As violence against Christians continues to increase worldwide, the CEO of Open Doors USA, David Curry, says American pastors are failing to educate their congregations on the “theology of persecution.”
Asked by The Christian Post why he thinks American believers seem so disconnected from the persecution facing the global church, Curry said it’s ultimately “a failure of leadership.”
“This is a bit of an indictment,” he said, “but I think pastors … they’re not teaching their church[es] about it, they’re not teaching a biblical standard, they’re not teaching a theology of persecution.”
Curry pointed out that the New Testament was written by persecuted Christians, yet in the U.S. — and much of the Western world — there’s very little emphasis on that reality.
“There are books of the Bible that start with Paul in prison, and at the end, he’s still in prison,” he explained. “But we’re not hearing that Gospel in America, and I think it’s created a chasm between us and the rest of the world.”
There is hope, though, Curry argued. In order to turn it around, pastors need to spend a portion of every Sunday “talking, praying in some way about their persecuted brothers and sisters.”
This is not the first time Curry has spoken out about the divide between the American church and the rest of the Christian population. In mid-June, he penned a column for USA Today, in which he wrote believers in the U.S. are “whistling through the graveyard” as Christian persecution continues to increase.
“Inoculated by entertainment and self-absorption, they are completely detached from the experience of the global church,” he continued. “The American church is feeding itself to death while the worldwide church is being murdered.”
Curry’s scathing indictment came one month after it was reported radical Islamic extremists stormed into a church choir practice in Nigeria and kidnapped 17 Christians. He also noted that, in 2018 alone, 3,731 Christians in the African country were killed.
Another part of the problem, Curry argued, is Christians in America are inundated with media and news.
“We take our marching orders on what’s important by what’s on our Twitter feed,” he said. “That’s a very unhealthy way to prioritize what’s important because it’s what’s urgent, but it doesn’t allow us to focus on the things that are timeless and important.”
Regardless, believers in the U.S. need to become more vigilant because, according to Curry, who took over as CEO of Open Doors USA in 2013, persecution against Christians has only increased.