less oriented to the United
States and more neutral toward meeting with Libya and Iran. In June 1989, his gov-
ernment was overthrown and a military government took over under the leadership
of Omar al-Bashir. In the same year, Baptist Sunday school teacher and former
U.S. president Jimmy Carter tried to help broker a peace between Bashir’s gov-
ernment and the Sudanese People’s Liberation Movement in the south. How-
ever, the former’s unwillingness to budge on the application of the Shari’a and
the latter’s unwillingness to abandon its call for a secular state led to a diplomatic
impasse.73
The events of 1989 ushered in the National Salvation Revolution—a revolu-
tion that effectively linked Bashir and the military with Turabi and the Muslim
Brotherhood. Power then evolved into a kind of “dual power” between military
and the National Islamic Front (NIF). The NIF “incorporated [the Muslim
Brotherhood] into [it], creating a single mass Islamist movement that would work
actively for the continuing Islamization of society and could also participate di-
rectly in the party politics of the time.”74
The politics of Sudan are diverse and extremely complicated. Political scien-
tists interested in pluralism, ethnic politics, and the vacillation between democ-
racy and autocracy will find Sudan to be a troublesome, yet intriguing case study
in postcolonial development. However, the lack of study on the nation’s Christian
minority is particularly problematic. Given the current government’s systematic
Islamization program, a related anti-Christian focus is apparent. Nina Shea, direc-
tor of the Puebla Program on Religious Freedom of Freedom House, a secular
human rights organization founded by Eleanor Roosevelt and Wendell Wilkie in
1941, has detailed numerous acts of Christian persecution by the Khartoum gov-
ernment since 1995 alone. Among the violations of human rights include: (a) forc-
ing young Sudanese Christian boys to convert to Islam; (b) “cultural cleansing”
campaigns aimed at black Christians and animists; (c) enslaving southern women
and children; (d) bombing, looting and burning southern towns; (e) keeping food
from starving Christians in southern towns; and (f ) applying the Shari’a to Chris-
tian converts and sentencing them to death for apostasy.75 According to Voice of
the Martyrs, a Christian relief and human rights organization in Bartlesville,
Oklahoma, an estimated 500 Christians were martyred each day in the renewed
Sudanese civil war.76 The persecution of Christians in Sudan has, until recently,
gone all but unnoticed. U.S. Congressman Frank Wolf (R-VA) took a fact-finding
mission to Sudan; as a result, he and Senator Arlen Specter (R-PA) introduced leg-
islation that sought to deal with Christian persecution around the world. The re-
sulting legislation was the International Religious Freedom Act passed by Con-
gress in 1998 (see chapter 6). Two other congressmen, Tony Hall (D-OH) and
Chris Smith (R-NJ), joined Wolf in bipartisan agreement that the persecution of
Christians in Sudan and other locales needed to be addressed. For now, the suffer-
ing in Sudan continues and the Christian-Muslim rift widens. Chapter 6 will de-
tail the increased persecution of Christians in Sudan and other nations around the
world.
Africa 75
Zambia and Frederick Chiluba
For twenty-seven years, Zambia was ruled by the autocrat and self-styled represen-
tative of Africa’s developing independent nations, Dr. Kenneth Kaunda. Replete
with his charismatic personality and trademark leopard skin cap, Kaunda was the
symbol of the best and worst of Africa’s postcolonial development: a cocky, self-
assured man who advocated a unique path to “black” African, as opposed to
“white” colonial, development. Kaunda ruled as a virtual dictator in a semirepres-
sive one-party state and, as a result, nearly ran his country into the ground finan-
cially. When the popularly elected evangelical Christian Frederick Chiluba took
over in 1991, Zambia was quite poor and deeply in debt.
Northern Rhodesia, a British colony since 1924, was placed in a federation by
its colonial overlords in 1953. That federation included Southern Rhodesia
(modern-day Zimbabwe) and Nyasaland (modern-day Malawi). In December
1963, that British protectorate broke up and the next year the leader of the United
National Independence Party (UNIP), Kaunda, was elected to form a govern-
ment in January 1964. By October 1964, Northern Rhodesia was independent and
now, as Zambia, a free and autonomous member of Britain’s Commonwealth. A
supporter of African liberation movements, Kaunda declared Zambia a one-party
state in 1972 and the next year the border between Zambia and (formerly South-
ern) Rhodesia was closed. In the early 1980s, Kaunda implemented a program of
economic austerity while combating corruption in government. Economically,
strikes and demands for better pay led to social problems. More austerity meas-
ures from 1985 through 1987 led to the erosion of the nation’s economy, and riot-
ing occurred. Increases in the prices of key agricultural commodities and fuel
created social turmoil. By 1988, Kaunda was feeling the political heat. After get-
ting 95.5% of the vote in the October 1988 presidential election (in which he was
the only legal candidate), civil unrest occurred in the country’s copperbelt region.
Students and workers protested, and by late June 1989 a coup d’état almost took
Kaunda out of power. Had it not been for troops loyal to him he would have been
deposed.77
Seeing the “writing on the wall,” in May 1990, Kaunda called for a popular
referendum on multiparty politics to be held in July of that year. It was then that
the chairman of the Zambian Congress of Trade Unions, Chiluba, began to gain
support. After going back on his pledge toward limited democratization, Kaunda
reversed course and called for the nation’s constitution to be revised, the scrapping
of the referendum on multiparty politics, and, in the latter’s place, genuine multi-
party democratic elections by late 1991. On October 31, 1991, Chiluba was over-
whelmingly elected with 75.79% of the vote over Kaunda. Democracy had come
to Zambia, and six political parties gained representation in Zambia’s legislature.78
Zambia had a Pentecostal president (Chiluba has attended an Assembly of God
church in Lusaka but is still an elder in the mainline United Church of Zambia),
and the end of its postcolonial authoritarianism had arrived.
Chiluba has been described as Zambia’s Lech Walesa (Poland’s first post-
communist president) or its “Black Moses.” Born in 1943, Chiluba is the son of a
miner. Forced to drop out of high school for financial reasons, Chiluba worked in
Tanzania where he got interested in the country’s labor politics. He soon latched
on to the African nationalism sweeping the continent in the 1960s. He then em-
braced Marxism and studied in the USSR for a short while. In 1966, he got a job
with a Swedish multinational mining equipment firm as an accounts assistant,
working for the company until 1990. As one of Zambia’s delegates to the UN
General Assembly in 1973, he became increasingly disillusioned with the unac-
countability of Kaunda’s government. “Coming from a country in which the gov-
ernment was accountable to no one, Chiluba was overwhelmed by the public out-
cry over the Nixon administration’s attempted cover-up of the scandal, and he
returned to Zambia thoroughly convinced of the benefits derived from a free press
and a thriving political opposition.”79
Imprisoned in July 1981 for allegedly planning a putsch with the CIA’s help,
Chiluba was released in October 1981. But it was at this time that Chiluba
found God: “I’ve lived my life intermittently running away from the Lord. But
in His own loving way, He has brought me back from time to time.”80 Chiluba
confessed to a kind of Jonah-like experience. As the Bible recounts, the way-
ward prophet ran from the Lord when He wanted to use him to warn the peo-
ple of Nineveh of the pending doom of their city. The people of Nineveh re-
pented, and God did not destroy their city.81 Although Chiluba may not be a
prophet, his personal call from God to serve Him came at his darkest hour:
“The greatest thing that happened in my life was my arrest and detention. I be-
came aware of the power of God and became convinced nothing happens with-
out his knowledge.”82
Guided by the Gospels of Christ, Chiluba sought to incorporate a message of
national revival, economic freedom, justice, and political change. In campaign-
ing, the short (less than five feet tall), fiery orator caught the people’s imagination:
“Let us show the outside world we can do as well as people elsewhere. Are we
ready to work?” To this the receptive crowds cheered and replied with an em-
phatic, “Yes!”83 Chiluba sought to radically transform Zambia from a socialist,
one-party authoritarian state, to a free-market, democratic, and God-fearing na-
tion. What’s more, in December 1991, his first official act as president was to de-
clare Zambia a “Christian nation.” Given the fact that 72% of Zambians are
Christian, Chiluba sought to renew the nation by inspiring them to appeal to the
scriptures as a basis for strength and hope.84 During his first administration the
legislature voted to place the president’s declaration that Zambia was a Christian
nation into the country’s constitution.
Africa 77
Chiluba’s first administration was not a bed of roses. He was vexed with cor-
ruption and scandal within his cabinet. He had to deal with a $7 billion debt
passed to him from the Kaunda years. His response was at times swift and at times
less than swift. He immediately fired a number of corrupt officials from the
Kaunda years but remained vexed by some of his own cabinet officers’ problems.
As a result, a number of Chiluba’s cabinet members accused each other publicly of
venality. Chiluba did not dismiss the charges of corruption but put a different
spin on the government’s problems. “[C]orruption can never be eradicated from
any society because it is a ‘sin problem’ deeply rooted in human nature,” he stated.
“We are all corrupt in some way . . . If it is not in the area of money, it may be in
the use of power, or in our attitude to our neighbors.”85 Chiluba warned those
making accusations against various government officials to “judge not . . . and
thou shalt not be judged,” when confronted with problematic allegations aimed
at cabinet ministers involved in alleged adulterous affairs and illegal bigamy.86
When Chiluba came to power in 1991, he immediately embarked on a mas-
sive and wholesale economic reform program that sought to liberate the nation’s
bankrupt economy from the throes of statism and nationalization. Kaunda had
tried to bring Zambia’s economy into the twentieth century by using the
country’s top export commodity, copper, to support his program of nationaliza-
tion, subsidies, and price controls. This program failed abysmally in 1975 when
the copper industry collapsed due to the drop in the price of copper. As a result,
Chiluba boldly applied the Harvard economist Jeffrey Sach’s capitalist “shock
therapy” (as used in Poland during the beginning of the post-communist phase
in 1989–1990) to the nation’s stagnant economy by selling off inefficient state-
owned enterprises (some 137 of them, from farms to dry-cleaning businesses to
breweries) valued at $140 million. He cut the nation’s spending by cutting food
subsidies. His opponents countered by saying that these neoconservative or
Thatcherite policies increased unemployment and hurt the general social envi-
ronment. At the end of Kaunda’s tenure average annual inflation in Zambia was
around 100% each year. In Chiluba’s first year, inflation rose to 200%, but by
November 1996 it was down to 45% and the indigenous currency, the kwacha,
was completely convertible.87
Interestingly, Chiluba’s transformation from a Marxist African nationalist,
along the lines of most African National Congress members (the party that con-
trolled multiracial South Africa at the beginning of the twenty-first century), to a
Western, procapitalist democratic leader is perhaps one of the most remarkable
changes for him as Zambia’s evangelical Christian leader. Some secular Western
analysts felt he was too weak personally to deal with the freewheeling business
interests that seemed to exercise huge amounts of influence in his government.
However, his attack on pornography in 1993 may suggest that his politics are suf-
ficiently driven by a genuine concern for democratic change within a context of
applying the time-honored “Golden Rule,” the Decalogue, and the Beatitudes in
Zambian society (Matthew 7:12; Exodus 20; Matthew 5–7). Chiluba used a law
that gave the Zambian president the right “to ban certain materials” by fiat. A
fight within the cabinet over the imposition of Chiluba’s “Christian morals” oc-
curred as a result of the president’s decree.88
Despite problems, Chiluba turned the nation around politically. For the
first time, Zambia had: (a) a free and independent judiciary; (b) the right to pri-
vacy and “the inviolability of the home”; (c) more freedom of press and speech;
(d) freedom of religion; and (e) equal rights for women.89 The U.S. State depart-
ment verified these profound changes. Moreover, the Movement for Multiparty
Democracy (MMD), Chiluba’s governing party codified these rights and free-
doms in the nation’s first democratic constitution. Like any democracy, Zambia
under Chiluba went through a difficult birth. Critics accused Chiluba and the
MMD of creating a constitution that narrowly reflects the interests of their
party and government. Christian churches divided over the extent to which
Chiluba’s government was truly representative of Zambians and whether the
government was as interested in basic democratic freedoms as it proclaimed.
The Zambia Episcopal Conference (the nation’s governing arm for Roman Ca-
tholicism), the Evangelical Fellowship of Zambia, and the Christian Council of
Zambia all opposed the MMD’s constitution. A few Zambian university profes-
sors had problems with Chiluba declaring the nation a “Christian” one because
other religions were represented in the country, including Buddhism, Hindu-
ism, Islam, animism, and ancestral worship. However, the Pentecostal Assem-
blies of God (PAOG) supported Chiluba and one pastor of a PAOG said
“[nothing was] wrong with declaring the country Christian” because 70 to 80%
of the nation were followers of Christ.90 Although Zambia still has room for im-
provement in terms of civil liberties, Chiluba tried to effectively balance the use
of arbitrary power with democratic change. His successful attempt at keeping
Kaunda from running for president in the 1996 elections, which caused the
United States to lower the amount of foreign aid to Zambia, hurt his image in
the eyes of the many secular organizations. One political scientist even called
Chiluba a “small despot” for imposing grandfather-type laws on those who
wanted to run for president in Zambia.91 However, Chiluba turned his country’s
economy around, implemented the farthest-reaching democratic reforms in his
nation’s history, and moved Zambia toward becoming one of Africa’s brightest
new democracies. For Chiluba, the Christian life is a vigorous one that ought to
be front and center in one’s relationship with others. He literally believes that
“divine intervention” helped bring about the “peaceful transition from the sec-
ond to the third Republic.”92 He has attempted to broker peace among some of
Africa’s warring states, including post-Mobutu Democratic Republic of Congo
(formerly Zaire).
Africa 79
In January 1999, Chiluba met in Harare, Zimbabwe, with longtime Zimbab-

wean leader, Robert Mugabe. Chiluba was attempting to gain support for a “re-
gional initiative to resolve the conflict” in the Democratic Republic of Congo.93
The very next month, Chiluba sat down with Laurent Kabila in Kinshasa, the
Democratic Republic of Congo’s capital, and said that he was optimistic that a
cease-fire between rebels, attempting to overthrow Kabila’s authoritarian regime,
and the government would take place by the end of February 1999. Zimbabwe,
Angola, Namibia, and Chad supported Kabila militarily in the conflict, while
Uganda, Rwanda, and Burundi supported the rebels. Kabila would be assassi-
nated by his own bodyguards in a dispute with his generals in January 2001. Chi-
luba hoped to be the negotiator among the various parties involved in the conflict
taking place in one of Africa’s troubled areas.94 Chiluba, despite criticisms, was
working to make Zambia and all of Africa a better place. Like King David, Chi-
luba displayed personal moral failings. In October 2001, he divorced his wife,
Vera, of 33 years. After following the 1991 constitution somewhat reluctantly, Chi-
luba stepped aside when the MMD candidate won the 2001 election in late De-
cember and on January 2, 2002, he left office after two terms.
Conclusion
Africa may be a continent of paradoxes, but the links between democracy and
Christianity are clear. Although the raging conflicts between Islam and Christian-
ity occur in Nigeria, between Ethiopia and Eritrea, and within Sudan, we see the
Gospel of Jesus aiding in the liberation of some of the continent’s most authori-
tarian regimes, such as Malawi under its ex-dictator Dr. Hastings Banda. The ex-
tent to which Christianity and secular political forces will coexist in the fledgling
democracies of Africa must still be seen. For now, the Lord’s Word is affecting Af-
rican society and politics and, as seen in Zambia, a new type of freedom is influ-
encing political liberty: “. . . where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty” (2
Cor. 3:17).
 
America
Christianity, Politics, and the GOP Revolution in Congress
2 Chronicles 7:14—If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves,
and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven,
and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.
International Terrorism in America: September 11

and President George W. Bush’s Response
September 11, 2001, was a day that changed the United States forever. With the
deaths of 3,900 people in terror attacks on New York’s World Trade Center tow-
ers and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., America came under attack from for-
eign extremists in a way that the world had never seen before.1 As stated in chap-
ter 1, terrorism was not new to the United States. By the late 1980s and early
1990s, only about 10 terrorist incidents occurred on American soil each year.2
However, terrorism began to escalate in the mid-1990s. These incidents were
usually minor, until the April 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. However, the scale
and size of the September 11 attack was utterly disproportionate to anything seen
in any country around the world in the recent history of international terrorism.
Much like the Pearl Harbor attack by Japan, which killed close to 3,000 Ameri-
can armed service personnel and some civilians as well, the September 11 attack
stunned and outraged Americans of all races, classes, backgrounds, and religious
predilections.3
With resolve, the relatively new American president, George W. Bush, began
to respond to the Islamic radicals and others who were interested in spreading ter-
ror in America. In a complex, yet strategic approach to combating global terrorism,
President Bush attempted to do several things in fighting back at what was the
worst international attack, in terms of loss of life, on American soil in its history.
America 81
Faced with a new warfare, known as asymmetrical warfare, given the various ob-
jectives subsumed within it (which included military, social, political, and eco-
nomic), the president set out to catch and punish the terrorists responsible, the
Al-Qaeda terrorist network headed by the Saudi dissident terrorist, Osama bin
Laden. With bin Laden in hiding in Afghanistan, aided and abetted by the Tali-
ban regime there, Bush sought to begin the long process of ridding the world of
terrorist threats. Without a specific national target or army, America’s military was
confronted with several challenges. Bush began several maneuvers to put the
United States in striking position by early October 2001. According to The Econo-
mist, “The campaign [had] many dimensions: co-ordination of financial controls,
an international police investigation, diplomatic pressure, careful reassurance of
Muslims both within America and elsewhere, the encouragement of new peace
talks between Israel and the Palestinians, the encirclement of Afghanistan with al-
lies and with military forces.”4 On October 7, 2001, the long awaited counterat-
tack on the Al-Qaeda terrorist cells in Afghanistan began. Ninety percent of
Americans supported the American and British attacks; only five percent did not
favor the attacks.5
Within hours of the September 11 attack, the president was comforting the
nation by reading to it Psalm 23. His father, President George H. W. Bush, com-
mented on his son’s Christian faith: “Here’s a man that’s read the Bible through
twice . . . It’s something that is in his heart.” Bush had asked the nation to pray
and made Friday, September 14, 2001, a national day of prayer. Christian author
Max Lucado, who met Bush at the White House in the wake of the terror attacks,
said, “His first words to us were, ‘I have never felt better in my life, and it’s because
of the prayers of the American people.’” Americans began turning to God as a
source of strength. Unity and patriotism became national mantras. American flags
were sold out in almost every city and town in the U.S. Not surprisingly, some
Americans attempted to squelch the patriotic fervor. The American Civil Liber-
ties Union (ACLU) attempted to ban a “God Bless America” sign at an elemen-
tary school in Rocklin, California. However, parents, students, and even school
administrators held a “red, white and blue” rally at which 250 people supported
the school’s right to post the sign.6 As the tragedy sparked unity, President Bush
had come a long way from his nerve-racking 2000 election victory over Vice Pres-
ident Al Gore.
The 2000 Presidential Election
In what was the closest election since 1960, and most controversial since 1876, the
2000 presidential election saw George W. Bush, the Republican governor of Texas
and son of former American president George H. W. Bush, defeat Vice President
Al Gore. Bush’s victory was sealed on December 12, 2000 at 10 .. (EST) when
the U.S. Supreme Court dramatically stepped into the Florida election process
and stopped recounts of ballots in that divided state. The vote to criticize and re-
verse the Florida Supreme Court’s decision to continue recounts (which that state
court had issued in a 4–3 ruling on Friday, December 8) was 7–2. However, the
vote within the vote to stop the “standardless” recount process and effectively end
Gore’s continual legal contestation of the election was 5–4 with the high court’s
conservatives (Chief Justice William Rehnquist, Sandra Day O’Connor, Antonin
Scalia, Anthony Kennedy, and Clarence Thomas) voting to support the Bush
legal team’s arguments. The liberal wing of the court (Justices John Paul Stevens,
David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Stephen Breyer) voted in the minority.
The Bush victory in Bush v. Gore upheld his cliff-hanger win by 537 votes out of 6
million cast in Florida. As a result, the court legally sealed the state’s 25 electoral
votes for Bush. With less than two hours left to deposit Electoral College votes in
suburban Washington, D.C., Gore’s legal challenge in Florida became moot.7
The next day, December 13, in a subdued, yet conciliatory message to the na-
tion, Gore conceded by saying, “We will stand behind our new president.” Bush
spoke minutes after Gore from the Texas House of Representatives, where he
called for genuine bipartisanship. “I was not elected to serve one party, but to
serve one nation,” he stated. The next morning, December 14, Bush went to a
special morning service at Tarrytown United Methodist Church in Austin. Ac-
cording to his press spokesperson, Karen Hughes, “The Texas governor ‘decided
that he wants to start this on a message of prayer and healing.’” Vice President-
elect Dick Cheney’s Methodist pastor, Reverend Mark Craig, told President-elect
Bush that he was like “Moses of the Old Testament. You were chosen by God, as
was Moses, to lead the people.”8
Bush eked out the miraculous election victory by defeating Gore, 271–266, in
the Electoral College.9 Although Gore won by .005 percent10 of the popular vote
nationwide, Bush actually claimed the White House in dramatic fashion by
claiming Florida’s 25 electoral votes when on November 26, after a series of man-
ual recounts and a mandatory machine recount, the Florida Secretary of State,
born-again Christian Katherine Harris, certified the state election victory for
Bush. After over six million votes were cast in the state Bush’s brother (Jeb Bush)
headed as governor, Bush won by just over 500 votes.11 The certified election win
for Republican Bush set off more legal challenges from Democrat Gore, who
vowed to fight on, saying that the state’s “certified . . . vote count” was “neither
complete nor accurate.” Bush himself called for a concession from Gore, while
Bush’s spokesperson, Hughes, said “Gore ‘proposed yet another count and yet an-
other deadline’ after losing each tally in Florida.”12 In retrospect, Gore did not lose
the election in Florida. He lost it when he failed to win the states President Bill
Clinton had won in 1996, including Gore’s home state of Tennessee, as well as
Missouri, Arkansas, Kentucky, and West Virginia, to name a few. Gore simply
America 83
dropped the ball in states that were solidly Democratic in recent elections. More-
over, the Bush support base was energized and proved a formidable force leading
in all opinion polls up to the very day of the election.
The election shaped up as one of America’s strangest, yet important in echo-
ing the precedents of 1876 and 1888, when a president was elected without win-
ning the popular vote. It was the closest since 1960 when John F. Kennedy de-
feated Richard M. Nixon by less than 100,000 votes. According to political
scientist Richard J. Hardy, Kennedy was fortunate to win that election. “[I]f just
9,000 votes in Missouri and Illinois had switched from Kennedy to Nixon in
1960, the House again would have determined the presidency,” Hardy said.13 In
1888, the Republican Benjamin Harrison had defeated the sitting president,
Democrat Grover Cleveland, 233–168 in the Electoral College, yet Cleveland won
the popular vote by less than 100,000 votes (50.12% to 49.88%). In 1876, Florida,
Louisiana, Oregon, and South Carolina all saw their election returns contested,
and the presidency was decided in a joint session of Congress, which on March 2,
1877, declared Rutherford B. Hayes, the Republican governor of Ohio, presi-
dent.14 Hayes won after a joint commission of senators and representatives voted
8–7 in his favor.15 In return, Democrats demanded an end to Reconstruction in
the South. Hayes had lost the popular vote to Democrat Samuel J. Tilden by
250,000 votes.16
The 2000 cliff-hanger went on for weeks after the election (36 days to be
exact). The event saw a divided nation split virtually down the middle, with Bush
holding sway in rural areas, the South and Midwest, and with military voters. Gore
was popular in urban areas, the Northeast and West Coast, and with black voters.
As a result, the Gore team took the outcome to the courts in filing challenge after
challenge in Florida, the lone holdout due to the tightness of the race in that state.
One editorial in a California newspaper said, “Elections are about ballots—about
votes cast and counted. They should be settled on those terms whenever possible,
appealing only in the rarest and most extreme circumstances.”17
After the automatic machine recount mandated by state law, Bush led by 930
votes. The Gore-Lieberman camp pressed for further manual recounts, arguing
that many votes, actual and intended, for their ticket had been mispunched by
voters. State courts allowed manual recounts to persist in pro-Democratic
counties (among others), to the dismay of the Bush-Cheney camp. In all the re-
counts spurred by Democrats, the media failed to report, for nearly a month, that
445 illegal votes by Florida felons had been cast in the 2000 election. As the
Miami Herald reported, “The tainted votes—found in a review of nearly half a
million votes cast in 12 Florida counties—provide evidence that the presidential
race was influenced by thousands of ineligible voters. Nearly six million voters in
Florida’s 67 counties cast ballots.”
Of the 445 illegal votes, 330 were cast in Palm Beach and Duval counties.
Nearly 75% were cast by registered Democrats. “The Herald found 62 robbers, 56
drug dealers, 45 killers, 16 rapists and seven kidnappers who cast ballots.” Hence,
in all liklihood, Gore overwhelmingly benefitted from the illegal votes.18 This
phenomenon was bypassed by the media during the postelection wrangling.
During the saga, Americans became familiar with the lexicon of the polling
place, including such arcane terms as “dimpled chads” and “undervotes.” The for-
mer is the piece of paper produced when a machine ballot has a hole punched in
it, and the latter are ballots that had no vote for president on them. As most pun-
dits saw it, the election was to come down to a legal dogfight in the Florida Su-
preme Court. It was interesting to see the political process become overly legal.
The Gore team argued that a complete recount of the state, by hand, would solve
all problems. The Bush team responded by saying that would be logistically im-
possible because each of the 67 counties in Florida had different standards for
hand recounts. Some counties counted dimpled chads, hence, counting votes
based on the intent of the voter, usually in Gore’s favor, although no actual vote
had been cast. It was, to say the least, a veritable mess. After the machine recount
was finished on November 14, by state law, Bush had won the election. Counties
then began manual recounts which the Florida Supreme Court in a unanimous
decision, allowed until Sunday, November 26. Following those recounts, Bush
again won, and the Gore team continued to challenge in the courts. On Novem-
ber 26, Bush called for Gore to concede saying, “If the vice president chooses to go
forward, he is filing a contest to the outcome of the election . . . This is not the
best route for America.” Bush had a majority of the country’s support according to
the public opinion polls. An ABC television/Washington Post poll “found that 60
percent of those surveyed thought the vice president should concede.”19 Gore
fought on. He raised $3 million “quickly” to support the recounts and his legal
bills. Bush had to counter and raised $6 million to cover legal costs and other re-
count activities. This was spent on top of the $3 billion spent in the 2000 presi-
dential campaign—the most ever.20 The legal challenges by Gore and Bush’s
counter-challenges led to bitter partisan wrangling. Representative J.C. Watts (R-
OK) said on November 21, “With hope of victory slipping away, the Florida Su-
preme Court has allowed Vice President Gore one last chance to change the result
of the past recounts. This is a candidate who will not win or lose honorably but
will do so through the cut-throat tactics that eight years under President Clinton
have taught him.”21
Despite the fact that Florida’s Supreme Court’s November 21 decision to ex-
tend the manual recount deadline ended with Bush the certified victor in that
state, Bush appealed to the United States Supreme Court. On November 30, the
U.S. High Court heard oral arguments from the Gore and Bush lawyers. Bush
lawyer Theodore Olsen, a former counselor to President Ronald Reagan, argued
that the Florida Supreme Court “‘overturned the carefully enacted plan’ by state
America 85
legislators for resolving election disputes.”22 The next day, the U.S. Supreme
Court remanded the case back to Florida for further explanation from that state’s
high court, hinting that the Florida court might have violated the separation of
powers in Florida. This represented a partial victory for Bush. On a separate ap-
peal, Gore looked to be vanquished, but the Florida Supreme Court, on Decem-
ber 3 in a 4–3 vote, allowed the state to reopen its recount and awarded 154 votes
to Gore that did not meet the manual recount deadline of November 26. The
Florida Supreme Court, which boasted five males and two females who were all
appointed by Democratic governors between 1983 and 1998, was comprised of six
Democrats, with the lone exception of chief justice, Charlie Wells, who consid-
ered himself an independent. U.S. Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) said, “Two
strikes, two outs in the bottom of the ninth, and Gore gets a hit.”23 Nationally syn-
dicated columnist and Floridian Charley Reese said: “As the Florida Supreme
Court already has demonstrated, the law is immaterial when judges decide that
they can legislate the outcome they want under the guise of interpretation. This
practice, which has systematically dismantled our federal republic, introduces all
the vices of rule by men—uncertainty, arbitrariness and unpredictability.”24
The question of whether courts should be deciding elections is an important
one. The youngest chief justice in Missouri Supreme Court history, “Chip” Rob-
ertson, a former colleague of mine at Westminster College, said of the Florida
high court, “They are being asked to do what courts shouldn’t be asked to do, de-
cide an election.”25 Robertson served on the Missouri high court from 1985–1998.
He was appointed by then-Governor John Ashcroft. As the legal battle heated up
by late November and early December 2000, the public was convinced that Gore
was on his last legs: 66% felt Bush would be the next president, while 13% be-
lieved Gore would take the presidency.26
In what became a media circus, the election raised passions as demonstrators
from both parties flooded the Florida statehouse and U.S. Supreme Court. Many
in the Bush camp accused Gore and vice presidential nominee Senator Joe Lieber-
man (D-CT) of being poor losers. Signs reading “Sore Loserman,” colored exactly
like the familiar “Gore-Lieberman” placards, echoed the anger on the Republican
side at Gore’s continued legal assault on the certified outcome of the election.
The Media Debacle
The electronic media dropped the ball on election night when they declared
Florida for Gore before the polls had even closed statewide. It then declared pre-
maturely that Bush was the winner in Florida giving him the presidency. It was
not the first time the electronic media had called states too early in a presidential
election. In 1980, the Reagan victory was called late in the afternoon on the East
coast, keeping many from the polls on the West coast. ABC News said it adopted
new “guidelines” in order to correctly project winners in various states in subse-
quent elections. ABC stated it would not project a winner until all polls closed in a
state, rather than a majority of the polls as in 2000 and past years. It also said ABC’s
voter data would have to reflect the Voter News Services’ numbers. As the ABC
News president said, “calling a race is not the same as declaring a victor—it’s mak-
ing an informed estimate.”27 As syndicated columnists Jack Germond and Jules
Witcover said just days after the election, “The reason for this unwillingness to rely
on the actual vote count [for projections] is pure and simple: Network ratings and
TV’s increasing treatment of news as entertainment.”28 Another unfortunate by-
product of the election was the excessive liberal bias of the mainstream media. Even
liberals themselves blushed at the attempts by the media to treat the Florida vote in
such a partisan pro-Gore way. Leftwing columnist and academician Camille Paglia
said, “The behavior of the northeastern major media during the Florida fiasco was
shockingly biased. From my perspective . . . the covert power presently wielded by
partisan liberal journalists has become positively alarming . . .”29 The House of
Representatives, controlled by the Republican party, held hearings on the media’s
dissemination of information on election night:
Rep. Billy Tanzin assembled a list that makes interesting reading. Bush won Alabama, for
example, by 15 points. The polls closed at 8 .., yet the state wasn’t called for Bush until
25 minutes later. Bush won Georgia by 12 points. The polls closed at 7. Yet the state was
not called for Bush until 7:59. Bush won Colorado by 9 points, Louisiana by 8, North
Carolina by 13 and West Virginia by 6—yet none of these states was called for Bush until
later in the evening, not until 10:46 in the case of West Virginia. Meanwhile, Michigan,
Pennsylvania and Florida were being called for Gore, giving the impression of a building
win for the vice president.30
With the media’s seemingly pro-Gore orientation evident, it was no surprise

that the moderate-to-conservative Fox news channel began to win the cable news
ratings battle with its rival CNN. Although available in 23 million less homes than
CNN, “Fox pounded CNN in ratings averages within each network’s universe of
homes, 2.1 to 1.3. Fox News also averaged more total homes, with 1.20 million
compared with CNN’s 1.06 million.”31 Clearly, many cable watchers felt Fox was
more objective in its treatment of the recount activities in Florida.
President George W. Bush and Christianity
President George W. Bush had been very open about his Christian beliefs. His op
-
ponent in the 2000 election, Vice President Gore, was willing to attend church on
Sunday mornings in the November recount period to show his commitment to
America 87
his faith. Gore was raised a Southern Baptist, but had become more centrist in
how his beliefs related to his personal life as he reached adulthood. Bush was born
into an Episcopalian home, but unlike his father, who refused to talk much about
his personal religious convictions (saying they were “private”), the younger Bush
not only embraced a more overt Christian philosophy but rededicated his life to
Christ in his early 40s after tiring of the “party” lifestyle. As a born-again Chris-
tian, the first to occupy the White House since Jimmy Carter in 1977, Bush felt
faith was an important part of his style of governing. Bush, who attended Metho-
dist churches after embracing a more zealous Christianity, was sensitive to the
claims of evangelicals. At 54, the new president admitted during his election bid
that he had been a teetotaler for 14 years. He had seen the importance of Christi-
anity in galvanizing the people of Texas to carry out the Golden Rule. He issued
the decree creating “Jesus Day” in Texas on June 10, 200032 in celebration of the
greatness of the Savior of mankind. As Jeffrey Weiss of the Dallas Morning News
said, “During the campaign, both candidates said they sometimes looked to
higher authorities in troubled times. Bush said Jesus was his favorite political phi-
losopher. Gore said he sometimes asked himself, ‘What would Jesus do?’”33
Bush attempted to reach out to various groups in the wake of his election vic-
tory. On December 21, 2000, he met with Christian, Jewish, and Muslim leaders
to float policy initiatives that would lead to religious groups aiding in providing
services, paid by government, for the poor. He also called for the creation of “a
White House Office of Faith-Based Action.” For Bush, the latter proposal under-
scored the importance of Christianity and religion, not government, as the source
of hope for millions of indigent and downtrodden Americans.34 It seemed as
though the new administration wanted to implement the words of the ancient
Hebrew prophet: “And oppress not the widow, nor the fatherless, the stranger, nor
the poor; and let none of you imagine evil against his brother in your heart”
(Zech. 7:10).
In another symbolic move, the following day (December 22), Bush nomi-
nated Senator John Ashcroft (R-MO) as his attorney general. Ashcroft, an evan-
gelical Christian (see more about him below), was seen by Bush supporters and
evangelical conservatives as a symbol of the changing moral tide after eight years
of President Clinton’s regime which included Attorney General Janet Reno, who
in her controversial actions from Waco to her indifference toward various scandals
in the Clinton administration, had become a lightning rod of conservative criti-
cism. The media came down hard on Ashcroft precisely because of his evangelical
beliefs and his policy stances. ABC Radio News gave Kate Michelman,35 president
of the leftwing National Abortion Rights Action League, two-thirds of the leading
news segment (between 11:00 .. and 2:00 .. CST the day Bush announced
his pick for the nation’s top law enforcer) to attack Ashcroft for his putative ex-
tremist views on abortion.36 No mention was made of Ashcroft’s qualifications,
such as the fact that he was both a two-term attorney general and two-term gov-
ernor in the state of Missouri from 1977–1993. Ashcroft, a likeable and popular
politician in Missouri, won Senate confirmation 58 to 42.37
America’s unique Christian heritage served to play a role in the 2000 presi-
dential election with evangelicals again one of the Republican party’s core constit-
uencies. Had it not been for the so-called Christian Right, Bush would not have
occupied the White House. One out of every three votes for Bush was from evan-
gelicals in the 2000 election. What’s more, in the 2000 congressional elections, 17
open seats in the U.S. House of Representatives went to candidates sympathetic
with the Christian Right. The U.S. Senate saw two losses (senators Spencer Abra-
ham [R-MI] and Ashcroft) and two gains (senators George Allen [R-VA] and
John Ensign [R-NV]).38 The resurgence of the Christian Right in American poli-
tics was important in the 1994 mid-year elections in which the GOP took Con-
gress for the first time in 40 years.
The Rise of the Religious Right in Contemporary American Politics
In an amazing development, the 1994 midterm congressional elections took on an

important symbolic quality. First, they were to serve as a referendum on President
Bill Clinton’s politics in his first two years in power. Second, they served as a ba-
rometer of what “grass roots” America thought about post-Reaganite American
politics. It was not that profound to state that the incumbent president was going
to see his party lose some seats in the U.S. Congress. Presidents John F. Kennedy
and Clinton had some success in off-year congressional elections. Kennedy saw
his party lose a net five seats in the U.S. House of Representatives and gain only
two seats in the U.S. Senate in 1962. Clinton saw slight Democratic gains in both
houses in 1998. According to the data, the average number of seats lost by the in-
cumbent president’s party in the House of Representatives between 1942 and 1994
was nearly 27. The average number of seats lost by the incumbent president’s party
in the senate was four. Of course, the latter had 33 seats up during each off-year
election cycle compared to the former’s 435.39
A number of explanations can be made for the decline in support for the
president’s party at midterm congressional elections. Political scientists Norman
C. Thomas and Joseph A. Pika state that most sitting presidents try to affect off-
year elections to lessen the amount of damage done to their party in Congress.
Studies show that raising money and targeting certain local House of Representa-
tives campaigns for national exposure may help, but oftentimes it may hurt a presi-
dent and his party. For example, political scientists William Riker and William Bast
found that between 1943 and 1960, in a study of 1,200 off-year congressional cam-
paigns, presidents endorsed only 37 candidates. Of these, only 17 went on to win
America 89
both the nomination and general election. In 1938, Franklin Roosevelt endorsed
12 candidates for Congress and only six got elected.40
Thomas and Pika argue that off-year elections usually tend to deal with local
issues and they relate more to the effects of candidates themselves. Moreover, with
a huge incumbency factor in congressional elections (over 90% in house and 80%
in the senate), presidents who try to challenge incumbents have their work cut out
for them.41 Thomas and Pika suggest that the national economy and a president’s
standing in public opinion polls may also have something to do with a president’s
party’s success rate at midterm elections.
The monumental 1994 off-year elections and the cataclysmic transformation of
power from the Democrats to the Republicans in the nation’s legislative branch was
truly astounding, but not without historical precedent. The Democrats lost 35 in-
cumbent seats in the House of Representatives while the Republicans lost none. As
a result, the net loss for Democrats was 52, the second worst loss since 1946, when
Harry S Truman saw his party lose 54 seats to the Republicans and, hence, control
of Congress. In the senate, two Democratic incumbents lost while no incumbent
Republicans lost. As a result, a net loss of eight seats occurred in the U.S. Senate for
the Democrats and the Republicans controlled both houses of Congress for the first
time since 1954. “The Republican sweep extended beyond congress with net losses
by Democrats in gubernatorial and state legislative elections, as well.”42
How could one explain the thunderous move to the right in American poli-
tics? Pundits were perplexed. “Short of an overall distaste for government, there
was no unifying theme among voters who supported Republican candidates,”
Richard L. Berke of the New York Times stated. An exit poll survey conducted by
that newspaper, found that “4 out of 10 voters listed crime as the No. 1 issue that
affected their voting for the House candidates. But of those people, half voted for
Democrats and half for Republicans. In addition 4 out of 10 voters said their vot-
ing for the House candidates had nothing to do with Mr. Clinton.”43
However, a major explanation for the change may be the rise of Christian vot-
ing and activism. According to Ralph Reed, Jr., the former head of the Christian
Coalition, one in every three American voters in 1994 identified themselves as ev-
angelical Christians, and of this grouping 65% voted for Republican candidates
and 24% voted for Democrats.44 Moreover, the liberal pressure group, People for
the American Way, estimated that “60% of all candidates affiliated with or
strongly supported by the religious right won their races.”45 Political scientists and
the national media were dumbfounded at the extent to which the Christian Right
had affected the outcome of the 1994 elections. Political scientist John C. Green
said, “The movement seemed to contradict conventional wisdom at every turn.”
According to Green, most pundits had buried the evangelical conservative move-
ment after the election of Clinton in 1992, and the Christian Right had seen both
wins and losses in 1992 and 1994. For example, it had won races in Minnesota but
lost the much-celebrated race featuring Christian conservative Oliver North in

Virginia. However, Green noted the importance of the Christian Right in its im-
pact on American politics: “Fifteen years of research by political scientists offers a
broader perspective: the real story of the Christian Right is the steady growth in
size and sophistication of a modern political movement, which like other move-
ments, has both strengths and weaknesses.”46
Green’s assessment is underscored by the feelings of Reed. Reed, who helped
found the Christian Coalition in 1989 in Virginia Beach, Virginia, makes a salient
historical analogy to his organization’s success and future in comparing it to
Frances Willard’s Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), which had
been founded in 1874. Willard, who led the organization from 1879 until her
death in 1898, helped guide the temperance movement toward greater acceptabil-
ity in American politics. Reed notes a number of important parallels between the
WCTU and the Christian Coalition. First, any single-issue movement (such as
the temperance movement’s concern with alcohol and the Christian Coalition’s
concern with abortion) “must eventually broaden” its scope and focus on a num-
ber of related issues of social and cultural importance. Second, changing the cul-
tural understanding of an issue and engaging in moral persuasion are not surro-
gates for “direct political action.” Last, the fact that Willard failed at trying to
develop a temperance-based political party should serve as a model for conserva-
tive Christians who may want to break from the Republican party if the gulf
between pro-life and pro-choice party members widens in years to come. As Reed
notes, third parties do poorly in the United States due to the nature of an electo-
ral system that frowns on “third party” competition. Moreover, single-issue parties
will usually get swallowed up in the agendas of the two major parties. “Had Wil-
lard remained in the Republican party, as most profamily voters do in our own
time, she would have been more effective.”47 Reed equates the Christian Coalition
and the rise of the evangelical Christian movement in politics to the resurgence of
“religious conservatives” in political activism. He sees the linkage between the “en-
ergized evangelical, the devout Roman Catholic and the observant Jew” as a major
cohort in American politics today.48 Recognizing his roots in Baptist minister
Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority in 1979, Christian television mogul and minister
Pat Robertson asked Reed to help energize and mobilize Christians through an
organization similar to Falwell’s. Reed opted for a grassroots organization that
took issues of importance to religious conservatives to the local level. From a bud-
get of $200,000 in 1989 to $27 million in 1996, the Christian Coalition grew to
1.9 million members and 2,000 local chapters. Under Reed, the Coalition distrib-
uted some 45 million voter guides in 125,000 churches across America.49 On April
23, 1997, Reed informed the nation that he would be stepping down as the
Coalition’s executive director. In his comments to the media, he stated, “Religious
conservatives have played a decisive role in the election of the first pro-family,
America 91
conservative Congress in generations. And all across the nation, men and women
of faith have helped shift state legislatures and school boards, town halls and city
boards in a more pro-family direction.”50
Ralph Reed: The Youth and Energy Behind the Rise of the Religious Right
Born in 1961 in Miami, Florida, Reed was raised in Miami by his father, an oph-
thalmologist and surgeon, and his mother, a homemaker. There, he lived in a typ-
ical middle-class neighborhood, went to public schools, and rooted for the Miami
Dolphins. His love for biography got him interested in politics at an early age. As
a result, when the national conventions for both major parties came to Miami in
1972, he watched the “gavel-to-gavel” coverage on the local television stations. By
1976, he was canvassing for a local politician running for congress. That same
year, his family moved to Toccoa, Georgia. In high school there he formed a con-
servative club and vociferously fought for the election of Gerald Ford. This was
ironic given the fact that the state’s native son, Jimmy Carter, was running against
the incumbent president. “After betting my math teacher that Ford would win,”
Reed confides, “I had to wear a peanut sign and carry a can of Planter’s peanuts
around my high school for a day as the price of losing.”51
After holding elective offices in junior and senior high school, Reed went off
to the University of Georgia in Athens to undertake his college education. He im-
mediately became politically active at Georgia and engaged in various campaign
work and lobbying within the state. In helping a longshot Republican, Mack
Mattingly, get elected to the U.S. Senate in Georgia (at that time a traditional
Democratic stronghold), Reed was given an internship in the senator’s office. This
led to his 1983 appointment as the executive director of the national College Re-
publicans. In this post, he helped corral support for the incumbent president, Ro-
nald Reagan, and he worked with two of the top Republican election consultants,
Lee Atwater and Ed Rollins.52
It was in Washington that he began to develop the skills that he most coveted:
a sense of organizational vision, a need for grand strategy, and the importance of
networks from the grassroots to the top. Raised a Methodist, Reed began to real-
ize that his life was devoid of spirituality. He paid lipservice to his Methodist
roots, but was not as interested in its application. In 1983, he began attending “an
evangelical church in Washington.” This was the beginning point of his conver-
sion to a new form of Christianity—a personalized, zealous testimony based on
the Gospels of Jesus Christ. He admits that his political views changed little after
being “born again.” “More than shifting my ideology, my Christian faith caused
me to shift my tactics.”53 Reed would help lead a revolution. That revolution came
when the GOP took Congress for the first time in 40 years.
The Revolution of 1994: The Advent of the Historic GOP Congress
Wednesday, January 4, 1995, a cool, crisp day in the nation’s capital, will forever
remain etched in the annals of American history as a day when a revolution began.
After 40 years in the wilderness, the Republican party had finally got its chance to
redirect Washington politics and make good on its “Contract with America.” At
1:17 .., the moment the honorable Newton Leroy Gingrich was elected the
Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, the Republican Congress was off
and running.
In the next 35 minutes, the new speaker discussed numerous topics, including
quotes from nineteenth century French social commentator Alexis de Tocqueville
to Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s (FDR) leadership and calls for bipartisan under-
standing of America’s social ills. Although acknowledging the Democrats, accom-
plishments in areas such as civil rights and social policy, he argued that Demo-
crats ought to follow the progressive lead of the Republicans in the areas of
limited government and fiscal policy. “We can find ways immediately to do
things better and to reach out and to break through the bureaucracy and to give
every young American child a better chance,” Gingrich said.54 He also evoked the
image Jesus conveyed in His parable of the “Good Samaritan” (See Luke 10:30–
37). “You can’t believe in the Good Samaritan and explain that as long as business
is making money, we can walk by a fellow American who’s hurt and not do some-
thing.”55 The mixture of assertiveness and compassion was a strange, but uniquely
heartfelt response from a man viewed by the media and many Americans as less
than caring. However, his own personal experience as an adoptee created a con-
text for his populist rhetoric which would soon be put into action and see the
most sweeping governmental changes since FDR’s “New Deal” in the 1930s. Al-
though Gingrich evoked various feelings from partisans and nonpoliticos alike
from extreme ire to hero-worship, the GOP’s top man in congress got power
through a mixture of vision, political hardball, extra effort, and good strategic
planning. His story is a modern-day success story in the “dog-eat-dog” scene of
Washington politics.
Newt Gingrich: The Entrepreneurial Vision
Newt Gingrich came from humble origins. A native of Pennslyvania’s capital, Har-
risburg, he was adopted at three by his mother’s second husband. A military brat,
he grew up on various military bases in the United States and Western Europe.
After graduating from a Columbus, Georgia, high school in 1961, Gingrich mar-
ried his former secondary school math teacher, Jacqueline Batty, who was seven
years his senior, in 1962. By 1965, he had a college degree from Emory University in
America 93
Atlanta. Though developing hawkish ideas about defense and foreign affairs, he
took draft deferrals and got a M.A. and Ph.D. in history from Tulane University in
New Orleans in 1968 and 1971, respectively. While a graduate student he “experi-
mented with marijuana, led a campus demonstration defending the school paper’s
right to print a nude photograph of a faculty member, and campaigned for Gov-
ernor Nelson A. Rockefeller of New York,” a civil rights supporter.56
While finishing his doctoral dissertation on Belgium’s nineteenth century ed-
ucation policy in the Congo, he took a job teaching at West Georgia College (now
West Georgia University) in Carrollton. Four years later, he yearned for political
life. Tired of the routinized academic life, he made his first attempt at congress in
1974. Trying to unseat incumbent Democratic Congressman John J. Flynt, Jr. was
difficult in the “solid South.” After two attempts, the third try was a charm and in
1978, Gingrich defeated a Democratic state senator (who had replaced a retiring
Flynt) by 7,600 votes. His use of modern campaign techniques, a professional
staff, advanced polling methods, and the support of environmentalists helped po-
sition himself for victory in 1978.57
As a renegade freshman in the House, Gingrich set out early to challenge the
status quo. “I think in order for this civilization to survive, at least as a free society,
we’ve got to have a more rigorous and cohesive sense of an alternative party,” he
said. From 1979 on, the move toward leadership and majority status for Republi-
cans in Congress became Gingrich’s obsession. He promoted a conservative
agenda via “special orders” (a time set aside after House business had concluded
for members to read their own ideas into the record), and forced votes in the
House on topics seen, at times, as controversial, such as school prayer and U.S.
trade with communist states.58
Gingrich’s combative style did not always serve him well. He was roundly
rebuked by media pundits often for verbal assaults on Democratic Speakers Tip
O’Neill and Jim Wright. The latter he single-handedly brought down in 1989.
In the same year, Gingrich was narrowly elected to the position of minority
whip on an 87–85 vote of sitting representatives. With his election, he publicly
declared that his vision was that the Republicans could retake the house by 1992.
The author of numerous books, Gingrich can be given the credit for the intel-
lectual blueprint of the GOP’s 1994 revolution as manifested in its “Contract
with America.” As a result of that congressional victory, his goals were realized.
These goals included: (a) rebuilding a viable, majoritarian party; (b) creating a
strategically and tactically attuned party dedicated to conservative principles; (c)
using all available means of technology and modern methods of political com-
munications; and (d) financing and training young and up-and-coming conser-
vatives who were rooted in his intellectual vision for the party.59 His visionary
philosophy was first described in Window of Opportunity: A Blueprint for the Fu-
ture.60 In that book Gingrich called for such things as computers for inner-city
youths instead of failed social programs. He proposed that the United States
should cultivate outer space for technological and economic development pur-
poses à la JFK. Gingrich believed that America’s liberal welfare state had ceased
to function as a vital corporate body. He tried to create a strategy to implement a
better democratic society free from the overkill of inert, bloated government. On
January 4, 1995, the former professor turned Baptist deacon was now getting a
chance to put 20 years of political experience into action as America’s newest and
boldest leader.
The intellectual powerhouse of the GOP, Gingrich reached his apex that cold,
exciting day on January 4, 1995. Despite Gingrich’s key role in one of the greatest
upsets in American history, the House was ready for some major changes and not
for others. In late 1998, with political problems and personal problems plaguing
him (similar to the problems facing the soon-to-be impeached president), the
twice-divorced leader of the GOP revolution decided to step down. Although he
was speaker for only two terms, Gingrich’s “lasting impact on the institution may
ultimately prove to be more significant than most contemporary observers are
willing to concede.”61 An era had ended, but Gingrich’s principles, theories, and
strategies of government would guide the party and its new president, George W.
Bush, into the new millennium.
Off to the Races: The First Day of the 104th Congress
Not since FDR’s first hours in office on March 2, 1933, when Congress had deliv-
ered sweeping legislation to deal with the Great Depression, including a congres-
sional and executive pay cut, had the nation witnessed anything like the first 24
hours of Republican congressional government. With a weary president, Clinton,
in power, who was forced to the middle (away from the radical fringe) on contro-
versial yet crucial social issues such as prayer in schools and his use of the Surgeon
General’s office as a bully pulpit for radical ideas (such as promoting the legaliza-
tion of drugs and socially unacceptable sexual techniques for grade schoolers),
1995 saw Washington change its ways more in one day than had been the norm for
40 previous years.
The first day of the 104th Congress will remain as one of America’s most im-
portant days in its political history. Immediately after Gingrich was sworn in, the
GOP started to work. In an amazing 14-hour period, the Republicans began mak-
ing good on their promises to the American people found in the “Contract with
America.” Legislation was passed in the House on that day which had never been
part of the national government’s modus operandi since its inception over 200
years earlier. Instantaneously, the Republicans set out to reform the internal
machinations of the people’s legislature. One journalist noted, “Some of those
America 95
reforms had begun years ago as Democratic proposals, only to languish as senior
Democrats refused to move them forward.”62 The GOP Congress delivered nu-
merous reforms on that first day alone. They included:
1) a limit on the speaker’s tenure to eight years and committee and subcommit
-
tee chairs to six years;
2) a ban on proxy voting;
3) changing how spending requests were accounted for;
4) three-fifths majority for approval of tax increases;
5) opening committee meetings to the public;
6) making the audit of house operations independent;
7) making Congress more accountable by following labor laws and other
workplace-based laws that apply to all Americans;
8) cutting congressional staff by one-third;
9) jettisoning three committees; and
10) ending the floor vote of five nonvoting delegates including the District of
Columbia’s. Most of the reforms required senate approval as well.63
The new minority leader of the house, Richard Gephardt (D-MO) said of
the day’s events, “The American people deserve more than rubber-stamp Repub-
licanism.”64 Former Congressman Robert Dornan (R-CA), who lost his seat in
the house in a controversial election in 1996, echoed the excitement felt as “40
Biblical years in the desert with very little manna coming down from heaven”
had finally ended.65 Not since the New Deal had Americans seen something like
it. The Republican revolution, once a piece of paper called a “Contract,” was
now being implemented in full force by the new face of conservatism in America.
In all, over 25 rules changes were voted on, with the lion’s share passing, and the
most historic opening session of Congress ended at 2:24 .. on January 5, 1995.
Interestingly, it was evangelical Christians on the right side of the political spec-
trum who had helped make this moment a reality. Its leaders would have to take
notice of the power of this highly mobilized and effective cohort who had now
risen to political prominence again as they had when helping President Reagan
to victory in 1980. The Republican revolution was brought about in part by up-
start, newcomer congressmen and senators who not only purveyed a progressive
conservative message rooted in less government and increased governmental ac-
countability, but were unashamed of placing the message within a spiritual con-
text. A number of congressional newcomers in 1994 and 1996 were avowed
Christians, and their political agendas conformed to the general Christian
Right’s agenda.
Christian Leadership in Congress: The Revolution of 1994

and Evangelical Lawmakers
As many politicians are loathe to talk about their personal spiritual lives, the
changing power structure in Washington after 1994 brought a renewed promi-
nence to things spiritual in legislation addressed by the GOP Congress. At the
forefront of a number of important issues were leaders whose own backgrounds
were rooted in their personal Christian backgrounds. When Speaker Gingrich an-
nounced in May 1995 that Congress would move ahead on a constitutional
amendment seeking to legalize prayer in schools the secular media was shocked.
However, spiritual and religious issues were now seen as important to the gener-
ally conservative majority in congress.
A growing number of evangelicals began lining the halls of Congress in Wash-
ington, D.C. As Reed stated, when the Christian Coalition lobbied for support,
much would come from the plethora of Republicans and small number of Demo-
crats that aligned with the social conservative vision of the evangelical community.
Christianity in its evangelical form cuts across partisan lines in Washington, D.C.
The following leaders in the house and the senate will be examined in order to give
a sample of how Christianity’s impact was felt in DC during the late twentieth and
early twenty-first centuries: then-Senator, now Attorney General, John Ashcroft
(R-MO), Congresswoman Helen Chenoweth (R-ID), Congressman Virgil H.
Goode, Jr. (D-VA), Congressman Steve Largent (R-OK), Congressman Mike
McIntyre (D-NC), and Congressman J.C. Watts (R-OK).
John Ashcroft (R-MO)
U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft was born in Chicago in 1942. The son of a
prominent Pentecostal minister, he grew up in Springfield, Missouri, the home of
the Assemblies of God church—the church he attended then and now—which is
a large historically Pentecostal denomination and “leading force on the funda-
mentalist side of contemporary American Protestantism.”66 A graduate of Yale
University and the University of Chicago Law School, Ashcroft began profes-
sional life as a professor of business law at Southwest Missouri State University in
Springfield in the late 1960s. After losing a U.S. House election in 1972, he was
eventually elected to serve as Missouri’s attorney general in 1976. After two terms
in that post, he was elected governor in 1984. He held that post for two terms (the
legal limit in Missouri) and followed senior Republican senator John C. Danforth
as Missouri’s next U.S. senator in 1994. In a state that has been Democratic tradi-
tionally, Ashcroft followed Danforth and former Republican governor Christo-
pher S. Bond (who became Missouri’s senior U.S. Senator after Danforth retired)
in making the Republican cause more prominent in Missouri politics.
America 97
An avowed conservative and evangelical Christian, Ashcroft defined himself

as a fiscal and social conservative as Missouri governor. In that position he exer-
cised the line-item veto often to keep the Democratic state legislature within the
realms of economic prudence. He championed the pro-life cause and saw his ad-
ministration win an important legal battle in Webster v. Reproductive Health Ser-
vices (1989). In that case the US Supreme Court upheld a Missouri anti-abortion
law. The court said that in Missouri:
1) abor’tions could not be done by public sector workers;

2) abortions were not allowed in public buildings; and
3) if an abortion was performed at 20 weeks or later, the physician must com-
plete tests to see if the fetus could live outside the womb.
The 5–4 verdict was thought by pro life forces to move almost completely toward
eliminating Roe v. Wade. That was not the case.67
In 1994, he won the U.S. Senate seat easily by defeating incumbent Congress-
man Alan Wheat, an African-American, from Kansas City. Race became some-
thing of an issue for liberals in that election and Ashcroft was pilloried as antiblack
because of his unequivocal opposition to affirmative action. After six productive
years in the senate, Ashcroft ran for reelection in 2000. In what would have been
the country’s most important Senate race, Ashcroft was challenged by the sitting
governor, Democrat Mel Carnahan. Ashcroft led throughout the race. The race
got bitter with Ashcroft representing the views of American conservatives and
Carnahan, a virtual Clinton double as Missouri’s governor from 1993–2000, rep-
resented some seeming moderation on the economic front and a liberal agenda on
the social front. Then on the night of October 16, 2000, heading to a campaign
event in southeast Missouri, Governor Carnahan’s small plane crashed, and he
was killed along with his oldest son Randy (the plane’s pilot), and his top aide,
Chris Sifford. It was a tragic day for Missourians. Ashcroft immediately sus-
pended his campaign for a week. He was gracious to Governor Carnahan’s widow,
Jean Carnahan. When election day arrived (November 7, 2000) the strange elec-
tion took an even stranger twist as Missourians barely put the deceased governor
in office and Ashcroft’s career as a U.S. Senator was over. He lost by less than
49,000 votes out of 2.3 million cast.68 A state judge allowed some polls in St.
Louis to stay open past the 7:00 .. closing time. A federal court stepped in and
“officially” closed the polls near 8:00 .. Republicans conjectured that this
helped the late governor and the state’s new governor, Democratic state treasurer
Bob Holden, to defeat Ashcroft and Congressman Jim Talent (R-MO), respect-
ively. Both elections were extremely close, like the national presidential election.
Prior to Holden taking the reins as Missouri’s new governor, the acting governor
appointed the late governor’s widow to Carnahan’s Senate seat. It was a bizarre
and tragic story and disappointing ending for Ashcroft’s Senate career.
But, for Ashcroft, the biblical verse, Romans 8:28 had special meaning, be-
cause within weeks of his loss, which he handled as gentlemanly and profession-
ally as any politician in recent years, he was tapped to become the next attorney
general of the United States under the new President George W. Bush. It was a
remarkable comeback for someone who had just lost to a deceased person. Im-
mediately, the radical and liberal interest groups had a field day attacking
Ashcroft’s political views and his Christian beliefs. One liberal columnist said,
“To place such an ideologue in charge of the Department of Justice was Bush’s
payoff to the right wing, but it is at best a cynical choice that certainly deserves
to be strongly challenged in the Senate.”69 Few in the media and the leftwing
groups even bothered to look at Ashcroft’s actual record. He was vilified time and
again by radical black activist Jesse Jackson and many other liberals and radical
interest groups because they were threatened by his views. Prior to his actual
confirmation hearings, most were attacking Ashcroft for his opposition to one
black judge from Missouri who lost his nomination to a federal court post. How-
ever, it was rarely mentioned in the press that Ashcroft had voted in favor of 26
of 28 of President Clinton’s African-American nominees for federal judge posts
between 1995–2000.70 Nor did most journalists discuss the fact that he had
signed into law Missouri’s Martin Luther King, Jr. Day as governor. What’s
more, his stint as Missouri’s attorney general from 1977 to 1985, made him more
than qualified to head the justice department at the national level. As one con-
servative pundit put it, “It is Ashcroft’s deep learning in the law, respect for the
rule of law and long years of an impeccably lived public life that make him fit to
head the justice department.”71 Even Democrats in his home state had praise for
him. African-American Missouri state representative Quincy Troupe said Ash-
croft was “one of Missouri’s most progressive governors before Carnahan,” since
Ashcroft had appointed many black jurists to the bench.72 Once the liberal col-
umnists and groups stopped howling, the senate finally confirmed Ashcroft. The
top law enforcer in America was an evangelical Christian. Symbolically and in
practice, a sea change began as the Bush administration took office, and Ashcroft
was a key figure in the move to renew America’s identity as a champion of Chris-
tian ideals.
Helen Chenoweth (R-ID)
Congresswoman Chenoweth, a public affairs consultant and former congressional

aide, succesfully won Idaho’s first district in 1994 during the GOP’s revolution. A
divorced mother of two and grandmother of six became the penultimate female
evangelical Christian conservative legislator. She was famous for her willingness to
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attack the Clinton administration’s regulatory policies on Western lands, which

limited logging, grazing, and mining. These issues combined with socially conser-
vative issues have helped her become one of the evangelical community’s best-
loved conservative Christian leaders. What’s more, the fact that she was female
countered the widespread belief that few women support Republican policies. In
her run for the congressional seat in 1994, she came out strongly against abortion
and gay rights. Her opponent (the incumbent Democrat Larry LaRocco) attacked
her as an “extremist” and a “mouthpiece for the radical right.” However, he was
derailed during the campaign when forced to admit that he lied about sexual dis-
crimination charges against him. Chenoweth won with 55% of the vote.73 Chen-
oweth won the Christian Coalition’s Legislator Award and in 1998 her voting
record was dubbed 100% in agreement with that organization’s legislative
agenda.74 In November 1998, an extramarital affair from years prior, when she was
single, was discovered and the divorced mother said that she had put the matter
under the blood of Christ years ago. As has been seen in this chapter, evangelicals
are not immune from the problems that beset politicians in Washington. But, the
fortitude shown in allowing God to help them overcome sin is what sets them
apart as it does all Christians in need of God’s forgiveness. Chenoweth was re-
elected in both 1998 and 2000.
Virgil Goode (D/I-NC)
Congressman Goode, a lawyer from Virginia’s fifth district, was first elected to
the House of Representatives in November 1996. As a social conservative,
Goode’s Baptist background proved influential in his firm opposition to abortion
(including partial birth abortion, funding abortion services in American military
bases abroad, and public funding of abortion domestically), his support of HR 31
that called for the display of the Ten Commandments in public buildings, and his
support of the Defense of Marriage Act. “His stances on . . . issues . . . are suffi-
ciently in line with social conservative thought that [then] Christian Coalition
Executive Director Ralph Reed hailed Goode’s victory at a news conference after
the election.”75 As a “Blue Dog” Democrat (referring to a coalition of Southern
Democrats in the house that espouse socially conservative, but liberal economic
views), he was one of the house’s most ardent anti- gun control proponents and a
vehement voice for the besieged tobacco industry. Goode used his seat on the
House Agriculture Committee to propose tobacco-related legislation. He came to
Washington after holding a state senate seat from the time he was 27 years old.
Twice he ran for the U.S. Senate and was defeated. In 1998, the Christian Coali-
tion gave Goode a 75% rating in its annual scorecard for congressmen and
women.76 An opponent of school choice in the public sector, a recent issue of im-
portance to the Christian Coalition, he voted against laws to create scholarships
for students giving them choice over the schools they would attend. He also voted
to fund the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), another Christian Coali-
tion issue that was opposed due to the funding of obscene projects by the NEA.
Still, one reporter of the Daily Progressive (Charlottesville, Virginia), said that
“Virgil Goode . . . leans so far to the right it’s a marvel he can remain ambula-
tory.”77 In 1998, after voting with five fellow Democrats for President Clinton’s im-
peachment in the House, Goode left the Democratic party and declared himself
an independent.
Steve Largent (R-OK)
Congressman Largent was elected to the House in November 1994. He entered

politics with a huge advantage: name recognition. Largent was one of the greatest
football stars in the history of the National Football League (NFL). After playing
football as a collegian at the University of Tulsa, Largent played 14 years with the
Seattle Seahawks in the NFL. During his career (1977–1990), he set six NFL
records and was in the Pro Bowl (the NFL all-star game) seven times. In 1995, he
was given the highest honor accorded NFL players—he was inducted into the Pro
Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio.78
Largent first took office in December 1994, just weeks before the start of the
historic 104th Congress. He finished Senator Ernest Istook’s (R-OK) term after Is-
took took Senator David Boren’s (D-OK) seat in the Senate. Largent immediately
took an important post on the commerce committee. But his love of his fellow
man led him to look beyond the day-to-day in D.C. As what one New York Times
reporter called “the most ideologically pure of the conservative Republicans
elected to Congress in 1994,” Largent sought to activate his evangelical Christian
influence among his colleagues. He began a single “accountability session” in at-
tempting to change how Washington did its business. The “accountability ses-
sion” was for fellow congressional males to meet in the evenings and keep them-
selves pure and faithful to God, their families, and their country. Four other
accountability groups soon sprung up and a total of 25 congressmen were attend-
ing these sessions.79 The sessions were important to these men: “Several who at-
tend the sessions, which sometimes run as long as five hours, refer to them as the
single best thing they have done since arriving here, and the one thing on their
constantly changing schedules that can’t be canceled.” Largent understood the
need for male accountability in a city where leaders fall to sinful temptations daily.
As he stated, “I’m exposed to all the temptations. I don’t drink or smoke or take
drugs, obviously, but all the sexual stuff is hitting all my friends who are between
40 and 45. It seems like they’re all losing their minds over it, and I’m susceptible
too. I think the danger would be if I said I wasn’t.” Largent took it upon himself to
help his fellow colleagues in their “accountability sessions” to loosen up and not
America 101
take their official posts too seriously. He and fellow congressmen went to Orioles
games and movies for relaxation. Largent became a Christian as a high school stu-
dent. The product of a broken home, his father left his mother and she remarried
“an abusive alcholic.” He says, “when I heard the Gospel of Christ and he said
things like, ‘I will never leave you nor forsake you,’ that was enormously appeal-
ing to me.”80 It is important to note that Largent is the father of four children and
he has been married for almost 30 years.
Largent’s public speaking and leadership abilities are evident. His experience
on the playing field has given him a unique outlook on the political arena. He
stated, “Through my experience in athletics, having been in a lot of pressure situ-
ations, you learn that the best way to approach them is to be cool, calm and col-
lected as you can be.”81 He stands for his principles firmly. Those principles are
rooted in evangelical Christian ones. As he said to a group at Oklahoma Baptist
University in 1994 during his first campaign, “We need leaders who will not ask:
What is popular? What do focus groups say? What do the opinion polls say? We
need leaders who will ask: What is right?” Largent’s lead on such issues as the De-
fense of Marriage Act (DOMA) in 1997 (see below) and a number of abortion
bills have made him a leader among younger congressmen and women in the
GOP Congress. He has had the courage to state his beliefs unequivocally and
stand for what he felt was right: “Proverbs talks about a good name as more valu-
able than precious stones or silver. That’s really true. The way you gain a good
name is by the small decisions you make in your life every day of the year.”82 Lar-
gent continued to make a difference in Congress and as a leader who stands by
firm evangelical Christian principles.
Mike McIntyre (D-NC)
Congressman McIntyre, a lawyer from North Carolina’s seventh district, was

elected in November 1996 to serve in the House of Representatives. A devout con-
servative Presbyterian, McIntyre is an elder and deacon at the First Presbyterian
Church in Lumbarton, North Carolina. After a tough primary fight in 1996, he
emerged to defeat the Republican challenger. McIntyre stressed balancing the
budget, education, and job creation. Like Goode, he was placed on the House Ag-
riculture Committee, where he, too, could defend the interests of tobacco farmers.
He favored proposals to suppress underage smoking, but was opposed to regula-
tion of the tobacco industry.83 McIntyre also voted against partial-birth abortion,
he supported HR 31 (favoring placing the Decalogue in public buildings), and in
1998 he spoke to Dr. D. James Kennedy’s conference on reaffirming America’s
Christian heritage. Dr. Kennedy is a major figure in evangelical Christianity as the
head of the Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Dr.
Kennedy’s church is affiliated with the conservative evangelical Presbyterian
Church of America, as opposed to the larger mainstream Presbyterian Church,

USA. The Christian Coalition gave McIntyre a 50% mark on its 1998 voting
record in Congress and like Virgil Goode, he diverged from that organization in
the areas of school choice, funding the NEA, his opposition to a super-majority
for passing tax increases, and his support for a bill that benefited attorneys.84
JC Watts (R-OK)
Congressman Watts was first elected by the voters of Oklahoma’s fourth congres-
sional district on November 8, 1994, to the U.S. House of Representatives. At the
time, he was one of two African-American Republican congressmen in the House.
The 1994 election was an impressive one in Oklahoma for supporters of the
Christian Right. All five of the Republican congressmen (including Congressman
Largent—discussed above) and both U.S. senators were linked to the Christian
Right. The lone Democrat was a conservative one socially. As political scientists
Nancy L. Bednar and Allen D. Hertzke said, “Oklahoma, indeed, may offer the
ideal environment for Christian Right mobilization. A conservative Bible Belt
state, it gave Pat Robertson his largest primary vote (21%) in 1988. It still has a
huge Democratic edge in voter registration, but many of these Democrats are re-
ligious traditionalists and social conservatives. Christian Right mobilization,
therefore, had the potential to cut deeply into traditionally Democratic voting
habits, which is precisely what occurred.”85 In his first race Watts defeated Demo-
crat David Perryman. Watts was better organized and better funded, as the Chris-
tian Coalition targeted his race for success. The former president, George H.W.
Bush, was brought in to speak on Watts’s behalf during the campaign. “When
questioned about his conservative views, Watts’s response was that he was not a
conservative because he is a Republican, he is a conservative because he is a Chris-
tian.” Watts won, and on election night no alcohol was served at his watch party.
What’s more, at his party, his pastor gave an invocation after his win was declared.
For many of the evangelical candidates, including Largent and Watts, no events
were ever planned for Sunday during the 1994 campaign. Watts had said that that
day was a time for “worship and family.”86
In his 1998 reelection bid, Watts got 62% of the vote. Watts was born in Eu-
faula, Oklahoma in 1957. He was the fifth of six children. He attended the Univer-
sity of Oklahoma (OU) where he was a football star as the quarterback of Barry
Switzer’s high-powered wishbone system. In 1980 and 1981, he was the Most Valu-
able Player (MVP) in the Orange Bowl as the Sooners beat Florida State in both
games. With a journalism degree in hand from OU, he went to the Canadian
Football League for five years. In his first year, 1981, he was the MVP of the Grey
Cup, the equivalent of the NFL’s Super Bowl. From 1987 to 1994, he served as a
youth pastor at a Baptist church in Del City, Oklahoma. In 1990, he was elected
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to the Oklahoma State Corporation Commission. He served as chair of that en-

tity as well. That experience helped persuade him to seek higher elective office.87
As a Christian and African-American, Watts was an important spokesman for
the GOP. He sought to uphold the party of Lincoln’s defense of equality for all. He
attacked special privileges for various groups based on race or other characteristics.
He spoke on behalf of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, numerous “anti-drug
campaigns,” and he worked on the cause of orphans.88 “Pure religion and undefiled
before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their afflic-
tion, and to keep himself unspotted from the world” (James 1:27). Watts also came
to the defense of his own: Baptists. In December 1999, President Clinton’s spokes-
man Joe Lockhart issued a visceral attack on Baptists for trying to proselytize Mus-
lims and Hindus. Lockhart said, “I think the President has made very clear his view
from any quarter, no matter what quarter it comes from, his views on religious tol-
erance, and how one of the greatest challenges going into the next century is deal-
ing with intolerance, dealing with ethnic and religious hatred, and coming to grips
with the long held resentments between religions. So I think he’s been very clear in
his opposition, including the Southern Baptists, that perpetuate ancient religious
hatred.”89 The Baptist minister/congressman lashed back saying, “What makes it
even more disturbing is that in making these hateful remarks, Lockhart was sup-
posedly expressing the president’s views.” The irony is that Clinton himself grew up
in the Southern Baptist church. Lockhart’s caustic and inflammatory comments
caused the head of the Southern Baptist Convention, Paige Patterson, to remark,
“Apparently, because the president has very few convictions, he harbors deep re-
sentment against those who do.”90 As seen time and again, Watts championed the
Christian cause on Capitol Hill—whether battling the White House or standing
against various and powerful anti-Christian Right interests.
Watts, who won his fourth consecutive election to the US House in Novem-
ber 2000, continued to sit on major committees. In the 107th Congress (1999–
2000), he was the House Republican Conference chair, the fourth highest post in
the GOP-led Congress. He also served on the armed services committee, and the
morale, welfare, and recreational panel. His contributions to the congressional
agenda between 1995 and 2002 were very important and he showed the nation
that a diversity of young, middle-class voices are now found in America’s black
community. His voice happened to be a distinctly evangelical one that provided
leadership for Oklahoma, conservative African-Americans, and the nation.
Analysis: Evangelical Bipartisanship Across the Aisles?
It is interesting to see that issues of importance to evangelical Christians are re-
ceiving bipartisan support in Congress. American congresspersons who identify
with evangelical voters are saying that they can find agreement on the social and
religious issues while disagreeing on the “mainstream issues” such as education,
taxation, and various macroeconomic problems. Hence, the issues that divide
many politicians of an evangelical orientation are not the religious ones, but the
partisan political ones. Evangelical Christian politicians irrespective of party tend
to oppose abortion, oppose special legal provisions for homosexuals, favor bills re-
lated to Christian activity and the right to proclaim one’s Christianity publicly
whether by praying in public schools or placing the Decalogue in a public build-
ing. Perhaps some of the divisiveness in America’s legislature is not related to
Christian issues, but more explicitly partisan economic and other social issues
such as crime, smoking, educational standards, and so on.
The Religious Left in America Today
Much has been said in America’s media about the Religious Right, also known as
Christian Right; however, little is heard about the so-called “Religious Left.” It
was the clergy of the mainline denominations of Protestantism and the Catholic
church who for years backed the American Democratic party, despite the fact that
most studies show that mainline Protestants tended to vote Republican. With the
Christian Coalition on the rise after 1988, a number of clergy and Protestant or-
ganizations (primarily from the older, more established churches) began to ques-
tion the agenda of the Religious Right. In 1996, the Pew Resource Center claimed
that “the conservatism of white evangelicals is the most powerful political force in
the country today.”91 As a result, groups on the Religious Left mobilized to coun-
ter the influence both spiritually and politically of the Religious Right. These
groups were engaged in similar grassroots activism, just “on a smaller scale.”92
In 1996, the Christian Coalition distributed 33 million voter guides to educate
voters as to where political leaders stood on issues of importance to its member-
ship: pro-life on abortion, opposition to special rights for gays, tax cuts, and so
on. One group who might be called the Christian Coalition of the Left, is The
Interfaith Alliance (TIA). TIA claims that it sent out five million voter guides that
called for attention to issues such as Medicaid, Medicare, better water quality, and
federal funding of education for college students.93 The executive director of TIA
is Reverend Dr. J. Philip Wogaman. Wogaman is the senior pastor of Foundry
United Methodist Church in Washington, D.C., the church that President Bill
and Hillary Rodham Clinton attended during their eight years in Washington,
D.C. By 1996, TIA had 109 chapters. Like its conservative counterpart, the liberal
TIA was actively involved in influencing elections. In Oregon in 1996, TIA dis-
tributed what it called its “mainstream” voter guides to help Representative Ron
Wyden win the vacant U.S. Senate seat in Oregon. Interestingly, TIA was given
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“$25,000 in seed money in 1994 by the Democratic Congressional Campaign

Committee for aiding the party in electioneering.”94 TIA has attempted to yank
the family values carpet from under the Christian Coalition. Although not as
large or as powerful, TIA used longtime CBS newscaster Walter Cronkite to at-
tract membership. In a letter to prospective members, on TIA’s website, Cronkite
wrote a scathing attack on the Christian Coalition for TIA. In it he said that, “I
am absolutely sure that the Christian Coalition does not speak for the great ma-
jority of men and women of faith in this country. And I, for one, am not prepared
to stand by and permit [Pat] Robertson [founder of the Christian Coalition] and
his friends to get away with wrapping their harsh right wing views in the banner
of religious faith . . . will you take a stand? Will you help TIA in saying “No” to re-
ligion as a political cover—“No” to Pat Robertson—“No” to Ralph Reed—“No”
to Jerry Falwell?”95 Cronkite was “the most trusted journalist in America” until he
left CBS in 1981.96 Like its conservative counterpart, TIA sought to influence
Americans of various religions in order to reverse the stunning successes of the
GOP in 1994. Along with TIA, a number of voices are heard on the Religious
Left. One voice is that of the Reverend Jim Wallis.
Jim Wallis
Wallis, an evangelical Prostestant pastor, heads a congregation of 30 in a poor

neighborhood in Washington, D.C. just 16 blocks from the White House.
Wallis’s church, the Sojourners, is as much a social movement that has sought “to
serve as teachers, counselors, and social workers,” among its many jobs.97 Since
1981, Wallis has led the Sojourners and he believes that “ a renewal of the heart”
is needed to deal with the diverse and sundry problems facing America’s inner
city today. He believes churches can be a positive force for social change. “The
precedents, he writes, range from the churches of East Germany—which served
as incubators for much of the movement that ultimately brought down the Ber-
lin Wall—to the countless liberation movements and small countries in the
Third World, the dismantling of apartheid in South Africa and the recent truces
among some of the most vicious youth gangs in the United States.”98
In 1996, Wallis brought 200 clergy, theologians, and community activists to-
gether to counter what he saw as “ideological Christianity”—that is, the Religious
Right. The group was called “A Call to Renewal: Christians for a New Political Vi-
sion.” In commenting on Wallis and the impact of the Religious Left, Washington
Post columnist Colman McCarthy said, “Those on the religious left have been to a
barricade or two as well as more than a few jail cells and have moved the country
closer to moral politics based on biblical standards of peace and justice.”99 Like fel-
low evangelicals on the Religious Left, Wallis believes the politicization of Christi-
anity is destructive. A fellow “dissident evangelical,” Tony Campolo, agrees.
Dr. Tony Campolo
Campolo, an American Baptist Church USA minister, is a professor of sociology

at Eastern College in St. Davids, Pennsylvania, where he has taught since 1965.
Campolo got his bachelor’s degree at Eastern and a doctorate from Temple Uni-
versity. He has authored 25 books and founded the Evangelical Association for the
Promotion of Education, which has attempted to bring medical, educational, and
other humanitarian relief to a number of developing countries. As a close friend
and religious advisor to President Clinton, Campolo helped the president’s
agenda on race relations by authoring opinion pieces on the subject. Campolo
also counseled the president after the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Campolo gives
300 to 400 public talks a year domestically and abroad.100
As a leading critic of the Religious Right, Campolo has said that “Jesus is nei-
ther Democrat or a Republican; he embraces neither the Contract with America
nor the platform of the Democratic Party.” Despite the years of decline in mainline
churches, Campolo remains optimistic about the future of many older Protestant
churches. “I find that mainline churches steadily are becoming increasingly wholis-
tic and that evangelicals who aren’t part of the Religious Right are finding them-
selves more and more at home in those churches.”101 The issues that impact the Re-
ligious Left according to Campolo are civil rights issues such as income equity for
poor ethnic minorities. He argues that “we cannot deal with race relations without
dealing with poverty.”102 He cites smoking and gambling as distinct evils as much as
other higher profile moral issues such as abortion. He admits that the abortion issue
is troublesome and that President Clinton’s veto of a partial-birth abortion bill
upset him. He also believes that the Democratic Party’s decision to exclude a speech
by pro-life Democratic governor Paul Casey of Pennsylvania at the party’s 1996 na-
tional convention was unfair and sent a less-than-inclusive message to voters.103
The two main areas where Campolo’s views, and perhaps the bulk of those on
the Religious Left, diverge from evangelicals on the right side of the political spec-
trum are gay rights and the welfare state. Regarding the former, Campolo says, “I
am worried that there are referendums all across the country that are aimed at lim-
iting what I consider to be the legitimate rights of gays.” Countering Campolo’s
views on gay rights, Ralph Reed believes that granting special civil rights protec-
tion to gays based on sexual preference is a “Pandora’s Box.” He adds, “does a sa-
domasochist, a polygamist, or an adulterer have the same rights?”104
Evangelical Christianity and Its Influence in Politics in America Today
Evangelical Christians have continued to make a difference in American politics

at local, state, and national levels. For conservative Christians, the symbolic value
America 107
of Christianity is important. Much like the American presidency, Christianity is

powerful both in the realm of Holy Ghost–inspired action and in terms of the
message avowed Christian politicians send their communities. For example, in
Ashland, Missouri, a small town about 10 miles north of the state’s capital, Jeffer-
son City, the board of alderman voted on November 14, 2000, to begin all meet-
ings with prayer and the Pledge of Allegiance. The late alderman Raymond Bade,
who moved to open meetings with prayer, said, “I am very concerned of our na-
tion being a Christian nation. It was formed on Christian principles, and I would
like to keep it that way. I want to uphold the Christian faith that the first Congress
built this nation on. I want to stand up for my Christian faith, and this is an op-
portunity to do it.”105
The Supreme Court affirmed legislative prayer in 1983 in Marsh v. Chambers.
That case legally legitimated prayer before the Nebraska state legislature. In that
case, Chief Justice Warren Burger said prayer was “simply a tolerable acknowl-
edgement of beliefs widely held among the people.” Ashland’s city administrator,
Ken Eftink, stated he was inviting local churches to give the invocation prior to
city council sessions.106
In other venues, prayer was an important topic. In Virginia, a U.S. District
Court judge ruled that a daily minute of silence in public schools was not uncon-
stitutional. According to Judge Claude M. Hilton, “the Commonwealth’s daily
observance of one minute of silence act is constitutional, the act was enacted for
a secular purpose, does not advance or inhibit religion, nor is there excessive en-
tanglement with religion.” Predictably, the ACLU, formed in 1925 to protect the
civil rights of blacks, challenged the law on a moment of silence on behalf of nine
students in Virginia’s public school system, saying the law abridged the U.S.
Constitution’s First Amendment Establishment Clause. The ACLU argued that
the Virginia law was akin to the Alabama law that had been struck down by the
U.S. High Court in Wallace v. Jafree (1984). In that case the Alabama law “men-
tioned prayer.” Judge Hilton did not agree. He believed Virginia legislators
“wanted to give students a chance to collect their thoughts and gather themselves
for the learning day ahead.” On Monday, October 29, 2001, the Supreme Court
upheld Virginia’s moment of silence as constitutional.107 The battle over a mo-
ment of silence and prayer in schools in Virginia seemed to fall in line with the
Clinton administration’s views. In the wake of the crushing 1994 loss of Con-
gress, Clinton announced his acceptance of a moment of silence in public
schools for two reasons: to appear to move toward the center politically and to
stave off calls from Republicans in Congress for a school prayer amendment to
the Constitution.
In May 1995, Speaker Gingrich, Senator Phil Gramm (R-TX), and the Chris-
tian Coalition’s Reed announced a newly minted “Contract with the American
Family.” The contract, which supplemented the 1994 “Contract with America,”
which was more explicitly “economic,” sought to identify ten social goals for
Congress and families in the United States. One of the new contract’s provisions
was the “Religious Equality Amendment,” which would safeguard religious
speech in schools. Jay Sekulow, general counsel of the American Center for Law
and Justice (founded by Pat Robertson in 1991) said, “School administrators all
over the country are hostile to Christian students’ exercising their rights.” Chris-
tian school prayer advocates had won victories in two U.S. Supreme Court deci-
sions: Board of Education of Westside Community Schools v. Mergens (1990) and
Lamb’s Chapel v. Center Moriches Union Free School District (1993). In these cases
the Supreme Court upheld the Equal Access Act (EAA of 1984) which mandates
public schools to let all groups, including Christian and other religious ones, have
access to public school facilities. The court recognized the fact that students in
those school districts had had their religious speech rights abridged because they
were not given equal access to school facilities under the EAA. The court ruled in
those cases that the EAA applied to both nonreligious and religious groups as
well.108
In July 1995, Clinton announced a memorandum on religious freedom. His
administration believed students in public schools had: 1) the right to pray, read
Bibles and other religious materials, and discuss religion as long as it did not dis-
rupt other school activities; 2) the right to pray when not taking part in other
school activities; 3) the right to participate in religious clubs before and after
school just like other co- and extracurricular groups; 4) the right of religious
groups to use school facilities like other non-curricular groups; and 5) students
had the right to pray and state their beliefs publicly without the encouragement
or discouragement from teachers and administrators. Clinton asked his attorney
general, Janet Reno, and his education secretary, Richard Riley, to implement
the memo as federal policy. Prior to the GOP victory in 1994, the battle for
prayer in schools had taken some interesting twists. Since outlawing prayer in
schools in Engle v. Vitale (1962), the U.S. High Court had continued to view
prayer in schools as a violation of the Establishment Clause. In 1992, in the case
of Lee v. Weisman, the court ended prayer at school graduations by saying school
officials could not invite clergy to deliver graduation prayers because it consti-
tuted an endorsement of religion by a public entity. However, in the same year,
in Jones v. Clear Creek Independent School District, a federal appeals court in
Texas said a student-led prayer was constitutionally valid at graduation ceremo-
nies. The battle over prayer in public school-related environments continues to
go on. In 2000, the U.S. High Court rejected voluntary student-led prayer at
high school football games by a 6–3 vote in Santa Fe v. Doe. Interestingly, in a
November 1994 CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll, 73% of Americans supported a
constitutional amendment for prayer in school. This was up from 68% in
1987.109
America 109
Abortion: The Changing Tide?
In the area of abortion, some positive developments occurred in the 1990s. De-
spite the fact that 35 million abortions were performed between 1973 and 1999
since the invidious Roe v. Wade decision made abortion-on-demand the law of the
land, abortions in the United States dropped between 1992 and 1996. The rate of
abortions per 1,000 women dropped from 25.9% to 22.9%.110 The evangelical
Christian-sponsored abstinence movement began taking hold in the 1990s in the
United States. The GOP-led congress created the Title V program to give $50
million a year to the states to start abstinence education programs in schools and
other venues. “The birthrate among teen girls declined from 6.2 percent in 1991 to
less than 5 percent in 1999, the lowest in 60 years.” As abortion dropped among
teens, the rate of abstinence among teens rose.111
In the area of partial-birth abortions, the Republican-controlled congress
twice sent President Clinton a ban on the procedure. Clinton vetoed both laws.
Even pro-choice U.S. Senator Pat Moynihan (D-NY), who was replaced by
Clinton’s wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton, in 2001, likened the procedure to “infan-
ticide.”112 Other Democrats agreed with Moynihan. In Iowa, the state’s pro-choice
governor, Tom Vilsack, announced during his election campaign in 1998 that he
would support a ban on partial-birth abortion if the state’s legislature voted one
into law. In Missouri, the Democratic governor, the late Mel Carnahan, like Clin-
ton, twice vetoed partial-birth abortion bans sent to him by a Democratic-
controlled legislature in the late 1990s. In 1999, the Missouri General Assembly
overrode Carnahan’s veto and made the ban law. In an appeal, St. Louis Circuit
court judge Robert Dierker, Jr., upheld the Missouri infanticide law in December
2000, saying that the ban was legal, but that other types of abortions were not
outlawed as a result of the law. Dierker said the Missouri law was not as sweeping
as the Nebraska law struck down in a 5–4 verdict by the U.S. High Court in June
2000 in the case of Stenberg v. Carhart.113 Clearly, evangelicals were making a dif-
ference in the area of abortion nationwide at the dawn of the twenty-first century.
Congress and the Defense of Marriage Act
In 1997, the GOP-led Congress passed an historical piece of legislation known as

the “Defense of Marriage Act” (DOMA). The DOMA was aimed at keeping
marriage a traditional and sacred union between a husband and wife. As Adam
stated at the onset of the Book of Genesis, which subsequently became the moral
and legal foundation of marriage in all societies worldwide (with the exception
of some polygamous societies historically), “Therefore shall a man leave his fa-
ther and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh”
(Gen. 2:24). When homosexuals began demanding same-sex marriages in the

1990s, Congress acted to prevent such marriages from occurring. Representative
Largent took the lead in securing the legislation in protecting the time-honored
and traditional marriage arrangement known since the dawn of mankind. Presi-
dent Clinton quietly signed the law, which he tepidly supported, in the middle
of the night to keep the media and gay rights groups from lambasting him live on
the nation’s cable and network news channels, which by and large were opposed
to the initiative.
In the law, Congress stipulated that marriage could only take place between a
male and female and that it would be up to the states to define the legal require-
ments of marriage. Moreover, Congress empowered the states to pass similar
DOMA laws in order to prevent homosexuals form marrying in one state and
seeking recognition of their marriage in other states. In the late 1990s, the Hawaii
Supreme Court said same-sex marriage was legal, and Christian conservatives
worried that gay and lesbian “unions would then be valid in every state, because of
the ‘full-faith and credit’ clause in the U.S. Constitution, which requires states to
honor contracts made in other locations unless they are specifically prohibited.”114
In November 1998, Hawaiians banned gay marriage via referendum, effectively
overturning the state’s high court decision.115 In April 2000, a form of gay mar-
riage, called “civil unions,” was passed by the Vermont Democratic-controlled
legislature, signed by the state’s Democratic governor, Howard Dean, and legally
approved by that state’s supreme court.116 To keep so-called “domestic partners”
from achieving marital status, more than half the states had DOMA-type laws by
late 1997.117 Again, homosexuality, which most in the evangelical community
deemed to be immoral (see Lev. 18:22, 20:13; Rom. 1:27, and 1 Cor. 6:9), was at
the center of a number of issues that were very divisive in American politics in the
1990s and into the 2000 election campaign.
Congress and Religious Freedom: Christianity Championed
In 1997, at the start of its second straight legislative session, the majority Republi-
cans continued to proclaim the importance of religious issues for both substantive
and symbolic purposes. After attempting to pass a constitutional amendment that
would allow prayer in schools in the 104th Congress, the 105th Congress went to
work on another major issue facing it: religious persecution (see chapter 6 for
more on Christian persecution around the world). “[Speaker] Gingrich . . . said
the protection of religious freedom would be ‘one of the top priorities’ for Repub-
licans this year.” With that pronouncement, the Republican majority in Congress
passed legislation that imposed economic sanctions on Russia if its legislature, the
Duma, passed a law that would “stamp out religious groups not recognized in
America 111
Soviet times”118 (see chapter 5 for further details on this issue and Russian politics
in general). It was clear that defending Christianity was a key issue to many Re-
publicans and Democrats alike in the U.S. House of Representatives. By 2001,
America had a president deeply concerned about the persecution of Christians.
His new national security advisor, political scientist Condoleeza Rice, said, “I am
deeply interested in the persecuted abroad . . . After all, I am a Christian too.”
Both Rice, the former Stanford University provost, who had helped poor youths
while living in Palo Alto, California, during her days at Stanford, and Secretary of
State Colin Powell, the former chairman of the joint chiefs under both presidents
George H.W. Bush and Clinton, as well as national security adviser under Presi-
dent Reagan, were interested in issues confronting people of faith abroad. General
Powell stated that he wanted to work with evangelicals in various “faith-based in-
itiatives” when he said: “I’m on your side . . . Let’s work together.”119
The Debate on Posting the Ten Commandments in Public Places
The debate over posting the Decalogue became contentious across the nation in
many states and on Capitol Hill in the late 1990s. In 1997, the House had debated
a resolution (HR 31) which called for a public display of the Ten Commandments
in public buildings. On March 5, 1997, in a role call vote, the resolution passed by
a vote of 295–125. The resolution, sponsored by Robert Aderholt (R-AL), was in
response to the firestorm that evolved when a circuit court judge directed his fel-
low Alabama circuit court judge Roy Moore to remove the Ten Commandments
from his courtroom. Moore refused and the case went to the Alabama Supreme
Court. In the debate over whether the Decalogue should be allowed in public
buildings Donald Manzullo (R-IL) said, “Here we are in America today at this
point in history where we have to defend the posting of the Ten Commandments
on the wall of the chambers of a judge who looks upon those Ten Command-
ments in the historical aspect that this is the basis of all our laws. After all, the rea-
son it is against the law to steal is that this was listed in the Ten Commandments.
Thou shall not steal.”120 Representative Joe Scarborough (R-FL) echoed
Manzullo’s sentiments. Both spoke for the 216 Republicans and 79 Democrats
who voted for the resolution. Scarborough said:
Even though the radicals of the past 30 years do not like to admit it . . . the Ten Com-
mandments are a great part of our American heritage. In fact the very radicals who claim
to try to tear God out of our public life, out of our courtrooms, out of our schools, any
mentioning of it at all, who want to censor God and censor those who believe in the im-
portance of faith and this country’s destiny, they claim to do it because they want to pro-
tect the Constitution, and yet the father of the Constitution, James Madison, stated while
he was drafting the Constitution: “We have staked the entire future of the American

civilization not upon the power of government, but upon the capacity of the individual to
govern himself, to control himself and to sustain himself according to the Ten Com-
mandments of God.”121
Representative Barney Frank (D-MA) said of HR 31, “It is simply inappropriate

constitutionally in this country to tell people that the price of justice in Alabama or
anywhere else is to be acknowledging the superiority of two religions over others.”122
Although national political leaders, such as those found in the Republican-led
Congress, gave their stamp of approval to the Decalogue hanging in public build-
ings, legal battles continued at the state and local levels. In Kentucky, officials
from Pulaski and McCreary counties, and school officials from the Harlan
County public schools, were taken to court by the ACLU in November 1999 for
displaying the Ten Commandments. In May 2000, U.S. district judge Jennifer
Coffman said the displays endorsed religion and violated the Establishment
Clause. However, the Harlan County School board placed new displays of the
Decalogue with other historical documents in the school’s administrative office.
McCreary and Pulaski counties responded similiarly. On December 7, 2000, the
ACLU asked Judge Coffman to hold the two counties and the school district in
contempt of court. The public institutions were setting themselves up for a legal
showdown with the judge: “The new displays in Pulaski and McCreary counties
include many of the same documents as before, although they are no longer short-
ened to only their religious references. Also, the new displays include an explana-
tion of the role the Ten Commandments and eight other documents on the walls
played ‘in the foundation of our system of government.’”123 In a similar struggle,
Judge Roy Moore took on the ACLU and the U.S. federal courts in attempting to
defend the symbolic and religious importance of the Decalogue in public places in
his state of Alabama where he was a state circuit judge.
Judge Roy Moore
Judge Moore captured the evangelical Christian community’s collective heart in

1997 as he stood firm in his defense of free exercise of religion and his right to post
the Ten Commandments in his circuit court room in Gadsden, Alabama. Moore
was a little-known judge who got national attention when he refused to remove
the homemade tablets symbolizing the Ten Commandments in 1994 when the
ACLU came after him. Moore made the Decalogue in 1980, inspired by a Ten
Commandments plaque in his mother’s home. After purchasing a wood-burning
kit, he etched the commandments into the tablet’s “pages” and inscribed “The
Law” on the front cover and he etched a picture of Moses coming down from
Mount Sinai with the rock tablets of the law that God had given him.124
America 113
Moore’s is a fascinating story 0f how one man challenged the system in order
to stand for his principles. Moore grew up in Etowah County, Alabama, located
northeast of Birmingham. He spent part of his youth in Texas and Pennsylvania.
In 1965, he was Etowah High School’s student body president. Upon graduation
from high school, he matriculated at West Point. Four years later he graduated
640 in a class of 800. At West Point, he participated on the Academy’s gymnastics
team. His hard work paid off. By his senior year, he finally earned a varsity letter
in the sport. Showing his persistence, Moore proved that hard work indeed pays.
After a five-year military commitment, which included a tour of duty in Vietnam,
Moore left the armed services in 1974 and enrolled in the law school at the Uni-
versity of Alabama. After graduating in 1977, he came back to Etowah county to
practice law. He served as deputy district attorney and then in 1982 ran for a cir-
cuit judge post as a Democrat. Moore lost in the primary and left Alabama for
two years. During that time, he practiced kickboxing and herded cattle in Austra-
lia. He returned to Alabama in 1984 and practiced law privately in Gadsden. In
1986, he lost another election for Etowah’s district attorney position. Like Abra-
ham Lincoln, Moore was learning to cope with failed political battles, while ad-
hering to the principles that guided him. Between 1986 and 1992, Moore practiced
law. In 1992, he was appointed by Governor Guy Hunt to the circuit court judge-
ship after an incumbent died. “His Ten Commandments plaque—which had
been hanging in his law office—went with him to the courthouse.”125
The controversy surrounding Moore began in 1994 when the ACLU went to
federal district court to remove Moore’s Decalogue. It also sought to keep juries in
Moore’s courtroom from opening with prayers. Eventually, a federal judge stated
that the ACLU could not sue because its lawyers would not be on juries in Etowah
County. The federal court said only lawyers who came before Moore’s court regu-
larly could sue Moore’s court. At the same time, the Alabama governor, Fob
James, sued to move the case from federal to state court. As the case became fa-
mous, so did Moore.126 The Alabama state legislature passed resolutions in May
1995 supporting him and his cause. A statewide poll, conducted in Alabama in
March 1997 by the Mobile Register and the University of South Alabama, found
that 88% agreed with his stance on posting the Decalogue in his courtroom. Sim-
ilarly, a national poll, conducted in July 1997 by the Birmingham Post-Herald and
Ohio University found that 64% of the country agreed with him, and 72% in the
South.127
Moore’s passionate defense of the Ten Commandments and his challenge to
the American political establishment on church and state separation was a clarion
call to many on the evangelical right. As Moore said, “I absolutely do not believe
that government should tell you who you have to worship or what you have to
worship. But to acknowledge the foundation of our country is never a violation of
the First Amendment.”128 Moore, like Lincoln, eventually won a major election,
when in the Fall 2000 election cycle he was elected to be the new supreme court
chief justice of the state of Alabama.129 The people of Alabama supported him and
many Americans did likewise, including the Republican Congress, in standing for
God’s eternal law: the Ten Commandments.
Conclusion
Evangelical Christianity’s impact on American politics at the dawn of the new

millennium is pronounced. From battles in courts over religious freedom to con-
tinued conflicts over moral issues with serious economic ramifications (from gam-
bling to abortion to pornography), the Christian Left and the Christian Right
continue to wage war. Christian psychologist Dr. James Dobson has said, time
and again, Americans are in the midst of a “cultural war” over values and the
Christian Right argues that the Judeo-Christian foundations of the society are at
stake. Sociologist James Davison Hunter has discussed the cultural battles over
family, educational issues, and art in a provocative book. As Hunter notes, much
of the cultural political battle today between groups in America stems from reli-
gious segmentation in the nineteenth century and back to early days of the Amer-
ican republic.130 From Attorney General Ashcroft to President Clinton’s spiritual
adviser Campolo, we see prominent Christians weighing into the cultural fray on
various sides of the ideological spectrum. What’s more, the GOP Congress has
had a major impact on placing important symbolic, as well as tangible, legislation
before the nation. Christian politicians in the American states and locales have
followed the congressional lead, and evangelicals continue to impact their respec-
tive levels of government in important ways.
 
Russia and the Soviet Successor States
Life Without and with God
Psalm 9:17—The wicked shall be turned into hell, and all the nations that forget God.
The End of Communism: Ideological and Spiritual Vacuums
November 9, 1989, is a date that will be remembered for generations in Europe

and the world. On that day the Berlin Wall collapsed, and with it came the begin-
ning of the end of a repressive system of governance. As a teaching assistant in
graduate school at the time, I remember telling my students that we would be
talking about that moment for at least 20 years. In many ways, the collapse of the
Berlin Wall symbolized a number of things. First, it symbolized the beginning of
the end of a hegemonic worldview: Soviet communism. Second, it symbolized the
dawning of a new era: the post–Cold War age. Both are still undefined in many
respects. Finally, it symbolized the creation of an ideological vacuum that has been
filled by various ideological and spiritual forces. Although I am not saying that
communism is completely dead or that the West categorically triumphed over
communism (three rigid communist regimes remain in Cuba, China, and North
Korea, and even the state capitalist French government at the dawn of the new
millennium had communist ministers in it), the real advent of a new era began
when the Soviet Union collapsed on Christmas Day 1991. This is the benchmark
from which change in world politics was measured as the new post–Cold War
world order emerged in 1992.
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Communism and the Soviet System
The Soviet Union1 emerged from Russia’s Bolshevik Revolution in 1917. With its
charismatic leaders, the Russian, Vladimir Ilych Lenin (born Vladimir Ulaya-
nov), the Russian Jew, Leon Trotsky (born Lev Bronstein), and the Georgian, Jo-
seph Stalin (born Iosef Djugashvili), the direction of politics during the Revolu-
tion in Russia took numerous twists and turns. Lenin led a small faction of
Marxists, the Bolsheviks,2 and used a revised theory of applied authoritarian so-
cialism to carry out his Marxist revolution in Russia. As a result, Karl Marx’s
ideas were realized in part, although the Leninist application of Marx’s views was
never really pure in its original form.3 Marx believed that a socialist workers’ rev-
olution would lead to communism, a sort of utopian state that would see work-
ers control the means of production, and eventually the state would “wither
away” and each worker would take as little as he or she needed and give as much
as he or she could to benefit the whole. As a result, Marx’s views take on a quasi-
spiritual or mystical quality in the sense that his normative ends were not
grounded in any empirical reality, but rather on the faith in the correctness of his
philosophy. Religious studies scholar Bill Young argues correctly that commu-
nism is, in itself, a kind of religion. His argument is based on the assumption that
worldviews and religious beliefs are based on a perception of “ultimacy” that
drive individuals to seek for ends beyond the temporal. He believes that commu-
nist philosophy holds true for this assumption. In that sense, Marx’s views are,
more or less, another kind of religion.4
During the awkward period of “Dual Power,” from February to December
1917, both the Russian Duma, the nation’s legislature, and the Petrograd (then re-
named Leningrad after the Revolution—known today as St. Petersburg) Soviet-
controlled government ruled jointly. Then Lenin’s Bolsheviks seized power. The
Bolsheviks, however, failed to win a majority in the Duma elections of December
1917, and in January 1918, on Lenin’s orders, the Bolsheviks used force to compel
the Duma’s closure on its opening day, thereby initiating the Russian civil war.
Lenin’s “Reds” took over most of the central parts of the country, while the
“Whites” tried to maintain control of the peripheral regions of Russia’s ancient
empire. Under Lenin, most of Russia was communized during the 1918–1920 pe-
riod. His economic policy, known as War Communism, led to nationalization of
all industry, grain requisitioning, forced land annexation from Russia’s peasants,
who made up 80% of the country’s population, and the bureaucratization of the
political system.5
With the consolidation of Red power, the creation of the Union of Soviet
Socialist Republics (USSR), and control of the Communist Party of the Soviet
Union (CPSU) in place by 1921, Soviet society underwent its next transforma-
tion in areas of social and cultural change not seen in any other society up to that
Russia and the Soviet Successor States 117
point. First, the official atheistic dogma of the regime, a vestige of Marxist the-
ory, was applied in a concise and all-encompassing manner. The Kievan Rus
princes had declared Orthodox Christianity the Russian national religion in ..
988 (only 106 years after the Russian state was founded).6 That religion and its
official position in the society were wiped out in the span of a few short years as
the Bolsheviks took power. Second, the party took absolute control of the state
and society. Third, nationalization of industry continued. Fourth, the Soviet
government established a youth organization—the Komsomol. Fifth, education
was controlled by the state and revamped to reflect the party’s doctrinaire
Marxist-Leninist orientation. Finally, the Bolsheviks under Lenin attempted to
make marriage superfluous.7 However, some have argued that the Soviets did not
want marriage to end, but rather to see it removed “from the Orthodox Church’s
clutches.”8
As historian Richard Pipes has shown in his translation of politburo docu-
ments from the secret Soviet archives, Lenin gave orders to confiscate Russian Or-
thodox Church property in order to benefit from the wealth of the churches, and
he also sought to silence all clerical opposition immediately after the Bolsheviks
won the civil war. Lenin ordered the expropriation of church lands and valuables.
He also ordered priests to be shot if they did not conform to the government’s de-
mands. From Lenin’s perspective, liquidating Orthodox priests would serve the
Revolution better in the long run.9
The Bolshevik Assault on the Russian Orthodox Church
The Bolsheviks disestablished the Russian Orthodox Church in January 1918, de-
claring Russia free of religious indoctrination. In what appeared to be a tolerant
edict advocating the separation of church and state, Lenin’s decree, entitled “On
Separation of Church from the State and Schools from the Church,” called for
freedom of worship and conscience in order to loosen the Orthodox Church’s
hold as the spiritual arbiter of the state. As a result, “the Bolsheviks promoted
schisms among faiths, inflamed hostilities among various groups of officiating
priests, and desecrated and destroyed thousands of churches, mosques, and syn-
agogues, many of which represented unique architectural achievements.”10 Dur-
ing the Russian civil war, “Persecutions and killings of priests, lootings and dese-
crations of churches, liquidations of monastaries all carried out by, or at least with
the approval of, local authorities were commonplace,” according to historian
Lewis H. Siegelbaum.11 The Bolsheviks killed an estimated 10,000 Orthodox
Church priests alone in the years immediately following the November 1917 Rev-
olution.12 One Russian official during the Boris Yeltsin years has placed the abuses
of Soviet power in its relationship to churches at mind-boggling levels. “Accord-

ing to incomplete data, during the years of Soviet power [(1917–1991)] over
500,000 priests were repressed and over 200,000 were killed.”13 Lenin’s brutal
campaign against the church’s clergy also affected property. It is estimated that dis-
solving monasteries and seizing assets earned the Bolshevik regime over seven bil-
lion rubles.14 In Moscow alone in the early 1920s, at Lenin’s command, nearly 95%
of the churches were leveled.15
With official crackdowns on Orthodox prelates, a schism between clerical fac-
tions within the state church manifested itself fully by 1922. Cheka, the Russian
secret police and forerunner to the notorious KGB, placed Father Tikhon, the
head of the Russian Orthodox Church, under house arrest. This helped more rad-
ical clergy, who agreed with much of the aims of the Bolsheviks’ Revolution, to
start the Living Church movement. The movement originally wanted to liberalize
the Orthodox Church and weaken the resolve of the monks and bishops who con-
trolled the Church, but the Bolsheviks used the movement to divide and conquer
both factions within the Orthodox Church. The manipulation of the state church
saw an uneasy cohabitation evolve between the Church and the Bolshevik regime
by 1927. At the same time, the regime set in motion groups trained in anti-
Christian propaganda to further the official aims of the atheist government. For
example, the Komsomol’s January 6, 192316 pseudo-Christmas celebration “was a
carnivalesque mockery of the religious holiday” which included workers and stu-
dents dressed in clown costumes, mocking the great Christian holy day and holi-
day, and effigies of Jesus and other figures affiliated with Christianity were ridi-
culed openly and burned.17 The persecution of Orthodox priests and others
affiliated with the state church foreboded many terrible things to come from the
authoritarian communist state in Russia. The truth of the psalmist applies to the
leadership that hijacked the peoples of a poor, agrarian state in 1917: “The fool
hath said in his heart, There is no God . . .” (Psalm 14:1).
As Lenin’s New Economic Policy (NEP) evolved between 1921 and 1927, the
regime was forced to change its approach to economics, culture, and society. In-
stead of an absolute communization of the economy, a mixed economic system
was put into effect. In this system, the “commanding heights” of the economy, to
quote Lenin, were kept in the nation’s hands but some parts of the smaller, nonin-
dustrial aspects of the economy were reprivatized, including much of the agricul-
tural economy. By 1926, marriage conventions were returning to their normal pre-
Revolutionary ways, and by the early Stalinist period secularization continued,
but degenderization of Soviet society was ending. By the 1940s, during the Great
Patriotic War, the churches were reopened to allow Russians to regain hope from
the nation’s ancient institution, the state Orthodox Church, in order to restore
faith in the communist state’s fight against the Axis powers.18
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The Legacy of Stalinism and Its Effect on the System
Stalin consolidated power in the USSR as its totalitarian dictator by roughly 1927.
Prior to his ascendency to the position of supreme leader of the communist state,
he went from being Lenin’s Bolshevik Revolutionary comrade to first general sec-
retary of the CPSU. As head of the CPSU, he used his organizational, strategic,
and manipulative skills to forge control over the party, which after 1921 became
stronger vis-à-vis the state. Stalin, although an enigma to many in the West dur-
ing his years of power, was known for his ruthless, Machiavellian personality. The
characteristics of the Stalinist system of Soviet politics included:
• A regimented and authoritarian command economic system. After 1927,
and the end of the NEP, Stalin reversed his original support of the NEP’s poli-
cies and he began to advocate collectivization of agriculture and nationaliza-
tion of industry. Stalin’s approach to collectivization of agriculture was all-
encompassing.19 Historian Donald W. Treadgold states: “On January 20, 1930,
there were slightly over four million peasant families in collective farms, most
of them having been taken during the previous year or two. By March 1 of the
same year the number had risen to over fourteen million—fifty-five per cent of
all peasant families.”20 The results were similar in industry, as Stalin commu-
nized the entire society. From small shopkeeper to miner, the “Man of Steel”
controlled all aspects of the economy.
• The use of coercion and terror to create a repressive police state. Of course,
these tactics had been used by Bolsheviks to silence their opponents, as seen in
the case of the state church, but Stalin took repression and terror to new heights.
He attacked the CPSU. Of the 2,000 delegates to the CPSU’s seventeenth party
congress in 1934, only 59 were present at the next party congress in 1939. Of the
149 members of the party’s prestigious central committee (much like Congress
in the American political system) that were elected in 1934, 98 were executed by
1939. What would it be like to have two-thirds of the American Congress liqui-
dated, via the bullet not the ballot, in a five-year period? What’s more, scholars
estimate that from 1934–1941, the era of the Great Terror, that anywhere from 12
to 20 million people were arrested and/or executed under Stalin.21
• The deification of the leader in a literal “personality cult” despite the fact
that Lenin had given orders to the politburo not to venerate him above the
general goals of the Revolution. Stalin lionized Lenin in order to legitimate his
own claims to power and keep others in the politburo from challenging him
for the leadership of the communist state.
• A persistent program of mind control within the state that utilized propa-
ganda and other means to manipulate its citizens was a staple of Bolshevik and
Stalinist Russia.
one line short

• A society fully mobilized for socialism and war.

• A system that thrived on nationalism to legitimate itself.22 This is ironic
given the fact that the Soviet state was to be an internationalist workers’ state.
The glorification of national identity was not part of the Marxist equation. The
nation was a bourgeois construct that artificially got citizens to avoid the real
nature of problems facing them, which were not nationalistic, but rather, eco-
nomic, according to Marxist-Leninist dogma. When Stalin developed his “so-
cialism within one nation” policy, he began to jettison the internationalism of
Marxist political development and embrace old-fashioned Russian nationalism
to mobilize the masses in the USSR. Ironically, the great Russian dictator used
Russian nationalism to his advantage. Many forget that Stalin was not Russian,
but Georgian by birth.
From a Christian standpoint, the Bolshevik experiment was an attack on the
institutions of church, family, and society in Russia. It had many symbolic ramifi-
cations in the West. The secularization of any society in history, as in Soviet Rus-
sia, led to a massive political and social paradigm shift. This shift saw the end of a
society that was rooted in an agrarian, developing economic system, with a peas-
ant class that was beholden to the Orthodox Church for guidance. The Bolshe-
viks hoped to secularize the society and erase the spiritual reliance by Russians on
the Church itself. Although the transition, in reality, saw one absolutist govern-
ment under the czars, replaced by another absolutist government under the Reds,
the effect on Christianity was pronounced. This type of shift is not altogether dif-
ferent from the shift many academicians have described in the last decade of the
twentieth century as the move into a “Post-Christian” age, where governments
and various social and cultural elites believe that God and the things of His realm
have no place in the developments of twenty-first century society.
Christianity in Post-Communist Russia
Between 1990 and 1996, the number of registered organizations like Christian
churches grew in Russia from 5,500 to 13,000. According to Andrei Oskarovich
Protopopov, President Boris Yeltsin’s advisor on religious affairs, Russia had
around 20,000 religious congregations, with the lion’s share of them Christian.
From 1990, the number of denominations rose from 20 to over 60 in Russia’s
Christian community alone. As the new millennium arrived, the historical Rus-
sian Orthodox Church had 75% of all Christian believers in the country.23
Toward the end of the Soviet Union, official state atheism began giving way
to a new relationship between church and state. The amazing transformation was
originally spurred on by glasnost (openness) under Mikhail Gorbachev after 1986
and accelerated following the collapse of the Soviet Union on December 25, 1991.
Leadership in the USSR, which for years was qualified with official atheism for all
leaders, began under Gorbachev to acknowledge spirituality and its importance to
the average Russian, especially the peasant. Gorbachev, who was an avowed athe-
ist when he took the mantle of Soviet leadership, would often tell of his mother’s
strong Christian beliefs when meeting with high profile religious leaders. He re-
mained an atheist throughout his tenure as leader in Russia. Gorbachev’s effect on
religious liberalization cannot be underestimated. A symbolic victory for defend-
ers of the church took place in Russia in 1988, when the Russian Orthodox
Church’s leader, Patriarch Pimen, met with Gorbachev. It was the first meeting
between a Soviet leader and the top Church official since World War II. More-
over, the opening of churches began to occur all over Russia. In the following two
years, 2,000 churches affiliated with the state church opened in Russia. Eighteen
hundred of these were older ones reopened after being closed for years due to state
repression. In 1988, the Soviet state saw fit to return to the Church important rel-
ics. Symbolically, this was important for the relegitimation of the Church as an
historical force in Russian society and politics. Some 150 million viewers watched
the event on Russian television. In June of the same year, Gorbachev allowed a
weeklong celebration of the millennium of the Church. Although the premier did
not take part in the festivities, his wife Raisa did, and this symbolic show of sup-
port raised the hopes of Orthodox Christians all over Russia that a new era of reli-
gious toleration had arrived.24
Russia’s return to its Christian heritage sparked a formal discussion of the ap-
propriate relationship that church and state ought to have in a modern democ-
racy. The discussion also included the ironic and paradoxical tales of the juxtapo-
sition of atheism and Christianity during the Soviet years. In the postcommunist
era, the internal feuding over the rights of the state church vis-à-vis evangelical de-
nominations and other minority religions began.
Russia Under Yeltsin
Under Boris Yeltsin, Russia continued the transition in domestic and foreign pol-
icies from hostilities with the West to greater peaceful coexistence. This was the
direction that his predecessor, Gorbachev, had begun in 1986 during the peres-
troika and glasnost era. The USSR had long fashioned much of its foreign policy
on realpolitik rather than pure ideology, although ideology and the expansion of
communism was a part of the Soviet state’s general program from the early days of
the regime until Stalin canceled the Comintern in the 1940s.
Not wanting to lose Russia’s position in world affairs, Yeltsin knew a truncated
Russia (without the manpower, resources, and nuclear weaponry of the pre-1992
USSR) would be seen as weak among Western states. Hence, Yelstin produced a
balancing act of behaving in a conciliatory fashion toward the West in order to get
economic carrots for his reeling economy from 1992–1996. He did this in order to
move toward greater détente with the West. On the other hand, a number of things
forced Yeltsin to move away from outright rapprochement with the West, including:
1) the October 1993 use of force to subdue a recalcitrant Duma;

2) the rise of the ultra-nationalist right in the December 1993 elections where
neo-fascist Vladimir Zhirinovsky’s Liberal Democrats won a plurality of the
vote with 23% and 65 seats in the Duma;
3) the West’s expansion of NATO eastward;
4) the fact that Russia was still a nuclear power; and,
5) Russia’s internal conflict with Chechnya.
Russia had serious postcommunist economic problems. By the start of 1996,

Russia was $124 billion in the red as it sat atop the world’s debt ladder.26 Yet, Yelt-
sin helped guide Russia toward some successes in the political and economic
realms. His ability to walk the fine line between authoritarianism and democracy
proved crucial to the first decade of postcommunist development in Russia.
Russia under Putin
On December 31, 1999, Russian president Yeltsin resigned suddenly after more
than eight years in office. He had been elected under the old communist system
in 1991 by popular vote and returned in 1996 under the new democratizing
system. In stepping down, Yeltsin appointed his prime minister, the unknown
former communist bureaucrat, Vladimir Putin, as the nation’s new president.
Putin was elected on March 26, 2000, without the need for a French-style run-
off election. Putin beat Communist party leader Gennady Zyuganov and others
with 52% of the vote. Over 60% of Russia’s 108 million registered voters took
part in Russia’s third presidential election since multiparty politics were allowed
by the CPSU in the winter of 1990. Putin, who worked for the Soviet KGB for 16
years, mainly in East Germany, inherited a growing, yet problematic, economy
and a number of social and political problems from Yeltsin. In 2000, economic
growth was seven percent, a fairly good figure for developing east European
economies. Unfortunately, the economy’s growth could not keep up with the
skyrocketing costs and living standard. Putin immediately tackled tax reform,
and he raised pensions and salaries by increasing real income by seven percent in
2000. Russia benefitted from high oil prices globally, and its export oil helped its
overall macroeconomy.27
In the realm of political governance, Putin took major political steps to cen-
tralize power and reverse the developing autonomy of the Russian regions that his
predecessor had put into effect. He also continued to prosecute the war with the
Chechens in southern Russia’s Caucasus Mountains. The war, which began in
1994, had a bloody yet negotiated settlement in 1996 under Yeltsin. The new
phase began in the Fall of 1998 and was into its seventeenth month by January
2001. The state of the Russian army, with low morale among draftees and poor
pay and living conditions, was among the factors that aided the Chechens in mak-
ing many gains in guerrilla-type combat.28
With the enthusiastic endorsement of most Russians, Putin sought the reas-
sertion of Russia’s symbolic role as a world power. Putin convinced the Duma and
the upper-chamber to ratify the 1993 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START
II) which had been blocked by the old communist legislature. Putin at once
began to use the postcommunist Russian developments of the free market to con-
vince Russians that their economy was headed in the right direction. However,
his penchant for mixing reformist elements with traditional authoritarian politics
led to the adoption in December 2000, of the old Soviet national anthem written
in 1944 by Alexander Alexandrov. The Soviet-era lyrics were replaced with new
ones that recognized Russia as a “holy country . . . protected by God.” The new
post-communist lyrics were written by the same man who penned the original
Stalinist words in the 1940s, 87-year-old Sergei Mikhalkov. The Russian parlia-
ment adopted the new postcommunist song (the old Soviet tune with new
words) and replaced the nineteenth century Russian national anthem written by
Mikhail Glinka. That anthem, which had no words, had been in use for nearly 10
years after the fall of the USSR. Some liberal politicos were not happy with the
return to the anthem of Stalin and post-Stalin oligarchs. Yeltsin had blocked at-
tempts to resurrect the anthem by the Communist party. Putin “agreed to a com-
promise under which the old anthem would be restored, while Russia would keep
the post-Soviet tricolor flag and the state coat of arms with the czarist double-
headed eagle.”29
Putin has been criticized for being authoritarian. The director of the Institute
for Political Technology, Igor Bunin, said of Putin, “He does not think in terms of
democracy. He is a technocrat, a pragmatist, a workaholic, allowing for no coun-
terbalance of power.”30 However, Christian groups were encouraged on election
day 2000 when Putin signed a law extending the deadline to December 31, 2000,
for religious groups to register with the Russian government. Piotr Konovalchik,
president of the Union of Evangelical Churches, met with Putin when he was
prime minister in 1999 and believed Putin was interested in allowing churches to
start new works, train leaders, and proselytize.31
Interestingly, the law Putin signed was an addendum to a controversial law
enacted by the Duma in October 1997, placing greater strictures on religious
organizations. The bill, which was supported and perhaps initiated by leaders of
the state church, attempted to eliminate or severely control religious groups seen
as totalitarian or as perceived cults, such as Jehovah’s Witnesses. In February 1999,
Russian Orthodox Church patriarch Alexsii II attacked foreign religions, which
he believed were having a negative effect on the country. The concern over non-
Christian groups, like the Church of Scientology, led to the Orthodox Church
warning Russians of these types of groups’ intentions. According to the United
States Department of State, “critics of the [1997 Duma] law believe that the basic
assumption behind the law is that religious groups must prove their innocence
and their legitimacy before gaining the advantages of state recognition.”32 Keeping
in line with the Soviet legal tradition, the act made the presumption of guilt over
innocence, which is exactly the opposite of the Anglo-American common law-
based system in which one is seen as innocent until proven guilty. Like restrictive
laws aimed at various groups in other former Soviet republics, the law contains
the equivalent of a “grandfather clause” that allows groups with an history of 15
years in Russia to have automatic status as local religious organizations. Many
Christian churches, such as Pentecostal and charismatic groups, as well as reli-
gious groups such as Mormons, believed the law could be used to stop their
church activities. By April 1999, 130 out of 400 groups had registered at the na-
tional level. By March 31, 2000, close to 15,000 religious groups had not been reg-
istered nationwide.33
The law had the effect of giving the regions more control of religious groups.
Thirty regions (out of 89 in the Russian Federation) enacted laws that, according
to human rights groups, violated Russia’s postcommunist constitution. The re-
gional laws on religion restricted church activities. Yeltsin hoped the law would be
applied fairly and with the goal of toleration. But various churches found them-
selves discriminated against. In Khabarovsk, in November 1998, Methodists, Pen-
tecostals, and other Protestants were kept from reregistering under the new law. In
summer 1998, in Rostov-on-the-Don, the city officials reneged on allowing a Pen-
tecostal church to rent a city sports complex for a “Jesus Festival concert.” That
same summer, the Billy Graham crusade association was forced to cancel an out-
door revival service by local leaders in Voronezh after a local Baptist group was de-
nied permission to host the meeting. According to the U.S. State Department,
human rights activists believe that only 15% of religious freedom violations are re-
ported. Clearly, Christian persecution in its most extreme form, martyrdom, is
not occurring in Russia in a widespread manner as it did during the communist
era, but intolerance has grown, and the public’s indifference is not surprising. The
USSR was an atheist nation for 70 years, and only 20% of Muscovites who are
Orthodox Christians attend church. The attendance figure is seven percent in the
rest of the country.34
one line short

Georgia
Georgians were converted to Christianity in the fourth century .. Despite Per-
sian and Turkish influences over the years, Georgia maintained its separate Chris-
tian identity in the face of Islamic growth in the Middle East. From the tenth cen-
tury, after Armenia’s loss of sovereignty, Georgia became the chief repository of
Christianity in the Transcaucasus. Georgia’s recent troubles with its large neigh-
bor, Russia, began in the late eighteenth century. In 1783, King Irakli II signed a
treaty with Russia turning foreign and defense policy over to Russia, giving Geor-
gia home rule within the Russian empire. By 1878, Russia had taken control of
Georgia by erasing gradually the latter’s medieval kingdom. As a result, a strange
equivocal relationship began between the two nations. That relationship saw
Georgians thankful for Russian protection from Muslims in the region, but the
Georgians did not appreciate the Russian influence on their language or culture.35
Georgian nationalism manifested itself in the early nineteenth century as an
arm of the socialist movement opposed to the Russian bourgeoisie. Georgian so-
cialists were intellectuals who tapped into the growing anti-Russian and anti-
Armenian sentiment in the working and peasant classes. The intra-Christian con-
flict here is intriguing, given Russia and Armenia’s Christian orientation. As part
of the Menshevik strain of the Russian Social Democratic Workers Party, the
Georgian party broke with the Bolsheviks in May 1918 when Georgian Menshevik
Noah Shordania disavowed the Bolshevik Revolution and placed socialism on the
back-burner. As a result, Georgian national unity was emphasized and Georgia’s
fledgling autonomous state was off and running. The Georgians achieved politi-
cal independence within the context of a war-torn economy capped by war with
the Turks and the collapse of its major export market in Russia.36
Georgia was aligned with Armenia and Azerbaijan after the start of the Rus-
sian civil war. The Transcaucasus Federative Republic lasted about a month
(April–May 1918). Georgia declared independence in May 1918 under Menshevik
leadership. Germany, which had moved in to support the Whites in the Caucasus
Mountains, provided protection for the Georgians against the Reds; German help
lasted until the armistice of November 1918 that ended the First World War. Then
the British moved in and kept the Georgians free until early 1920. The power pol-
itics of the region, with Turkey and Russia agreeing to spheres of influence in the
Transcaucasus, allowed the Bolsheviks to attack Georgia in February 1921, and
within a month the Red Army had conquered Tiflis (changed by the Reds to Tbi-
lisi), the Georgian capital.37 For the next 70 years, the Georgians were to be part of
the USSR.
Zviad Gamsakhurdia, a well-known Soviet dissident, was post–Soviet
Georgia’s first president. Actually, he came to power in 1990 prior to the collapse of the
one line short

USSR. He was known as “the Havel of the Caucasus.”38 An Orthodox Christian,

Gamsakhurdia used all aspects of Georgian national life, including the Church, to
attack the Soviet state. Once in power, however, he was less than supportive of
democratic development in Georgia, which incurred the wrath of social move-
ments and church groups. Ironically, Gamsakhurdia had participated in such
groups in the 1970s when they opposed the neo-Stalinist state. Gamsakhurdia
moved Georgia completely out of the Russian orbit after the collapse of commu-
nism. Georgia was the only Soviet successor state that refused to join the newly
founded CIS in 1992. However, many argue that Gamsakhurdia’s extreme nation-
alism and “flamboyant disregard for the conventions of government” led to his
ouster, the battering of Tbilisi, and a civil war within Georgia.39
In the fall of 1991, students began to demonstrate in the streets of Tbilisi
against the underfunding of education, and this led to a battle between paramili-
tary forces sympathetic with the president and those who opposed him. With op-
position forces stepping up their assault on the Georgian parliament, where Gam-
sakhurdia was holed up, the opposition paramilitaries flushed him from his
bunker. On the Orthodox Christmas Day, January 6, 1992, Gamsakhurdia was
forced into exile in Armenia. He eventually died in exile. Some 200 died in the
two-week siege of Tbilisi by opposition forces, and then in March 1992, Eduard
Shevardnadze, the former Soviet foreign minister who had been looking for work
since his resignation in December 1990, returned to Georgia. Gamsakhurdia’s fol-
lowers were not happy. They saw in Shevardnadze a Soviet lackey who would once
again make Georgia a puppet state of Russia. Others, however, saw him as “a sav-
ior” who could help put Georgia back together. Confirming his popularity, Geor-
gians elected Shevardnadze president in October 1992, by giving him 92% of the
vote in an election where voter turnout was over 70%.40
Perhaps a large minority of Georgians saw the ouster of Gamsakhurdia as ille-
gal and illegitimate. One journalist argues that Gamsakhurdia was incompetent as
a ruler and that he had moved the country away from democracy as it was trying
to democratize. He did this by censoring writers, resisting a market-oriented
economy, and lowering the age of marriage for girls to 15 years of age (because the
Georgian nation might be overtaken by “fast-breeding minorities”). “It made the
intellectuals of Tbilisi cringe in embarrassment.” Some Georgians believed “that
the changes that led to Gamskhurdia’s eventual removal were concocted: part of
an elaborate plot between Moscow and revanchist communists in Tbilisi to install
Shevardnadze as Georgia’s leader.”41
Gamsakhurdia had ousted the communists. In August 1992, Shevardnadze
called for new parliamentary elections for October. Forty-six political parties par-
ticipated. Gamasakhurdia’s April Round Table coalition, that had taken the April
1990 elections, had broken into three parties, and they even supported Shevard-
nadze as parliamentary chairman.42
Unfortunately for Shevardnadze, the civil war with Abkhazian separatists and
the internal discord with South Ossetia, which wanted to reunite with its Russian
neighbor, North Ossetia, gave pause for questions about the future of a unified
Georgia. Shevardnadze used force to try and stop both conflicts, and Russian
troops were brought in to stop the reunification of the Ossetians. By summer
1993, the war with breakaway region Abkhazia was going nowhere fast. A Russian-
brokered truce held until August, and UN peacekeepers, the first ever in the lands
of the former Soviet Union, were in the midst of fighting again by Abkhazians and
Georgians.43 The country continued to have centripetal political and ethnic
movements throughout the 1990s.
For Georgians, the struggle over their new political development has been di-
rectly tied to the politics of nationalism, cultural identification within the Geor-
gian nation, and the use of the Georgian Orthodox Church as a strictly cultural
and national symbol of patriotism. This is why it was difficult at times for Geor-
gians to make sense of postcommunist politics in their country given the similar
themes and imagery used by leaders like Gamsakhurdia and Shevardnadze.
For Shevardnadze, his conversion to Orthodox Christianity via the Georgian
Church in November 1992 was an important symbol of national reconciliation
between communist past and an independent future. In what appeared to be a
genuine conversion, complete with baptism, Shevardnadze announced to fellow
Georgians and the world that he was no longer an atheist and had accepted the
Lord under the teachings of Orthodoxy. He had also taken the Christian name,
Giorgy.44
For Georgians, Orthodox Christianity is the dominant religion: Around
70% of the population adhere to it. During the Soviet era, the number of Ortho-
dox priests declined in Georgia and the number of churches dropped as well,
while religious education all but vanished. However, since the end of communist
rule, numerous Protestant sects have grown and became part of a developing
Christian landscape in Georgia. Those denominations include Baptists, Seventh
Day Adventists, and Pentecostals such as the Assemblies of God churches. Like
Russia, the Georgian Orthodox Church has sought special laws that would give
it a monopoly on Christianity in the country. It has sought antimissionary legis-
lation to keep American-based evangelical churches out of Georgia. As a matter
of fact, Georgian Orthodox Church leaders believe that some evangelical and
mainline Protestant churches are attempting to undercut the legitimacy of the
Orthodox Church’s role in Georgian society. What’s more, the national Ortho-
dox Church, along with a number of Georgian politicians, believes these groups
are “subversive.”45
The Georgian Orthodox Church has sought to get the Georgian government
to return its land expropriated during the 1917 Revolution. The Church argues
that 20 to 30% of the land of Georgia once belonged to the Church. Other
churches, such as the Armenian Apostolic Church and the Roman Catholic
Church, have had problems getting their land back as well. Some religious perse-
cution has occurred in recent years in Georgia. Elected Georgian leaders accused
Jehovah’s Witnesses of undermining the Georgian Orthodox Church. Hence,
some nationalist politicians want the Jehovah’s Witnesses to be banned in Geor-
gia. Some members of an Assemblies of God church were abused physically and
verbally by police. The Georgian public seems to be “ambivalent” in the new reli-
gious climate, and attendance at Orthodox services is made up predominantly of
women and older persons. Anti-Semitism has been sparse, but in December 1998
60 gravestones at a Jewish cemetery were knocked down in Tbilisi. President She-
vardnadze publicly condemned the act.46
Georgia is a patriotic nation that has sought to abandon its ties to commu-
nism and carve a distinct path for itself politically. If its nationalism can be tem-
pered enough to bring itself in line with the family of nations worldwide, perhaps
evangelical Christianity will affect positively the people’s desire for peace and
stability in that historical Christian country.
Armenia
Like Georgia, Armenia became a Christian nation in the fourth century .. when
in 301 it “became the world’s first country to declare itself Christian.”47 Armenia
was long known as the most ethnically homogeneous nation in the former USSR
consisting of 93% Armenians in the early 1990s. This homogeneity tinged the spirit
of the people. Armenians have been fierce defenders of their Christian heritage.
They have also been known for their ability to use the local economic systems in
the Caucasus to their advantage. Armenians had greater mobility than their neigh-
bors the Georgians or Azerbaijanis.48 More urbanized and middle class than the
Azerbaijanis and Georgians, the Armenians opted for nationalism as their domi-
nant ideology, while Georgians embraced Marxism (and eventually democratic so-
cialism) and the Azerbaijanis jettisoned socialism and nationalism and embraced
Islam rather than a secular belief system.49
Much of Armenia’s historical battle for sovereignty and legitimacy as a nation-
state came from its long-standing feud with Turkey, which stemmed from the fact
that historically a majority of Armenians were found in the diaspora outside of
Russian (Eastern) Armenia. “By the close of the nineteenth century, the people of
Western Armenia, the far larger and more populous region, were suffering ex-
treme poverty and discrimination under Ottoman Turkish rule.”50 Hence, most
Armenians moved primarily to the Yerevan province under the protection of the
Russian empire. Turkey’s ethnic cleansing of Armenia from 1894–1896 led to the
expelling of thousands of Armenians from eastern Anatolia (eastern Turkey
today). The Armenian Church was directly involved in Armenian nationalist ac-
tivities as the Armenian Revolutionary Federation defended the Armenian
Church against Russian expropriation of Church lands in 1903. Hence, national-
ism and religion were directly interwoven. For a people who had never had a
nation-state, the First World War brought tragedy as the Ottoman Turks liqui-
dated some 600,000 to 2.5 million Armenians between 1915 and 1922 in Eastern
Anatolia (or Western Armenia as it is called by Armenians).51 The 1915 genocide,
along with the demand for repatriation to Western Armenia, continue to this day
to be national obsessions. Much like the Palestinians in Israel, Armenians lay
claim to the territory of Eastern Anatolia that they once occupied.
Armenia became an independent state in May 1918. Despite battling with its
neighbors Azerbaijan and Georgia, the Armenians managed a democratic govern-
ment. The embryonic state inherited many problems, especially starving refugees
from battles with Turkey, Georgia, and Azerbaijan. Armenia gravitated toward the
Whites during the Russian civil war and got military support from the United
States. However, it was not enough. The League of Nations and the Allies did
nothing to support the political claims of independence for Armenia. As a result,
the Turks invaded and Armenia signed an agreement with the Bolsheviks which
placed a Bolshevik government in Armenia. Consequently, the Reds controlled
Armenia by December 1920 and eventually incorporated that nation into the
USSR.52
After nearly 70 years of Soviet control, Gorbachev’s glasnost and perestroika
led to political unrest in the Caucasus. In February 1988, ethnonationalism broke
loose in Nagorno-Karabakh, an ethnic Armenian enclave in southwestern Azerab-
ijan. The events saw demonstrations by the local Armenians and rioting. In late
1988, Soviet soldiers were in Yerevan, Armenia’s capital, and the Karabakh was
under a state of emergency. Then Armenia was hit by a catastrophic earthquake in
December 1988. Some 25,000 were killed and one-half million were left without
housing. Gorbachev toured the devastated area. Armenians were not happy with
Gorbachev and the Soviet government’s inaction in Nagorno-Karabakh. As a re-
sult, the Armenians turned toward nationalism and independence, and they
wanted to part with their traditional friends, the Russians.53
Armenia held its first postcommunist elections in May 1990. With under 50%
turnout at the polls, the issue at hand was whether Armenia should seek indepen-
dence; opt for home rule within the USSR; or seek independence and reclamation
of lost lands from Turkey. By the end of the summer of 1990, no party had control
of the Armenian parliament. Although 73% of the national legislature’s delegates
were Communist party members, most advocated more sovereignty for Armenia
outside of the Soviet orbit. In early August 1990, Levon Ter-Petrosian, the famed
Armenian dissident and leader of the Armenian National Movement party, was
elected chairman of the state’s Supreme Soviet. Eventually, Armenia broke free of
the USSR. After a September 1991 referendum in which 95% of the voters voted to
leave the Soviet Union, Ter-Petrosian was elected as the nation’s new president in
October with 83% of the vote. He would stay in power until 1998. Interestingly,
Armenia was one of the last of the Soviet republics to break loose from Soviet heg-
emony. “On 23 September, when Armenia finally declared itself independent, it
was the only republic to do so entirely on the basis prescribed in the Soviet consti-
tution, an indication yet again of the debt of gratitude Armenians feel for Russian
protection.” With the return of independence for Armenia, not experienced since
1920, Armenia was to see difficulties in dealing with the geopolitics of the situation
in Nagorno-Karabakh. The battle between Azeris and Armenians over the Kara-
bakh was important to Russia and Iran in terms of stability on their borders.
What’s more, Turkey was interested in supporting the Azeris against their time-
honored enemies, the Armenians, and because the Azeris were Muslim brothers
and sisters.54 The Karabakh conflict ended with an armistice in 1994 after the Aze-
ris were defeated and many ethnically cleansed from the Karabakh.55
Armenia’s national church, the Armenian Apostolic Church, is headed by the
Catholicos, who is seen “more as a leader of the nation than as a religious figure.”56
A series of laws were passed after 1991 aimed at registering churches and keeping
the Armenian Apostolic Church as the official state church. The legal strictures
were intended to keep foreign sects from missionary work, but in effect that has
not happened. Since 1991, most churches have been able to operate in Armenian
society, with the exception of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, which were banned. In
1997, the state increased the number of church members from 50 to 200 as a min-
imum for registration as an offically recognized denomination. By summer 1999,
48 groups had registered including Pentecostals. The state church was exempt
from all laws regarding proselytizing and registration (similar to the recent Rus-
sian experience). Today, 90% of Armenians belong to the state church. Other
Christian groups include Roman Catholics, 25,000 Pentecostals, 5,000 Armenian
Evangelical Church members, 2,000 Baptists, charismatic Christians, and
Seventh-Day Adventists. There are 500 Jews in Armenia, mostly in Yerevan.57
Religious freedom has been adequate for almost all groups in Armenia in re-
cent years, with the exception of Jehovah’s Witnesses and Muslims. Due to the
Karabakh war, most Armenian Muslims were “forced to leave the country.” Most
Armenian Christians do not practice their faith. Most see it as a link to their eth-
nic background and identity only. “Antipathy toward Muslims remains a serious
problem, despite generally amicable relations with Iran.”58 In a case of Christian-
Muslim conflict, the Karabakh has seen violence and death equally applied by
both Armenian Azeris of the Karabakh and Muslim Azerbaijanis. What’s more,
outside help from Armenia to the Armenian Karabakh citizens and help from Is-
lamic states such as Turkey and Iran to the Muslim Azeris inflamed the struggle
between 1988 and 1994 in the Christian Armenian irredenta.59
Conclusion
The former Soviet Union underwent a radical transformation during the 1990s.
That transformation was incomplete as the peoples of the former Soviet Union at-
tempted to democratize and develop their fractured nations during the last decade
of the twentieth century. Clearly, the ideological power of communism did not
die with the end of the Soviet state. Communists still played a powerful role in
Russia and other former Soviet republics at the beginning of the new era of de-
mocratization in the early 1990s. Communist parties still had representation in
the legislatures of numerous post-Soviet republics as the year 2000 arrived. The
complex struggle between secular ideologies and values and Christian values con-
tinues to play out on the canvas of the broad post-Soviet landscape. Evangelicals
have found new opportunities to promote a Christian vision for those great lands
with well over 250 million people. As sociologist Michael Matskovsky, a member
of the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union at the end of the perestroika era,
said, “Moral relativism was the beginning of the Soviet tragedy . . . We don’t be-
lieve in your God, but we in the Soviet Union have lost our faith in communism,
which was our God. Now we are looking for something to replace it, and we be-
lieve the Ten Commandments would be a good place to begin.”60
When the Christian creed can become more than nationalistic icons and
phrases, perhaps the Lord will begin to change the hearts of the people. This is oc-
curring in Russia, Georgia, and Armenia, albeit at a slower pace than in other
parts of the world. However, after the 70 years of totalitarian communism that de-
nied the existence of God, Christianity is leaving an indelible mark on the politics
and societies that once stood behind the Iron Curtain.
 
The Persecution of
Christians Around the World
Acts 7:59–60—And they stoned Stephen, calling upon God, and saying, Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.
And he kneeled down, and cried with a loud voice, Lord, lay not this sin to their charge.
And when he had said this, he fell asleep.
On February 5, 1997 an angry crowd of 30,000 Pakistani Muslims went on a ram-

page in the Punjab province. Nearly three-quarters of the homes in the Christian
village of Shantinagar were destroyed. A Salvation Army church was torched and
neighboring churches, including a Catholic one, were destroyed. Of Pakistan’s 138
million people, 2.5% are Christians. What had led to this terrible display of man’s
inward feelings? The riots in Shantinagar and Khanawel occurred due to events
200 miles to the south. In the town of Lahore, a Muslim mosque had broadcast
over loudspeakers that Christians had desecrated the Quran, ripping pages from
it, and making defamatory remarks against Muhammad, Islam’s great prophet.
The announcement filtered from mosque to mosque in the region as the Islamic
faithful were in the midst of Ramadan, the holy month of fasting for Muslims.
Christians denied the allegations. As a result of the attacks, 20 Christians were in-
jured seriously and two Muslims were killed by police. The Roman Catholic
bishop for Multan, Patras Yusaf, blamed police for instigating the riots and said
that a police officer may have tossed the ripped pages from the Quran into the
mosque in Khanewal. A week after the riots, a Christian was shot and injured in
Karachi in a protest demonstration against the climate of Christian intolerance.1
Stories like this are becoming quite familiar around the world today. Perhaps
Samuel Huntington’s thesis is coming true? Is the historic West, based on Christian
values and views, in a deathgrip with Islam and its worldview? Hopefully not.
Huntington discusses the nature of Islam and how it is at odds historically with the
West, but how do we account for the persecution of Christians in environments
The Persecution of Christians 133
where culture, skin-color, language, and patterns of social and political develop-
ment are identical with the dominant majority (who are not Christians)? Chris-
tian persecution is on the upswing. The September 2001 terrorist attacks in New
York and Washington, D.C. clearly suggest that Huntington’s theory may be com-
ing true. The Chicago Tribune’s foreign correspondent, Tom Hundley, stated, just
days after the attack, “Despite the best efforts of Bush and other national leaders
to portray this as a war against terrorism rather than a war against Islam, it is rap-
idly sinking into the ‘Clash of Civilizations,’ the book in which Harvard Univer-
sity scholar Samuel Huntington so famously predicted such conflict at the end of
the Cold War.”2 However, despite the attacks by militant Muslims on U.S. institu-
tions, the vast bulk of the Muslim and Arab world called for peace and sided with
the United States and other Western nations in combating terrorism and the mil-
itant Islamic regime of the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Religion and Violence
Little has been written on the formal academic study of religion and violence. Ac-
cording to political scientist David C. Rapoport, nation-states and religions are
connected to violence in four general ways: first, when countries use religious vio-
lence against other countries; second, when a nation-state uses religion to quell
domestic trouble; third, when a government uses religion to justify remaking the
nation-state’s social order; and, fourth, when states (or leaders) use violence predi-
cated on religious beliefs for political or secular ends.3 According to Rapoport, the
agreement between Israel and God, which manifested itself in the Sinai Covenant,
was important because “the herem (the religious mandate to exterminate enemy
populations and utterly demolish their possessions) was applied.” He argues that
this gave Christians the model for the Crusades in the Middle Ages, as well as var-
ious Islamic jihads since Islam’s founding. However, Christianity in its earliest
form during the apostolic era, was somewhat different from the religions of the
two other “warrior states.” He argues: “Just as Christ is seen as the innocent victim
of violence and persecution, so the early Christians saw themselves as innocent
sufferers for His sake. Until the fourth century, when Christianity became a state
religion, most Christians were pacifists. Undeniably, the Gospels provide power-
ful justifications for pacifism, and the return to Christian roots normally produces
pacifist movements.”4 Rapoport’s generalizations can be applied to specific con-
texts, both contemporary and historical, in order to see how religion is used as a
tool of state terror and repression. His first point is exemplified by the historic use
of systematic Islamization by the Ottoman Turks in Bosnia and Herzegovina after
Ottoman control began after 1326. Indigenous Christian (whether Catholic or
Orthodox) Slavs were forcibly converted to Islam. Ironically, his third supposition
is exemplified by atrocities committed by Bosnian Serbs against Bosnian Muslims

in the 1992–1995 civil war in that nation-state. The “Orthodox Christian” Serbs
did allow religious imagery and revenge to affect their actions in fighting Bosnian
Muslims. Although the role of religion as a key variable in the conflict seems less
important than the overt political variables of nationalism, national identity, and
ideological factors, the brutal descriptions of Bosnian Serb dominance and repres-
sion of Bosnian Muslims did have some religious overtones. Religious warfare, al-
though not the reason for most conflicts as often supposed (as stated in chapter 1),
is still a problem around the world today. State terror used against Christians and
other religious minorities has a long history, and the persecution of believers con-
tinues today.
The Persecution of Believers in the Bible
The persecution of believers is not a new phenomenon. The Bible is replete with
examples of those who were persecuted for their faith. Perhaps the greatest exam-
ple is the story of Job, a righteous man who loved God and walked with Him. As
the Book of Job tells us, his children were taken by peoples descended from the
Cushites (the Sabeans). He also lost all of his possessions and worldly treasures.
What’s more, he lost children and family due to natural disasters (see Job 1:15–19).
As a result of the terrible trials he found himself in, Job said, “Naked came I out of
my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return thither: the Lord gave, and the Lord
hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord. In all this Job sinned not, nor
charged God foolishly” (Job 1:21–22).
The persecution of believers is a difficult and, at times, confusing social phe-
nomenon. The Old Testament describes the problems of persecution that the Is-
raelites faced both in bondage under Egyptian rule and afterwards when firmly es-
tablishing themselves in Israel after their sojourn in the wilderness. Prior to this
period, we have the story of Joseph, who rose to be Egypt’s prime minister as an
Israelite, and it still inspires today. The young boy Joseph, whose arrogance and
self-confidence got him in trouble with his brethren, was sold into slavery in
Egypt. Despite a frightening prison term after being falsely accused of sexual ha-
rassment with the intent to commit adultery, Joseph was exonerated by the Pha-
raoh when it was revealed that he could interpret the Egyptian leader’s dreams. As
chief dream interpreter in the monarch’s court, Joseph was used by God to foretell
famine and drought in Egypt and he was richly rewarded by the Pharaoh. His ul-
timate victory occurred when he ordered his brothers to eat with him (as they did
not recognize him) and he forgave them for what they did to him years before. Jo-
seph was persecuted both by his own family and the minions of the Egyptian
leadership but he drew strength from his relationship to God and was rewarded
by God as a result, finding “favor” with a foreign peoples in a foreign land (see
Gen. 37–50).
Moses is another example of a Hebrew who belonged to Pharaoh (Ramses II),
sometime between 1400 to 1240 .., who was persecuted for his identification
with the people of his bloodline. Although the story of Moses is a familiar one, his
persecution is somewhat akin to Joseph’s except that he was persecuted after he
had led Ramses’s Egypt to conduct numerous military and political conquests in
the Middle East. Once realizing that he was not Egyptian but rather Hebrew, eth-
nically, he jettisoned his Egyptian heritage and embraced the Hebrew life, replete
with its humbling and demeaning position of servility to the Egyptians. Due to
persecution and the fear that he would be executed for the murder of an Egyptian
sentry, he fled to Midian in the Sinai peninsula where he stayed for 40 years, mar-
ried, and settled down as a farmer. Of course, the rest of Moses’s story is well
known, but his persecution underscores the persecution of God’s people since the
commencement of the biblical age. Numerous accounts of persecution are found
in the Bible, from the trials of David as he ran from Saul (see 1 Sam.) to the sack-
ing of Jerusalem and the trials of various prophets including Daniel, for his prob-
lems in Babylon (see Book of Daniel). As an empirical fact, persecution has been
a part of the believer’s pedigree as long as written memory can remember. Of
course, for Christians today this is not surprising. Jesus stated frankly in the Gos-
pels that “ye shall be hated of all men for my name’s sake” (Matt. 10:22). And the
first martyr for the cause of Christ was the Apostle Stephen, who was stoned to
death by an angry crowd that refused to countenance his preaching of Christ (see
Acts 7:55–60). Like his Lord and Savior, Stephen was persecuted and died a cruel
death for the things he taught and believed.
The persecution of believers is especially relevant for indigenous peoples who
have minority status in various national contexts. Today, Christians in Muslim
lands are among the most repressed in history. The Islamic world has grown in re-
cent years. Most think of the Arab world as the only repository of Islam; however,
states in South Asia now come to mind when discussing Islam and its role in po-
litical life. The single largest Islamic state in the world is Indonesia, the country of
numerous atolls in the South Pacific that is home to 216 million and a sizable mi-
nority Christian population.5 Pakistan is another example of a Muslim state
neighboring the world’s largest democracy, India. As Huntington notes, Islam is a
political force that affects all religious and cultural activity in states like Indonesia
and Pakistan. Although, historically more tolerant of minority religions, includ-
ing Christianity, Indonesia and Pakistan have changed, and activist Islam has be-
come more front and center in these two countries. The replacement of the dicta-
tor Suharto in Indonesia in 1998 and Pakistan’s successful underground testing of
nuclear weapons to counter its regional enemy India in the same year affected
these two Islamic states in ways that may prove problematic in the twenty-first
century. As is seen in the five countries in the developing world discussed below,
Christians continue to face persecution.
Indonesia
With 216 million people, Indonesia is the largest Islamic nation in the world, and
approximately 87% of its population are adherents of the Muslim faith. Most are
Sunni. The second largest religion in Indonesia is Christianity, the faith of 10% of
the population.6 Catholicism is dominant in the provinces of Maluku and Nusa
Tengas Timor. In the eastern province of Irian Jaya, Protestants are dominant in
the north while Catholics make up a majority in the south. For years, Indonesia
was an authoritarian state with a predominantly Muslim citizenry, but with a sec-
ular government under Suharto. Much like Turkey, the government tolerated reli-
gions as a part of society, but refused them institutionalized privileges. After the
end of the Suharto regime in May 1998, many Islamic political groups rose to the
fore in Indonesia. However, the status quo was maintained given the Indonesian
public’s nonsupport of Islamic-style government. Because an Islamic theocracy
(based on the current Iranian model) seems out of the question to most Indone-
sian citizens, Islamic groups are attempting to “Islamize” the society, much like
the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) in Algeria and Sudan who then use their agenda
of Islamic social reform to place the society and polity on the slippery slope to Is-
lamic democracy or overt theocracy.7
Indonesia is a different kind of Islamic nation because, first, it is an authori-
tarian state and not “officially” Islamic and, second, the state attempted histori-
cally to stop Islamic activism before it got too successful at the grassroots. As a na-
tion that was Hindu and made the transition to Islam, Indonesians tend to
“absorb rather than resist new currents,” says philosopher Paul Marshall. Histori-
cally, Christians, Muslims, and those of other faiths lived side by side in peace.
Christians owned and operated “universities, schools, newspapers, and social or-
ganizations with the same freedom and the same restrictions from the authoritar-
ian government as anybody else.” In terms of political power, Christians have been
marginalized in minor, powerless, political parties. Muslims control the party of
government, the Golkar Party. In some of Indonesia’s smaller Islands, beyond the
main island of Java, Christians are found in the majority. As seen in many states,
the central government has sought to lessen population problems by encouraging
resettlement to the nearly 14,000 islands. However, this has caused problems in
Christian-dominated islands. One area of confrontation has been East Timor.8
East Timor, formerly Portuguese Timor, was annexed by the Indonesian gov-
ernment in 1975. The area is home to some 700,000 people. In the nearly quarter
of a century struggle for independence, around 200,000 lost their lives. According
to Marshall, “The struggle is largely political in the sense of focusing on land and
independence, rather than being overtly religious.” However, as one of Indonesia’s
Christian enclaves, 80% of East Timorese being Roman Catholic, the region was
hotly contested on the religious front. Despite the confrontation between Indone-
sian soldiers and Catholics, which led to a number of deaths, a “war of monu-
ments” was waged between Catholics and the military in East Timor. Catholics
displayed crucifixes and statues of Mary while the military knocked them down
and defaced them and replaced the icons with signs proclaiming Indonesian
unity.9
The momentum of Islamic activism spurred increased bloodshed in Indone-
sia in the eastern Christian islands and on the main island of Java. In October
1996, in the town of Situbondo, 18 churches were burned down when thousands
of Muslims rioted after a court issued a lenient ruling to an Islamic preacher who
was guilty of heresy and false teachings. After burning the courthouse, the mob
turned to the churches. “The bodies of a priest, his wife, two children and an em-
ployee were later discovered in the burned-out ruin of a Pentecostal church.” Po-
lice arrested 100 people as a result of the incident. In September 1996, a church
was torched by Muslims near the nation’s capital, Jakarta. In July 1996, 11
churches were damaged after being attacked by an angry group of people. Find-
ing causes for these attacks was difficult. “In the Surabaya [the island where Situ-
bondo is located] case, residents said the crowd formed after a dog wandered into
a mosque during prayers, and was then seen trotting back into a Christian
house.” Many Muslims feared more Christian converts. Muslims blamed the
trend on bribery via rice or money.10 Hence, the clash of civilizations in Indone-
sia escalated.
The persecution of Christians in Indonesia also dovetailed with social unrest.
In May 1998, the longtime dictator Suharto was forced from power when students
protested and rioted in the capital of Jakarta on the island of Java. Destroying
businesses, the urban district, and looting, the students called for greater freedoms
and an end to Suharto’s bloody, yet economically efficient 33-year reign. As a re-
sult, government minister B.J. Habibie was placed in control of the government
by the military. The secular media looked at the transition from Suharto to Habi-
bie in the context of political and economic stability only. As Marshall notes,
Habibie was the head of the “association of Islamic intellectuals” (ICMI). The
ICMI increased its influence over the Indonesian government, and this was a con-
cern to the military. What’s more, ICMI reached out to other South Asian states
in order to facilitate and propagate the Islamic faith.11 After Habibie came to
power, the world should have expected Islam to play a greater role in Indonesia.
Habibie tried to quell social and political unrest by allowing opposition political
parties to form, releasing political prisoners detained under Suharto, and ending
censorship on some magazines.12
In October 1998, the Asian economic crisis got worse in Indonesia. On Octo-
ber 27, 1998, the single largest demonstration of people, primarily students, took
place outside the parliament in Jakarta. Eight thousand students gathered to de-
mand democracy and free elections from the Habibie regime. “The students,
many of them women wearing Islamic head scarves, warned they [would] step up
demonstrations ahead of a government assembly [scheduled for November 1998]
that [would] shape guidelines for [the] 1999 elections.” On the same day, in Cia-
mis, 125 miles southwest of Jakarta, a riotous “mob damaged at least 10 shops and
houses” and beat an ethnic Chinese Indonesian man. The rioters were protesting
“the use of a Chinese-owned home as a place for Christian worship.” In Indonesia,
most ethnic Chinese are either Christian or Buddhist. As a result of the actions of
people in Ciamis, police stepped up security in a neighboring town, Tasikmalaya.
In 1996, rioters had torched churches there.13
In late August and early September 1999, East Timor underwent a cataclys-
mic event. On August 30, East Timorese voted overwhelmingly to secede from In-
donesia and declare themselves independent. Almost 99% of the 430,000 regis-
tered voters took part in the United Nations (UN)-sponsored referendum.
Immediately following the vote, three UN workers were killed by pro-Jakarta mil-
itants. Within a few days of the vote, the UN began evacuating its personnel from
East Timor due to armed violence against its workers and various East Timorese
citizens. Hundreds of people were killed between August 30 and September 9,
1999, in what was deemed primarily “religious violence.”14
The government tried to maintain a modicum of toleration for religious plu-
ralism after Suharto’s fall. In February 1999, the state ministry of religion began a
program in which Muslim and Christian clergy were trained in conflict resolution
and multiculturalism. This program was carried out in 100 provincial subdistricts
throughout the country. Despite attempts by the Habibie regime to advocate a ge-
neric religious toleration, much sectarian violence occurred in 1998 and 1999 (as
stated above) after Suharto’s fall.15
In January 1999, fighting between Muslims and Christians in the Maluku
province broke out. The violence spread to neighboring islands throughout 1999
and into 2000. Unlike the violence aimed primarily at Catholics in East Timor in
1999, this fighting was between Muslims from the Sulawesi and Ambonese islands
and Protestants in Maluku. Eventually, by early 1999, 300 had died and over
10,000 were refugees due to the conflict. The violence was allegedly spurred by
the immigration to the province by new Muslims who supposedly threatened to
tilt the long-standing economic and ethnic balance in the area. In Maluku’s capi-
tal, Ambon, churches, shops, and houses were burned. Citizens armed with ma-
chetes and spears took to the streets. By April 1999, Jakarta had stymied the first
phase of the conflict by sending native Christian and Muslim military personnel
to the area. By late 2001, one American church put the estimates of the number of
dead Protestant and Muslim Indonesians in the conflict in the Moluccas islands at
5,000 to 8,000. What’s more, of the Moluccas islands’ two million people, half
were forced from their homes between 1999 and 2001. Making matters worse, the
fighting spread to the neighboring Kai island chain. The Christian-Muslim fissure
in Indonesia continued.16
Between June 1998 and April 1999, according to the U.S. Department of
State, Christian groups said 168 attacks on Christian churches and property took
place. Examples of some of these attacks included a fight between Muslims and
Christian security guards of a gambling house in Ketapay, West Jakarta. The
Christians were mostly of Ambonese descent. As a result, a riot broke out and 14
were killed, 27 churches and Christian schools were attacked, and some razed.
The anti-Christian violence led to anti-Muslim violence when Christians
torched mosques, homes, and stores of Muslims in Kupang, where Muslims were
in the minority. In Java on February 13, 1998, Muslims attacked 28 churches in
the western part of the island. Muslims broke windows, tried to burn churches,
and desecrated church interiors. Vandals also attacked cars of church members
and destroyed church property. This violence was seen as part of the growing sec-
tarian tension based not only on religion, but ethnic identity as well. The Mus-
lim population in West Java was relatively poorer historically than the wealthier
ethnic Chinese Christian Indonesians. In January 1999, Robert Seiple,
Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom (for a full biography
see below), went to Indonesia to meet with senior government officials and lead-
ers of various religious communities. Along with the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta,
Seiple reaffirmed the United States’s commitment to religious toleration and
human rights in Indonesia.17
Pakistan
Pakistan was founded in 1947 when the British removed themselves from the In-
dian subcontinent. From its foundation, Pakistan was a nation of multiple iden-
tities. Its founder, Mohammed Ali Jinnah (1876–1948) headed India’s Muslim
League. During the 1930s, Jinnah began rallying supporters by using Islam to stir
political and social concern for Indian Muslims. Although a Muslim, Jinnah used
Islam to bring various Muslim peoples from different ethnic backgrounds to-
gether on the subcontinent. Islam was to be the common cultural and social iden-
tifier among all Muslims in India. Jinnah called for the separation of India into
two nations: one Hindu (the dominant majority) and one Muslim. However, he
planned on creating a secular state that did not discriminate against anyone. A
contrasting viewpoint was held by Muhammad Iqbal, the other prominent politi-
cal figure in the Pakistani movement. Iqbal called for a Pakistan that reflected the
social climate of the Muslim community in India. He advocated an Islamic re-

public based on Sharia law and other Islamic teachings.18
In 1947, Pakistan consisted of West Pakistan, today’s modern-day geo-
political region known as Pakistan, and East Pakistan, a region 1,000 miles east of
Islamabad. East Pakistan left Pakistan as a result of the intra-Islamic war of 1971
that ended up creating the autonomous nation-state of Bangladesh. Between 1948
and 1956, Pakistan evolved into a South Asian state that saw politics, ethnicity,
and religion all combine to complicate matters for Pakistanis.
In 1953, as the national discussion on the constitution occurred, rioting and
violence was triggered when members of the Ahmadiyya, a wayward Islamic sect,
were labelled as non-Muslims by “a national court of inquiry.” The Ahmadiyya,
followers of Mirza Ghulam Ahmad (1835–1908), who had proclaimed himself a
prophet, believed that he, and not Muhammad, was Islam’s last prophet. The kill-
ing of Ahmadis in Punjab during the 1953 riots abetted the lethargic process of
constitution-building in Pakistan. Finally, after eight years of debating, the Paki-
stanis promulgated their first constitution. It was democratic and it created a gen-
uine Islamic Republic with a British-style parliament. Interestingly, about half of
Pakistan’s existence (dating from 1948) has been democratic; the other half, au-
thoritarian. Although other developing states have similar track records with de-
mocratization, Pakistan’s ethnic, political, and religious challenges seem to
sharpen the line of demarcation between democracy and authoritarian-styles of
rule. In 1958, General Muhammad Ayub Khan foisted a military coup d’état on
the state and took control during a time of political turbulence. Ayub believed
Western parliamentarism was not compatible with Pakistan’s unique political and
social climate. He attempted to “guide” democracy via the military. Like Kemal
Attaturk in Turkey during the 1920s, Ayub was a secular, Western-oriented Mus-
lim. He immediately set out to revamp Pakistani society toward a more Western
image and put Islam in its place as but one facet of a complicated social system. In
1962, Pakistan created its second constitution and changed the state’s name from
the “Islamic Republic of Pakistan” to the “Republic of Pakistan.” Ayub met resis-
tance from the ulama, the Islamic community of scholars, who did not want the
religious character of the state to be watered down. He relented and held off a
challenge by Mohammed Ali Jinnah’s sister, Fatima Jinnah, for the presidency.
Ayub, who had banned all political parties, successfully got a fatwa (a legal brief
from an expert on the Sharia), that stated that women could not be the head of
state in Pakistan. Ayub was succeeded by General Yahya Khan who held power for
two years, 1969–1971.19
Sulfikar Ali Bhutto took power in 1971. Bhutto promised to return Pakistan to
democracy and he was an advocate of socialism (à la Nasser in Egypt from 1952–1971).
Bhutto took power during one of Pakistan’s most turbulent years—the year of the
country’s civil war. Pakistan’s religious and ethnic cleavages were too great. According
to religion and international affairs scholar John L. Esposito and historian John O.
Voll, the civil war and splitting of the nation “was due not only to Pakistan’s failure
to achieve national integration—to realize the Islamic identity of its Muslim na-
tionalism—but also to dependence on Western secular institutions and culture
during Ayub Khan’s regime.” Bhutto immediately forged ties with rich Arab oil
states for economic purposes, but the religious and cultural ties to these Muslim
nations were used to advocate Islam at home. Bhutto was accused of being an op-
portunist on the religious card, and he implemented laws that restricted alcohol
consumption. Bhutto used Islam to justify socialist policies. His Pakistan People’s
Party (PPP) used Islam in its public relations to mobilize support.20
Bhutto became head of state in a non-elected manner. Appointed in 1970 by
Yahya Khan as prime minister, he took the reigns of power after Yahya Khan
stepped down. So, Bhutto had been elected to parliament, but appointed by the
military to head the government. Originally, he favored a restoration of democ-
racy, but his interests in establishing personal legitimacy as Pakistan’s leader and
maintaining socioeconomic order after the civil war led him to keep the authori-
tarian regime in place until 1973, when a new constitution was drawn up and
British-style parliamentarism returned to Pakistan. Three years later, Bhutto ap-
pealed to the people to extend his reign in order to confront radical and other Is-
lamic forces that were decidedly against his socialism and usage of Islam in poli-
tics. As Islam continued to transform Pakistan socially and politically, the March
1977 elections saw Bhutto and the PPP retain power against a growing tide of op-
position. The opposition, which included the religious parties, claimed voter
fraud. As the opposition’s cries increased, the temperature of Pakistan’s sociopoli-
tical landscape rose dramatically. Then on July 5, 1977, General Zia ul-Haq foisted
a coup on the state and ushered in yet another period of martial law.21
Zia took the politicization of Islam in Pakistan to a new level than had been
established by Bhutto. He imposed Islam in all areas of life in order to legitimize
himself. He “coopted” the Pakistan National Alliance’s (PNA) goals and invited
its members into the government. The PNA had been an umbrella grouping of
parties in opposition to Bhutto. Zia took the PNA’s slogan, “nizan-i-Islam (the
system of Islam)” and adopted it to give his government more legitimacy. He
adopted the Islamic policies of the Jamaat-i Islami (the Islamic Society), a party
that had always advocated Islamization of society. Zia : (a) enforced the Ramadan
fast period; (b) made Fridays the one day off each week (in order to observe the
Muslim holy day); (c) encouraged prayer five times each day (salat) and develop
more places for prayer; (d) declared that those who refused to accept Muhammad
as Allah’s prophet were unbelievers; (e) declared that all top echelon government
leaders had to live their lives according to the tenets of Islam; and (f ) declared that
sacred Islamic texts, such as the Quran, were to be the basis for the nation’s legal
system, hence, making Islam the guiding force in the life of the Pakistani polity.22
Zia expanded his authoritarian power by legitimizing military rule in late

1979 when he proscribed political parties, stopped elections permanently, and
began to restrict the media. Legally and socially, Zia broadened Bhutto’s policies
by making discos, gambling, and alcohol illegal. He also promulgated Islamic laws
aimed at Islamizing society. They included laws that curbed adultery, theft, other
sex crimes, and consuming alcohol. Flogging was used on offenders, but amputa-
tion never occurred. Stoning was authorized for adultery, but never used. Zia im-
posed the zakat (alms) tax and the agricultural tax as part of his Islamization ef-
forts. The former caused problems between the country’s majority Sunni Muslim
population and minority Shi’a Muslim population. By the mid-1980s, the govern-
ment relented to the demands of the Shi’a peoples who refused the compulsory
zakat based on the Shi’a interpretation of the Quran. Zia continued to consoli-
date power and kept himself and the military regime above the law.23
To challenge Zia’s regime, the PPP and other parties, which were barred in
1979, came together in 1981 to form the Movement for Democracy (MRD). By
December 1984, with the Jamaat-i-Islami advocating a return to electoral democ-
racy, Zia called for a plebiscite to affirm his Islamization program and a gradual re-
turn to a parliamentary democracy in Pakistan. In early 1985, national and local
elections occurred on a nonpartisan basis. “By the end of 1985, martial law was ter-
minated, civilian rule restored, press censorship lifted, and political parties per-
mitted to function with some restrictions.” The MRD and Jamaat-i Islami contin-
ued to call for partisan elections and an end to Zia’s presidency. In August 1988,
Zia’s era ended when he was killed in a plane crash. Three months later in Novem-
ber 1988, the PPP defeated a nine-party Islamic coalition to win Pakistan’s most
democratic election ever. As a result, Pakistan had its first openly elected prime
minister in 11 years and the Islamic world’s first-ever female prime minister, the
daughter of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Benazir Bhutto. Benazir Bhutto was caught in a
difficult situation. Although a reformist, like her father, she could not cut into the
Islamization that Zia had taken to the next level. Given her place as a female in a
Muslim society, she symbolically legitimated the ever-increasing conservative Is-
lamic ways of Pakistanis when she went on a pilgrimage to Mecca, entered into an
arranged marriage, and began a family.24 Although the darling of the West, as a
Harvard-educated prime minister, Benazir Bhutto had trouble leading Pakistan
because she led a minority government (one in which the PPP had won only a
plurality of the vote at 25%). The PPP was faced with an ominous military, a vocal
opposition, and the Islamic Democratic Alliance (IDA), made up of nine parties
which had the military’s support. She also faced intranational factionalism with
ethnic and political problems in Punjab and other provinces, and corruption in
the government and in her family. This led to her ultimate downfall. In early Au-
gust 1990, President Ghulam Ishaq Khan dismissed her government. Elections
were called for late October 1990.25
The IDA won the 1990 elections convincingly over the PPP. The new prime
minister, Nawaz Sharif, let the West know that he was not an Islamic fundamen-
talist. Sharif and the IDA government were seen as “pragmatic on international
and domestic issues.” It supported the United States and Saudi Arabia in the Gulf
War of 1991. The legacy of authoritarian rule and socioeconomic instability led to
greater ethnic discord in Karachi in 1994–1995 and the worst violence since 1971.
In Karachi, Muslims of different ethnic and cultural origins battled clan-style.
Over 800 were killed.26
The October 1999 bloodless coup d’état in Pakistan repeated the all-too-
familiar stage of political development in that developing nation. Like Ayub in
1958 and Zia in 1977, the military toppled the civilian government led by Sharif.
As in 1958 and 1977, the military argued that political corruption and economic
malfeasance had to be corrected. To make matters worse, Pakistan was $34 billion
in debt at the time and its defense expenditures were escalating following the May
1998 underground nuclear test in retaliation for India’s test weeks before. In this
heightening climate of political tension regionally, Pakistan was heading toward
trouble. What’s more, its foreign reserves were only one billion dollars.27
Taking power in only 17 hours, the Pakistan military was efficient in deposing
the longtime premier, Sharif. By 5:00 .. on October 12, 1999, the military had
taken control of government installations throughout the country. Ironically, the
leader of the coup, who had just been dismissed as army chief of staff by Sharif,
General Pervez Musharraf, was in a civilian airliner circling the Karachi airport as
his plane was about to run out of fuel. Sharif had tried to keep Musharraf ’s plane,
which had 200 on board, from landing in an attempt to keep him from personally
taking control of the coup.28
Musharraf, a muhajir (migrant) whose family came from Delhi during the
partition in 1947 to Karachi, joined the Pakistani military in 1964. He led a num-
ber of artillery and infantry brigades and commando units. Under Benazir
Bhutto, he was named director general of military operations. In 1998, he became
the top officer in the country’s military when General Jehanzir Karamat resigned,
protesting the military’s weakened role in the nation’s decision-making process.
Some argue that Musharraf ’s promotion occurred because he was not a part of the
traditional officer elite from the Punjab province. As an outsider ethnically, Sharif
may have thought Musharraf could not build or sustain a power base. Musharraf
has been seen as a Western-oriented leader with reformist ideals.29
Christians in Pakistan number around three million (about 2.5% of the pop-
ulation, up from 1.56% in 1981). Of all Christians in Pakistan, 98% live in Punjab,
with 60% of those residing in villages. The two largest churches in Pakistan are
the Church of Pakistan and the Roman Catholic Church respectively. The former
consists of Methodists, Presbyterians, Lutherans, and Anglicans, thus making it
the main Protestant church in the country. The Catholic Church says about 70%
of English-speaking Catholics attend church regularly. Urdu-speaking Catholics

attend church at a lower percentage.30
Legally, non-Muslims have more restrictions on free exercise of religion in Pa-
kistan. A 1998 law, the “Shari’a Bill,” was passed by the lower house of parliament
as an amendment to the 1973 constitution. It would make Shari’a law the law of
the country if passed in the upper house as well. Christians were worried that the
law would aid the premier at the time, Sharif, in Islamizing the society and poli-
tics and erode the rights of religious minorities. The blasphemy law, which dates
from the era of British colonial rule in India imposed a two-year sentence for
mocking or insulting any religion in Pakistani society. In 1991, the blasphemy sen-
tence was increased to 10 years. In 1982, a life sentence was added to the law for
those who knowingly and maliciously defiled the Quran. In 1986, life in prison or
the death penalty was added for those who misused or abused the name of the
Prophet Muhammad. According to the U.S. State Department, “No one has been
executed by the [government of Pakistan] under any of these provisions, although
some persons have been sentenced to death, and religious extremists have killed
persons accused under the provisions.”31 Christians and Muslims alike have been
jailed and sentenced to death under the blasphemy law. Anwar Masih, a Chris-
tian, was jailed for blasphemy in December 1993. Fortunately, he pled for a
“lesser” charge of blasphemy and was released on April 24, 1998 after serving his
time in prison. Another Christian, Ayub Masih, no relation, was detained and
convicted in late 1996. He was convicted after supporting Salman Rushdie.32
Masih was sentenced to die on April 27, 1998. As his case was on appeal, he was
shot at while on trial in 1997 and his family, along with 13 other Christians, were
forced to flee their village. On May 6, 1998, Roman Catholic priest and human
rights proponent John Joseph, Ayub Masih’s chief defender in the realm of public
opinion in Pakistan, committed suicide by shooting himself outside the court in
Sahiwal where Ayub Masih had originally been convicted. As a result, four days
after Joseph’s death, Christian-Muslim violence erupted in Faisalabad. It spread to
Lahore, where Christians vandalized Muslim property. Apostasy, converting to
another religion from Islam, is not a capital offense as it is in Saudi Arabia or
Sudan, but most conversions occur secretly due to the overwhelming negative so-
cial stigma of converting out of Islam in an Islamic state. Religious violence has
occurred in recent years as the tale of the Christian village of Shantinagar suggests
(see this chapter’s opening paragraph). Unfortunately, in Shantinagar 20,000 peo-
ple were displaced as a result of the riot. In the two years that followed the riot, the
government gave $100 to some home-owners and rebuilt 200 homes that sus-
tained damages or were completely destroyed in the Muslim-Christian rioting.
Anti-Christian violence has occurred in Pakistan largely due to hostilities between
Islamic militants and poorer Christians. In December 1997, a Muslim leader,
Manlana Habib Dogar, did not want land owned by his brother-in-law to be used
for the construction of a church. He led a mob to destroy the church. One month
later, the pastor of that church, a Presbyterian Church of Pakistan pastor, Nur
Alam, was murdered by three armed men. No arrests were made in the property
damage or killing of Pastor Alam. In November 1998, a Christian family of nine
were murdered in Nowshera, an act which Christians in the village claim was reli-
giously motivated. A month later in December 1998, four members of the same
family were arrested and charged with the aforementioned crime.33 In September
2001, in the wake of the terrible terrorist attacks on Washington, D.C. and New
York, Muslim-Christian violence in Pakistan escalated when it was announced
that General Musharraf ’s government would support the Americans and the glo-
bal coalition against the Taliban in seeking to excise Osama bin Laden’s terrorist
network from Aghanistan. On the evening of the attack, September 11, 2001, a
Christian restaurant owner was beaten to death in Rawalpindi when Muslims
dining at his restaurant would not pay for their meal. “Take your payment from
America,” the Muslims told the owner. The owner protested and he was attacked
and killed. The climate of intolerance was heightened and Pakistan’s small indige-
nous Christian minority were petrified at the potential backlash that had come
due to the terrorism on American soil. Of course, Pakistanis and other Muslims in
the Middle East and South Asia were extremely concerned about the intolerance
shown toward their fellow religious brothers and sisters in the West in the wake of
the September 11 attacks.34
Despite terrible violence between Muslims and Christians, the government
has allowed peaceful religious activities, such as a “Christmas Peace Walk” in
Karachi by members of the main Protestant church in Pakistan, the Church of
Pakistan. The democratic government under Sharif also revised job application
forms to remove the identification of an individual’s religion, which had per-
sisted since the colonial period in India. Some Christians believe this will not
end discrimination against them given the fact that surnames may tell a person’s
faith and passports and “identity cards” indicate religious affiliation. Sharif ap-
peared to strengthen the right of religious minorities when he held a Christmas
dinner in 1997 for 1,200 people, and in 1998 the Bishop of the Church of Paki-
stan held an “interfaith, interdenominational Christmas dinner” which included
the chief minister (equivalent of an American governor) of the Punjab province
in Pakistan.35
Between 1985 and 1999, the Pakistani government attempted to deal with the
rights of non-Muslims in an interesting way politically. Seats in the lower house of
the parliament, the National Assembly (NA), were reserved based on religious
identification. In local and national elections, non-Muslims must vote for at-large
non-Muslim candidates. Muslims may vote for Muslim candidates who are geo-
politically specific to the region the voters live in. Hence, the “personal vote” is
not available for Christians who do not feel they can be represented by Islamic
parties at the local level.36 Christians have four seats in the NA. In the 1997 na-
tional elections, Christian NA members represented 327,606 people as compared
to other non-Muslim NA members, such as Hindus at 319,029, Sikhs, Buddhists,
and others at 112,801. These figures underestimate the religious minority popula-
tion in Pakistan since the minority constituencies are based on the 1981 census.37
Ironically, this type of “consociationalism” is applied in India, and it has been ad-
vocated by political scientists in order to provide minority representation in eth-
nically fragmented polities where the rights of smaller ethnic, cultural, and reli-
gious groups may be easily violated by dominant groups who control the
majoritarian system.38
Sudan
As seen in chapter 3, Sudan is a nation with problematic ethnic, religious, and

geopolitical fissures. The current phase of the Sudanese civil war dates from
1969, the year the south declared its independence.39 The country’s second dem-
ocratic government was overthrown in 1969 and the military dictatorship of
General Jafar al-Numayri began. Although a tenuous peace between northern
government forces and the southern troops occurred in 1972, by 1983, the civil
war resumed with a vengeance as the Sudanese People’s Liberation Army (SPLA)
under Dr. John Garang vowed to stop the north’s attacks and ethnic cleansing of
blacks, mainly Christians and animists in the south. Since 1973, over one-half
million people have perished fighting in the civil war. Another 4
21 million have
been displaced. Around one million have starved to death during this time pe-
riod.40 Compare this to Northern Ireland where just over 3,000 died as a result of
the sectarian “troubles” between 1969–1994.41
After Numayri imposed the Shari’a on the state in 1984, the SPLA began to
fight more ardently. At that time, Cuba, Ethiopia, and Israel all offered support to
the SPLA. Indeed, politics does make strange bedfellows. Libya, Iraq, and the Pal-
estine Liberation Organization supported the north. After the 1989 coup (see
chapter 3 above), when the government in the north changed hands, this allowed
the SPLA to make some major inroads militarily by the middle 1990s. However,
internal factionalism led to a breakaway SPLA faction, the SPLA-United, which
then battled the SPLA from 1989–1993. The SPLA/United was led by Garang’s
second in command, Riek Machar. In 1994, the Khartoum government forces
went on the offensive and drove many black Sudanese into Uganda. By 1997, the
SPLA, working with the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, had made gains in the
south and east. This allowed many homeless southerners to return to their
homes from refugee camps in Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya, Uganda,
and Central African Republic. The SPLA worked with another insurgency force,
the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), which moved west out of Eritrea and
Ethopia in hopes of eventually taking Khartoum and cutting off Khartoum’s ac-
cess to the Red Sea. The NDA was a strange grouping of the SPLA with eight
Muslim political parties. One of those parties, the Beja Congress, has a paramili-
tary arm, the Beja Congress Armed Forces. All of these groups supported the im-
position of Islamic law in 1984, but many of these groups’ leaders found them-
selves jailed by the National Islamic Front (NIF) (see chapter 3 above). The NIF
was part of Numaryi’s government. The NDA used the SPLA as the military arm
of the movement in order to fight the Khartoum government. This was done be-
cause it was theoretically against the Quran’s teachings for Muslims to fight each
other. This teaching was not followed in 1971 in the Pakistani civil war and the
Gulf War of 1991 when Iraq attacked Kuwait (both intra-Islamic clashes). The
SPLA provided 95% of the NDA’s forces.42
The most recent phase of the conflict, since 1983, saw some overtures toward
peace. Former U.S. president Jimmy Carter, who was in Sudan in 1989, returned
in 1995 and came away with a short-lived détente. He did get many of the south-
ern forces to agree to a peace deal with Khartoum in April 1997. The breakaway
SPLA-United faction favored the deal, which called for limited home rule, a refe-
rendum on secession, and the right to stay armed. Unfortunately for Carter and
the Khartoum government, Garang’s SPLA refused any deal short of full indepen-
dence for the south.43
As Marshall states, “Some churches and academics have shied away from the
issue of the persecution of Christians because, they claim, it might lead to anti-
Arab or anti-Islamic prejudice.”44 However, the tide of Christian persecution by
the Islamist government in the north cannot be underestimated. In the Nuba
Mountains, in south-central Sudan, the government has sought to repress and ex-
terminate the black African peoples, who are largely Christian. The Christian Nu-
bans date back to the sixth century .. Between 1986 and 1996, 500,000 Nubans
were killed. By 2000, that number had risen to approximately 850,000. Today
around 200,000 Nubans live and perhaps as many as two million are in concen-
tration camps, known as “peace camps.” This ethnic cleansing has been used to
weaken the resistance of Christians in the south and to keep the Nubans from
helping the SPLA. Marshall reports that in the Nuba Mountains, “There have
been reports, including from Catholic bishops, of crucifixions of Christians by the
army. As of 1996, over half the population of southern Sudan were in concentra-
tion camps; that number is estimated at eight million.”45
It should be stated that Christians were not the only ones who felt the wrath
of the government. The minority Muslim community in the Nuba Mountains
suffered at times as well, as intermarriage among the faiths was not uncommon,
and churches and mosques in some villages were torched by overzealous govern-
ment troops.46 On the whole, Christians suffered terribly under General Omar
al-Bashir’s regime. Under Bashir, a rigid Islamization policy was implemented,

authored by the country’s powerful attorney general and NIF head, Dr. Hassan
Abdullah al-Turabi. Turabi’s Islamization initiatives saw the following results: (a)
abandoning people in the desert without water or food; (b) enslavement; (c) tor-
ture; (d) rape; (e) child kidnapping; (f ) forced relocation of people; (g) forcing
acceptance of all things Islamic in order to get food; (h) widespread starvation;
(i) forced Islamic conversion on non-Muslims; (j) enforcing the Islamization
program in all schools; and (k) the end of freedoms such as freedoms of assembly,
press, and speech.47 As Marshall indicates, the secular press and others believe
“the specifically religious dimension [of the Sudanese conflict] . . . [is] an overlay
on what is “really” an ethnic or territorial conflict. However, in a conflict which
has, by one side, been pronounced a jihad, which involves widespread forced
conversion to Islam, sometimes on penalty of death, and which government
troops machine-gun altars and tear the figure of Jesus off crucifixes, religion is no
mere veneer.”48
The issue of slavery as a part of the Christian-Muslim rift in Sudan was a real
and serious issue to most Americans and Westerners who followed the conflict.
The idea of slavery at the dawn of the twenty-first century was inconceivable to
most in the West. However, the Sudanese war has seen much of it. As the govern-
ment attempted to rid the state of “any non-Islamic expressions and non-Islamic
people,” the slave trade thrived in the southern part of the country. Animist and
Christian women and children were sold in order to perform “cheap labor” or
household duties. Some were sold as concubines. Baroness Cox, deputy speaker of
the House of Lords in the United Kingdom, stated that “traders [were] bringing
slaves back into the southern areas so they could get better prices by offering to
sell the children back to their parents.”49 After 1995, some 11,000 Sudanese slaves
were bought back by the human rights organization, Christian Solidarity, of Swit-
zerland. It paid around $50 per slave. The United Nations’ Children’s Emergency
Fund (UNICEF) believed that buying the slaves back actually encouraged slavery
in Sudan.50 The average slave child in the mid-1990s sold for “five head of cattle,”
and a boy often went for ten cows.51 The Christian slave children were often
forced to convert to Islam and cut all ties to their families.
Another problematic issue for Sudanese Christians in the south was the issue
of foreign aid, which generally flowed through Khartoum, the capital. Sudan used
to get foreign aid from the U.S. government until 1991 when it backed Iraq in the
Gulf War. After aid was cut off, many private Western organizations sought to
provide aid to those caught in the horrors of the civil war. However, the Khar-
toum government felt “many Western groups are fronts for Christian missionary
work or intelligence-gathering.” As a result, only Islamic organizations were al-
lowed to deliver aid to the needy. And, these groups were only allowed in
government-controlled locales in the south of Sudan. One agency, Dawa Islamia,
the largest Muslim aid organization in Sudan, had strong ties to the government
and did not give food to Christians or animists in the south unless they converted
to Islam.52
In June 1999, the U.S. Senate passed a foreign appropriations operations bill
aimed at getting food and other humanitarian supplies directly into the hands of
Garang’s Sudanese People’s Liberation Movement, the political arm of the SPLA.
This occurred when Washington was told that 150,000 southerners were starving
because Khartoum had kept food and medicine from getting to the south. The
United States had been giving aid again to Khartoum in the late 1990s via the
NIF’s “Operation Lifeline.” However, with calls to keep aid out of the
government’s hands due to its persecution of Christians and others, American
lawmakers saw to it that a change was made. Senator Sam Brownback (R-KS)
said, “Christian activists played an enormous role in drawing the attention of the
world to the slavery, genocide, and abuse in Sudan.” Some 4.3 million people did
not get food in southern Sudan due to Khartoum’s intention on controlling oil re-
serves in the south and punishing Christians and animists. The government orig-
inally kept the relief from the south because it said fighting between southern fac-
tions got in the way of relief efforts. “Assistant Secretary of State Susan Rice [said]
that the NIF’s support of slavery, religious persecution, terrorism, and civil war
make Sudan one of the world’s worst rights abusers.”53
The State Department has documented a number of incidents in Sudan. In
May 1998, Archbishop Gabriel Zubeir of the Roman Catholic Church was held
for five hours in order to keep him from attending the Intergovernmental
Agency on Development (IGAD) peace sessions in Nairobi, Kenya. Later that
year in late July and early August, two Catholic priests and 18 others were ar-
rested on charges of aiding in bombings in Khartoum on June 30, 1998. The two
priests, Father Boma and Father Sebit, were detained in a secret location while
the Sudanese Supreme Court decided on whether their case should be held be-
fore a civil court or a military court. Many view this case as one aimed at intimi-
dating Christians and those in the political opposition. Both priests were facing
the death penalty and “post-execution crucifixion” if convicted. In attempts to
intimidate Christians via legal and extralegal means, the Khartoum government
has authorized the destruction of 30 religious buildings via bulldozer since 1990.
The SPLM, Garang’s political arm, has engaged in peace talks mediated by the
IGAD in Kenya and Ethiopia in May 1998 and July 1999. At the 1999 meeting,
Khartoum and the SPLM agreed to the creation of a “permanent secretariat for
sustained and continuous negotiations.” The SPLM, as acknowledged by the
U.S. government, is “dominated by Christians.” In only one instance was a com-
plaint lodged against Christians involved in the SPLM, when Protestant mis-
sionaries baptized children who were attending a Catholic school without con-
sent of the children’s parents.54
India
India, the world’s largest democracy at just over one billion people, is a fascinating
country.55 With its ancient civilizations competing for control of the Indus valley
and the Hindus immigrating in the sixth century .. from that area in what is
now modern-day Pakistan, India has grown up to become a major geopolitical
state with nuclear capabilities. Since it began underground testing of its nukes in
1998, it has sparked, along with its enemy Pakistan, a new arms race in South
Asia—one that has unsettled the nuclear arbiters of the West, especially Washing-
ton, which under President Bill Clinton was caught off-guard when the Indians
and Pakistanis detonated their nuclear bombs.
From a religious standpoint, India is an interesting story. It is 82.4% Hindu,
yet it has sizable minority religious communities, including an Islamic commu-
nity of 12.7% of the population and a Christian community of 2.3%.56 Sikhs,
found mainly in Punjab in northwest India, make up two percent of the popula-
tion. Sikhism is a relatively new religion that evolved in the fifteenth century. It
stems from a mixture of both monotheistic Islam and Hindu cultural traditions.
Legally, the Indian Penal Code does not allow: (a) the promotion of violent at-
tacks based on religion, language, race or place of birth; (b) defiling a place of wor-
ship; (c) disturbing religious gatherings; (d) committing deliberate acts that incite
strong religious feelings or insulting one’s religious beliefs; (e) trespassing on
places of worship; and (f ) promoting bitterness between various sectarian and so-
cial communities—that is, propagating communal strife.57
Christians in India are found in the northeastern states, where they are at
times a majority, and in the southern states of Kerala, Tamil Nadu, and Goa. The
ancient caste system affiliated with Hinduism, and more specifically with Indian
society as a whole, has left a unique and indelible mark on India through the ages.
Indian Christians have rejected the caste system. Christians from lower caste
Hindu families have suffered from discrimination as their family members did.
Historically, if lower caste Hindus converted to Christianity they would lose their
affirmative action status according to the 1948 Indian constitution. Those who
converted to Buddhism, Jainism, or Sikhism did not lose their affirmative action
status because these religions were categorized as Hindu in the constitution.58
India, the world’s second largest country, is a multiethnic and multireligious
society. The Hindu faith, which manifests in a number of assumptions about life
and spiritual goals, evolved out of various spiritual traditions in the Indus Valley
dating back to 3000 .. Modern variations of Hinduism are derived from the
Indic period (c. .. 300–1200) when the Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain traditions
began to manifest themselves. Hinduism, a polytheistic religion, conceptualizes
the idea of a supreme being within a plurality of gods. The “three basic forms” of
the “Absolute” (or, as they are called, “the three high gods”) include the Hindu
gods: Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva. Brahma is “the creator god;” Vishnu is “the
preserving god;” and, Shiva is “the destroying god.” Indian religions and cultures
scholar Gerald James Larson suggests that a kind of “prehistoric spirituality,”
which includes the worship of a number of gods and goddesses at the village-level
in India, still persists today. This is known as “village” Hinduism. Larson esti-
mates that some 400 million Indians ascribe to this form of Hinduism in India
today.59
Folklore has it that the Apostle Thomas60 may have founded a Christian com-
munity in India and was allegedly martyred in Madras in .. 52. This commu-
nity is known as the Malabar Christian community (“ ‘Thomas Christian’ com-
munity”) found today in Kerala and Tamil Nadu. Larson believes the legend of
Thomas is probably pure folklore and that Christians may have been in India by
.. mid-300s at the earliest. However, most histories of Christianity in India date
the Christians, arrival at the sixth century .. Protestant missionary work did not
begin until the early eighteenth century when Danish Lutherans arrived. Today,
India has 20 million Christians. Nine million are Roman Catholic. Eight million
are Protestant, with 1.5 million belonging to the Church of South India, an amal-
gamation of Methodists, Anglicans, Presbyterians, Dutch Reformed, and Congre-
gationalists. The Church of North India has 500,000 constituents and is made up
of Baptists, Methodists, Anglicans, Presbyterians, Disciples of Christ, and Con-
gregationalists. The Syrian Orthodox Church, also known as the Thomas Chris-
tian community, has about 1.5 million members. Its counterpart, the Mar Thomas
Syrian Church, has about one million constituents and is aligned with both the
North and South Indian churches. The Mar Thomas Syrian Church split with
the Thomas Christian community in the nineteenth century. Pentecostals, Lu-
therans, Baptists, Methodists, and Anglicans all have multiple independent
churches in India today. Sixty percent of all Christians are found in Kerala, Tamil
Nadu, and Andhra Pradesh in the nation’s south.61
The British came to India in the seventeenth century. As a mercantilist
power,62 the British began to colonize India via the East India Company. As the
British gained control of India by the end of the 1700s, they brought foreign val-
ues and ways to the Hindu people. Missionary Christianity was radically different
from indigenous Christianity and other religions in India. Along with English
Christianity came the liberal ethos of the Western democracies: individualism,
capitalism, and progress. This contrasted sharply with Indian communalism, an
underdeveloped society in the economic sense, and the time-honored system of
the caste in the Indian social order. According to political scientist John G.
Stoessinger, the British helped the Indians prepare for the twentieth century and
eventual independence. First, the British taught the Indians about democracy,
which spurred the Indians to call for self-governance. Second, the British helped
lay the foundations for an improved standard of living. Third, the British educated
a number of future Indian leaders, including Mahatma Gandhi. Finally, the Brit-
ish brought a developed health and educational system to India.63
Nationalism in India found its political and spiritual persona in the person of
Mohondas K. Gandhi. “The Mahatma,” or leader, as he was known, helped to
keep the nationalist movement, the Indian Congress, unified. Gandhi, a trained
attorney, began his career working for the rights of Indians in South Africa. He
eventually embraced the Hindu concept of ahimsa, or nonviolence to living
things. Politically, the doctrine was known as passive resistance or civil disobedi-
ence. Gandhi eventually became completely ascetic and almost mystical. His per-
sonal austerity was used to show the world that India’s people were of the earth
and could subsist in the wake of British colonial control. Jailed numerous times
for inciting strikes by Indian workers, Gandhi could not keep religious factional-
ism from ripping the national movement apart. In 1948, less than a year after in-
dependence, he was assassinated by a Hindu extremist.64
As a stratified society, India’s caste system troubled Gandhi. The idea that all
people were born into certain classes and that some, the untouchables, were des-
tined to live out a fate at the bottom of the social ladder, was incomprehensible to
most Westerners. The Indian constitution recognized the need for providing vari-
ous remedies to improve the social and economic plight of various “socially and
educationally backward classes.” In December 1980, the Mandal Commission
filed its report, which essentially called for a kind of American-style affirmative ac-
tion in Indian society. Among the commission’s findings were that “economic
backwardness” was different from “social and educational backwardness,” and
that a certain percentage of government posts and slots in higher education ought
to be set aside for the “Other Backward Classes.”65
The Indian government was controlled by the democratic socialist and secu-
lar Congress party from its inception until 1989. In 1951, Jawaharlal Nehru engi-
neered the amazing feat of carrying out democratic elections. At the time, India
had well over 500 million citizens. Thus, the elections of 1951 made India the
world’s largest democracy. In its foreign policy, India attempted to walk a tight-
rope between communist East and capitalist democratic West. The policy of
“nonalignment” helped to reinforce India’s independence and its attempt to be
the democratic leader of the developing world.66 Despite numerous internal
threats, from Muslims in Kashmir to Muslims in Tamil Nadu, and external
threats from Pakistan to China, which the Indians fought in a short border war in
1962, the Indian society and economy developed at a steady, yet slow pace.
By 1989, internal divisions in society over how to respond to terror, and reli-
gious and ethnic factionalism, became more problematic. With Indira Gandhi,
Nehru’s daughter, as prime minister, India progressed between 1966 and 1984. Un-
fortunately, she was assassinated in 1984 by a Sikh extremist after she had ordered
the extirpation of Sikh extremism by unusual military force in the Punjab. As a re-
sult, the political tide began to change. In December 1989, a National Front gov-
ernment was elected. As a minority coalition government, headed by V. P. Singh,
the new government had communists on the left and a newly growing force on the
right, the Hindu nationalist party: the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The BJP,
which had had very few seats in the Indian parliament, won 86 seats, the most it
had ever gotten. That government collapsed in 1990, and the Congress party re-
turned to power under the leadership of Indira Gandhi’s son, Rajiv. Like his
mother, Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated in 1991, and in June of that year, the BJP
saw its electoral fortunes improve with a jump from 86 seats to 117 seats in the Lok
Sabha, the nation’s legislature. The party’s electoral returns rose from 11% to 20%.67
The BJP was a curious nationalistic party that blended traditional Indian national-
ism with a commitment to a Hindu India. It attempted to desecularize schools,
promote Hinduism in all phases of life, and redefine India as a Hindu, as opposed
to a multi-ethnic and multireligious, state. As we shall see, the new Hindu nation-
alism of the post-1989 period abetted anti-Christian feelings in the country. Al-
though the BJP governments of the late 1990s and early twenty-first century most
likely did not intend for this to happen, the strident Hindu nationalism of the BJP
found cohabitating with Muslims and Christians in a “Hindu” India to be a diffi-
cult proposition. Of course, the three faiths had lived together for over one thou-
sand years. What’s more they had lived peaceably for much of that time.
As in Pakistan, indigenous and convert Christians are usually found in the
lower socioeconomic echelons of society in India. As members of a caste-based so-
ciety, Indians make social, economic, and political judgments based on caste.
Christians and missionaries in India have generally rejected the idea of caste.
Christians from lower-caste Hindu families suffer from discrimination as do their
family members. Lower-caste Hindus who convert to Christianity lose affirmative
action status. Those who become Buddhists, Jains, or Sikhs do not lose their affir-
mative action status, for these religious groupings are included in the Hindu cate-
gory in the Constitution. Indian Christians and non-Indian Christians may pros-
elytize; however, since the 1960s, foreign missionaries could not be resident
foreign missionaries. They had to get short-term tourist visas. As of January 1993,
there were 1,923 registered Christian missionaries in the country. By March 1999,
many foreign missionaries were having difficulty getting their visas renewed.
Some missionaries could not travel to the northeastern part of the country, where
a higher number of Christians are found. The BJP government has been un-
friendly to Christians in terms of ministry work. As a Hindu nationalist party, it
has tried at the national level to mute non-Hindu influences. At local levels, it has
been even more provocative. In February 1999, after a series of attacks on Chris-
tians, the government of Gujarat began obtaining information on Christians that
would track the number of missionaries in the province, itemize these churches’
funding sources, and catalogue so-called “tricks” used to convert people. This
was ostensibly done in order to protect Christians. After a public outcry against
the program and a court order barring it, the provincial government scotched the
census.68
In 1998, there were 90 incidents aimed at Christians. Most were mob ac-
tions aimed at destroying church property. Some were violent attacks on Chris-
tian pilgrims and church leaders. Examples of the violence in that year included:
one priest was assaulted; a Christian cemetery was occupied and tombs dam-
aged; an attack occurred on a Catholic hospital; a church was vandalized and a
crucifix desecrated; and, a militant Hindu youth group, tied to the BJP and the
National Volunteer Corps, demolished a chapel. On September 23, 1998, four
Catholic nuns were gang raped in Madhya Pradesh by Hindu extremists. Three
days later, Hindu extremists broke into a church and placed a statue of Shiva in
the church. Shiva is one of a myriad of major gods in the Hindu faith, but it is
one of the top gods (as the destroyer god). On October 30, 1998, delegates to the
national Christian conference in Baroda, Gujarat province were beaten with
chains, belts, and sticks. During Christmas week 1998, members of the Shiv Sera
political party in Gujarat decorated Christian neighborhoods with Hindu sym-
bols and directed shop-owners to remove Christian decorations. In January
1999, two Christian prayer halls were set on fire in Gujarat. On January 27,
1999, 12 Christians from Gujarat were forcibly reconverted to Hinduism by
“threat of the loss of right to use the local well and the destruction of their
homes.” The state government of Gujarat set up goodwill committees in relation
to these charges and arrested 43 people. On January 23, 1999, Australian mis-
sionary Graham Staines and his two sons were killed while sleeping in their car,
when a mob of Hindus set fire to their automobile and shouted Hindu slogans
at them. Staines had worked in India for many years and ran a hospital for lep-
ers in Orissa; he was in the town to attend a Bible camp. Fifty-one were arrested
in the murders of Staines and his sons, but many of them were released due to
lack of evidence.69
In September 2000, BJP premier, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, visited U.S. president
Bill Clinton in Washington, D.C. As a result of the high-level meeting, a number
of Indian-U.S. agreements were concluded including accords on improving
“cooperation on such issues as trade, investment, counterterrorism, counterdrug
issues, energy and the environment, among others.” However, problems did per-
sist between the two democracies. First, India refused to sign the Comprehensive
Test Ban Treaty, which had not taken effect because the U.S. Senate had not rati-
fied it by late 2000 (although the president signed it). American Democratic party
presidential candidate and sitting vice president Al Gore said of Prime Minister
Vajpayee, “It is rare to find a leader who embraces the qualities of idealism and
pragmatism and confidence and humility. And in you, Mr. Prime Minister, we
have such a leader.”70
Despite Gore’s effusive flattery of Vajpayee, numerous protestors demon-

strated against India and its prime minister’s BJP-led government in order to at-
tempt to get the Indian government to confront growing minority—and specifi-
cally religious—persecution in that country. Representative Dana Rohrabacher
(R-CA) “told protestors that Vajpayee was asking the U.S. for help against terror-
ism while allowing Christians to be terrorized in the country.”71
China
Some political and historical commentators have called the twenty-first century,
“the Asian century.” This seemingly strange assertion is provocative. Yet, when
one looks at the development of the world’s fastest growing continent, one will see
many things. Most importantly, one will see the continued economic growth and
transformation of the largest country on earth: China. At 1.2 billion people,
China is a major actor in the post–Cold War world order.72 As Huntington states,
“China’s history, culture, traditions, size, economic dynamism, and self-image all
impel it to assume a hegemonic position in East Asia.”73 As the leader of Asia,
from a military power standpoint, China has forced the U.S. to continually re-
think its diplomacy with Beijing. Having benefitted from regional economic
growth since the 1980s, China stands as a potential leader and model for other
Asian states. Huntington argues that economic success in Asian polities has
shifted the balance of power internationally in three ways. First, the economic
productivity of Asian states has allowed the states of East Asia and South Asia to
grow militarily. As a result, various regional rivalries have evolved since 1991 that
were not as important, or were kept under wraps, during the Cold War. Indeed,
regional security has become tenuous, as seen in the case of North Korea’s “cold
war” with Japan and China’s with Vietnam. Second, economic development has
led to greater conflict in terms of trade with the United States. And the Asian
states seem to be getting the upper hand economically. Finally, China is attempt-
ing to dominate regional politics, as it has historically. As a result, other Asian
states will side with the world’s largest country, or attempt to combat China’s heg-
emony via a modified containment-type policy.74
For over 4,000 years, the Chinese Empire saw itself as “the center of the uni-
verse.” It was not until the twentieth century that the Chinese began to revise this
view. Historically, the Chinese were an isolated people. Because life and interna-
tional relations outside of the nation’s boundaries were of little consequence to
rulers and their staffs, made up of the bureaucratic mandarin elite, China main-
tained a relatively slow-paced and economically autarkic society that had no real
relations with the West. China was relatively unaffected by the West until the
1700s. At that time, the British arrived looking for trade opportunities. By the
1800s, opium was a major commodity of trade by the British, and they had
found an open market and willing consumers for the drug in China. Unfortu-
nately, more than one million people became addicted to the drug. As a result,
the Chinese government, under orders of the emperor, asked Queen Victoria to
halt the drug trade. When the British refused, the Chinese blocked ships in Chi-
nese ports and the infamous Opium War commenced. The British took all im-
portant ports along China’s coast as a result, and the matter was put to rest in
1842 with the signing of the Treaty of Nanking. Again, as was the case in India,
the colonial and imperialistic aspirations of the British got in the way of geopo-
litical diplomacy and fairness for the indigenous people. China was eventually
divided among Western powers. Ironically, colonialism brought Christianity to
China, and as Stoessinger states, “The picture of Christian missionaries attempt-
ing to repair the ravages of opium addiction caused by their conationals became
a source of additional confusion.”75
Because of Western imperialism and a mixture of the emperors’ hubris and
myopia regarding its political abilities, China suffered through many tumultuous
events after 1850. “During the [nineteenth and twentieth centuries], China
[underwent] five major convulsions: the Great Peasant Rebellion, the Boxer Re-
bellion, the Self-Strengthening Movement, the Nationalist Revolution, and the
Communist Revolution.”76 These have been attempts by the Chinese to regain au-
tonomy and challenge the West regarding China’s internal development. The
Great Peasant Rebellion, also known as the Tai-Ping Rebellion or “Christian Re-
bellion,” began in 1851 and lasted 15 years. The leader of the rebellion, Hung, tried
to create a philosophy of mixing land reform with the beliefs of Christianity.
Hung referred to his attempt to establish a Christian kingdom as “Tai-Ping Tien-
Kuo,” or the “Great Kingdom of Heavenly Peace.”77 He claimed to be “the
younger brother of Jesus” (see Matt. 24:24). Hung gained millions of followers,
and approximately 20 million died during the rebellion. Hung attacked the for-
eign “barbarians” who had too much control over the society. As Hung got more
peasants on his side, he began to assert more control. By the middle of the 1850s,
he and the rebels controlled half of China. The Manchu government, with the aid
of Western powers, was frightened at what a government of the masses might lead
to in China. With military machinery and armaments from the West, the tide was
stemmed in 1864, and the rebellion ended when Hung committed suicide.78
The Boxer Rebellion of the summer of 1900 was an insurrection again aimed
at foreigners in Peking (now Beijing). The Boxers were extremists who had joined
secretive anti-Western groups. They wanted to intimidate the ruling Manchu
government and frighten foreigners in China. After holding foreign diplomats
hostage in the capital city for two months in the summer of 1900, the government
crushed the rebellion and executed its leaders. As a result, both the Great Peasant
Rebellion of 1851 and the Boxer Rebellion of 1900 were utter failures.79
The Self-Strengthening Movement was the third Chinese revolt, led by the
charismatic nationalist physician Sun Yat-sen. This movement was aimed at
maintaining time-honored Chinese values and utilizing Western know-how to
strengthen Chinese society and economy. As had been conceptualized in the first
two rebellions, indigenous Chinese values were viewed as incompatible with
Western values and Western ways. Dr. Sun argued otherwise. China could be-
come a great power if it would embrace its rich and glorious history as well as
apply newer Western technologies and military know-how in order to make
China great again. Dr. Sun himself was a unique individual. He had studied at a
British school and was born in Macao, a tiny Portuguese territory next to China
and Hong Kong. Dr. Sun was also a convert to Christianity. After his early school-
ing, he took a medical degree in Hong Kong and learned the ways of the West
from missionary physician Dr. James Cantlie. After graduating, he intended to
practice medicine in his native Macao. However, because of his nationalistic pred-
ilections, the Portuguese revoked his license and would not allow the budding
surgeon to serve in Macao. After that, Dr. Sun decided to put all his efforts into
revolutionary activities. While in exile in London, he began to advocate the over-
throw of the Manchu dynasty. He called for democracy and a moderate socialism
in the economic realm. In 1911, a nationalist rebellion began. Dr. Sun was going to
be the new republic’s first president. However, the revolution collapsed when war-
lordism kept it from realizing its potential. Dr. Sun was disappointed, and he re-
signed as leader of the Nationalist Revolutionary Movement. He then approached
Western nations in hopes of getting support for his idea of a Chinese democratic
state. However, self-interest had led the West to prefer a backwards, truncated
China, which was easier to manipulate politically and economically. Unfortu-
nately for the West, Dr. Sun began to gravitate toward authoritarianism to achieve
his goals after Western rejection. He watched the success of Vladimir Ilych Lenin’s
Bolshevik Revolution in Russia (see chapter 5). As Stoessinger notes: “Both Lenin
and Sun Yat-sen were professional revolutionaries, yet no two men could have dif-
fered more. Sun Yat-sen was a Christian and by temperament inclined toward
parliamentarism rather than the use of violence; Lenin was a tough, shrewd revo-
lutionary strategist who firmly believed that only a tightly organized, blindly obe-
dient party could accomplish the goals of revolution.”80
Dr. Sun then attempted to form a party based on the Soviet communist
model that would be more of a dictatorship of the proletariat, at first, in order to
militarily conquer China. This would eventually prepare the way for democracy.
Dr. Sun’s new party, the Nationalist party or Guomindang (GMD), was head-
quartered at Nanking. Dr. Sun died in 1925, but he had prepared a successor to
keep his dream of a Nationalist China alive. That man was Chiang Kai-shek.
Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist Revolution was a mixture of tough authoritar-
ianism and the attempt to restore Confucian values in Chinese society in the 1930s.
As generalissimo, Chiang Kai-shek recognized Joseph Stalin’s plan to put China

into its sphere of influence via the Comintern. Chiang Kai-shek resisted and
purged communists from the GMD. He then attacked Western imperialism and
attempted to impose Confucian traditions in China. Although Chiang Kai-shek
essentially restored a kind of military empire in China and brought some stability,
he failed to mollify the peasants, who constituted the bulk of the population, and
this led to the rise of the communists under Mao Zedong. Abetting this volatile
context was Japan’s annexation of Manchuria in 1931, and by 1937, the GMD was
in the throes of a full-scale war with Japan, which sought to destroy the National-
ist government and make China a colony of a fellow Asian state. As a result, the
Japanese captured Chiang Kai-shek’s capital at Nanking, and the GMD was
forced to move to Chungking. In this wartorn environment, the communists
under Mao began to assert themselves.81
The civil war in China was a culmination of a divided society and one that
saw millions of peasants embrace communism in the late 1930s in order to chal-
lenge the authoritarianism of the GMD. Unfortunately for many of the peasants,
the authoritarianism of the GMD would be replaced with a far more ruthless to-
talitarian communism under Mao. Between 1947 and 1949, an all-out struggle for
power ended when the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) under Mao rode into Pe-
king. On October 4, 1949, standing in the seat of ancient Chinese dynasties in
Tiananmen Square in Peking, Mao, like a great Chinese emperor of old, declared
the start of the People’s Republic of China. China’s twentieth century conflicts
would end, but the monolithic force of communism would now penetrate all as-
pects of the society, including the free exercise of religion.
According to political scientist Gary K. Bertsch, the Maoist period (1949–
1976) in China was characterized by six distinct characteristics: (a) “absolute self-
lessness” in serving the communist state; (b) “class consciousness” in the Marxian
tradition; (c) “ideological study”; (d) “obedience to the Communist party”; (e)
“labor and production”; and (f ) the “red” versus “expert” dilemma. Mao saw him-
self as part revolutionary and part poet-philosopher. Accumulating volumes of
material, Mao sought to personally indoctrinate the Chinese public. His “Three
Much Read Articles” focused on a fictitious ancient Chinese character, a contem-
porary soldier, and a foreign volunteer physician. It sought to create role models
for the Chinese in subordinating their lives and dreams to his personal will and
the Revolution. In bowing to the party’s will, Mao was able to engage in massive
social and economic reform. The Great Leap Forward (1956) attempted to push
China’s agrarian economy toward industrialization, much like Stalin’s did in Rus-
sia in the late 1920s and early 1930s (see chapter 5). Mao had banked on the Chi-
nese selflessness, voluntarism, and mass spontaneity in seeing the Great Leap For-
ward through. However, the plan failed miserably because people worried about
their own personal livelihoods.82
Class consciousness is a Marxian staple that demands that the worker became
aware of his or her plight. The model Chinese citizen was to be on guard against
class struggle and to keep bourgeois views from filtering into society. The PLA sol-
dier spent hours studying Mao’s works, and heavy indoctrination was part of the
army’s regimen. In general, little evidence evolved to show that most Chinese
thought in class terms in spite of the government’s attempt to make class struggle
a centerpiece of its program. Party obedience was part of the totalitarian system
under Mao. Again, Mao borrowed from Stalin in creating a bonafide personality
cult. The following song, “The East is Red,” is a good example of how Mao be-
came like a god as leader of Red China:
The East is Red,
The sun rises.
China has brought forth a Mao Zedong.
He works for the people’s happiness.
He is the people’s great savior.
Chairman Mao loves the people,
He is our guide.
He leads us onward
To build a new China.
The Communist Party is like the sun,
Whenever it shines, there is light.
Where there’s the Communist Party,
There the people will win liberation.83
Ideological study, like inculcating class consciousness, was at the center of the com-
munist program in China under Mao. His teachings saturated society, and the
seminal work was his “Little Red Book.” This communist catechism was a collec-
tion of revolutionary aphorisms and moral precepts. Emphasizing ideological
study instead of objective academic discourse, it helped in creating the conceptual
foundations for the Cultural Revolution,which some scholars date between 1966
and 1969.84 In this period, Mao sought to divide the party in order to keep alleged
ambitious enemies from toppling him, and he hoped to create a new cadre of ideo-
logically pure Maoist leaders in the younger generations. That revolution failed ut-
terly, and many were killed in what became the worst of many terrible events in
Mao’s draconian rule. It would not be too harsh to compare this period in recent
Chinese history to Stalin’s terror period between 1934–1941 (see chapter 5).
Under Mao, manual labor was championed as labor and production became the
great proletarian virtues. Even service sector workers such as teachers, physicians,
lawyers, and businessmen were seen as producers of goods in the best tradition of
the Chinese peasant and working classes. Finally, the red-versus-expert dilemma
was a problem brought on by Mao’s emphasis on Marxist indoctrination. By the
Cultural Revolution, the emphasis on ideology (red) as a precondition for work
and government favor was the norm. After 1976, this changed and by the Tianan-
men crackdown of 1989, the pendulum had swung to the technical and scientific
(expert) in order to pick elites who could benefit the economy and society, not
just the party.85
After Mao’s death, the Chinese communist state began to change its eco-
nomic modus operandi. These changes also led to political and social alterations.
By 1982, China had begun to deemphasize heavy industrial production (the Sta-
linist mode) and emphasized lighter manufacturing instead. In the agricultural
realm, peasants were allowed to keep some produce from personal plots in order
to live at a higher standard of living (similar to Mikhail Gorbachev’s experiment
as Communist party head in his native Stavropol province in southern Russia in
the late 1960s, and his experiment with perestroika after 1985 as premier in that
country). China began opening up to foreign trade and non-Chinese enterprise.
Foreign music, books, and movies were all allowed into the country. A growing
number of new laws aimed at regulating social life were implemented that dealt
with such areas as marriage, taxation, and civil and criminal laws. These laws
were supposed to end the arbitrariness of the Maoist era. Class labels were jetti-
soned in order to restore stability in society. Terms like “capitalist roader” and “re-
actionary” were no longer used. An energy problem took its toll on the coal and
oil sectors in China in the early 1980s. The one-child family planning policy led
to an increase in abortions and a national obsession with male heirs, or “little em-
perors” as they are called today. Upon Mao’s death in 1976, an awkward transition
of power within China’s communist hierarchy culminated in the eventual return
of the oft-jailed but loyal Maoist partisan, Deng Xiaoping. Between 1978 and
1980 Deng took control of the party, and by 1982 he was dealing with problems in
(a) energy, communications, and transportation; (b) a weak technological base;
(c) a growing population; (d) increasing youth unemployment; (e) a poor stan-
dard of living; (f ) stagnating agricultural production; and (g) inefficiency in
China’s heavy industries.86
By 1989, restlessness and the staleness of socialist authoritarianism led to a
student revolt at Tiananmen Square in Beijing. On June 4, 1989, the same day the
Poles went to the polls, which symbolized a crack in the Iron Curtain due to dem-
ocratic change, the PLA sent their tanks in to crush the fledgling democratic
movement. Scores died, and the communist regime in Beijing, led by seemingly
benign Deng, displayed its true colors. China, after Mao’s death, was in a state of
ideological flux. The Communist Party’s prestige had sagged. The citizens resented
the power struggles in the one-party state. And, the people became increasingly
skeptical about Marxism’s ability to solve economic and social problems. Thus,
the demonstrations at Tiananmen Square were not a surprising occurrence.
What’s more, China has seen numerous economic and social ills in recent years.
Today, one hundred million Chinese are unemployed. Of the 100,000
government-owned enterprises, half continue to lose money and will be closed or
sold. Long an agrarian society, 800 million peasants barely subsist, and many find
the growth of the service sector in Chinese cities to be inequitable. Inflation ran
around 25% in the 1990s. Crime has gone up 20% a year since 1996.87
Add increased tenseness in China’s foreign relations with the United States,
the globe’s main superpower, and the recipe for volatility is beyond a simmer in
the frying pan. Since the mid-1990s, relations between Washington and Beijing
have grown somewhat icy, despite continued trade between the two countries.
The Clinton administration even sold the Chinese high-security satellite tech-
nology linked to the Chinese nuclear program. This occurred without a wince
from the American public. Despite the friend the communist government in
China had in Bill Clinton, Beijing got upset when the United States: (a) sold 150
F-16 warplanes to Taiwan; (b) said Tibet was a sovereign occupied region; (c) al-
lowed the Taiwanese president, Lee, to visit the United States; (d) improved rela-
tions with China’s enemy Vietnam; (e) precluded Beijing from getting the 2000
Olympics (which went to Sydney); (f ) rebuked China for its human rights
record; (g) put sanctions on China for selling ballistic missiles to Pakistan; (h) ac-
cused China of selling chemical weapons to Iran; and (i) kept China out of the
World Trade Organization and threatened further economic sanctions on
China.88 Within this context it is no surprise to see the persecution of Christians
increasing.
“How long wilt thou forget me, O Lord? for ever? how long wilt thou hide
thy face from me?” (Psalm 13:1). The persecution of Christians in China begins
with the ruthless suppression of the 1950s until the death of Mao. After Mao’s
death, liberalization brought new hope to Christians, but following the Tianan-
men Square crackdown in 1989, the government began to punish Christians anew.
The government’s Religious Affairs Bureau controls religion in the country. By
law, this agency must be headed by an atheist Communist party member. All
churches must operate within the Three-Self Patriotic Movement for Protestants
or the Catholic Patriotic Association. If churches and groups chose to go outside
the narrow line of the law, the government, in the mid-1990s, began to retaliate
punitively. Catholics subject to Rome have been punished. Protestant evangelicals
who meet in “house” or “underground” churches have been subject to “fines, ar-
rest, and imprisonment.”89
The Chinese government says that 180 million of its citizens are “religious.”
Of that number, 0.4% to 0.8% are affiliated with the Vatican—which is not rec-
ognized by Beijing. The Vatican argues that there may be upwards of 10 million
Catholics in the country. The government says 0.08% to 1.2% of China’s popu-
lation are Protestants and registered with the government. The government be-
lieves that 2.4% to 6.5% of the population attend house churches. The govern-
ment asserts that 10–15 million Protestants worship in house churches, but
foreign analysts believe 30–80 million attend these secret mostly evangelical
churches.90
Numerous Protestants and Catholics have been martyred for the cause of
Christ in China in recent years. As Nina Shea put it, “In January 1996, Chinese
authorities renewed their drive to register all Protestant meetings. Though there
were certainly many faithful Christians within the patriotic associations, millions
of Chinese Christians have refused to seek government registration, believing that
to register would compromise their faith by giving ultimate authority to the state
rather than to God.”91
Persecution is rampant in China. In the fall of 1996, Pastor Allen Yuan, the
octagenarian leader of one of the major evangelical Protestant house churches in
China (located in Beijing), was forced to close his church due to government ha-
rassment. Pastor Yuan had served a total of 22 years in jail for his faith. Between
June and August 1998, Pastor Yuan was “placed under virtual house arrest” for
holding a service in which 350 were baptized.92 In 1996, three evangelical Chris-
tian women were beaten to death by police. The martyred included 36-year-old
Zhang Xiuju. In April of 1996, over 300 house churches were closed in Shanghai
alone.93
In recent years, Catholics were brutally attacked by the government. Numer-
ous bishops were detained and tortured. Bishop Su Chimin, the auxiliary bishop
of Baoding in Hebei Province, was arrested in Spring 1996. Up to that time, he
had spent a total of 15 years in prison, having been beaten, hung from the ceiling,
and put in water up to his waist in a dark closet for days.94
The IRFA and the Commission on International Religious Freedom
In 1998, Congress passed the International Religious Freedom Act (IRFA). This
act was promulgated in order to monitor religious persecution abroad and pro-
mote religious freedom worldwide. The law created, essentially, the post of inter-
national religious freedom “czar,” much like the “drug czar,” or the director of the
Office of National Drug Control Policy, which was created in 1989 by President
George H. W. Bush. Bush named a conservative Catholic, Ronald Reagan’s for-
mer secretary of education William Bennett, to that post. The formal title of the
new position was Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom. The
post was to be housed in the state department. The Ambassador’s staff was
charged with finishing reports (by September first each year) on the status of reli-
gious persecution in each country around the world.95 The law allowed for the
president to use diplomatic and economic sanctions against countries that contin-
ually violate the religious rights of their people. The law also created a new post,
the special advisor on international religious freedom, to serve on the National Se-
curity Council staff. The law put into effect a presidential commission: the U.S.
Commission on International Religious Freedom (CIRF).96 After opposing the
law stridently, President Clinton began to use “bureaucratic” measures to appease
religious conservatives in Congress. He ordered Secretary of State Madeleine Alb-
right to create the Secretary of State’s Advisory Committee on Religious Freedom
Abroad. As a result, “The State Department said that it would expand the cover-
age of religious persecution in its annual human rights reports and, at the behest
of Congress, produced a special study that focused predominantly on the plight of
Christians.”97
The CIRF was created to observe and evaluate religious persecution globally.
It reports to the president, the secretary of state, and Congress. It was given a four-
year mandate that expires in 2003. In October 1999, the Commission consisted of
11 members who represented the Christian, Muslim, Jewish, and Baha’i commu-
nities in America. Rabbi David Saperstein, Director of the Religious Action Cen-
ter of Reform Judaism in Washington, D.C., was named chairman. Michael K.
Young, dean of the George Washington University Law School, was named vice
chairman. Robert Seiple, Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Free-
dom, was named a nonvoting, ex-officio member. According to the IRFA, the
president selected three commissioners, four commissioners were selected by con-
gressional leaders of the party not in the White House and two commissioners
were chosen by leaders of the president’s party in congress. Each commissioner
was eligible for a two-year appointment that was renewable. The commission has
monitoring and advising authority only; it cannot apply sanctions to countries. It
can, however, hold hearings if it wishes. In 1999–2000, the commission chose to
focus primarily on three countries: China, Russia, and Sudan. These were the
main subjects of its May 1, 2000 report. On that day, the commission gathered in
Washington, D.C. to release its first annual report. Rabbi Saperstein opened the
press conference by saying:
The Founders of our country understood that the words, “We are endowed by our Crea-
tor with certain inalienable rights,” put freedom of religion at the center of those funda-
mental rights. It is the first of the enumerated rights in the First Amendment. It is cen-
tral to the human condition and to what we have striven for during so many decades of
the 200-plus-year history of this country: to ensure that the religious life of the individ-
ual and of the religious communities could flourish without the government restraining
or interfering with that freedom; that this part of the vision of human rights cuts across
the global community, and as such it ought to be a centerpiece of American foreign
policy.98
The first international religious freedom “czar,” Robert Seiple, was confirmed
by the Senate on May 5, 1999. The position of special envoy (a.k.a. Ambassador-
at-Large for International Religious Freedom) was created to advocate religious
tolerance, religious freedom around the world, and promote conflict resolution in
areas where religious and sectarian discord persisted. Prior to his appointment,
Seiple was president of World Vision, the largest private relief organization in the
world. During his tenure, he raised the organization’s income from $145 million
per year to $345 million per year. World Vision has been primarily concerned with
confronting global hunger and poverty. Seiple, who was born in Harmony, New
Jersey, in 1942, got his bachelor’s degree in American literature from Brown Uni-
versity in 1965. Between 1966 and 1969, he flew 300 combat missions for the Ma-
rine Corps in Vietnam and rose to the rank of captain. He was the recipient of nu-
merous wartime medals including the Distinguished Flying Cross. From 1971 to
1983, he held various administrative posts at Brown, including vice president for
development and director of athletics. In 1983, he became president of Eastern
College and Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary. He held that post for four
years. In 1994, he was named “Churchman of the Year” by Religious Heritage
America, a nonprofit, ecumenical organization that honors overachieving Ameri-
cans who are excellent role models and apply personal religious beliefs in their
daily living.99
Conclusion
Christians continue to be persecuted, along with other religious minorities, in

various nations around the globe. In 1999, it was estimated that “166,000 persons
were martyred for their faith worldwide.”100 On January 8, 2001, the militant Is-
lamic government in Kabul, Afghanistan, known as the Taliban, “imposed the
death penalty for anyone who converts from Islam to another religion.” The
Taliban’s leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar, “accused followers of other faiths—
particularly Christians and Jews—of trying to convert Muslims and seeking to de-
monize the harsh brand of Islam practiced by the Taliban.”101 As seen in the above
pages of this chapter, the world has a long way to go before we will find Christians
exercising their religious freedom rights harmoniously as American Christians are
able to apply them in the United States. In September 2000, China’s communist
regime blasted the State Department for its second annual report on that nation’s
constant violation of religious freedoms. A Chinese government spokesman for
the State Administration of Religious Affairs said, “Relying solely on rumors and
lies to accuse other governments and interfere in internal affairs of other countries
is a mistake repeatedly made by the U.S. State Department report.”102 However,
the problems in China, as seen above, and other states around the world, continue
to manifest. Christians are under assault for their beliefs, and the U.S. govern-
ment, led by the post-1994 GOP Congress, is beginning to take note. For the
world’s persecuted Christians and men and women of other faiths, the psalmist
reminds us that “Many are the afflictions of the righteous: but the Lord delivereth
him out of them all” (Psalm 34:19).
 
Christians Continue to Make a
Difference in Politics
Matthew 5:16—Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works,
and glorify your Father which is in heaven.
At the start of the twenty-first century, the Christian belief system continues to
leave an indelible mark on politics the world over. It is hard to conceive that one
solitary carpenter turned preacher and His twelve apostles could have begun such
an amazing spiritual and historical movement some 2,000 years ago. In the post-
Crucifixion years, Christ’s teachings took root in various forms, and they still pro-
foundly affect societies and governments today. This book has been concerned
with one central theme: Christians affect politics, usually for the better, at many
levels of government throughout the world. A corollary to this theme is that each
individual Christian does make a difference politically and socially in his or her
community. This concluding chapter will look at the global challenges confront-
ing Christians in the new millennium. It will then end on the positive contribu-
tions Christians are making in trying to affect their communities in order to enact
fair and just policies. Christians are a diverse lot. There is much disagreement over
doctrine, politics, and so on in Christendom around the world today. However,
the ideals that Christians stand for behoove them to uphold the teachings of Jesus
in attempting to live peaceably with fellow Christian believers and those who fol-
low other religious traditions (see Psalm 34:14). Moreover, that fine line between
religion and state in the United States and other countries is not always clear.
However, the Christian stands for ideals that supercede the time-honored ideol-
ogies of governments. In order to bring reconciliation along ethnic, social, or
other lines, the Christian churches must play a role in helping the hurting, the
dispossessed, and the devastated in the crime-riddled neighborhoods, the ele-
Christians Continue to Make a Difference 167
gant suburbs, the towns, the cities, and the rural areas of the world. If anything,
Christ’s people can help individuals change their hearts to begin a process of living
peaceably with one another. Christ’s love and magnanimity knows no bonds or
bounds.
Each Vote Does Count After All
In October 2000, prior to the American national elections, evangelical Christian

psychologist James C. Dobson, the founder of Focus on the Family ministries,
told supporters that the Christian vote would play a crucial role in who got into
the White House and what policies were forwarded by the government. Dr.
Dobson said, “Political commentators note that a number of important races
this fall will likely be decided by very narrow margins. University of Virginia po-
litical scientist Larry Sabato said, ‘Anyone who is inclined to say “my vote doesn’t
count” is especially wrong this year because this will come down to a handful of
votes’ . . . Your vote matters! At least six congressional races in our nation’s his-
tory have been decided by a single vote.”1 Ultimately, Professor Sabato’s prognos-
tication was correct and one out of three evangelicals’ votes for the new president
put George W. Bush in the White House. Christians continue to have a major
impact on America’s politics. As seen in chapter 4, a number of evangelicals have
gotten directly involved in the political arena and now play a major role in U.S.
politics and government.
Challenges Faced by Christians Today
Christian Persecution in the United States
Despite many positive developments, Christians (evangelicals and non-

evangelicals alike) still face many challenges in the political realm. First, the perse-
cution of Christians around the world and in the United States has increased. As
documented in detail in chapter 6, Christians, and believers from other faiths, are
being persecuted in many nation-states worldwide in record numbers. It is hard for
the American and Western Christian to comprehend the level of barbarism aimed
at Christians in many developing areas. Fortunately, the United States has acted, at
the behest of Congress, to confront this global concern. However, even in America,
a nation which prides itself historically on the defense of religious freedom and the
free exercise thereof, Christians are being discriminated against daily.
In late 2000, a federal district court in Ohio struck down the state’s motto,
“With God, all things are possible,” which had been that state’s motto for 40
years.2 In Columbia, Missouri, a 24 year-old woman lost her job at a local hospi-
tal for wearing a cross lapel pin on her white lab coat in January 1997. Miki Cain
was fired by hospital administrators because the cross was an “unprofessional
adornment,” although, staff were allowed to wear “holiday pins . . . during 16 days
at Christmas, the week of Hanukkah, the week ending in Easter and on New
Year’s Day, Fourth of July, Thanksgiving and Halloween.” Cain argued that other
workers were wearing “head coverings” (mainly Islamic women wearing the time-
honored hijab—the Muslim female headress). Cain was told that those were ac-
ceptable for “religious/cultural reasons.” Cain had been employed at the hospital
since April 1996. At that time, she wore a small cross necklace to work daily. No
one had challenged her until the post-Christmas confrontation. The administra-
tion attempted to get her to cover her necklace up. According to Cain, one super-
visor told her, “If God was with you, he could help you buy turtlenecks to cover
the cross up.” The management asked her to wear a ring with a cross on it instead.
Cain was mystified. “It’s a little bit shocking to be going through this; I never
thought I would be terminated, but I do take my spiritual beliefs seriously.” Even-
tually, Cain was contacted by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and
she agreed to have it represent her in mediation with the hospital (Cain’s case
never went to court). That was ironic given the ACLU’s anti-Christian stance on
most issues as seen in chapter 4. By early March 1998, the ACLU and the mid-
Missouri hospital had cut a deal to reinstate Cain and give her a settlement of
$18,500. Cain rejected the former and took the latter part of the deal. She had
moved on with her life and took a job at a library in Indiana.3 The hearings for the
nomination of Attorney General John Ashcroft underscore how the most respect-
able and reputable of American legislators in the U.S. Senate can viciously attack
an individual with strong religious convictions. Christians are reminded of
Christ’s admonition: “And ye shall be hated of all men for my namesake: but he
that endureth to the end shall be saved” (Matt. 10:22). The continued assault on
religion, and specifically Christian freedom, is real and it continues in America in
the schools, city councils, and the courts. The only way this challenge for Chris-
tians can be overcome is to seek the Lord and unify in prayer so that the hearts of
Americans and others around the globe will become less indifferent to Christian
persecution and religious freedom.
Crime
Another area of concern for evangelicals in the political realm is the indifference
toward sin and various crime related to sin. Of the more overt issues, crime has
continued to vex America. In 1900, one in 100,000 became a murder victim. By
the end of the twentieth century, 10 in 100,000 were homicide victims.4 The good
news was that crime dropped in the United States throughout the 1990s. How-
ever, alcohol use by twelfth graders began to rise again by the late 1990s. The use
of LSD, crack cocaine, and marijuana by high school seniors rose steadily in the
1990s.5 The seeming indifference toward the use of recreational drugs by Amer-
ica’s leaders (Bill Clinton, Al Gore, and Newt Gingrich all admitted to marijuana
use as college students) was cause for concern among the generation of young
people exposed to drugs in the 1990s. What’s more, President Clinton’s first sur-
geon general, Dr. Jocelyn Elders, called for legalization of recreational drugs, such
as marijuana. She was criticized heavily from the right for her viewpoints in late
1994, and eventually sacked in December 1994 for deviating from the Clinton
administration’s course of action in the area of drug control policy. On February
7, 2001 on CNN’s “Larry King Live” Attorney General Ashcroft stated, in his first
major interview after his charged confirmation hearings, that Clinton was to
blame for the increase in marijuana use in the 1990s. Ashcroft referred to Clinton’s
infamous quote that he “smoked [marijuana], but didn’t inhale;” yet “that if he
had to do it again, he would inhale.” The American attorney general said, “I think
that sends the wrong signal. It’s so important you have a president who will speak
forcefully against drug use, rather than wink and give the nod in some sense, say-
ing ‘I don’t inhale, but I wish I had.’”6 Christians face many challenges in a global
society that tolerates and even, at times, promotes illegal drug usage, as in the case
of the debate on the use of heroin in needle exchange programs to help heroin ad-
dicts cope with their addiction. This practice has been bitterly criticized by former
American drug czar William Bennett as fundamentally unethical and immoral.
Again, the Christian worldview should aid in changing the hearts of individuals if
they are willing to let Christ guide them away from sin and into His “marvelous
light” (1 Peter 2:9). For each Christian is a reformed sinner, in thought and deed.
Not one is perfect, and that is why we have called on Jesus to guide us and keep us
from the pitfalls found in the world. The church now runs prison ministries,
homeless shelters, rehabilitation units, and so on. This is the proper role of the
church in helping sinners in a lost world. Perhaps, the faith-based initiatives in
President Bush’s White House will attempt to let the Holy Spirit direct them to
make a difference in the lives of ordinary Americans: “Bush said Christians will be
welcome in his administration. [The president said,] ‘I’m mindful of telling peo-
ple that when asked about my religion that I’m mindful of walking the walk . . .
that’s the best thing I can do as president. And when you walk the walk, people of
faith will walk right with you.’”7
Obviously, numerous social ills, such as pornography and illicit television and
Internet programming vex the nation’s citizens. One study said one of four chil-
dren (ages 10–17) “were exposed to unwanted pornography” on the Internet in
1999. “At a congressional hearing on [pornography], a former Justice Department
official “noted that [under Attorney General Janet Reno from 1996–2000] not a
single internet-based obscenity case [was] brought.”8 Pornography is a $12–13 billion
business in the United States. “That’s more than if you combined the annual rev-
enues of the Coca-Cola and the McDonnell Douglas [now Boeing] corpora-
tions.”9 A study of sex on American television by the Henry J. Kaiser Family
Foundation, released in February 2001, found that more than two out of every
three television shows on prime time television contained sexual content (includ-
ing sexual suggestiveness, intercourse, and crude sexual humor). The study said
that a 12% increase in the amount of sexual content had occurred between 1997
and 1999.10 Despite the pitfalls of sin in our world, Christians are making a differ-
ence in politics.
Post September 11 Terrorism: Clash of Civilizations?
The terrorist attacks by Islamic radicals on the United States on September 11,
2001, will forever remained etched in the annals of American and world history.
Terror directly aimed at Americans, as the institutions that symbolize American
power (capitalism and defense in the form of the World Trade towers and the Pen-
tagon, respectively) were damaged severely. Many Americans recoiled and ques-
tioned why others from across the globe would kill innocent people in making a
political statement. On the other hand, Americans of all political stripes, ethnic-
ities, and religions joined arm-in-arm to denounce terror and the fringe groups
from the Mideast that supported the attack. As a result, good old-fashioned patri-
otism returned to the land of the free.
As John L. Esposito argues, to impugn Islam in general would not be the ra-
tional course of action. He believes attacking Islam as the source of Islamic funda-
mentalist terrorism was like stating that a “monolithic communist threat” would
overtake the West, when in fact the Soviet Union was fragmenting due to internal
economic dislocation and chaos. As Esposito states, “The selective approach of
most analyses of Islamic activism omits, downplays, or dismisses the reasons given
by activists (and indeed many Arabs and Muslims) for criticism and rejection of
the West: imperialism, America’s tilt toward Israel, Western governments’ support
for oppressive regimes (the Shah’s Iran, Tunisia, Nimeiri’s Sudan, Lebanon).”11
Clearly, Americans and Christians realize that the anger directed at the United
States may be partially aimed at Christianity, but more than likely we have seen ter-
rorism aimed at the West because of what it produces economically, culturally, and
socially, and its unrivaled geopolitical power. Despite the use of religious imagery
and other types of propaganda, as seen from the Taliban leaders who declared in
early October 2001 that America was trying to Christianize Afghanistan, most in
the Islamic world and the West realized that the roots of the conflict had more to
do with politics, although it was cloaked in religious terms and symbolism. Con-
servative Christian columnist Cal Thomas, said, “While secular and moderate
Muslims do not appear threatening, the growing number of extremists who take
the Koran as a declaration of war against all non-Muslims has become a clear and
present danger, not only overseas, but increasingly in our own country.”12
Working with groups from other religions, including Muslims (of which an
overwhelming majority want peace), Christians in America can show their love of
mankind and their willingness to stand for freedom and peace in the face of ter-
rorism. Hopefully, the nations of the world will continue to denounce, contain,
and eventually, extirpate terrorism around the globe. Americans will see some
changes in order for security to be maintained. However, that is a cost that many
are willing to bear. Will Americans draw closer to the Lord in order to ask for His
protection in terms of national security? Will a serious clash of civilizations
evolve? Let us hope terror can be contained and stopped, and Christians and other
faiths can work together to restore a stable international political, economic, and
social order.
Christianity Making a Difference in Politics and Society
The Bible as Historical and Inspirational Text
In the United States and many other countries people are returning to the Bible to
solve problems and educate a new generation of children. In many high schools
throughout America, the Bible is taught as fact in courses on Western Civilization
and other courses tied to history. In January 1998, Fort Myers, Florida saw its
seven public high schools begin teaching elective courses in Old Testament his-
tory. The National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools says it has pro-
vided materials to school districts in 22 American states that help public schools
utilize the Bible in courses in the schools’ curricula. In Fort Myers, George De-
Witt, the local Christian Coalition chair, said, “The Bible is being presented as
history because it is history.” The Fort Myers course was controversial and sparked
lawsuits by the ACLU and the radical leftwing interest group People for the
American Way. The latter had agreed to a compromise with the Christian Coali-
tion in 1995. Both agreed that religion in and of itself should be taught in public
schools in order to give students a sense of history and context in how religion af-
fects Americans’ lives. They agreed that religion should be taught in order to edu-
cate students about world history as well. Of course, the truce occurred immedi-
ately after the GOP took Congress and President Clinton said schools were not to
be “religion-free zones” (see chapter 4). However, the truce broke in 1998 when
secular liberals and conservative Christians could not agree in Fort Myers on how
the Bible should be taught in the public schools. The former believed that the
Bible was not history, but mere literature subject to divergent interpretations. The
latter felt that the Bible was historical fact. As one North Carolina teacher, who
was teaching the Bible in her public school class, said, “We were looking at the
book [(the Bible)] itself, not interpretations. No indoctrination, just information.
And we never had one complaint.”13 At least, some public schools are attempting
to give an objective picture of the Bible and its lessons and heroes. This is positive
in a culture that has attempted to remove religion from its schools via public in-
difference and the courts.
The Bible continues to influence lives the world over. In Russia, General Ni-
kolai Stolyarov of the Russian army confessed that after visiting the United States
in November 1992 “he was impressed by the way Christian businessmen . . . intro-
duced their values into their operations.” As a result, he got the approval of the
Russian defense ministry to introduce “Judeo-Christian values” into the Russian
Army and he hoped to distribute one million Bibles to soldiers to improve their
morale. Although Stolyarov was not a Christian, he believed that Christianity
could help the army improve its overall performance.14 The world’s best-selling
book continued to make an impression on a generation of postcommunist seekers
in Russia and other parts of Eastern Europe in the 1990s.
Conclusion
President Ronald Reagan said, “Without God, there is no virtue, because there’s
no prompting of the conscience. Without God, we’re mired in the material, that
flat world that tells us only what the senses perceive. Without God, there is coars-
ening of the society and without God, democracy will not and cannot long en-
dure.”15 Clearly, President Reagan understood that the nexus between politics and
Christianity in America was important. President George W. Bush has mirrored
President Reagan in reminding Americans that the values associated with Christi-
anity are important for a society like the United States to continue to meet the
needs of its citizens. Bush has said that his Christian faith has “sustained me in
moments of success and in moments of disappointment . . . without it, I doubt I’d
be here today.”16 Although some viewed President Bush’s views and actions in ad-
vocating faith-based charitable giving, via his new “White House office that
would distribute billions of dollars to religious groups and charities,” as a viola-
tion of the Establishment Clause, others saw it as a sign that the United States
would attempt to find new and creative ways to weave the ethic of the historical
Christian faith into the actions of government to the benefit of all Americans.17
On July 19, 2001, the House of Representatives passed a bill aimed at “ex-
panding the role of religious charities in federal social programs.” The vote was
233–198, largely along partisan lines in the GOP-controlled house. With the Sen-
ate controlled by Democrats, 50–49 after Senator Jim Jeffords’ (I-VT) defection
from the GOP in June 2001, the new Senate majority leader Tom Daschle (D-
SD) said the bill would not come before the Senate until 2002 in order to prevent
the bill from speedily going into law, thus giving President George W. Bush an-
other victory in fulfilling his campaign promises from the 2000 election.18
The faith-based charities debate became a red herring for many politicians
when The Salvation Army attempted to work with the Bush administration in
July 2001 to find a solution to the thorny issue of churches receiving government
dollars without hiring homosexuals who do not conform to the private tax-
exempt organization’s doctrines. The Salvation Army had worked with the White
House to create a bill that would not force it to hire gays. However, after negative
publicity from the press, and the homosexual lobby, the administration appeared
to back away from the advice of the Salvation Army, saying existing federal laws
were sufficient to protect all faiths involved.
Unfortunately, the Salvation Army, one of the world’s reputable charitable or-
ganizations and, unbeknownst to millions, vibrant evangelical Christian
churches, was pilloried for its doctrines and position on employment. Ironically,
the church’s position on homosexuality is one of the more moderate positions on
that topic among evangelical Christian churches.19 Historian and practicing Sal-
vationist Edward H. McKinley, says, “Its image as a social welfare agency some-
times works at cross-purposes to its evangelical ministry.”20 Because many believe
it is a private welfare agency concerned with its thrift stores, Christmas kettle
drum drives, and other types of social welfare, many in the secular world were
happy to assail it for its views on homosexuality, although as “Salvation Army
public affairs director, Maj. George Hood” said “you can look at our policies and
see that we exercise no discrimination at any time.”21 The Salvation Army began
in 1878 under the leadership of Englishman William Booth, a Methodist, and it
arrived in the United States in 1879. It has continued to involve millions of Amer-
icans of all ages in its work to zealously show God’s love to the world. Despite the
attacks upon it, the Salvation Army held firm and continued to be the most visible
Christian relief organization in the United States. As an evangelical church “its
firmly orthodox Christianity bestows great strength as [do] the Army’s members,
who share a sense of divine purpose, a missionary zeal, and an abiding warm-
hearted loyalty to Christ.”22
This book has sought to evince that Christianity continues to affect politics
in many overt ways not only in the United States, but around the world as well.
From Arab Christians in small villages who attempt to work with Arab Muslims
and Israeli Jews to the rising number of evangelicals in Africa and the struggle by
Christians to deal with the many social problems on that continent, Christians
not only play a role in world politics, but their role will grow as the faith contin-
ues to increase, especially in the developing world. It would take a separate book
to categorize the groups, sects, and political parties that espouse the Christian
philosophy in the developing world. This book has sought to brush the surface
of Christianity’s profound impact on societies in various developing contexts
from Russia to Namibia to Zambia by producing empirical evidence supporting
Christianity’s key role in politics around the globe. What’s more, the corollary
(to my main thesis) that each Christian is important in their respective society is
crucial. Why? Because individual Christians are leaving an indelible mark on the
face of the globe. They are reaching out to their neighbors and communities with
His Gospel of peace and reconciliation. The only force in the world that can
change each heart, one-by-one, is Christ. With the help of the growing grass-
roots political and social movements, evangelical churches of all stripes will con-
tinue to see each of their members play a major role in changing their world’s so-
cieties for the better.
Like George Bailey in Frank Capra’s 1946 classic film, “It’s a Wonderful
Life,”23 the Christian must realize that his or her local community and church
would not be as rich socially or energized without his or her presence. Each Chris-
tian has a mission to affect his or her world for Christ in ways that may not be en-
visioned immediately in his or her life. As was the case with Bailey, the Christian
must realize that his or her impact is important and that without the willingness
to affect his or her community and church positively for Christ, generations of fu-
ture Christians will be denied a positive role model. Hence, the work of forward-
ing the Gospel will not continue. Like the seminal study completed by sociolo-
gists Elihu Katz and Paul F. Lazarsfeld which described the “two-step flow” of
communication, the Christian influences public opinion in his or her church,
family, and community in important ways. As a leader among men and women,
the Christian can use his or her knowledge of the Bible and the Gospel to affect
others positively for Christ. Hence, Christians are important agents of influence
on local public opinion. As Katz and Lazarsfeld state, “opinion leaders are not a
group set apart, and that opinion leadership is not a trait which some people have
and others do not, but rather that opinion leadership is an integral part of the
give-and-take of everyday personal relationships.”24 For Katz and Lazarsfeld, the
opinion leader is someone who will filter information to others based on his or her
expertise in the field of information under discussion. This process is known as
the “two-step flow,” and each individual with specialized knowledge in a given
field (e.g. college graduates with majors in specific areas) will have an impact as a
leader among his or her friends and others in his or her community.25 Hence,
Christians can emulate this model and see God’s Word spread and lives change in
our world. There is something to the saying that “all politics is local.” Similarly,
without the localized side of human interaction, few would hear the truth of
God’s work in the world today and the countless stories that make up the bulk of
how He is affecting politics today.
Are Christians perfect? By no means. Do Christians, at times, make major
mistakes in the political realm? Absolutely. However, the evidence from this re-
search suggests that the Lord, in His divinely inspiring way, continues to guide
people in countries the world over toward the higher goal of fulfilling His law and
serving others, thus recognizing that the Bible can help solve social and political
ills. Despite the political fragmentation in the post–Cold War world at the dawn of
the twenty-first century, Christianity as a geopolitical and geosocial phenomenon
is cutting across numerous civilizations (i.e. cultures). Its evangelical forms are
providing unity and social cohesion at a time of geopolitical turbulence and social
change. What’s more, the world is a better place when leaders invoke biblical prin-
ciples. Jesus taught us the Golden Rule, found in seven other faiths, which says,
“Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even
so to them: for this is the law and the prophets” (Matt. 7:12). It is through His
teaching and Spirit that the peoples of the world will continue to affect politics
and society in important ways. It is incumbent upon all of us to allow the Holy
Spirit to guide us as we attempt to make our localities better places to live and
work. God’s power is not as overt, at times, in politics, but as the prophet said in
ancient Israel, His will for the nations is forged “Not by might, nor by power, but
by my spirit, saith the Lord of hosts” (Zech. 4:6).
Notes
Chapter 1
Background information on Western civilization and its relationship to historical Christen-

dom for this chapter was drawn from the following sources: Albert M. Craig et al., The Heri-
tage of Western Civilizations, 3d ed. (New York: Macmillan, 1994); Peter J. Klassen, Europe in
the Reformation (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1979); William L. Langer et al. Western
Civilization: Paleolithic Man to the Emergence of European Powers (New York: American Heri-
tage/Harper & Row, 1968); and Steven Ozment, The Age of Reform 1250–1550: An Intellectual
and Religious History of Late Medieval and Reformation Europe (New Haven, CT: Yale Univer-
sity Press, 1980).
1. Peggy Noonan, “God is Back: In the wake of an atrocity, he shows he hasn’t forsaken New
York,” Wall Street Journal, September 28, 2001. <http://www.opinionjournal.com>.
2. See Tex Williams, “Mass Evangelism: Challenges and Potentials,” The Journal of Applied Mis-
siology 4 (1, April 1993). <http://www.acu.edu/missions>.
3. Kim A. Lawton, “Faith Without Borders: How the Developing World Is Changing the Face of
Christianity,” Christianity Today, May 19, 1997, 39.
4. See, for example, Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (New York: Free Press,
1992). Fukuyama argues that with the end of the banal communist experiment in central and east-
ern Europe history virtually ended, given the triumph of capitalism and democracy. With demo-
cratic capitalism’s victory, he believes no other challenges to capitalism remain. His argument has
been challenged by others given the fact that (a) communism still has a grip on some nations (e.g.
Cuba, China, and North Korea) and (b) that liberal democracy has not been fully tested in areas
that threw off the shackles of communism. For example, almost all central European nations are
trying to deal with the slow pace of economic reforms while experimenting, many for the first
time, with democratic pluralism in their newfound political and electoral systems.

5. Barry Rubin, “Religion and International Affairs” in Douglas Johnston and Cynthia Sampson,
eds., Religion, The Missing Dimension of Statecraft (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994),
21. Hereafter refer to as Johnston and Sampson.
6. Edward Luttwak, “The Missing Dimension” in Johnston and Sampson, 11.
7. See Ronald Inglehart, Culture Shift in Advanced Industrial Society (Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 1990), 337–338.
8. CBS Television Evening News, July 4, 1997.
9. Harvey Cox, Fire from Heaven: The Rise of Pentecostal Spirituality and the Reshaping of Religion
in the Twenty-First Century (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1995), 3.
10. The Carolingian monarch, Pepin III (a.k.a., “the Short”), the leader of the Frankish Kingdom
(most of modern-day France and Germany) and successor to Charles Martel, who had fought
the Arab Muslims off at Tours, France in .. 732, used the Church to appease the conquered,
mostly Germanic, tribes like their arch enemies the Saxons. Converting pagan tribes to Nicene
Christianity helped bring lands and tribute into the Carolingian fold. In 754, Pepin III forged
an alliance with Pope Stephen III to defend the Church against the Lombards, who were lo-
cated southeast of the Franks in parts of modern-day northern Italy, Bavaria, and Austria. This
provided a challenge to Rome’s eastern emperor and, hence, a split occurred between political
and religious loyalties: a Western Christian empire and church and its Eastern counterpart. By
1054, the full-blown political fissure was final. Rome and Constantinople were no longer re-
sponsible to each other politically or spiritually. However, by 1096 and the start of the Great
Crusades, Constantinople called on Rome to help defend itself from the surging Muslim Sel-
juq Turks. So the relationship within Christendom was still superficial at best.
11. The full title of the Sira is Sirat Rasul Allah (“Life of the Prophet of God”) and it was written by
ibn-Ishaq and edited by ibn-Hisham. An English translation has been written. See Alfred Guil-
laume, A Life of Muhammad (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1955).
12. John B. Christopher, The Islamic Tradition (New York: Harper, 1972), 16.
13. Robert S. Paul, The Lord Protector: Religion and Politics in the Life of Oliver Cromwell, Ameri-
can ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1964), 10A.
14. In putting Hus into the proper historical context as the forerunner to the Luther-inspired Ref-
ormation, historian Lonnie Johnson discusses the importance of Christendom, its East-West
rift, and the nationalistic implications for Czechs and Germans (regarding Hussite and Lu-
theran legacies) in excellent detail. See Lonnie Johnson, Central Europe: Enemies, Neighbors,
Friends (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), chapter 4.
15. Indulgences were statements of forgiveness of sins by Roman Catholic priests that were sold to
penitent individuals (in the form of letters) in order to escape years of purgatory prior to the
faithful soul entering heaven. Prelates used the sale of these “letters” to finance church building
projects, and so on. Eventually, some popes extended indulgences to apply to future sins that
would be committed by the individual as well as retroactive sins committed by people’s dead
family members.
16. Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince and the Discourses (New York: Modern Library, 1950), 21.
17. See Aaron Wildavsky, The Nursing Father: Moses as a Political Leader (Tuscaloosa, AL: Univer-
sity of Alabama Press, 1984). The late Dr. Wildavsky was one of America’s foremost political
scientists in the field of American politics and the subfields of federalism, budgetary politics,
and political leadership. As the son of Jews from eastern Europe and the former Soviet region,
his Jewish heritage persuaded him to break from writing on American politics and focus on his
interest in the Torah and his roots. After The Nursing Father, he returned to writing on Ameri-
can politics. He had a distinguished career at the University of California-Berkeley.
18. Christianity Today, April 7, 1997, 59.
Notes 179
19. See Henry H. Halley, Halley’s Bible Handbook, rev. ed., 69th ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Zonder-
van, 1990), 154–155. Hereafter referred to as Halley. Also, see Deuteronomy 19 for a description
of the cities of refuge that the Lord placed in His Law that provided amnesty for those who had
accidentally or mistakenly killed others (as opposed to willful and malicious murderers, who
were condemned to death automatically by law). This chapter of the Old Testament is an ex-
ample of the Lord’s grace and fairness in applying His Law historically.
20. “Ten Commandments are the basis of our laws,” H. R. 31, 105th Cong., 1st sess., Congressional
Record (5 March 1997), H741. <http://www.thomas.loc.gov>.
21. Henry Halley believes the Exodus may have begun around 1450 .. or 1230 .. according to
the archeological research on the subject. He also believes that Jericho fell around 1400 ..
Hence, I have chosen the former date. See Halley, 33 & 113–115.
22. See Plato, the Republic, as edited by Allan Bloom (New York: Basic Books, 1968); and Plato,
The Statesman, translated by J. B. Skemp and edited by Martin Oswald (Indianapolis: Bobbs-
Merrill, 1957) for two excellent translations and commentaries.
23. See Karl R. Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press, 1950).
24. See I Samuel 8. God told the prophet Samuel that the people had rejected Him, not Samuel, as
prophet in choosing to beg for a king (worldly ruler) to govern and “judge” them.
25. Ray Stannard Baker, Woodrow Wilson: Life and Letters: Princeton, 1890–1910, vol. 2 (Garden
City, NY: Doubleday, 1927), 10.
26. Arthur S. Link, Wilson: The Road to the White House (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press, 1947), 321.
27. See Kurt W. Jefferson, “Clinton Must Cooperate with Congress,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, De-
cember 10, 1996, 7A. The author compared presidents Bill Clinton and Woodrow Wilson and
urged the president to work with the Republican Congress in the area of foreign affairs in order
to achieve balance and bipartisan cooperation. Ironically, both presidents were Democrats
from the south, both former governors, both were elected to their first terms with about 43 per-
cent of the vote and their second terms with 49 percent of the vote. Both lost a majority in
Congress and had to deal with divided government in their second terms. Finally, Wilson
sought to make a name for himself as a world statesman, in which he was partially successful.
Clinton sought to do the same with mixed results. Of course, Clinton’s impeachment casts a
pall over his legacy.
28. See Samuel P. Huntington, “The Clash of Civilizations?” Foreign Affairs 72 (No. 3, Summer
1993), 22–49. According to Huntington, his piece sparked more debate and controversy in
America’s top foreign policy journal than any other piece since the famous “X article” of U.S.
diplomat George Kennan in 1947, which warned of the “Red” threat from Moscow. Along
with Winston Churchill’s “Iron Curtain” speech at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri,
in 1946, Kennan helped provide intellectual and ideological ammunition for the Cold War
between the Soviet bloc and the US-led Western bloc.
29. See Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (New
York: Simon & Schuster, 1996), 20–21. Hereafter referred to as Huntington 1996.
30. See Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Pandaemonium: Ethnicity in International Politics (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1994).
31. Dr. Vojislav Stanovcic, Professor of Political Science, University of Belgrade, lecture to stu-
dents, faculty, and staff, Westminster College, Fulton, Missouri, November 2, 1995. Stanovcic
is one of the world’s best-known experts on federalism, multi-ethnic politics, and pluralism.
32. Edmund Jan Osmanczyk, The Encyclopedia of the United Nations and International Relations,
2d ed. (New York: Taylor and Francis, 1990), 1018.

33. Graham Evans and Jeffrey Newnham, eds. The Dictionary of World Politics: A Reference Guide
to Concepts, Ideas and Institutions (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1990), 417.
34. John T. Rourke, International Politics on the World Stage, 5th ed. (Guilford, CT: Dushkin/
Brown & Benchmark, 1995), 388.
35. See Quincy Wright, A Study of War (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1942).
36. Hans J. Morgenthau (rev. by Kenneth W. Thompson), Politics Among Nations: The Struggle for
Power and Peace, brief ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1993), 136–137.
37. Columbia Daily Tribune (Columbia, MO), October 26, 1997, 5A.
38. The Macomb Daily Journal (Macomb, IL), December 31, 1997, 1A, 8A; Columbia Daily Trib-
une, December 30, 2000, 5A.
39. Columbia Daily Tribune, May 1, 1999, 5A.
40. Herbert K. Tillema, International Armed Conflict Since 1945: A Bibliographic Handbook (Boul-
der, CO: Westview Press, 1991), 7–9.
41. Huntington’s nine civilizations include: Western, Latin American, African, Islamic, Sinic,
Hindu, Orthodox, Buddhist, and Japanese. See Map 1.3 in Huntington 1996, 26–27.
42. See Huntington 1996, 256–257. See also: Ted Robert Gurr, “Peoples Against States: Ethnopo-
litical Conflict and the Changing World System,” International Studies Quarterly 38 (Septem-
ber 1994), 347–378; New York Times, February 7, 1993, 1 & 14; and Ruth Leger Sivard, World
Military and Social Expenditures 1993 (Washington, DC: World Priorities, Inc., 1993).
43. Huntington 1996, 258.
Chapter 2
1. Halley placed Abraham’s life at about 2000 .. He placed Adam at c. 4000 .. and “The
Flood” at c. 2400 .. See Halley, Halley’s Bible Handbook, new rev. ed., 69th ed. (Grand Rap-
ids, MI: Zondervan, 1990), 34.
2. It is interesting to note that the Apostle Paul uses the births of Ishmael and Isaac to illustrate an
allegory between the Christian and Mosaic Covenants. The gist of the story is to show the in-
delibleness of the promises made by God to believers who adhere to Christ’s commands (see
Galatians 4:21–31).
3. The Dreyfus Affair dealt with the fate of a young Jewish captain in the French army, Alfred
Dreyfus, who was framed by fellow officers for allegedly giving classified military information
to Germany. Sentenced for treason, he was sent to Devils Island in 1894. After the revelation of
an anti-Semitic conspiracy, Dreyfus was exonerated and freed in 1906 with no compensation or
penitence from the conspirators who made Dreyfus a scapegoat.
4. John G. Stoessinger, The Might of Nations: World Politics in Our Time, 10th ed. (New York:
McGraw-Hill, 1993), 118. Hereafter referred to as Stoessinger 1993.
5. Arthur Goldschmidt, Jr. A Concise History of the Middle East, 2d ed. (rev. ed.) (Boulder, CO:
Westview Press, 1983), 232–233. Hereafter referred to as Goldschmidt.
6. This was the secret agreement by Britain, France, and czarist Russia to divide the Ottoman
Empire after World War I. France would get Syria and Lebanon and the British would get Pal-
estine and Mesopotamia (largely modern-day Iraq). The Arabs would be allowed to control the
Arabian peninsula.
7. Stoessinger, The Might of Nations, 118.
8. Christian E. Hauer, Jr. Crisis & Conscience in the Middle East (Chicago: Quadrangle Books,
1970), 32.
Notes 181
9. Goldschmidt, 236.
11. Goldschmidt, 235–239.
12. Helen Chapin Metz, ed. Israel: A Country Study, 3d ed. (Washington, DC: Federal Research
Division, Library of Congress, 1990), 42. Hereafter referred to as Metz.
14. In his award-winning book, political scientist Daniel Jonah Goldhagen argues that thousands
of German citizens willingly and actively participated in the genocide against the Jews of West-
ern and Central Europe. He also gives examples of the way in which the nation’s political cul-
ture, imbued (as he sees it) with a profound anti-semitic character, affected the country’s
churches. Despite the efforts of people like Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the famed Protestant theolo-
gian who was martyred by the Nazis, and others, including Catholic clerics (today Germany is
almost 40% Protestant, 35% Catholic, and 25% non-confessional), German Christianity was
tainted by the “eliminationist racist antisemitism.” Of course, the manifestations of these traits
were diametrically opposite Christ’s teachings. See Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, Hitler’s Willing
Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1996), 105–115.
15. Michael J. Cohen, The Origins and Evolution of the Arab-Zionist Conflict (Berkeley, CA: Uni-
versity of California Press, 1987), 117–118.
16. Michael G. Roskin and Nicholas O. Berry, IR: The New World of International Relations, 2d ed.
(Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1993), 135.
17. Hauer, Crisis and Conscience in the Middle East, 40–41. See note 8.
18. Stoessinger 1993, 121.
20. See 1 Samuel 21:10–15.
21. Dan Kurzman, Genesis 1948: The First Arab-Israeli War (New York: The World Publishing
Company, 1970), 208–210.
24. Metz, 54.
25. Metz, 256.
26. Max I. Dimont, The Jews, God and History (New York: Signet, 1964), 399.
27. David Schoenbaum, The United States and the State of Israel (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1993), 73.
28. Here I mean the attitudes, values, and orientations of people toward their government. This
term is an important term used in the study of political science to understand and gauge the
national character or political psychology of a nation. For example, the British political culture
is one that includes elements of democracy, individualism (classical liberalism), and collecti-
vism. American political cultural is quite similar with an emphasis on individualism over col-
lectivism. For a better understanding of the concept see the seminal work on the subject by Ga-
briel Almond and Sidney Verba, The Civic Culture: Political Attitudes and Democracy in Five
Nations (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1963).
29. “The ensuing parliamentary debate, from February 1 through June 13, 1950, between those fa-
voring a written constitution and those opposing it was a microcosm of the conflict between
state and religious interests that would continue to agitate Israeli political life.” See Metz, 181.
30. See Metz, 202–203, 253, and 357.
31. See the classic Socratic dialogue, the Republic, by Plato for a utopian vision of communalism
(found in Book IV) as expounded some 23 centuries ago. Of course, the idea of raising children
communally has been attacked in modern Western democracies, including the United States,

where codified individual rights have preserved parental rights legally and moral and religious
arguments have outweighed overtly secular ones historically. See Allan Bloom, The Republic of
Plato (New York: Basic Books, 1968), 101. The time-honored right to raising one’s children be-
came a topic of heated debate with now-senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s controversial view
that “it takes a village” to rear and educate children. What’s more, her husband’s unabashed
support of his wife’s vision and writings on the subject were openly championed during his ac-
ceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention in August 1996.
32. This figure is from 1988 data. See Metz, 97.
33. Metz, 98.
34. See Howard M. Sachar, A History of Israel: From the Rise of Zionism to Our Time (New York:
Alfred A. Knopf, 1976), 376–382. This work is one of the seminal tomes on Israeli history.
35. Goldschmidt, 265–266.
36. H. W. Brands, Into the Labyrinth: The United States and the Middle East, 1945–1993 (New York:
McGraw-Hill, 1993), 65. Hereafter referred to as Brands.
37. Stoessinger 1993, 128–129.
38. Goldschmidt, 266–267 and Stoessinger 1993, 129–130.
39. See Brands, 70.
41. Louis L. Snyder, Encyclopedia of the Third Reich (New York: Paragon House, 1989), 81.
42. Isser Harel, The House on Garibaldi Street (New York: The Viking Press, 1975), 153–154. The
Shema (Shma) is the core statement of a Jew’s faith proclaimed immediately after the call to
worship at prayer time twice daily. The Shema is literally the scripture passage found in Deute-
ronomy 6:4, “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord.” Moses made this pronounce-
ment after bringing the Decalogue down from Mount Sinai.
43. Gabriel Bach, “Eichmann Trial” in Encyclopedia of the Holocaust (New York: Macmillan, 1990),
429. Hereafter referred to as Bach.
44. Bach, 430.
45. Bach, 430.
46. Many of the world’s countries were upset with Israel’s abduction of Eichmann saying that it
was a violation of international law. The abduction of criminals and subsequent extradition
process has been a source of debate in the American political and legal communities. The 1989
capture of Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega and his extradition to the United States gave
rise to a fierce debate over whether the American military’s actions were constitutional. More
recently, in the 1992 Supreme Court case, United States v. Alvarez-Machain (504 US 655), a cit-
izen and resident of Mexico, Humberto Alvarez-Machain, was kidnapped in Guatemala by
Mexican authorities. He was then turned over to American authorities and extradited in a pri-
vate plane to Texas to stand trial for the murder of an American Drug Enforcement Agency of-
ficer. In a 6–3 ruling, the court upheld the constitutionality of the kidnapping saying that
Alvarez-Machain’s claims that the U.S. district court did not have the jurisdiction to try him,
and hence the actions of the United States violated international law, were not legally viable.
Writing for the court’s majority, Chief Justice William Rehnquist stated that because the
United States had never signed a specific treaty on abductions with Mexico, both nations had
the legal right to act as they did.
47. Roskin and Berry, IR, 346. See note 16.
48. See Matthew 27. I am not saying that the Jews killed Christ. His execution was carried out by
the Roman authorities. However, culpability resides within His own people (the Jews), and the
rest of mankind (the Gentile nations) as well, for His persecution and crucifixion. Irrespective
of race, creed, or heritage, each nation of His world would have called for His death. This is
Notes 183
why His death is a monumental event in human history, and that His promised forgiveness to
those who crucified Him (and those who continue to metaphorically crucify him by their sin-
ful deeds) evinces the power of His love and atoning grace.
49. Time, May 26, 1967, 26.
50. Time, May 26, 1967, 26.
51. John G. Stoessinger, Why Nations Go to War, 3d ed. (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1982), 160.
Hereafter referred to as Stoessinger 1982.
52. For an authoritative and scholarly discussion of misperception in international politics see
Robert Jervis, Perception and Misperception in International Relations (Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 1976).
53. For a fuller understanding of the theory of realism (and diplomatic prestige) in international
politics see Hans J. Morgenthau (rev. by Kenneth W. Thompson), Politics Among Nations: The
Struggle for Power and Peace, brief ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1993). Also see Michael G.
Roskin, National Interest: From Abstraction to Strategy (Carlisle Barracks, PA: Strategic Studies
Institute, US Army War College, May 20, 1994).
54. See Judges 6–8.
55. See Judges 20 where the prideful and arrogant Israelites with around 400,000 men took on
their rebellious brethren, the tribe of Benjamin, and their 26,000 men. On the first two days of
battle the overconfident Israelites lost a combined 40,000 men. After repenting, fasting, and
seeking God, Israel destroyed 25,100 Benjaminites in the final decisive battle around the city of
Gibeah. This historical event may mirror militarily the trials of the modern state of Israel in the
Yom Kippur War of 1973.
56. Time, June 9, 1967, 30.
57. Time, June 16, 1967, 22.
58. Roskin and Berry, IR, 140.
59. Time, June 16, 1967, 27.
60. Time, June 16, 1967, 27.
62. Facts on File, October 7–13, 1973, 833.
64. Stoessinger 1982, 165–174.
66. Stoessinger 1982, 165–174.
67. Keesing’s Record of World Events, March 1994, 39883.
68. Time, July 11, 1994, 30.
69. Time, July 11, 1994, 34.
70. Tom Gross, “PA stamps fail to get seal of approval on Christmas cards,” The Jerusalem Post, De-
cember 24, 1996. <http://www.jpost.com>.
71. Time, July 31, 1995, 45–46.
72. Robert Slater, Rabin of Israel: Warrior for Peace (New York: HarperPaperbacks, 1996), xv.
73. See Israel Television-Channel One (internet coverage), May 31, 1996. <http://elections96-
malam.macom.co.il>.
74. Current Biography Yearbook 1996 (New York: H. W. Wilson, 1996), 400.
75. Current Biography 1996, 400.
76. “Speech by Prime Minister Netanyahu on the Presentation of the Government to the Knesset,”
June 18, 1996 (Jerusalem) (internet copy from the Likud Party homepage). <http://
www.likud.org.il>.
77. The Jerusalem Post, September 5, 1996. <http://www.jpost.com>.

78. Facts on File, September 26, 1996, 697.
79. Current Biography 1996, 399.
80. This quote and preceding information were translated by the author from: Patrice Claude, “M.
Nétanyahou déclare la vallée du Jourdain «inséparable d’Israël»,” Le Monde Weekly Selection,
international edition (Paris), December 5, 1996, 4.
81. Columbia Daily Tribune (Columbia, MO), March 15, 1997, 2A.
82. Columbia Daily Tribune, March 20, 1997, 3A.
83. World Almanac and Book of Facts 2000 (Mahwah, NJ: World Almanac Books, 1999), 887.
84. St. Louis Post-Dispatch, April 18, 1997, 11A.
85. Bruce Hoffman, Responding to Terrorism Across the Technological Spectrum (Carlisle Barracks,
PA: Strategic Studies Institute, Army War College, July 1994), 5.
86. David E. Long, The Anatomy of Terrorism (New York: Free Press, 1990), 102–103.
87. Slater, Rabin of Israel, 600.
88. See Slater, Rabin of Israel, 301–305.
89. Time, January 3, 1969, 26.
90. Time, January 3, 1969, 26. Eshkol’s reference is to Genesis 4:15 where God placed a mark on the
rebellious Cain after he killed his brother, Abel.
91. Columbia Daily Tribune, October 24, 1998, 1A.
92. Yahoo! News, World Headlines, October 26, 1998. <http://www.dailynews.yahoo.com>.
93. “Elections ’99: Election Results & 15th Knesset Guide,” The Jerusalem Post, May 20, 1999.
<http://elections.jerusalempost.com/final.html>.
94. Jane Perlez, “Israel and P.L.O., With Help of US Reach Accord: Agreement Envisions Finaliz-
ing Borders Within One Year,” New York Times, September 4, 1999, A1, A4.
95. “‘Time for peace’: Talks begin on final Mideast accord,” CNN.com, September 13, 1999.
<http://www.cnn.com>.
96. Yahoo! News Asia, World, “Israel rules out return to pre-1967 borders, insists on Jerusalem,”
September 14, 1999. <http://asia.yahoo.com>.
97. Yahoo! News, World Headlines, “Israelis, Palestinians Open Talks,” September 14, 1999.
<http://www.dailynews.yahoo.com>.
98. Columbia Daily Tribune, September 28, 2001, 9A.
99. Columbia Daily Tribune, November 30, 2000, 3A.
101. Columbia Daily Tribune, December 11, 2000, 3A.
102. Columbia Daily Tribune, February 5, 2001, 3A.
104. Nina Gilbert, “Sharon beat Barak by 25% of vote,” Jerusalem Post, February 8, 2001. <http://
www.jpost.com>.
105. USA Today, February 1, 2001, 9A.
107. Interview with the author, Westminster College, Fulton, MO, October 8, 1999.
108. Ibrahim Barzak, “Peres, Arafat Agree on Measures,” Yahoo News/Associate Press, September
26, 2001. <http://dailynews.yahoo.com>.
109. See “Israel bans Arafat from using Gaza airport,” Yahoo! Asia News, October 18, 2001.
<http://asia.dailynews.yahoo.com>; Columbia Daily Tribune, October 18, 2001, 8A; “Israel a
suspendu tout contact avec les Palestiniens,” Le Monde, October 17, 2001. <http://
www.lemonde.fr>; Michele Gershberg “Palestinian Gunmen Assassinate Israeli Minister,”
Reuters newswire, October 17, 2001. <http://dailynews.yahoo.com>; “Israel May Accept Pal-
estinian State,” BBC News, October 16, 2001. <http://news.bbc.co.uk>; and Mark Lavie,
Notes 185
“Sharon Endorses Palestinian State,” Associated Press newswire, October 16, 2001. <http://
dailynews.yahoo.com>.
110. World Almanac and Book of Facts 2000, 695.
111. Mutual Radio News, March 27, 1997.
112. Judith Sudilovsky, “Islands of Christianity,” The Jerusalem Post, February 18, 1997. <http://
www.jpost.com>.
113. Sudilovsky, “Islands of Christianity.”
116. “Paul Harvey News,” ABC Radio Network, June 2, 1997 and ABC News, ABC’s “Good Morn-
ing America,” ABC Television, June 9, 1997.
117. See S. Aaron Osborne, “Christians Protest Proposed ‘Anti-missionary’ Legislation,” Christian-
ity Today, May 19, 1997, 55.
Chapter 3
1. Richard Nyberg, “Swapping Guns for Sewing Machines,” Christianity Today, May 19, 1997, 46.
2. “Africa for the Africans,” The Economist: A Survey of Sub-Saharan Africa, September 7, 1996, 5.
3. Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (New York:
Simon & Schuster, 1996), 65–66. Hereafter referred to as Huntington 1996.
McGraw-Hill, 1993), 92. Hereafter referred to as Stoessinger 1993.
5. See David Barrett and Todd Johnson, eds., The World Christian Encyclopedia, 2d ed. (New
York: Oxford University Press, 2001). The author thanks Mr. Peter Crossing of the World Ev-
angelization Research Center in Richmond, Virginia, for his help in obtaining this data.
6. The World Almanac and Book of Facts 2000 (Mahwah, NJ: World Almanac Books, 1999), 695.
7. Christianity Today, November 9, 1992, 64.
8. Tex Williams, “Mass Evangelism: Challenges and Potentials,” The Journal of Applied Missiology
4 (1, April 1993). <http://www.acu.edu/missions>. This journal is affiliated with Abilene Chris-
tian University in Abilene, Texas.
9. Williams, “Mass Evangelism.”
11. Christianity Today, November 9, 1992, 64.
12. Harvey Cox, Fire from Heaven: The Rise of Pentecostal Spirituality and the Reshaping of Religion
in the Twenty-first Century (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1995), 15.
13. Williams, “Mass Evangelism.” See note 8.
14. This data was given to me by my Brother-in-Christ and colleague, Dr. Daniel Egbe, who spe-
cializes and teaches international politics and African politics. See the World Health
Organization’s data on HIV and AIDS. <http://www.who.int>.
15. Kwasi Boahene, “The IXth International Conference on AIDS and STD in Africa,” AIDS Care
8 (October 1996, 5), 609.
16. The Economist, February 10, 1996, 42.
17. The Economist, September 29, 2001, 51–52.
18. Katy Attanasi, “AIDS Around the World,” Pentecostal Evangel, October 7, 2001, 8.
19. Greta Bloomhill, Witchcraft in Africa (Cape Town: Howard Timmins, 1962), 10.
20. Bloomhill, 110–111.
21. World Press Review, March 1992, 38.
22. Michael Gelfand, The African Witch: With Particular Reference to Witchcraft Beliefs and Practice

Among the Shona of Rhodesia (Edinburgh: E. & S. Livingstone, 1967), 49; see also Barrie Rey-
nolds, Magic, Divination, and Witchcraft Among the Barotse of Northern Rhodesia (Berkeley,
CA: University of California Press, 1963).
23. Gelfand, 57–60.
24. According to Kaigh, “Literature teems with cases apparently, well authenticated, of both lycan-
thropy and vampirism.” See Frederick Kaigh, Witchcraft and Magic of Africa (London: Richard
Lesley, 1947), 27. Hereafter referred to as Kaigh. According to anthropologist Dr. William F.
Guinee, a professor, expert on demonic spirit possession among indigenous peoples in the Car-
ibbean and colleague of mine on the teaching faculty at Westminster College, lycanthropy may
be difficult to verify empirically. A shaman or witch doctor may be spiritually transformed into
a wild animal, say a bear or tiger, and he may be growling, wearing animal skins, and so on—
literally in a paranormal state psychologically. As a result, believers may be fixated on the indi-
vidual and his transmutative state, but he may still look outwardly (to the nonbeliever and oth-
ers) as himself–that is, as a man acting strangely, wearing animal skins, and chanting in grunts
and animal-like sounds.
25. Kaigh, 38.
26. Kaigh, vii.
27. See both “Angels Are In–Devil & Holy Spirit Are Out,” Barna Research Group, April 29, 1997;
and “Annual Survey of America’s Faith Shows No Significant Changes in Past Year,” Barna Re-
search Group, March 8, 1999. <http://www.barna.org>.
28. Kaigh, 65–66.
29. Acts 19 gives the account of the seven sons of Sçeva, the Jewish high priest of Ephesus, and their
attempts to exorcize evil spirits from people. In Acts 19:13, the sons proclaim, “We adjure you
by Jesus whom Paul preacheth.” Immediately, a demon responded to them “Jesus I know and
Paul I know; but who are ye?” (Acts 19:14). Then the evil spirit attacked them “and prevailed
against them, so that they fled out of that house naked and wounded” (Acts 19:15). The moral
of this account is that invoking demons out of people ought not to be done by those who (a)
do not believe in Jesus and His power to cast devils out; (b) that the Name of the Lord is a use-
less command to those who do not believe in Him even if they are trying to be used of Him in
miracles like these; and (c) one ought to have prayed and fasted much prior to attempting an
exorcism according to Jesus’ command (see Matthew 17:15–21).
30. World Press Review, November 1992, 38.
31. Stoessinger 1993, 87–93. See note 4.
32. Lipset argues that a nation must develop economically (in a capitalist manner) in order to de-
velop a democratic political system. See Seymour Martin Lipset, Political Man: The Social Basis
of Politics (New York: Doubleday, 1960). However, this theory does not take into account the
lack of democratic traditions, principles, and structures that would help facilitate the competi-
tion and pluralism that democracy necessitates, let alone the most important and basic element
of democracy: education.
33. From the lectures of Dr. Richard D. Hirtzel, emeritus professor of political science, Western Il-
linois University. Dr. Hirtzel taught introduction to international relations and African politi-
cal systems to the author as an undergraduate from 1984–1988.
34. See Samuel P. Huntington, The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century
(Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1993). Hereafter referred to as Huntington 1993.
Huntington’s book was the co-winner of the Grawemeyer Award for Ideas Improving World
Order. For other seminal works on democratization and political development in the field of
political science, see Gabriel Almond and G. Bingham Powell, eds., Comparative Politics: A De-
velopmental Approach (Boston: Little, Brown, 1966); Samuel P. Huntington, Political Order in
Notes 187
Changing Societies (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1968); Joseph LaPalombara and
Myron Weiner, eds., Political Parties and Political Development (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Uni-
versity Press, 1966); Lipset 1960 (see note 32); Lucian W. Pye and Sidney Verba, eds., Political
Culture and Political Development (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1965); and
Myron Weiner and Samuel P. Huntington, eds., Understanding Political Development: An Ana-
lytical Study (Boston: Little, Brown, 1987).
36. Richard Joseph, “Democratization in Africa after 1989: Comparative and Theoretical Perspec-
tives,” Comparative Politics 29 (3 April 1997): 363–378.
37. Stefan Lovgren, “Instead of Aid, Trade,” US News & World Report, October 13, 1997, 37–38.
38. Joseph, “Democratization in Africa after 1989,” 364.
39. Europa World Year Book 1995, vol. II (London: Europa, 1995), 2174–2176.
40. John T. Rourke, International Politics on the World Stage, 5th ed. (Guilford, CT: Dushkin/
Brown & Benchmark, 1995), 360–361.
41. Europa World Year Book 1995, vol. II, 2174–2176.
42. Europa World Year Book 1995, vol. II, 2174–2176.
43. Roy J. Enquist, “Politics of Reconciliation Namibian Style,” Christian Century, March 15, 1995,
300. Hereafter referred to as Enquist.
44. Enquist, 300.
45. Enquist, 301.
46. Edgar O’Ballance, The Secret War in the Sudan: 1955–1972 (Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1977), 16.
48. Cush is listed first among the sons of Ham in Genesis 10:6.
49. Harold D. Nelson, ed., Sudan: A Country Study, 3d ed. (Washington, DC: United States Gov-
ernment, Department of the Army, 1983).
50. John L. Esposito and John O. Voll, Islam and Democracy (New York: Oxford University Press,
1996), 81. Hereafter referred to as Esposito and Voll.
51. Mansour Khalid, The Government They Deserve: The Role of the Elite in Sudan’s Political Evolu-
tion (London: Kegan Paul International, 1990), 4.
52. Esposito and Voll, 79.
53. Thomas M. Poulsen, Nations and States: A Geographic Background to World Affairs (Englewood
Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1995), 202.
55. Nelson, 84. See note 49.
56. Encyclopedia Americana (Danbury, CT: Grolier, 1992), 835–843; and Nelson, 84.
57. Black Africans make up 52% of Sudan’s population. Arabs account for 39% and Bejas 6%. See
Robert Young Pelton, The World’s Most Dangerous Places, 4th ed. (New York: Harper Collins,
2000), 853–854.
58. Nelson, 100 (see note 49).
59. Europa World Year Book 1995, 2863 (see note 39).
60. Esposito and Voll, 78–101. See note 50.
61. Khalid, 119–161 (see note 51); and Esposito and Voll, 83 (see note 50).
62. Dunstan M. Wai, The African-Arab Conflict in the Sudan (New York: Africana, 1981), 56.
63. Wai, 56.
64. O’Ballance, 35 (see note 46).
65. O’Ballance, 35.
66. Wai, 65 (see note 62).
67. Douglas Johnston, “Looking Ahead: Toward a New Paradigm” in Douglas Johnston and Cynthia

Sampson, eds., Religion, the Missing Dimension of Statecraft (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1994), 318. Also see Matthew 18:21–22, the exact scriptural passage which Lagu applied
after praying for the Lord’s guidance in dealing with his Muslim prisoners following the plane
crash in southern Sudan in 1971.
68. Johnston, “Looking Ahead,” 318.
69. For example, Cynthia Sampson delineates the role of the American Friends, the Quakers, in
negotiating peace within Nigeria in the wake of civil war in that country in 1966–1967. Al-
though peace talks failed, the Quakers were revered by both Nigerian and Biafran represen-
tatives. See Sampson, “‘To Make Real the Bond Between Us All’: Quaker Conciliation Dur-
ing the Nigerian Civil War” in Johnston and Sampson, 88–118 (see note 67). Stanton
Burnett suggests that American foreign policy-makers have for too long misunderstood the
implications that religion and religious conflicts have on various contexts and US foreign
policy. He and others provide some important suggestions for the American and Western
approach to understanding and rectifying religion-based conflicts in other parts of the
world. See Burnett, “Implications for the Foreign Policy Community” in Johnston and
Sampson, 285–305.
70. John L. Esposito, The Islamic Threat: Myth or Reality?, 2d ed. (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1995), 88–89.
71. Esposito, 89.
72. Esposito, 89–92.
73. Esposito, 92–93.
75. Nina Shea, In the Lion’s Den: A Shocking Account of Persecution and Martyrdom of Christians
Today and How We Should Respond (Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman, 1997), 31–32; and
Kim A. Lawton, “The Suffering Church,” Christianity Today, July 15, 1996, 54.
76. Voice of the Martyrs (Bartlesville, OK), “Tragedy in Sudan,” videotape, 1996.
77. Europa World Year Book 1995, vol. II, 3484 (see note 39).
78. Europa World Year Book 1995, 3484–3485.
80. Current Biography Yearbook 1992, 127.
81. See the Book of Jonah and Matthew 12:41.
82. Newsmakers 92 (Detroit: Gale Research, 1992), 81.
84. The 72% figure is from Christianity Today, May 17, 1993, 90.
85. Quoted in Issac Phiri, “Evangelical President Contends with Corruption, Economy Woes,”
Christianity Today, April 3, 1995, 94.
86. Africa Report, March 1994, 59.
87. The Economist, November 23, 1996, 46; and Phiri, “Evangelical President Contends with Cor-
ruption, Economy Woes,” 94.
88. Christianity Today, May 17, 1993, 90.
89. See the “Annual Report on Human Rights Practices: Zambian Human Rights Practices, 1993,”
United States Department of State, January 31, 1994. <http://www.state.gov>.
90. See “Zambia: Church Leaders Protest at Draft Constitution,” Anglican Communion News
Service, December 8, 1995. <http://www.ely.anglican.org/news/acns>.
91. Said Adejumobi, “Elections in Africa: A Fading Shadow of Democracy?” International Political
Science Review 21 (January 2000), 66.
92. “President Frederick JT Chiluba–the Man and his Mission: Mr. FTJ Chiluba–Why Zambia a
Christian Nation?” <http://www.statehouse.gov.zm>.
Notes 189
93. “Chiluba Confers with Mugabe on Congo conflict,” Media Institute of Southern Africa, Janu-
ary 11, 1999. <wysiwyg://55/http://www.woza.co.za/africa/jan99/simsamdrco.him>.
94. “Le président Chiluba attendu mardi à Kinshasa,” Forces of Freedom in Democratic Republic
of Congo website, February 1, 1999. <http://speednets.com/congo/Francais/le—president—
chiluba—attendu—a—k.htm> (Translated from the French by the author).
Chapter 4
1. Columbia Daily Tribune (Columbia, MO), November 23, 2001, 9A.
2. Michael G. Roskin and Nicholas O. Berry, IR: The New World of International Relations, 2d ed.
(Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1993), 256.
3. Loch K. Johnson, America as a World Power: Foreign Policy in a Constitutional Framework, 2d
ed. (New York: McGraw Hill, 1995), 260. According to Johnson, “Almost 100 Navy ships and
some 300 airplanes were based at Pearl Harbor at that fateful hour. The Japanese hit all eight
battleships moored in the harbor, and five sank. So did two destroyers and several other ships.
Over 200 aircraft were damaged and many were destroyed. Luckily, the two aircraft carriers in
the Pacific fleet happened to be at sea and escaped. Less fortunate were the 2,330 service person-
nel killed and the 1,145 wounded (along with 100 civilian casualties).”
4. Economist, September 29, 2001, 11.
5. “Poll Analysis,” The Gallup Organization, October 8, 2001 <http://www.gallup.com>. From
the Sunday evening October 7, 2001 CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll.
6. “Religion Today News Summaries,” October 10, 2001 <http://www.crosswalk.com>.
9. One Gore elector from the District of Columbia refused to cast her vote for Gore in protest of
the District’s nonstatehood status. This is according to “NBC Nightly News with Tom Bro-
kaw” December 18, 2000.
10. Columbia Daily Tribune, January 14, 2001, 6A. Bush lost the popular vote to Gore by 539,947
votes. However, the miniscule percentage difference in both the popular vote and the vote in
the state of Florida means the election was basically a tie (if one accounts for a normal statisti-
cal margin of error). Hence, the 2000 vote was actually closer than the 1960 vote given the
larger number of voters (N size=just over 100 million voters) participating, as the country has
grown substantially over 40 years.
13. Richard J. Hardy, Government in America (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1990), 390. Political sci-
entist Brian J. Gaines argues (as others have before) that Nixon actually defeated Kennedy in
the 1960 popular vote if actual votes for non-Kennedy electors are taken into account in Ala-
bama and Georgia. See Brian J. Gaines, “Popular Myths About Popular Vote-Electoral College
Splits,” PS: Political Science and Politics 34 (March 2001), 71–75.
14. World Almanac and Book of Facts 2000 (Mahwah, NJ: World Almanac Books, 1999), 502.
18. David Kidwell, Phil Long, and Geoff Dougherty, “Hundreds of felons cast votes illegally,”
Miami Herald (Miami, FL), December 1, 2000. <http://www.herald.com>.

21. USA Today, November 22, 2000, 7A.
27. Columbia Missourian (Columbia, MO), November 23, 2000, 5A.
29. Camilia Paglia, “The Peevish Porcupine Beats the Shrill Rooster,” Salon, December 6, 2000.
<http://www.salon.com>.
31. Tom Bierbaum, “Queer as Folk and Fox News Ace Cable Numbers,” Inside.com, December 6,
2000. <http://www.inside.com>.
32. Official Memorandum State of Texas Office of the Governor. <http://www.tompaine.com>.
35. I was invited by Wisconsin Public Radio (WPR), an arm of National Public Radio located in
Madison, Wisconsin, to defend Attorney General Ashcroft, and promote this book (prior to its
publication), on February 2, 2001, the day after Ashcroft’s confirmation. I was brought on the
air to give equal time to the controversy surrounding the Ashcroft nomination two days after
NARAL’s Michelman had been WPR’s guest on January 31, 2001. See “Conversations with
Kathleen Dunn,” WPR, February 2, 2001. <http://www.wpr.org>.
36. ABC Radio News, December 22, 2000.
38. Christianity Today, January 8, 2001, 21.
39. These figures are based on the author’s calculations from the chart on page 134 in Norman Thomas
and Joseph Pika, The Politics of the Presidency, 4th ed. (Washington, DC: CQ Press, 1996).
40. Thomas and Pika, 132.
41. According to Dr. Richard J. Hardy, Associate Professor of Political Science, University of
Missouri-Columbia, American government course lecture, Fall 1988.
42. Thomas and Pika, 134.
43. New York Times, November 10, 1994, B1.
44. National Public Radio, November 9, 1994.
45. Time, November 21, 1994, 62.
46. John Green, “The Christian Right and the 1994 Elections: A View from the States,” PS: Politi-
cal Science and Politics 28 (March 1995), 5.
47. Ralph Reed, Active Faith (New York: Free Press, 1996), 37–38. Hereafter referred to as Reed.
48. Reed, 11.
49. “Statement by Ralph Reed, Jr. concerning his resignation from the Christian Coalition,” The
Christian Coalition, April 23, 1997. <http://www.cc.org>.
50. “Statement by Ralph Reed, Jr. concerning his resignation from the Christian Coalition,” The
Christian Coalition, April 23, 1997. <http://www.cc.org>.
51. Reed, 20.
52. Reed, 21–22.
53. Reed, 23.
54. St. Louis Post-Dispatch, January 5, 1995. <http://www.postnet.com>.
Notes 191

58. Current Biography Yearbook 1989, 200–201.
59. Current Biography Yearbook 1989, 200–201.
60. See Newt Gingrich, Window of Opportunity: A Blueprint for the Future (New York: St. Martin’s
Press, 1984).
61. Donald R. Wolfensberger, “The Institutional Legacy of Speaker Newt Gingrich: The Politics
of House Reform and Realities of Governing,” Extensions (Fall 2000), 8.
62. Christian Science Monitor, January 5, 1995. <http://www.csmonitor.com>.
63. Christian Science Monitor, January 9, 1995. <http://www.csmonitor.com>.
65. Christian Science Monitor, January 5, 1995 <http://www.csmonitor.com>.
66. Congressional Quarterly Weekly Report, January 7, 1995, 110.
67. Facts on File, July 7, 1989, 491.
69. Robert Scheer, “Ashcroft a Far-right Pick Who’s All Wrong,” Columbia Daily Tribune, January
8, 2001, 4A.
70. Columbia Daily Tribune, January 14, 2001, 5A.
71. R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr. “Liberals Turn to Slander Against Ashcroft,” Columbia Daily Tribune,
January 8, 2001, 4A.
74. See <http://www.cc.org> for the Christian Coalition’s congressional scorecards of each senator
and congressperson.
and congressperson.
77. The Daily Progressive (Charlottesville,VA).<http://loper.org/~george/interests/politics/rougue–
gallery/democrats/goode/goode.html>.
78. “Steve Largent: Bio,” Steve Largent, 1st Congressional District of Oklahoma website. <http://
www.house.gov>.
79. From Melinda Henneberger, “Putting a Christian Stamp on Congress,” New York Times, No-
vember 13, 1997 found at “Steve Largent: Bio,” Steve Largent, 1st Congressional District of
Oklahoma website. <http://www.house.gov>.
80. Henneberger, “Putting a Christian Stamp on Congress.” <http://www.house.gov>.
81. From Matthew Robinson, “Congressman Steve Largent: Channeling the Drive That Made
Him a Gridiron Great,” Investor’s Business Daily, July 30, 1997 found at Steve Largent: Bio,”
Steve Largent, 1st Congressional District of Oklahoma website. <http://www.house.gov>.
82. Robinson, “Congressman Steve Largent: Channeling the Drive That Made Him a Gridiron
Great.” <http://www.house.gov>. See also Proverbs 22:1.
and congressperson.
85. Nancy L. Bednar and Allen D. Hertzke, “The Christian Right and Republican Realignment in
Oklahoma,” PS: Political Science and Politics 28 (March 1995), 11.
86. Bednar and Hertzke, “The Christian Right and Republican Realignment in Oklahoma, 13–15.
87. “J. C.’s Biography,” JC Watts, Jr., 4th Congressional District of Oklahoma website. <http://
www.house.gov>.
88. “J. C.’s Biography.” <http://www.house.gov>.

89. “Baptist Congressmen Call for Clinton Press Secretary Resignation,” Christianity Today.com,
December 1999. <http://www.christianityonline.com>.
90. “Baptist Congressmen Call for Clinton Press Secretary Resignation,” <http://www.christianity
online.com>.
91. Christianity Today, October 7, 1996, 36.
92. Human Events, December 6, 1996 (culled from Ebscohost—an electronic catalog of current pe-
riodicals and journals).
93. The Interfaith Alliance website, October 22, 1998. <http://www.tialliance.org>.
94. Human Events, December 6, 1996 (culled from Ebscohost).
95. “Walter Cronkite” (a 1998 letter from the famed broadcaster), The Interfaith Alliance. <http://
www.tialliance.org>.
96. “Walter Cronkite” CBS Worldwide, “information please,” 1998. <http://cbs.infoplease.com>.
97. National Catholic Reporter, March 1, 1996 (culled from Ebscohost).
98. National Catholic Reporter, November 18, 1994 (culled from Ebscohost).
99. National Catholic Reporter, March 1, 1996 (culled from Ebscohost).
100. Marc Ethier, “Man of Many Hats: Clinton Adviser Teaches, Preaches, Writes” reprinted from
The Chronicle of Higher Education in “dialogues: Online Conversation with Scholars & Speak-
ers,” Wake Forest University homepage (1998). <http://www.wfu.edu>.101. Christian Century,
February 22, 1995, 215.
102. Proverbs 14:31 says, “He that oppresseth the poor reproacheth his Maker: but he that honour-
eth him hath mercy on the poor.” Campolo would argue that the church must reach the hurt-
ing and aid the poverty-stricken in this hour.
105. Jesse Bogan, “Ashland Institutes Prayer at City Council Meetings, Mid-Missourian (Columbia
MO), November 23, 2000, 1. Alderman Bade died of a heart attack on February 26, 2001, just
a little over three months after offering the prayer resolution; he was 74. He was a deacon for
many years in the First Presbyterian Church of Maryland Heights, Missouri (a St. Louis sub-
urb) and in recent years attended the First Presbyterian Church of Jefferson City, Missouri. He
was a military policeman in World War II and was married to the former Anna Viers for over
54 years. He had retired from working in his family’s refrigerator installation business. He was
called “a valuable mediator and gentleman.” In 1997, he tried to get a ban on “adult entertain-
ment.” His son-in-law, Larry Garrett, said, Bade was “a real red, white and blue kind of guy,
with eagles and flags everywhere.” Bade’s brother, William Bade, said, “He wasn’t afraid of
death. He would want us celebrating.” See Columbia Daily Tribune, February 27, 2001, 2A.
106. Jesse Bogan, “Ashland Institues Prayer at City Council Meetings,” 1.
107. Stephen Davis, “Virginia’s minute of silence is upheld,” Washington Times, October 31, 2000.
<http://www.washtimes.com>. See Anne Gearan, “Court Won’t Review Silent Prayer Law,”
Yahoo! News/Associate Press newswire, October 29, 2001. <http://dailynews.yahoo.com>.
108. Issues and Controversies on File (Facts on File), October 13, 1995, 1 (4), 73–80.
109. Issues and Controversies on File, 73–80.
110. The World Almanac and Book of Facts 2000, 892.
111. Dr. James Dobson Discusses America’s Choice: Nine Key Issues That Will Shape Our Future (Colo-
rado Springs, CO: Focus on the Family, 2000), 2.
112. Dr. James Dobson Discusses America’s Choice: Nine Key Issues That Will Shape Our Future, 2–3.
114. “Dr. Dobson’s Newsletter,” family.org: A Web site of Focus on the Family, January 1998.
<http://www.family.org>.
Notes 193
115. Facts on File, November 5, 1998, 795.

116. Facts on File, April 27, 2000, 280–281. Close to 60% of Vermont’s legislators supported the
“civil unions” bill.
117. Columbia Daily Tribune, July 11, 2001, 2A. In some states, like Missouri, Democratic governors
and Democratic-led legislatures passed the laws prohibiting gay marriage.
118. Alan Philips and Hugo Gurdon, Electronic Telegraph (London), September 12, 1997. <http://
www.telegraph.co.uk>.
120. Congress, House, Representative Donald Manzullo of Illinois speaking on the “Ten Com-
mandments are the basis of our laws,” H. R. 31, 105th Cong., 1st sess., Congressional Record (5
March 1997), H741. <http://thomas.loc.gov>.
121. Quoted by Representative Joe Scarborough of Florida speaking to “support [the] display of
[the] Ten Commandments in courtrooms,” H. R. 31, 105th Cong., 1st sess., Congressional
Record (5 March 1997), H711. <http://thomas.loc.gov>.
122. Human Events, March 21, 1997 (culled from Ebscohost).
124. Alan Choate, “Profile: Judge Roy Moore,” Mobile Register, August 20, 2000. <wysiwyg://147/
http://www.al.com/news/mobile/Aug2000>. Hereafter called Choate.
125. Choate.
126. Choate.
127. “Honors/Recognition,” Elect Judge Roy Moore Chief Justice website. <http://www.judge
moore.org>.
128. Choate. See note 124.
130. See James Davison Hunter, Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America (New York: Basic
Books, 1991).
Chapter 5
1. The term “soviet” is derived from the Russian word sovet, which means workers’ council.
2. The term “Bolshevik” is transliterated from the Russian to mean “majorityite,” even though
Lenin’s Bolsheviks were a minority in the Russian Social Democratic Workers’ Party at the time
of the split between the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks (“minorityites”) in 1903 at the Russian So-
cial Democratic Workers’ Party conference in London.
3. Compare Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels’s Communist Manifesto (1848) to what actually took
place in Russia and one will see numerous contradictions, not the least that Marx called for
revolution in an industrial context and that they also argue that European communist parties
would have to play the bourgeois parliamentary game of politics in order to enervate and con-
trol political party systems before full-scale proletarian (worker) revolution could be realized.
4. Dr. Bill Young is a colleague of mine at Westminster College, where he is a professor of reli-
gious studies. We taught a course on religion and politics together in the fall 1999 semester. He
is an ordained Presbyterian minister. See his excellent book, one of the many he has authored,
for his profound take on Marxism and religion: William A. Young, The World’s Religions:
Worldviews and Contemporary Issues (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1995), 7.
5. Ronald Gregor Suny, The Soviet Experiment: Russia, the USSR and the Successor States (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 62 (hereafter referred to as Suny); and Alan Wood, Stalin
and Stalinism (London: Routledge, 1990), 6 (hereafter referred to as Wood).
6. Suny, 507.

McGraw Hill, 1993), 41–42.
8. Lewis H. Siegelbaum, Soviet State and Society Between Revolutions, 1918–1929 (Cambridge, UK:
Cambridge University Press, 1992), 150. Hereafter referred to as Siegelbaum.
9. Richard Pipes, ed. The Unknown Lenin: From the Secret Archive (New London, CT: Yale Uni-
versity Press, 1996), 11.
10. Andrei Oskarovich Protopopov, “Church-State Relations in the Russian Federation,” Brigham
Young University Law Review (1996) (culled from Ebscohost—an electronic catalog of current
periodicals and journals).
11. Seigelbaum, 157.
12. Ted Byfield and Virginia Byfield, “That Russia’s Communists Should Appeal to the Bible Is
More than Mere Irony,” July 15, 1996, Alberta Report/Western Report, 36.
13. Protopopov.
14. Donald W. Treadgold, Twentieth Century Russia, 7th ed. (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1990),
231. Hereafter referred to as Treadgold.
15. David Remnick, Resurrection: The Struggle for a New Russia, pbk ed. (New York: Vintage
Books, 1998), 170.
16. January 6 is the historical Christmas day for Orthodox Christians. It was the day Russians cel-
ebrated Christmas under the Old Style (Julian) calendar used by the czars, which was about
two weeks later than the New Style (Gregorian or Western) calendar implemented by the
Bolsheviks. Under that calendar, used by Western nations, the great Christian holiday of
Christmas fell two weeks earlier on December 25 each year. Russians and other Orthodox
Christian states (such as Greece and Yugoslavia) still celebrate Christmas on January 6 each
year.
17. Siegelbaum, 160. See note 8.
18. See Seigelbaum, 149–165.
19. Wood, 60. See note 5.
20. Treadgold, 249.
21. Mary McAuley, Soviet Politics 1917–1991 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 50; Geoffrey
Hosking, The First Socialist Society: A History of the Soviet Union from Within, 2nd enlarged ed.
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994), 203; and Wood, 60–62.
22. Wood, 60–62.
23. Protopopov.
24. Hedrick Smith, The New Russians (New York: Avon Books, 1991), 395.
25. Joseph L. Nogee and R. Judson Mitchell, Russian Politics: The Struggle for a New Order (Bos-
ton: Allyn and Bacon, 1997), 118.
26. Robert Zuzowski, Political Change in Eastern Europe Since 1989: Prospects for Liberal Democracy
and a Market Economy (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1998), 64.
27. Columbia Daily Tribune (Columbia, MO), December 31, 2000, 5A.
30. “Putin Signs Religion Law, But Doubts Linger,” Crosswalk, Religion Today, April 3, 2000.
<http://religiontoday.crosswalk.com>.
31. “Putin Signs Religion Law, But Doubts Linger.” <http://religiontoday.crosswalk.com>.
32. United States Department of State, “Annual Report on International Religious Freedom for
1999: Russia,” Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor. Washington, DC, September
9, 1999. <http://www.state.gov>.
one line short

Notes 195
1999: Russia.” <http://www.state.gov>.
1999: Russia.” <http://www.state.gov>.
35. Robert Parsons, “Georgians,” in Graham Smith, ed. The Nationalities Question in the Soviet
Union (London: Longman, 1991), 181.
36. Parsons, “Georgians,” 182.
37. Treadgold, 171–173. See note 14.
38. Vaclav Havel is the Czech dissident playwright who became Czechoslovakia’s president in De-
cember 1989 after the “Velvet Revolution” in which the people peacefully overthrew the com-
munist government in Prague. Havel became a national figure with his opposition to commu-
nism in the 1960s and 1970s. His plays and writings were anticommunist via metaphors about
life in his country. He helped lead the Prague Spring revolt of August 1968 that was quelled by
Soviet tanks. Although in poor health, Havel continued to preside over the Czech state (which
was divided politically in 1993 into two sovereign states: the Czech Republic and Slovakia) at
the dawn of the new millennium.
39. Suzanne Goldenberg, Pride of Small Nations: The Caucasus and Post-Soviet Disorder (London:
Zed Books, 1994), 82. Hereafter referred to as Goldenberg.
40. Goldenberg, 82–83.
41. Goldenberg, 88.
43. See Goldenberg, 107–113.
44. Goldenberg, 110.
1999: Georgia,” Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor. Washington, DC, Septem-
ber 9, 1999. <http://www.state.gov>.
1999: Georgia.” <http://www.state.gov>.
47. Columbia Daily Tribune, September 25, 2001, 7B.
49. Suny, 98–99. See note 5.
50. Goldenberg, 134.
51. Suny, 101–102.
52. Suny, 102 and Treadgold, 172.
53. Treadgold, 512–513.
54. Goldenberg, 142–145 and 168–173.
55. “Armenia,” IMP—Global facts: History, politics, hundreds of countries. <http://www.imfme
tal.org>.
56. Suny, 441.
1999: Armenia,” Bureau of Human Rights, Democracy and Labor. Washington, DC, Septem-
ber 9, 1999. <http://www.state.gov>.
1999: Armenia.” <http://www.state.gov>.
60. James C. Dobson and Gary L. Bauer, Children at Risk: The Battle for the Hearts and Minds of
Our Kids (Dallas, TX: Word Publishing, 1990), 238.
one line short

Chapter 6
1. See Christianity Today, April 7, 1997, 59 and World Almanac and Book of Facts 2000 (Mahwah,
NJ: World Almanac Books, 1999), 847. Hereafter referred to as World Almanac.
2. Tom Hundley, “Native Christians ‘Very Scared’ of Attacks: Anti-Islamic Acts in U.S. Used to
Justify Violence,” Chicago Tribune, September 25, 2001. <http://www.chicagotribune.com>.
3. David C. Rapoport, “Some General Observations on Religion and Violence,” Terrorism and
Political Violence 3 (Autumn 1991), 135–136.
4. Rapoport, 129.
5. World Almanac, 807.
6. World Almanac, 807.
1999: Indonesia,” Bureau for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, Washington, D.C., Sep-
tember 9, 1999. <http://www.state.gov>.
8. Paul Marshall with Lela Gilbert, Their Blood Cries Out: The Untold Story of Persecution Against
Christians in the Modern World (Dallas, TX: Word Publishing, 1997), 58–60. Hereafter referred
to as Marshall.
9. Marshall, 61.
10. Jonathan Head, “Five die as Muslims attack churches,” Electronic Telegraph (London), October
12, 1996. <http://www.telegraph.co.uk>.
11. Marshall, 60.
12. Los Angeles Times, October 29, 1998. <http://www.latimes.com>.
13. Los Angeles Times, October 29, 1998. <http://www.latimes.com>.
14. “Indonesia Rejects U.N. Peacekeepers,” Yahoo! News (Associated Press), World Headlines,
September 9, 1999. <http://www.yahoo.com>.
1999: Indonesia.” <http://www.state.gov>.
1999: Indonesia,” <http://www.state.gov>; Russ Turney, “Opposition in Indonesia: God is at
Work Despite War, Poverty & Persecution,” Pentecostal Evangel, August 5, 2001, 4–11. Turney
states in the Assemblies of God publication that as many as 20,000 Indonesians may be dead
in the two-year war in the Moluccas islands. He also says that “Hundreds of churches and
mosques have been destroyed” by Muslim extremists and retaliating Protestants fearing for
their lives.
1999: Indonesia.” <http://www.state.gov>.
18. John L. Esposito and John O. Voll, Islam and Democracy (New York: Oxford University Press,
1996), 102–103. Hereafter referred to as Esposito and Voll.
19. Esposito and Voll, 103–106.
24. This would be very much unlike the Muslim world’s second female prime minister, Tansu Cil-
lar of Turkey in the early 1990s. Cillar was not only a secular Muslim who did not wear the tra-
ditional female Islamic garb, she was also a feminist who made her husband take her last name.
See Current Biography Yearbook 1994 (New York: H.W. Wilson, 1994), 105.
Notes 197

27. Robert Bradnock, “World: South Asia Analysis: Can the Army Deliver?” BBC World Service,
October 19, 1999. <http://www.bbc.co.uk>.
28. “World: South Asia: Pakistan Coup: The 17 Hour Victory,” BBC World Service, November 11,
1999. <http://www.bbc.co.uk>; and “World: South Asia: Sharif Charged with Murder Plot,”
BBC World Service, November 10, 1999. <http://www.bbc.co.uk>.
29. “World: South Asia Profile: General Pervez Musharraf,” BBC World Service, October 13, 1999.
<http://www.bbc.co.uk>.
1999: Pakistan,” Bureau for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, Washington, D.C., Sep-
tember 9, 1999. <http://www.state.gov>.
1999: Pakistan.” <http://www.state.gov>.
32. See Salman Rushdie, Satanic Verses (New York: Viking, 1989). This book was deemed offensive
to the Iranian leadership and a fatwah declaring an Islamic death sentence for Rushdie was de-
creed. Rushdie, an Iranian Muslim, was forced into hiding in Britain as a result.
34. Tom Hundley, “Native Christians ‘Very Scared’ of Attacks: Anti-Islamic Acts in U.S. Used to
Justify Violence,” Chicago Tribune, September 25, 2001. <http://www.chicagotribune.com>.
35. United States Deparment of State, “Annual Report on International Religious Freedom for
36. I use the term “personal vote” out of context here on purpose. The “personal vote” is a term
used in Anglo-American democracies to describe an electoral scenario when “incumbents who
are perceived by their constituents as very helpful in providing constituency service are re-
warded with a personal vote.” Although this is not exactly what I mean, I believe that the
Christians who are denied the right to representation based on faith at the local levels in Paki-
stan, unlike Muslims, must then turn to a representation at the national level much like Amer-
ican’s voting for senatorial candidates. Hence, representation may not be as personal for Chris-
tians as it is for Muslims; and hence, constituency case-work, and so on may not be seen as
important for the Christians in political systems such as Pakistan. Of course, this may be a
problem for many minorities in majoritarian democracies throughout the world, but structu-
rally, Pakistan may have indirectly caused problems for non-Muslims in terms of representa-
tion and political equity in the creation of this system prior to the coup of 1999. See Philip
Norton (Lord Norton of Louth) and David M. Wood, Back from Westminster: British Members
of Parliament and Their Constituents (Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 1993), 36.
38. Dutch political scientist Arend Lijphart devised the theory of consociational democracy. This is
a type of political system, theoretically speaking, in which leaders representing fragmented po-
litical cultures will negotiate and bargain to bring about stability in the polity. Oftentimes, as
was the case in Lebanon, groups such as Muslims, Christians, and others will be guaranteed
representation based on a kind of quota system in a consociational democracy’s parliament.
This is done in order to give all voices, no matter how small, a stake in the political process. Un-
fortunately, elites oftentimes manipulate the system, and various centrifugal forces can under-
cut the system, as was the case in Lebanon in 1975. For more on consociationalism see Arend
Lijphart, “Typologies of Democratic Systems,” Comparative Political Studies 1 (April 1968),
3–44 and his Democracy in Plural Societies (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1977).

39. Although many scholars would argue that the war between Arab Muslims and black Christians
began in late 1955 prior to Sudan’s independence in 1956, it has carried on in one manner or an-
other since the country’s independence.
40. Robert Young Pelton, The World’s Most Dangerous Places, 4th ed. (New York: Harper Books,
2000), 851–854. Hereafter referred to as Pelton.
41. World Almanac, 871. See note 1.
42. Pelton, 854–859.
43. Pelton, 856–859.
44. Marshall, 216. See note 8.
45. Marshall, 23.
46. Marshall, 217.
47. Marshall, 23.
48. Marshall, 203–204.
49. Marshall, 21.
50. Pelton, 860.
51. Marshall, 21.
52. Pelton, 855.
53. “Sudan: Starvation puts 150,000 at Risk,” Christianity Today, September 6, 1999. <http://
www.christianity.net>.
1999: Sudan.” <http://www.state.gov>.
1999: India,” Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, Washington, DC, September
57. “VI. Legal Context,” a 1999 report on India and violence toward Christians there, Human
Rights Watch. <http://hrw.org>.
1999: India.” <http://www.state.gov>.
59. Gerald James Larson, India’s Agony over Religion (Albany, NY: State University of New York
Press, 1995). Hereafter referred to as Larson.
60. The Apostle Thomas, known historically as “Doubting Thomas,” was known for his lack of
faith and unbelief regarding the resurrection of Jesus. Thomas, who was also called Didymus,
said “. . . Except I shall see in his hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the print
of the nails, and thrust my hand into his side, I will not believe” (John 20:25). Eight days later,
Jesus saw Thomas for the first time since His resurrection and said to Thomas, “Reach hither
thy finger, and behold my hands; and reach hither they hand, and thrust it into my side: and be
not faithless, but believing” (John 20:27). Thomas responded by saying, “. . . My Lord and my
God” (John 20:28).
61. Larson, 22–23.
62. A mercantilist economy is one in which a nation-state uses military force and heavy doses of
protectionism to advance its economic goals as a country. This mode of economics was partic-
ularly popular during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in Europe when monarchs
sought to conquer territory in order to capitalize on new imperialist possessions.
McGraw-Hill, 1993), 101–102. Hereafter referred to as Stoessinger.
64. Stoessinger, 102–103.
65. Larson, 261.
Notes 199

67. Larson, 271–272.
70. Columbia Daily Tribune (Columbia, MO), September 16, 2000, 3A.
71. Ted Olsen, “Weblog: Indian Prime Minister Greeted by Protests,” ChristianityToday.com,
September 15, 2000. <http://www.christianityonline.com>.
73. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (New York: Simon &
Schuster), 229.
74. Huntington, 218.
75. Stoessinger, 50–53. See note 63.
76. Stoessinger, 53.
77. This is according to my esteemed colleague Professor Peter H. Kim, Associate Professor of Po-
litical Science at Westminster College, who has spent many years teaching and living in East
Asia. He teaches courses on China and is a leading expert on Southeast Asian politics, culture,
and society.
82. Gary K. Bertsch, Robert P. Clark, and David M. Wood. Comparing Political Systems: Power &
Policy in Three Worlds, 4th ed. (New York: Macmillan, 1991), 335–340.
83. Bertsch, et al., 336.
84. Bertsch, et al., 337–339. Some scholars date the Cultural Revolution between 1966 and 1976
upon Mao’s death. Others place it from 1966–1969.
85. Bertsch, et al., 337–339.
86. Michael Oksenberg and Richard Bush, “China’s Political Evolution.” In Roy C. Macridis and
Bernard E. Brown, ed. Comparative Politics: Notes and Readings, 7th ed. (Pacific Grove, CA:
Brooks/Cole Publishing, 1990), 164–165, 175.
87. Pelton, 961. See note 40.
88. Huntington, 223. See note 73.
89. Nina Shea, In the Lion’s Den: A Shocking Account of Persecution and Martyrdom of Christians
Today and How We Should Respond (Nashville, TN: Broadman and Holman, 1997), 59–60.
Hereafter referred to as Shea.
1999: China,” Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, Washington, D.C., September
91. Shea, 60.
92. Shea, 61; United States Department of State, “Annual Report on International Religious Free-
dom for 1999: China.” <http://www.state.gov>.
93. Marshall, 81. See note 8.
94. Shea, 63.
95. These first reports are used in this chapter to provide documented and empirical primary-
source data on Christian persecution in the five countries under examination in chapter 6.
96. United States Commission on International Religious Freedom webpage. <http://www.uscirf.gov>.

97. William Martin, “The Christian Right and American Foreign Policy,” Foreign Policy (Spring
1999), 27.
98. United States Commission on International Religious Freedom webpage. <http://www.us
cirf.gov>.
99. “Biographies of Principal Officers,” US Department of State webpage. <http://www.state.gov>.
102. ChristianityToday.com, September 14, 2000. <http://www.christianityonline.com>.
Chapter 7
1. “Family News from Dr. James Dobson,” Focus on the Family (Colorado Springs, CO), October
2000, 1–2.
rado Springs, CO: Focus on the Family, 2000), 14. However, in March 2001, a U.S. appeals
court reversed that decision, letting the Ohio motto stand. The ACLU decided against an ap-
peal to the U.S. Supreme Court. See “ACLU Says It Won’t Appeal Ruling on Ohio Motto,”
Everything Christian website, July 16, 2001. <http://www.everythingchristian.org>.
3. Columbia Daily Tribune (Columbia, MO), January 6, 1997 and March 9, 1998. <http://
www.columbiatribune.com>.
4. Robert Young Pelton, The World’s Most Dangerous Places, 4th ed. (New York: Harper, 2000), 936.
5. See The World Almanac and Book of Facts 2000 (Mahwah, NJ: World Almanac Books, 1999),
894, 904.
6. Michael J. Sniffen, “John Ashcroft Criticizes Clinton,” Washington Post, February 8, 2001.
<http://www.washingtonpost.com>.
7. Todd Starnes, “Anniversary of Church Shootings Serves as Reminder for Bush: Presidential
Candidate Promises to Battle Religious Bigotry in Wake of Texas Tragedy,” ChristianityTo-
day.com, September 15, 2000. <http://www.christianityonline.com>.
9. Laurie Hall, An Affair of the Mind: One Woman’s Courageous Battle to Salvage Her Family from
the Devastation of Pornography (Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House, 1996). Although pornography is
a problem in the secular world, Hall states, “A recent survey by Promise Keepers of those who
attend their conferences revealed that more than 50 percent of the men who attend a Promise
Keepers event have been exposed to pornography within the week before that event [italics
added]. This fact only demonstrates how pervasive the problem is within the Christian world”
(236).
10. See Columbia Daily Tribune, February 7, 2001, 8A.
11. John L. Esposito, The Islamic Threat: Myth or Reality? (New York: Oxford University Press,
1995), 196–198.
12. Cal Thomas, “Will They Fool Us Twice?” Jewish World Review, October 8, 2001 <http://
www.jewishworldreview.com>.
13. US News and World Report, January 12, 1998, 23–24.
14. Rosalie Beck and David W. Herndon, “Notes on Church-State Affairs: Russia,” Journal of
Church and State 35 (Winter 1993), 201–202.
15. Quoted in James C. Dobson and Gary L. Bauer, Children at Risk: The Battle for the Hearts and
Minds of Our Kids (Dallas, TX: Word Publishing, 1990), 236.
Notes 201
16. Quoted in the Columbia Daily Tribune, February 3, 2001, 9A.
18. Columbia Daily Tribune, July 20, 2001, p. 3A.
19. See the Salvation Army’s position statement on homosexuality at its American national head-
quarters website. <http://www.christianity.com/salvationarmyusa>.
20. Edward H. McKinley, Marching to Glory: The History of the Salvation Army in the United States
of America, 1880–1980, pbk ed. (Atlanta: The Salvation Army Supplies, 1986), 217.
21. Columbia Daily Tribune, July 21, 2001, 7A.
22. McKinley, Marching to Glory, 218. In the summer of 1985, at the age of 19, the author had the
journalistic pleasure of covering the Salvation Army’s International Youth Congress for United
Press International radio’s award-winning “Religion News.” It was an amazing event with some
5,000 Salvationist youth from all corners of the globe descending on the small, rural Midwest-
ern American town, Macomb, Illinois, and Western Illinois University. Certainly, I learned
much about the Salvation Army’s history, military-like structure, love of music and brass
bands, and its evangelical message. It is one Christian event I shall never forget.
23. Former 2000 Republican presidential aspirant and evangelical Christian Gary Bauer uses a
similar analogy in discussing how each unborn child has the potential to make an impact on
society as George Bailey did in Bedford Falls in It’s a Wonderful Life. The powerful Christian
subtext of that movie cannot be understated. See Dobson and Bauer, Children at Risk, 151.
24. Elihu Katz and Paul F. Lazarsfeld, Personal Influence: The Part Played by People in the Flow of
Mass Communications (Glencoe, IL: The Free Press, 1955), 33.
25. See Katz and Lazarsfeld, Personal Influence.
Index
Abbas, M., 50
Albright, M., 49, 163
Abboud, I., 72
Alexandrov, A., 123
Abdullah, King (Jordan), 26

Alexis I, 6
abortion, 90, 101, 104, 106, 109

al-Azhari, I., 71
in China, 160
al-Bashir, O., 74, 148
Abraham, 22
al-Husayni, H. A., 24
Abraham, S., 88
al-Mahdi, S., 73
Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union, 131

al-Numayri, J., 72, 73, 146
Aderholt, R., 111

al-Qaeda terrorist network, 81
Advisory Commission on Religious Freedom

al-Turabi, H., 73, 148
Abroad, 163
Ali, M., 69
Afghanistan, 81
Allen, G., 88
Africa
American Center for Law and Justice, 108
AIDS in, 60
American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), 81, 168
capitalism in, 65
American University of Beirut, 46
and Christianity, 57
Amin, I., 47
political instability in, 64–66

Amir, Y., 41
witchcraft in, 60–64

anti-Semitism, 128
Against the Robbing and Murderous Peasant

apartheid, 66–67
Gangs (Luther), 8
apostasy, 144
Ahmad, M., 69, 140

Arab-Israeli conflict, 22
Ahmadiyya, 140
early history, 23–24
Ahura Mazda, 6
Zionism, 23–25
AIDS, 60
Arab League, 26
Akhrass, E., 53
Arafat, Y., 39–41, 44–45, 49–50, 52–53
Alam, N., 145

and the Wye Memorandum, 48
one line short

Armenia, 126, 128–30 Borden, D., 100

Christian groups in, 130 Boxer Rebellion, 156
and Turkey, 128 Breyer, S., 82
Armenian Apostolic Church, 128, 130 Brown University, 164
Armenian National Movement, 129 Brownback, S., 149
Armenian Revolutionary Federation, 129 Bryan, W. J., 13
Ashcroft, J., 85, 87, 88, 96–98, 114, 168, 169 Bryn Mawr College, 12
asymmetrical warfare, 81 Bunche, R., 28
Attaturk, K., 140 Bunin, I., 123
Attlee, C., 25 Burgerm W., 107
Atwater, L., 91 Bush, George H. W., 44, 73, 81, 102, 162
aid to Israel, 45
Bade, R., 107 Bush, George W., 1, 51, 94, 98, 111, 167, 172–
Baeck, L., 33 173
Balfour, A. J., 23 2000 presidential election, 81–85
Balfour Declaration, 23, 24 and the media, 85–86
Bali, 63 and Christianity, 86–88
Banda, H., 79 response to domestic terrorism, 80–81
Barak, E., 49, 51 Bush, J., 82

resignation of, 50 Bush v. Gore, 82
Barna, G., 62
Barna Research Group, 62 Cain, M., 168
Bar-On, R., 45 Calvin, J., 8
Bast, W., 88 Cambridge University, 62
Batty, J., 92 Camp David Accords, 39
Bednar, N. L., 102 Campolo, T., 105, 106, 114
Begin, M., 39 Canadian Football League, 102
Beja Congress, 147 Cantlie, J., 157
Ben-Gurion, D., 27, 28, 30, 33, 41 capitalism, 65
Benin, 58 Carnahan, J., 97
Bennett, W., 162, 169 Carnahan, M., 97, 109
Berke, R. L., 89 Carnahan, R., 97
Bernadotte, Count F., 27, 28 Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly
Berry, N. O., 37 Conflict, 17
Bertsch, G. K., 158 Carter, J., 74, 87, 91, 147
Bharatiya Janata Party, 153 Casey, P., 106
Bhutto, B., 142, 143 Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), 146
Bhutto, S. A., 140 Cerullo, M., 55
Bhutto, Z. A., 142 Charles V, 7
bin Laden, O., 81, 145 Cheka, 118
Birmingham Post-Herald, 113 Cheney, D., 82
Bloch, D., 47 Chenoweth, H., 98–99
Bloomhill, G., 61 Chicago Tribune, 133
Board of Education of Westside Community Chiluba, F., vii, 58, 62, 64, 75, 76–77
Schools v. Mergens, 108 Christian support of, 78
Bolshevik Revolution, 23, 116, 157 Chimin, S., 162
and the Russian Orthodox Church, 117–18 China, 155–62
Bond, C. S., 96 abortion in, 160
Booth, W., 173 British arrival in, 155
Index 205
and class consciousness, 159
Coffman, J., 112
persecution of Christians in, 161

Cohen, M. J., 25
relations with US, 161

Comintern, 121
Tiananmen Square revolt, 160

Commission on International Religious Free
-
Christian Coalition, 89, 95, 171
dom, 163
Christian Council of Zambia, 78

communism, 115
Christian Right, 88–91

and the Soviet system, 116–17
Christian Solidarity, 148

Communist Party of the Soviet Union, 116
Christianity
Communist Revolution, 156
in Africa, 57
Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, 154
and Armenia, 128–30

Congress
belief in Satan, 63
and religious freedom, 110–11
and Bolshevism, 120

Constantine, 5
and crime, 168–70

Contract with America, 92, 93, 106
and democracy, 9–13

Contract with the American Family, 107–108
evangelical, 2
Cox, Baroness, 148
growth of, 2
Cox, H., 4, 59
and international politics, 1, 2, 3, 20–21

Craig, M., 82
conflict with Islam, 58–59, 132

Crimean War, 14
in Namibia, 66–68
Cromwell, O., 6, 7
Pentecostalism, 59
Cronkite, W., 105
in politics and society, 171–72

Crownover, R., xii
and post-Cold War order, 16

Cultural Revolution, 160
in post-communist Russia, 120–21
rise and politicization, 4–8

Daily Progressive, 100
spiritual roots of, 22

Dallas Morning News, 87
statistics on, 63
Danforth, J. C., 96
versus Islam, 58–59

Danin, E., 27
Christians
Daschle, T., 173
in Indonesia, 137
Dawa Islamia, 148
in Israel today, 53–55

Dayan, M., 36, 38
in the new millenium, 166

Dean, H., 110
in Pakistan, 143–44
Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), 101, 109–10
persecution of worldwide, 132

Democratic Congressional Campaign Commit
-
persecution in Namibia, 74
tee, 105
persecution in the US, 167–68

Democratic Republic of Congo, 64, 78, 79
repression in Muslim lands, 135

Deng Xiaoping, 160
statistics about, 59
Deri, A., 45
versus Muslims in Sudan, 68–74

DeWitt, G., 171
Christopher, J. B., 5
Dierker, Jr., R., 109
Church of Scientology, 124

divine law, 9
Churchill, W., vii, xiii, 25, 69

Dobson, J., 114, 167
Cleveland, G., 83
doctrine of preemption, 37
Clinton, B., 51, 82, 87, 88, 89, 94, 98, 103, 104,
Dogar, M. H., 144
111, 150, 163, 169, 171

Dornan, R., 95
and abortion, 109

Dreyfus Affair, 23
and India, 154

Dreyfus, R., 47
and religious freedom, 108

Dulles, J. F., 31
Clinton, H. R., 104, 109

Durbin, D., 85
East Timor, 136–37, 138

Geingob, H. G., 68
Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary, 164

Gelfand, M., 61
Eastern College, 106, 164

George, D. L., 23
Eban, A., 36
George Washington University Law School, 163
Economist, The, 81
Georgia, 125–28
Eden, A., 31, 32

Gephardt, R., 95
Eftink, K., 107

Germond, J., 86
Egbe, D., xii

Gingrich, N. L., 92–94, 96, 107, 169
Eichmann, A., 32–35

and the Christian Right, 94–95
Eisenhower, D. D., 31
Ginsburg, R. B., 82
Elders, J., 169

Glinka, M., 123
Emory University, 92
Golan Heights, 35, 38
Engle v. Vitale, 108

Goldstein, B., 39
Enquist, R. J., 67
Golkar Party, 136
Ensign, J., 88
Goode, V., 99–100, 101, 102
Equal Access Act, 108

Goodfellow, S., xii
Eshkol, L., 35
Gorbachev, M., 120, 121, 160
Esposito, J. L., 70, 73, 141, 170

and Armenia, 129
ethnic cleansing, 19
Gorbachev, R., 121
Evangelical Association for the Promotion of

Gore, A., 81, 86, 154, 169
Education, 106
2000 presidential election, 81–85
Evangelical bipartisanship, 103–104

and the media, 85–86
Evangelical Christianity
religious beliefs, 87
and American politics, 106–108

Graham, B., 124
Evangelical Fellowship of Zambia, 78

Gramm, P., 107
Great Leap Forward, 158
faith-based initiatives, 111

Great Patriotic War, 118
Falwell, J., 90, 105

Great Peasant Rebellion, 156
Fighters for the Freedom of Israel, 26

Great Terror, 119
Fighting Terrorism: How Democracies Can De- Green, J. C., 89, 90
feat Domestic and International Terrorism Guinee, B., xii
(Netanyahu), 43
Guomindang, 157
Final Solution, 32
Flynt, Jr., J. J., 93

Habibie, B. J., 137, 138
Florida Supreme Court, 84

Hall, T., 74
Focus on the Family, 167

Halley, H. H., 10
Ford, J., 91
Hamas, 39, 46
Foreign Affairs, 14
Hammurabi, 10
Frank, B., 112

Hardy, R., xii, 83
Freij, E., 41
Harel, I., 33
Harris, K., 82
Gamsakhurdia, Z., 125, 126

Harrison, B., 83
Gandhi, I., 152–53

Harvard University, 28, 133
Gandhi, M., 152

Hauer, C., 24
Gandhi, M. K., 152

Hausner, G., 34
Garang, J., 146

Hayes, R. B., 83
gay rights, 104, 106

Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 51
Gaza Strip, 39
Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, 170
Index 207
Hertzke, A. D., 102
Islamic Salvation Front, 136
Herzl, T., 23
Israel
Hilton, C. M., 107

and Adolph Eichmann, 32–35
Himmler, H., 32, 33

and capital punishment, 34
Hirtzel, R. D., 64
Christians in, 53–55
Hitler, A., 11, 25, 31, 37

creation of, 27
Hizballah, 46
early form of government, 28–29
Holden, B., 97
kibbutz, 29
Hood, G., 173

peace accord with the PLO, 39–41
House Agriculture Committee, 101

religious factions in, 29–30
Howard University, 28
September 11 terrorism, 52–53
Hughes, K., 82
Six Day War, 35–38
Hundley, T., 133

and terrorism, 46–48
Hunt, G., 113

Yom Kippur War, 38–39
Hunter, J. D., 114

Istook, E., 100
Huntington, S. P., 14–15, 18, 19, 58, 59, 64, 65,
132, 133, 135, 155

Jamaat-I-Islami, 142
Hus, J., 7, 8
James, F., 113
Hussein, King (Jordan), 26, 37

Jefferson, R. W., xii
Jefferson, S. A., xii
India, 135, 150–55

Jefferson, T., 8, 12
British colonialization of, 151–52

Jeffords, J., 172
Christians in, 150, 151, 153–54

Jehovah’s Witnesses, 124, 128, 130
Hinduism in, 150–51

“Jesus Day,” 87
nuclear tests, 143

Jewish State, The (Herzl), 23
persecution of Christians in, 154

jihad, 133, 148
relations with Pakistan, 150

Jinnah, F., 140
Indonesia, 135, 136–39

Jinnah, M. A., 139, 140
Christianity in, 136

Johns Hopkins University, 6
economic crisis, 138

Johnson, D., 72
and Islamic activism, 136

Johnson, J., xiii
persecution of Christians in, 137, 139

Johnson, L. B., 31, 37
Sunni in, 136

Jonathan Institute, 43
Inglehart, R., 3
Jones v. Clear Creek Independent School District,
Institute for Political Technology, 123
108
Interfaith Alliance, The, 104

Jordan River valley, control of, 44
Intergovernmental Agency on Development,

Joseph, J., 144
149
Joseph, R., 65, 66
International Religious Freedom, 139
International Religious Freedom Act, 74, 162–63

Kabila, L., 79
intifadeh, 45, 50, 51, 52

Kai-shek, C., 157
Iqbal, M., 139

Kaigh, F., 62, 63
Irakli II, King, 125

Karamat, J., 143
Irgun Zevai Leumi, 25

Katz, E., 174
Islam
Kaunda, K., 58, 75, 78
conflict with Christianity, 58–59, 79

Kennedy, A., 82
Islamic Democratic Alliance, 142

Kennedy, D. J., 101
Islamic Resistance Movement, 46

Kennedy, J. F., 83, 88
AU: Jefford, or Jeffords

Kerekou, M., 58
Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 98
Kerr, M., 46
martyrdom, 124
Kerr, S., 46
Marx, K., 116
Khan, A., 140

Masih, A., 144
Khan, G. I., 142

Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 43
kibbutz, 29
Matskovsky, M., 131
Kim, P., xii

Mattingly, M., 91
Kingsley, C., 62
McCarthy, C., 105
Kissinger, H., 38
McCartney, B., 176
Kitchener, Lord, 69
McIntyre, M., 101–102
Knesset, 29, 30, 55

McKinley, E. H., 173
Komsomol, 117, 118

Meir, G., 27, 38
Konovalchik, P., 123

Meyerson, M., 27
Kuralt, C., 4
Mezong, M., 158
Miama Herald, 83, 84
Lagu, J., 72
MichelmanK., 87
Lamb’s Chapel v. Center Moriches Union Free

Mikhalkov, S., 123
School District, 108

Mobile Register, 113
Largent, S., 100–101, 110

Mollet, G., 32
LaRocco, L., 99
Moore, R., 111, 112–14
Larson, G. J., 151

Moral Majority, 90
Lausanne Statistics Task Force, 59

Morgenthau, H. J., 16, 36
Lawton, K. A., 2
Moses, 9, 10
Lazarsfeld, P. F., 174

Mossad, 33
League of Nations, 13, 24

Movement for Democracy, 142
Lee v. Weisman, 108

Moynihan, D. P., 15, 109
Lenin, V. I., 116, 117, 119, 157

Mugabe, R., 79
and marriage conventions, 118

Muhammad, 5– 6, 132, 140– 41, 144
Leuci, V., xii

Musharraf, P., 143, 145
Levy, D., 50
Muslim League, 139
Lewinsky, M., 106

Mussolini, B., 31
Lieberman, J., 85
Link, A. S., 13
Nagy, I., 32
Lipset, S. M., 65
Namibia, 66–68, 69–77
Locke, J., 175

Nasser, G. A., 31– 32, 35– 37, 140
Lockhart, J., 103

National Abortion Rights Action League, 87
Lucado, M., 81
National Assembly, 145
Luther, M., 7, 8
National Council on Bible Curriculum in Pub
-
lic Schools, 171
Machar, R., 146

National Defense Council Foundation, 17
Machiavelli, N., 9
National Democratic Alliance, 147
Mandal Commission, 152

National Endowment for the Arts, 100
Manzullo, D., 10, 111

National Football League, 100
Mapai, 28, 30
National Islamic Front, 147
Mao Zedong, 158, 159–60

Nationalist Revolution, 156, 157
Marcos, T., 50, 73

Nationalist Revolutionary Movement, 157
Marsh v. Chambers, 107

Nazism, 11
Marshall, P., 136, 147

Nehru, J., 152
Index 209
Netanyahu, B., 41, 42–43, 44, 45, 46, 51
Pentecostal Assemblies of God, 78
voted from office, 49

pentecostalism, 59
and the Wye Memorandum, 48

People for the American Way, 89, 171
Netanyahu, J., 43, 47

People’s Liberation Army (China), 158
death of, 47
People’s Liberation Army of Namibia, 67
Netanyahu, I., 43
People’s Liberation Movement, 149
New Economic Policy (Russia), 118

People’s Republic of China, 158
New York Times, 18, 89, 100

Peres, S., 41, 44, 52
Nixon, R., 83
Pew Resource Center, 104
Noonan, P., 1, 2
Pika, J. A., 88, 89
North, O., 90
Pimen, Partriarch, 121
Nujoma, S., 67, 68

Pipes, R., 117
Place Among Nations: Israel and the World, A
O’Connor, S. D., 82
(Netanyahu), 43
Ohio University, 113

Plato, 11
Oklahoma Baptist University, 101

Politics Among Nations (Morgenthau), 36
Oklahoma City bombing, 80

Popper, Sir K. R., 11
Olsen, T., 84
Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine,
Omar, M. M., 164

47
O’Neill, T., 93
pornography, 169–70
Open Society and Its Enemies, The (Popper), 11
Powell, C., 52, 111
Operation Jonathan, 47
prayer in public schools, 107
Operation Lifeline, 149

preemptory strike, 37
Opium War, 156

Princeton University, 12
Protopopov, A. O., 120
pacifism, 133
Putin, V., 122–24
Paglia, C., 86
Pakistan, 135, 139–46

Rabin, Y., 39, 46, 47, 52
Christians in, 143

assassination of, 41
National Assembly, 145

Rantisi, H., 52
nuclear tests, 143

Reagan, R., 51, 84, 85, 91, 95, 111, 162, 172
religious freedom in, 144

Reconstruction, 83
Pakistan National Alliance, 141

Reed, Jr., R., 89, 90, 91, 95, 99, 105, 106, 107
Pakistan People’s Party, 141

Reese, C., 85
Palestine
Rehnquist, W., 82
civil war in, 25–28

religion and violence, 133–34
and Hamas, 46
Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism,
and intifadeh, 45
163
Also see Arab-Israeli conflict

Religious Affairs Bureau, 161
Palestinian Authority, 40, 50

religious education in US, 171–72
Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), 39,

Religious Equity Amendment, 108
146
religious freedom
peace accord with Israel, 39–41

and Congress, 110–11
Patterson, P., 1103

Religious Heritage America, 164
Paul, R. S., 7
Religious Left, 104–106
Peel Commission, 25
Religious Right. See Christian Right
Pentagon. See September 11, 2002 terrorist

Renner, M., 17
attacks
Reno, J., 87, 108, 169
Republic (Plato), 11
and Islamic fundamentalism, 170
Reynolds, B., 61
and the peace process in Israel, 52–53
Rice, C., 111

Servatius, R., 33
Rice, S., 149

Sharif, N., 143, 145
Riker, W., 88
Shamir, Y., 45
Riley, R., 108

Sharon, A., 50, 51–52, 53
Robertson, C., 85
Shea, N., 74, 162
Robertson, P., 90, 102, 105, 108

Shevardnadze, E., 126, 127
Rockefeller, N. A., 93
Shordania, M. N., 125
Roe v. Wade, 97, 109

Siegelbaum, L. H., 117
Rohrabacher, D., 155

Sifford, C., 97
Rollins, E., 91
Sinai Covenant, 133
Roosevelt, E., 74
Singh, V. P., 153
Roosevelt, F. D., 89, 92

Sira, 5
Roskin, M. G., 37
Six Days War, 35–38, 43
Ross, D., 50
Slater, R., 46
Rubin, B., 3
Smith, C., 74
Rushdie, S., 144

Sornonne, 73
Russia, 115
Soubeih, M., 45
atheism in, 120–21

Sojourners, 105
and Chechnya, 123

Souter, D., 82
and Christianity, 120–21

Southwest Missouri State University, 96
and communism, 116

South-West African People’s Organization
Duma, 116, 123

(SWAPO), 67
and Georgia, 125–28

Soviet Union. See Russia
under Putin, 122–24

Specter, A., 74
assault on the Russian Orthodox Church,

Staines, G., 154
117–18
Stalin, J., 116, 119–20, 121, 158
under Yeltsin, 121–22

Stanford University, 111
Russian Orthodox Church, 117–18, 127

Stanovcic, V., 15
Statesman (Plato), 11
Sabato, 167
Stenberg v. Carhart, 109
Sach, J., 77
Stevens, J. P., 82
Sadat, A., 39
Stoessinger, J. G., 37, 58, 59, 64, 156
Salvation Army, 173

Stolyarov, N., 172
Samuel, H., 24
Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START II),
Santa Fe v. Doe, 108

123
Saperstein, D., 163

Sudan, 68, 146–149
Sartre, J.-P., 37
Christianity in, 70
Satan, 63
early history of, 68–69
Scalia, A., 82
ethnic diversity in, 69–70
Scarborough, 111
and foreign aid, 148
Seiple, R., 139, 163, 165

Islamization of, 70–71
Seko, M. S., 64
persecution of Christians in, 147, 149
Sekulow, J., 108

political instability in, 69, 71
Self-Strengthening Movement, 156, 157

Sudanese People’s Liberation Army, 146
September 11, 2002 terrorist attacks, 1, 46, 133,

Suez crisis, 31–32
170–71
and American foreign relations, 32
Index 211
Suharto, 135, 136
University of Tulsa, 100
Summers, M., 62
University of Virginia, 167
Switzer, B., 102

Urban II, Pope, 6
Talent, J., 97
Vajpayee, A. B., 154
Taliban, 81, 170

Vietnam War, 31
Tanzin, B., 86
Vilsack, 109
Temple University, 106

violence and religion, 133–34
Ten Commandments, 111–12, 131

Voll, J. O., 70, 141
Ter-Petrosian, L., 129, 130
terrorism, 46–48
Wagner, P., 59
in America, 80
“Wailing Wall incident,” 25
Also see September 11, 2002 terrorist attacks

Walesa, L., 76
Terrorism: How the West Can Win (Netanyahu),

Wallace v. Jafree, 107
43
Wallis, J., 105
Thant, U., 36
War Communism, 116
Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twenti

- Washington Post, 84, 105
eth Century, The (Huntington), 64

Watts, J. C., 84, 102–103
Thomas, C., 82, 170

Weiss, J., 87
Thomas, N. C., 88, 89

Weizmann, C., 23
Tiananmen Square, 160

welfare, 106
Tikhon, Father, 118

Wells, C., 85
Tilden, S. J., 83
Wesleyan University, 12
Tillema, H. K., 18
West Georgia University, 93
Time, 2
West Point, 113
Tocqueville, A. de, 92
Westminster College, 85
Transcaucasus Federative Republic, 125

Wheat, A., 97
Treadgold, D. W., 119

White House Office on Faith-Based Action,
Treaty of Nanking, 156

87
Trotsky, L., 116

Why the Islamic Way? (al-Numayri), 73
Troupe, Q., 98
Wildavsky, A., 9
Truman, H. S., 89
Wilkie, W., 74
Tuchman, B., 37
Willard, F., 90
Tulane University, 93
Wilson, W., 6, 12, 13
on democracy and Christianity, 13
ul-Haq, Z., 141–42 Window of Opportunity: A Blueprint for the Fu-
United Nations Children’s Emergency Fund

ture (Gingrich), 93
(UNICEF), 148
witchcraft, 60–64
United Nations Emergency Force (UNEF), 32
Witchcraft and Magic of Africa, 62
United Nations Special Committee on Pales

- Witcover, J., 86
tine (UNSCOP), 26
Wogaman, J. P., 104
University of Alabama, 113

Wolf, F., 74
University of Belgrade, 15
Wolper, D., 47
University of Chicago, 36, 96

Women’s Christian Temperance Movement,
University of Georgia, 91
90
University of Khartoum, 73
World Christian Encyclopedia, The, 58
University of Oklahoma, 102

World Trade Center. See September 11, 2002
University of South Alabama, 113
terrorist attacks
World Vision, 164

Zambia, 58, 64
Wright, J., 93
political improvements in, 78
Wright, Q., 16
under the rule of Chiluba, 75–77
Wycliff, J., 7
Zambia Episcopal Conference, 78
Wyden, R., 104

Zeevi, R., 53
Wye Memorandum, 48, 450

Zhang Xiuju, 162
Zhirinovsky, V., 122
Yale University, 96
Zimbabwe
Yat-sen, S., 157

witchcraft in, 61
Yeltsin, B., 120, 121–22, 124

Zionism, 23–25
Yom Kippur War, 38–39, 43

Zoroaster, 6
Young, B., xii, 116

Zubeir, G., 149
Young, M. K., 163

Zvili, N., 55
Yuan, A., 162

Zyuganov, G., 122
Yusaf, P., 132

Christianity's Impact On World Politics

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CHRISTIANITY’S IMPACT

Major Concepts in Politics

and Political Theory

Garrett Ward Sheldon

Not by Might, Nor by Power

Christianity’s impact on world politics:

not by might, nor by power / Kurt W. Jefferson.

p. cm. — (Major concepts in politics and political theory; vol. 24)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. Christianity and politics. 2. World politics— 20st century.

BR115.P7 J44 322’.1— dc21 2002075708

DIE DEUTSCHE BIBLIOTHEK-CIP-EINHEITSAUFNAHME

Christianity’s impact on world politics:

not by might, nor by power / Kurt W. Jefferson.

−New York; Washington, D.C./Baltimore; Bern;

Frankfurt am Main; Berlin; Brussels; Vienna; Oxford: Lang.

(Major concepts in politics and political theory; Vol. 24)

Front cover photograph of Yasser Arafat at a Christmas Eve service in Jerusalem

(December 2000). Source: Independent Catholic News.

Source: Columbia Daily Tribune (Columbia, Missouri), photo by Ed Pfueller.

Cover design by Joni Holst

© 2002 Peter Lang Publishing, Inc., New York

All rights reserved.

Reprint or reproduction, even partially, in all forms such as microfilm,

xerography, microfiche, microcard, and offset strictly prohibited.

Printed in the United States of America

Kurt W. Jefferson: Christianity’s Impact on World Politics page v

Who can ﬁnd a virtuous woman?

For her price is far above rubies (Proverbs 31:10).

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Chapter 1 Introduction: The Resurrection of Christianity

Chapter 2 The Arab-Israeli Conﬂict 22

Chapter 3 Africa: The Wind Bloweth Where It Listeth . . . 57

Chapter 4 America: Christianity, Politics, and the

GOP Revolution in Congress 80

Chapter 5 Russia and the Soviet Successor States:

Life Without and with God 115

Chapter 6 The Persecution of Christians Around the World 132

Chapter 7 Christians Continue to Make a Difference in Politics 166

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xii Christianity’s Impact on World Politics

College). Each of these individuals made important contributions in keeping me

The Resurrection of Christianity as an

2 Christianity’s Impact on World Politics

(leaders, principles and movements/political parties) plays a major role in speciﬁc

4 Christianity’s Impact on World Politics

Christianity: Its Rise and Politicization

Christendom as an historical movement began on the day of Pentecost nearly

With this gathering of followers of a young carpenter from Nazareth, a man

6 Christianity’s Impact on World Politics

one line short

ocratic tendencies, which include manifestations of political and religious liberty,

one line short

8 Christianity’s Impact on World Politics

Democracy and Christianity

10 Christianity’s Impact on World Politics

12 Christianity’s Impact on World Politics

modern era. Although democracy was not necessarily a Christian concept or

Wilson himself is a contradictory ﬁgure in the annals of American history. Al-

14 Christianity’s Impact on World Politics

The West Versus the Rest?

Political scientist Samuel P. Huntington provoked serious reﬂection and political

16 Christianity’s Impact on World Politics