From Emperor Nero blaming Christians for the fire on the Roman Empire in 64 AD to Jesus Christ himself dying on the cross, Christians have been singled out and persecuted for their faith for thousands of years. A journal published by the Oxford University Press about the early Christians of the Roman Empire states that, “The normal charge against Christians was simply “being Christians”: they are punished, that is to say, “for the Name” (de Ste. Croix).Today, there is still unjustified persecution of Christians around the world, as college students are being murdered in mass shootings after answering “yes” to the question “Are you a Christian?”. Throughout history there is a total of 70 some million martyrs and, between 2000 and 2010, about
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Within the book, Persecuted: The Global Assault on Christians, the authors Paul Marshall, Lela Gilbert, and Nina Shea states that simply having a Bible in North Korea can result in execution or prison camp (Marshall, et al., 2013: 10). Due to the fact that North Korea is one of the only left states still under communist rule, there is an overall lack of freedom and rights for the people living there. On the basic level, if one does not comply fully with the rules dictated by Kim Jong-un, they are not in good waters. A lack of basic human rights is another reason behind the persecution of Christians living in this country. In December of 2015, the UN Security Council held a meeting to discuss the human rights violations happening in North Korea. They touched on the prison camps, food instability, and overall basic violence and discriminations happening within the borders (Hands 2015). A question one may have referring to the UN and North Korea is why can’t the UN do anything to solve these persecutions happening? An answer would be that the UN was designed to solve conflicts between states, and the persecution of Christians is happening within North Korea, making it an internal issue. Christians are facing discrimination and overall persecution within North Korea because of the strict …show more content…
Apart from a few cases similar to early Christian persecution, states do not usually tend to kill Christians just because they love God or read a Bible, but rather the discrimination happens because their beliefs do not align with the rest of the country. Although I agree not all persecution is religious and sometimes it can have nothing to do with Jesus, an argument I would have to that point is one from Johan Candelin in his article “The Persecution of Christians Today”, where he questions, “How do we know the difference between that kind of persecution and persecution based on their faith alone? I think we can answer it by asking a simple question: “If a person changes their religion to the majority religion of the country, will things get better for them?” If the answer is “yes,” then it seems that the persecution is solely on religious grounds” (Candelin). So, even if the intentions of the persecutors are not there because they personally hate the Yahweh, the God of is Israelites, I would side with this
Within the book, Persecuted: The Global Assault on Christians, the authors Paul Marshall, Lela Gilbert, and Nina Shea states that simply having a Bible in North Korea can result in execution or prison camp (Marshall, et al., 2013: 10). Due to the fact that North Korea is one of the only left states still under communist rule, there is an overall lack of freedom and rights for the people living there. On the basic level, if one does not comply fully with the rules dictated by Kim Jong-un, they are not in good waters. A lack of basic human rights is another reason behind the persecution of Christians living in this country. In December of 2015, the UN Security Council held a meeting to discuss the human rights violations happening in North Korea. They touched on the prison camps, food instability, and overall basic violence and discriminations happening within the borders (Hands 2015). A question one may have referring to the UN and North Korea is why can’t the UN do anything to solve these persecutions happening? An answer would be that the UN was designed to solve conflicts between states, and the persecution of Christians is happening within North Korea, making it an internal issue. Christians are facing discrimination and overall persecution within North Korea because of the strict …show more content…
Apart from a few cases similar to early Christian persecution, states do not usually tend to kill Christians just because they love God or read a Bible, but rather the discrimination happens because their beliefs do not align with the rest of the country. Although I agree not all persecution is religious and sometimes it can have nothing to do with Jesus, an argument I would have to that point is one from Johan Candelin in his article “The Persecution of Christians Today”, where he questions, “How do we know the difference between that kind of persecution and persecution based on their faith alone? I think we can answer it by asking a simple question: “If a person changes their religion to the majority religion of the country, will things get better for them?” If the answer is “yes,” then it seems that the persecution is solely on religious grounds” (Candelin). So, even if the intentions of the persecutors are not there because they personally hate the Yahweh, the God of is Israelites, I would side with this