Christian communities in the Middle East are facing a bleak season in which mere long-term survival has become an ambitious objective for some ancient groups. In Iraq, a decimated Christian population is trying to rebuild in the midst of an internal power struggle between Baghdad and Erbil, while Iran continues to exert its destabilizing influence through Shia militias. Christians are fleeing Egypt in record numbers in the face of horrific attacks and heavy-handed government harassment. In Lebanon, Christians fear the double threat of an unsustainable Syrian refugee crisis and the ever-growing influence of Hezbollah. In Turkey, the church is being suffocated between the regime and pressure from Russia. This hardly scratches the surface of the threats.
Yet despite all, there is a reason for hope. Christians in the Middle East have two sympathetic and powerful allies at the heart of the world’s most powerful government: Vice President Mike Pence and Ambassador for International Religious Freedom Sam Brownback.
Both of these men seem to have been tagged-in by their superiors, President Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo respectively, to lead the administration’s effort on protecting persecuted religious minorities, and what’s more, they both have a deep personal connection to the cause based in their own faith.
Brownback has been crisscrossing Washington and the globe with his folksy mannerisms and earthy Midwestern charm to get his message out. Often appearing without a large group of staff, his audiences might forget they are in the presence of an individual with a lifelong career of harnessing unwieldy political systems and turning them in new directions. He has a track record of having been a change agent in the Senate and as governor of Kansas. He has brought that same aptitude to his newest position at the State Department. His new objective is to force international religious freedom into the consciousness of U.S. foreign policymakers.
A shift in the traditionally “national security interest” driven U.S. foreign policy is no small object, but Brownback has been pounding the pavement, telling any group that will listen that when you increase religious freedom in a country, the economy improves and the chance of violence decreases. He has also gone to the epicenter of humanitarian or human rights crises. From visiting Rohingya refugee camps in Bangladesh to attending the trial of Pastor Andrew Brunson in Turkey, he’s been tirelessly present.
In all these efforts he has the support of Pompeo and Trump, and importantly, Vice President Mike Pence has been squarely behind his efforts. Pence planted his flag firmly on the issue with his pledge last year to Christians in the Middle East, saying “help is on the way!” Critically, Trump has proved willing to make good on Pence’s efforts, acting boldly in the interest of religious freedom and human rights internationally.
Pence and Brownback have not only given lip service to the plight of religious minorities in the Middle East, they have delivered results.
Pence has been the driving force behind the pledge of 300 million in direct aid to religious minorities in Iraq, sending USAID Administrator Mark Green and Brownback to personally visit the region and assess the need when the project seemed to be struggling on the launch pad. This funding is moving forward in a wide variety of important projects. More recently, Pence publicly pressured Burma’s president at the Singapore Summit to hold the perpetrators of atrocities against the Rohingya accountable.
Brownback has taken steps within the State Department, launching a Ministerial on International Religious Freedom almost immediately upon taking office, which highlighted the needs of Middle Eastern Christians and gave a platform to Uighur Muslims to speak against the repressive acts of the Chinese government. He also fully embraced the NGO community that has been advocating on these issues for years, organizing them into a grassroots army of informants and amplifiers.
The policies of Trump and the State Department have shown clear signs of these men’s influence, in cases such as sanctions against Turkey for the imprisonment of Brunson, eventually leading to his release and safe return to the United States.
Middle Eastern Christian communities, who need friends now perhaps more than they ever have, should take encouragement from the steps the the Trump administration is taking to prioritize helping the neediest religious minorities.
Peter Burns is the Government Relations and Policy Director at In Defense of Christians. Burns is a Philos Fellow and an alumnus of America’s Future Foundation’s Writing Fellowship. He previously worked for then-Gov. Brownback as a policy analyst.
