(ABP) — In a letter describing the Islamist persecution of Christians in Egypt, a Baptist minister in Cairo provides a disturbing warning against the entanglement of religion and politics.
And portions of the letter, two U.S. church scholars say, are evocative of the church-state challenges faced by some of the Baptist movement’s early champions, from Thomas Helwys to Roger Williams.
The Aug. 19 letter from Mounir Sobhy Yacoub Malaty followed days of brutal military action against the supporters of ousted president Mohammed Morsi in which the banished politician’s Islamic backers torched at least 50 churches, two of them Baptist.
“The people of Egypt have experienced the exposed, negative side of religious government,” Malaty, pastor of First Baptist Church of Cairo, said in reference to the Morsi’s now-deposed Islamic government.
Two Egyptian Christian boys sleep through violent protests engulfing the nation. (ABPNews photo /MOUNIR MALATY)
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While the most overt violence has occurred since the military swept Morsi from power, Malaty said policies and decisions made under Islamic rule set the conditions for the attacks that followed.
“The Cross has always been a problem for them,” Malaty said.
He gives a brief-but-disturbing glimpse of that problem in the letter. It contains frightening images of burning sanctuaries, funeral processions, masked gunmen and terrified children sleeping on concrete in make-shift shelters.
Malaty said things would be worse under Morsi.
“If the religious regime had continued, the future of the Christians in Egypt would have been threatened more seriously.”
Such words are reminiscent of the tribulations endured by many Baptists at the hands of religiously motivated rulers in Europe and the American colonies, scholars say.
“These brief lines are in many ways classically Baptist in terms of their response to religious liberty issues,” said Bill Leonard, professor of Baptist studies and church history at Wake Forest Uni-versity School of Divinity.
That includes seeing religious establishment as dangerous to pluralism and religious liberty, Leonard said in an e-mail to ABPnews.
Malaty reflects another core Baptist value when he describes the religious violence as opportunities for forgiveness and a Christian witness, Leonard said.
And all of it brings to mind various figures from Baptist history.
“In the U.S., Obadiah Holmes was arrested and jailed in 1651 by the New England Puritan establishment and beaten for his heretical non-conformist Baptist views,” Leonard said.
Nothing new
The letter also is a reminder that what’s happening in Egypt isn’t anything new.
“In many ways, Islam is experiencing now what Christianity experienced in the West from the 16th into the 20th centuries as struggles for religious liberty occurred,” Leonard said.
Malaty’s letter also serves to remind Americans of the importance of separation of church and state, another Baptist scholar said.
“The kind of public life we need is one where all people are free to exercise their faith,” said Curtis Freeman, research professor of theology and Baptist studies at Duke Divinity School and director of its Baptist House of Studies.
Baptist Roger Williams, who established America’s first Baptist church in 1638, embodied that ideal by supporting Quakers’ right to worship in his home of Rhode Island — despite opposing their theology, Freeman said.
“Religion tends to thrive when you have secular governments, not religious ones — even Christian ones,” Freeman said.
Freeman said he took from the letter another reminder: that Christians in America need to be praying for those in Egypt, Syria and other places where the church is being persecuted.
It’s also important to realize that American foreign policy in some cases has contributed to the demise of Christianity in some parts of the world, including Iraq, where an unintended side-effect of U.S. military intervention enabled Islamists to all but wipe out the church there.
“We may need to give serious thought to our own political views about things and support of things and go so far as to advocating for policies that will lead to the flourishing of Christianity” in the East, Freeman said.
Both in his letter and on his Facebook page, Malaty has been asking for prayers for the Christians in Egypt. He said those prayers are already being answered in some ways.
“Church buildings have always been of great importance to Egyptians,” he said. “It is good to hear now the believers are encouraging each other that the church is not a brick-and-sand building but a spiritual building of believers.”
Jeff Brumley is assistant editor of Associated Baptist Press.