Subj: IDOP – The Church United in Prayer for the Persecuted

The International Day of Prayer (IDOP) for the persecuted church is approaching. The IDOP website at http://www.idop.org is laden with freely available, downloadable information and resources. But just in case some people were still wondering, “What is IDOP and why should we pray for the persecuted church?” I posed some frequently asked questions to the World Evangelical Alliance Religious Liberty Commission’s International Director, Rev. Johan Candelin in Finland.

– Elizabeth Kendal

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INTERNATIONAL DAY OF PRAYER (IDOP)

FOR THE PERSECUTED CHURCH http://www.idop.org

Q) Rev. Candelin, International Day of Prayer (IDOP) for the persecuted Church is approaching (10 November) and organisations such as the one you represent are asking believers worldwide to join together and pray with one voice for religious freedom and for those who suffer for their faith – but isn’t this an issue of the past? Doesn’t the issue of religious persecution belong to the days of Stalin, Chairman Mao and Idi Amin etc? Isn’t the world more sophisticated than that, fifty years after the formulation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights?

A) Rev. Candelin: It is my understanding that more than 200 million Christians today do not enjoy their full human rights simply because they are Christians. You come to that number when you add all the members in all the churches in all the countries where there is not full religious freedom. This is the great, untold story of the world today — that Christians are the biggest group suffering for what they believe!

This problem is growing due to several factors. Firstly: the Church is mostly growing in countries where there is a strong anti-Christian sentiment that is driven either by politics, nationalism or religious ideology. Secondly: one million new churches have been started during the last ten years and my understanding is that during the next ten years we will see that at least double. The church grows by 70,000 new members every day. The last 30 years has seen the strongest growth ever of the Christian Church. Some people find this growth threatening.

We rejoice of course in the UN declaration of human rights and we fully support it, but the UN was created to deal with conflicts between nations while today we primarily have a situation where 90 % of all conflicts are within nations and very often with religious dimensions. As if that was not bad enough we have the new tension between Muslim cultures where state and religion are one, and Western cultures where state and religion are separated.

Q) Christians are generally peaceful and active humanitarians, so why would governments or individuals seek to persecute Christians or actively suppress the Christian message?

A) Rev. Candelin: There are several reasons why Christians are persecuted. They ‘worship another King’, they speak the truth and refuse to be corrupted by corrupt regimes, and often they are advocates of human rights. Christians often have contacts all over the world, they preach a gospel that is hated by ‘the forces of evil’, and they are also said to represent a Western influence, and whilst that is not true it is an example of the way Christians can be victims of disinformation. If disinformation is accepted, then comes discrimination and then persecution.

Q) This persecution constitutes large-scale human right abuse – so why don’t we hear about this on the news?

A) Rev. Candelin: Religion plays no role in the life of many media people in the West and they wrongly assume that the world is just a bigger version of their own worldview. The truth is actually the opposite! Out of 6 billion people in the world today only 2.5 percent consider themselves to be atheists. Religion actually plays a huge role in the world today.

Another reason why we don’t we hear about this on the news is that the Church in the West is generally not interested in the suffering Church. That is very sad because we have much more to learn from the suffering Church than from Hollywood. The Christian life in the persecuted Church is ‘the real thing’ to use a well-known commercial.

Q) Why you promote a day of prayer rather than a day of political action?

A) Rev. Candelin: With the message of the cross goes the cross of the message. Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ demonstrated that in his life, and tells us that in his word. In the context of his own life Jesus demonstrated the tremendous importance of prayer. We therefore want to transform our longings into prayer and ask God to transform the world through the prayers of his people. We also believe that it is a great blessing for everyone to pray together on the same day, for it helps remind us how big the church of Jesus Christ is and how many brothers and sisters we have. The least we can do is the most we can do: PRAY!

Q) How long has IDOP been running as an annual event, has it grown, and has it made a difference?

A) Rev. Candelin: IDOP started in 1995 and has grown to be the biggest one-day prayer event in the world. This is a miracle and a great blessing for everyone. It is a common project and the World Evangelical Alliance was only a very small tool in God’s hand. We want to give it away to churches and ask them to give it away. My estimation is that Christians in more than 120 countries from Norway in the north to Chile in the south and Alaska in the west to the Samoa Islands in the east will pray in November. Hundreds of thousands of people will pray in secret but they know that we are praying with them.

Only God knows what effect IDOP has had over the years, but I think we will be amazed one day when we will be able to look back and see the effects. Then we will ask ourselves, “Why didn’t we pray even more?”

Q) How can individuals and churches get the information and resources they need to make IDOP a really meaningful event in their church, home fellowship or private devotions?

A) Rev. Candelin: The best starting place is to go to the global IDOP website: http://www.idop.org There you can get information and find links to national websites, different languages, prayer topics and to organisations that help the suffering church. My personal prayer is that everybody would pass on this address to as many people as possible. I believe that God has equipped us with each other for a time like this.

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