We have mentioned a couple of times in the last year the precarious situation of indigenous Christians in North Africa, and the Middle East, and recently the House of Lords debated religious persecution in the region.  In a wide ranging debate featuring several high profile speakers including the Archbishop of Canterbury, one notable intervention was from Lord Sacks, the Chief Rabbi.  We thought it worth reproducing an extract from his speech.

It was Martin Luther King who said ‘In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies but the silence of our friends’.

That is why I felt I could not be silent today.  As a Jew in Christian Britain, I know how much I, my late parents and, indeed, the whole British Jewish community owe to this great Christian nation, which gave us the right and the freedom to live our faith without fear.  Shall we not, therefore, as Jews stand up for the right of Christians in other parts of the world to live their faith without fear?

And fear is what many Christians in the Middle East feel today.  We have already heard today about the plight of Coptic Christians in Egypt, of Maronite Christians in Hezbollah-controlled areas of Lebanon, of the vast exodus of Christians from Iraq and of the concern of Christians in Syria as to what might happen there should there be further destabilisation.  In the past year, we have heard of churches set on fire, of a suicide bombing that cost the lives of 21 Christians as they were leaving a church in Cairo, of violence and intimidation and of the mass flight of Christians, especially from Egypt.  I believe that we must all protest this series of assaults – some physical, others psychological – on Christian communities in the Middle East, many of which have long, long histories.  I, and I hope all other Jews in Britain, stand in solidarity with our Christian brothers and sisters, as we do with all those who suffer because of their faith.

I have followed the fate of Christians in the Middle East for years, appalled at what is happening and surprised and distressed by the fact that it is not more widely known.  We know how complex are the history and politics of the Middle East and how fraught with conflicting passions, but there are two points that I wish to make that deserve reflection.

Is this the future for Middle Eastern churches?

First, on the Arab Spring, which has heightened the fear of Christians in many of the countries affected, we make a great intellectual mistake in the West when we assume that democracy is, in and of itself, a step towards freedom.  Usually, that is the case, but sometimes it is not.  As Alexis de Tocqueville and John Stuart Mill pointed out in the 19th century, it may merely mean the ‘tyranny of the majority’.  That is why the most salient words in the current situation are those of Lord Acton, in his great essay on the history of freedom, who said: ‘The most certain test by which we judge whether a country is really free is the amount of security enjoyed by minorities’.

That is why the fate of Christians in the Middle East today is the litmus test of the Arab Spring.  Freedom in indivisible, and those who deny it to others will never gain it for themselves.

Secondly, religions that begin by killing their opponents end by killing their fellow believers.  Today, in the Middle East and elsewhere, radical Islamists fight those whom they regard as the greater and lesser Satan, but earlier this week we mourned the death of 55 Shia who were killed in a terror attack in Iraq.  Today, the majority of victims of Islamist violence are Muslim, and shall we not shed tears for them, too?  The tragedy of religion is that it can lead people to wage war in the name of the God of peace, to hate in the name of the God of love, to practise cruelty in the name of the God of compassion and to kill in the name of the God of life.  None of these things brings honour to faith; they are a desecration of the name of God.

May God protect Christians of the Middle East and people of faith who suffer for their faith, whoever and wherever they are.

We are grateful to CFI for bringing this speech to our attention through their magazine ‘In Touch’

In the midst of freezing conditions in Britain, summer seems a long way off.  Students are still hard at work preparing for their exams, not thinking about what they’re going to do with the long summer break.  The rest of us are grimly trying to get through the winter.  If we spare a thought for summer, it’s to recognise that it’s still a long way off.

In fact, if you have any thoughts of doing short term mission this summer, it’s far from a long way off, and actually you really need to get your skates on if you’re going to discern where you’re going, with which agency, get through their application process and raise the funds you need.  The process is lengthy so you need to get started now, if you haven’t done so already.

The place to start is in the Syzygy Guides to Doing Mission Well.  We have a comprehensive guide on doing short term mission which will talk you through from start to finish.  It will point you to helpful websites, and outline everything you need to do be ready.

Another good place to visit is Christian Vocations.  They have a particularly good search engine which shows you who is doing what, and where.  There are also helpful articles to fill you in on some of the practicalities.  Or go straight to your own denominational mission agency, if you have one, or an agency where other people you know have had a good experience.  We recommend the following agencies:

• BMS
• CMS
• Crosslinks
• LatinLink
• OMF

That’s not to say that other agencies aren’t good, it’s just that we don’t have personal experience of them.  But do make sure that you select an agency which operates under the Global Connections Short Term Missions Code of Best Practice which will ensure that the agency has reviewed its activities in the light of sector standard best practice.

And you don’t have to be university age to take part in a short-term mission team.  Many agencies are specifically recruiting older people, who have the benefit of life experience and wisdom even if not all the energy of youth.  In many ways they can achieve more than their younger counterparts, so don’t rule yourself out.

So what are you doing this summer?  Doing the usual or doing something different.  Taking a break or taking a risk?  Go on, do something adventurous this summer which will change your world, somebody else’s world, and see God at work in you and through you.  But don’t leave it too late!

Empty church, empty argument?

Last week Britain became a little more secular.  Not in a great cataclysmic way as the conservative press is proclaiming, but subtly, and in a way not unforeseen, as two court decisions  were made which in themselves may have little impact but which are indicators of a long-term trend and set a precedent.

Last August we considered the case of a couple of Christian bed-and-breakfast owners who refused to make a double room available to a gay couple.  On Friday the court of appeal ruled that they had discriminated against the gay couple despite their appeal that they weren’t specifically discriminating against gay people as their policy applied to all unmarried people irrespective of their sexual choices.  And the court was right: they did indeed break the law.  In the process of coming to this conclusion, ironically, the court is discriminating against the Christians.  It’s now official: gay rights trump Christian rights.

In another case heard on the same day, an atheist councillor took his local town council to court over their practice of holding prayers at the start of the meeting.  He argued that it infringed his human rights by forcing a religious activity on him.  Councils all over the country do this, as does the Westminster parliament, so it is not an uncommon practice.  The court ruled, interestingly (though a lot of pundits have missed this point) that his human rights weren’t infringed as he had the opportunity to absent himself during the proceedings, but that councils do not have the authority under the Local Government Act to hold prayers as part of their council meetings.  They are able to hold them outside the meeting though.

It certainly feels like these decisions, and several others like them in recent years, are undermining the traditional role of Christianity at the heart of Britain’s values, despite Prime Minister David Cameron recently asserting that Britain is a ‘Christian nation’.  Former Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey, who has become significantly more vocal in his ‘retirement’ than he was in office, comments: There are deep forces at work in Western society, hollowing out the values of Christianity and driving them to the margins.  It does at least seem that an aggressive secularist agenda is making steady progress.

Get out there and tell them!

The knee-jerk reaction is for the church to condemn both these decisions, though why in a democracy we should want the freedom to discriminate against others, or to force our prayers on people of other or no faith, needs to be considered carefully.  It would seem that our appropriate response to this situation is not to lament the fact that a small but vocal minority are no longer able to force their views and practices on the millions of British citizens who are now generally atheistic, only nominally Christian or hold to other faiths.

A far more appropriate response would be to set about in earnest increasing the number of Christians so that our views become the dominant perspective in this country once again.  We should not be writing letters to The Times in protest.  We should be getting out into the communities around us and proclaiming Jesus.  Only when we comprise the majority will it be appropriate for us to expect legislation in this country to reflect our views.

Our verdict: Lions 2, Christians 0 (see Persecution on its way)

Recently I seem to have been talking a lot about secondary stress with mission workers.  It’s a common though relatively unrecognised problem among overseas workers, particularly those working in compassion ministries or among poorer communities.  Secondary stress is the burden we take on not as a result of our own working or living conditions, but those of others.  It’s not excess baggage so much as other people’s baggage.  It’s what we pick up when we try to lighten the load on others who are already weighed down.

It is perfectly natural to feel a degree of anguish when working, for example, in a refugee camp, or when counselling others who have problems.  We would be pretty heartless if we were not affected by the tragedies we witness or the grief we hear about.  Our resulting compassion should spur us to more action to help the afflicted.  But when we can’t sleep at night because of it, or have images we can’t get out of our heads, it is becoming hazardous to us, and even in the midst of a major humanitarian crisis we need to take some steps to ensure that we maintain ourselves in a condition to be able to continue to help those who need our help.

The first step in dealing with secondary stress is to recognise that we may be suffering with it, because we often don’t notice.  It creeps up on us, daily growing, until something goes wrong.  Because I’m involved in debriefing a lot of people, often with major problems, last summer I arranged a debrief for myself, not because I thought I needed it, but because it is good practice.  Only after I emerged emotionally exhausted from the debrief did I realise how much other people’s baggage I was carrying.

One excellent tool for doing an inventory on yourself is Dr Beth Stamm’s Professional Quality of Life Measure, which can be downloaded free of charge from the Headington Institute.  It is simple to use, and asks just 30 questions about your work in helping others.  There are also other useful self-assessment tools on stress, burnout and lifestyle inventory available from the same website.

Once you have recognised that your levels of secondary stress are unacceptable, put into action your usual anti-stress techniques – debrief, holidays, or relaxation.  See our stress archive for more suggestions.  If none of these suggestions work, and you are still showing symptoms of elevated stress levels, you should take medical leave of absence, extended rest and seek counselling or even the help of a professional psychotherapist.

If when you return to work things immediately get worse again, you should be reassigned.  This of course, will add to your stress as you will feel guilty that you have let needy people down, but if you are not sufficiently resilient to cope in this situation, you may end up being a needy person yourself, and it is better for you to move on and to let a more resilient person take over.

If you’d like to learn more about secondary stress I recommend you listen to MemCare by Radio’s 4-part broadcast by Dr Brent Lindquist, who in addition to being excellently named really knows his stuff.  Each episode is packed with helpful information and the whole series will take you less than an hour to listen to, but much longer to work through!  There are also a lot of other good materials on the MemCare website which will help you to stay healthy.