The silence on Christian persecution is because of trade, not political correctness

Jeremy Hunt’s mission is noble but hollow – after all, his government does business with Saudi Arabia, Egypt and China

Andrew Brown
Fri 3 May 2019 16.36 BST Last modified on Fri 3 May 2019 17.23 BST

The foreign secretary, Jeremy Hunt, has been denouncing the persecution of Christians around the world in advance of a report he has commissioned from the Bishop of Truro. It’s true, and important, that Christians are being persecuted in large numbers, especially in the Middle East, and that this has been largely ignored by the British media for decades. But there is something very jarring in Hunt’s discovery of their cause.

In remarks to the press in Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia, one of the oldest Christian countries in the world, he blamed “political correctness” as well as post-colonial guilt for the British indifference to the suffering of Christians in Asia and Africa. There is certainly some truth to these accusations. The view that all religious believers were weird at best, and that anyone enlightened must be an atheist, were quite fashionable in the early years of this century. It was usually expressed as hostility to Muslims as much as in indifference to the sufferings of Christians – but it certainly wasn’t sympathy.

But Hunt is himself reportedly a Christian and he should remember the parable of the mote and the beam. The government of which he is a part has done almost nothing to support Christians abroad. It did not offer asylum to Asia Bibi, the Pakistani woman convicted under that country’s monstrous blasphemy law. It has sucked up to Saudi Arabia, a country where public Christianity is illegal, Christian migrant workers are treated abominably and where the corpses of executed criminals are still crucified.

It is a supporter of the government in Egypt, a country where Coptic churches are frequently assaulted. It is eager to trade with China, a country where Christians are persecuted and churches demolished. I can find no record of Hunt or any other recent foreign secretary raising these concerns directly when visiting the countries concerned.

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It’s very hard not to conclude that Hunt is using the genuine suffering of millions of Christians around the world more as a political gesture at home than as anything that might actually help them. Christianity is increasingly being used as a label distinct from and opposed to Islam – and as a flag in the culture wars.

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