SOUL FOOD:Killings bring other issues attention

A few newspapers briefly mentioned the brutal killings. Some printed a short Associated Press report. The Christian Science Monitor published a more comprehensive account by its correspondent in Turkey, Yigal Schleifer. In U.S. newspapers, it was the only story of its kind I found.

On April 20, two days after the slayings of three Christians in Malatya, Turkey, an English-language article in the online Turkish Hürriyet spoke of the “international focus” the incident had drawn. A quick Google search proved this largely true.

From Europe, across Pakistan and India and the Middle East to Australia, the killings were making headlines and editorials. Here, however, details and analysis were scarce.

On April 19, Bruce Tomaso had mentioned the Associated Press report in the DallasNews Religion blog (www.beloblog.com). He headlined the post “This is savagery,” after a quote from Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who used those words to condemn the attacks.

The mention went without comment. Denny Burk, an assistant professor of New Testament at Criswell College in Dallas, must not have seen it.

Two weeks later the professor wrote to Sam Hodges at The Dallas Morning News about the killings.

“[Burk is] concerned that few people seem to know that three Christians were killed in Turkey last month, and that life as a Christian there seems to be getting increasingly perilous,” Hodges posted to the blog, including links to the stories about the killings written for the Associated Press and the Christian Science Monitor as well as for Christianity Today and World magazine (also Christian).

About the dangers of life as a Christian, Burk has a point. Compass Direct, a Santa Ana-based news service whose task it is to report on the persecution of Christians worldwide, says it is intensifying.

Writing about the slayings in Malatya, Australian commentator Bill Muehlenberg notes that more Christians have been killed because of their faith during the last 100 years than throughout 1,900 years before. And more than 200 million do not have full religious freedom, he says.

On the same day that five Turkish youths were accused of killing German missionary Tilmann Geske and Turkish Muslim converts Ugur Yuksel and Necati Aydin, Christians in Baghdad fled al-Doura, the city’s Christian quarter, under threat of death by militants linked to al-Qaeda. Of the 1.4 million Christians formerly living in Iraq according to a 1987 census, only 800,000 remain.

Five days after the slayings in Malatya, four Christian missionaries were jailed in Istanbul after they were accused of disturbing the peace, insulting Islam and missionary activity — which in Turkey is not against the law.

A glance at the websites of Compass Direct (www.compassdirect.org) or Voice of the Martyrs (www.persecution.com), a Christian aid organization, will shed light on a multitude of similar ordeals for Christians around the world.

“If you are a follower of Jesus today,” wrote Muehlenberg, “there is a very real chance — at least in many parts of the globe — that you will have to pay for your faith with your life.”

Yet Burk’s e-mail to Hodges irked Jeffrey Weiss, who like Tomaso and Hodges writes on religion for The Dallas Morning News.

“With all due respect to Professor Burk,” Weiss blogged, “The murder of those three Christians in Turkey last month was certainly horrible. (Bruce [Tomaso] blogged it shortly after it happened, btw.)

But how many innocents died violently in Iraq or Afghanistan or Darfur yesterday whose stories will never appear in the DMN? More than three, I’ll bet. When I see the news releases about persecuted individual Christians from elsewhere in the world I sigh. Not because I don’t feel the pain. But because there’s so much pain out there. Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Pagan, Younameits.”

In another post, Weiss phrased his annoyance like this: “What makes those three deaths worth singling out in a world where genocide and mass tortures are all-too easily found?”

Later he distilled his question and posed it to readers in a weekly e-newsletter dubbed Religion Sneak Peek. Under the heading “Does dying for religion’s sake merit extra attention?” Weiss asked, “Should I care more about evil done in the name of God vs. evil done for power or politics or any of the other myriad reasons? And if so, why? Not a rhetorical query.”

You can read the answers he received on DallasNews Religion. Weiss found them “thoughtful.” By and large, I thought they missed the point.

But then I also think Weiss’s question missed the point. And I have a question of my own: Do we really have to ask if the vicious deaths of three men singled out because of their faith somehow trump other horrors in the world in order to report on them?

To the heart of what he heard in Weiss’s question, Burk wrote on his own blog (www.dennyburk.com), “I’m not drawing attention to the suffering of the three Turkish martyrs because I think Christians are the only persecuted people, nor is it because I think their martyrdom outweighs the mass of human suffering around the world.”

Then he offers eloquent reasons why Christians in particular should have an interest in the deaths of Geske, Yuskel and Aydin.

But in a separate e-mail to Weiss, printed on DallasNews Religion, Burk cites reasons why reporters (and I would add their readers) “with a secular concern” might be interested as well.

“Not only does this story inform the public’s understanding of the West’s clash with Islam,” he wrote, “the story also affects public opinion in Europe on the question of Turkey’s bid to become a member of the [European Union].

“The more barbarous the torture, the more implausible it will seem to many that Turkey should be a part of the European Union.”

As senseless as the reasons may seem, if we read — or listen to — the news, we know why grievous numbers are dying in Iraq and in Darfur.

But what, really, do we know about the savage killings of Geske, Yuskel and Aydin?

Brutal indeed, they are for now an aberration on the Turkish landscape. Though some are predicting that will not last. Why? Why now? Does it matter to us?

Those are questions I expected Weiss to ask. Next week, with the help of some local Turkish acquaintances, I’ll take a crack at them.