God's foreign policy': why the biggest threat to Bush's war strategy isn't coming from muslims, but from christians.

• Author: Green, Joshua

SHORTLY AFTER THE SEPTEMBER II terrorist attack, Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, two longtime figureheads of the evangelical movement, appeared together on the Christian Broadcasting Network to suggest the attack might have been caused by God's anger at American liberalism and secularism. "I really believe," Falwell said, with Robertson's concurrence, "that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American Way--all of them who have tried to secularize America--I point the finger in their face and say `you helped this happen.'"

Their message was roundly condemned as hateful and self-righteous. But for the brief moment that it dominated the news cycle, many assumed it to be an accurate reflection of conservative religious sentiment in the wake of the attack. That was far from true.

A day earlier, Steven Snyder of the evangelical activist group International Christian Concern issued an open letter that put forth a very different interpretation: "America is witnessing what Christians in other parts of the world have been enduring for some time. We are at war with an unseen enemy that has demonstrated its resolve to launch a `jihad' (holy war) on Americans, Christians, and Jews--and will show no mercy for innocent lives. We have turned a new page not only in American history but in the history of the world."

Snyder's response highlights a new and growing strain of evangelical politics--the movement for Christian solidarity. Since its rapid growth and mobilization five years ago, the Christian solidarity movement has turned evangelical energies toward an ecumenical vision of Christianity as a universal community. Its activists publicize abuses against Christians in Sudan, China, Burma, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan, among others. Above all, Christian solidarity activists work to redirect American foreign policy in defense of Christian communities everywhere. In just a few years, they have put their mark on American foreign policy, most notably in Sudan where, over the last decade, two million Christians and animists have been killed by the fundamentalist Islamic government.

As the United States mobilizes against the Taliban, the Christian solidarity movement is rapidly finding new supporters. Despite the best efforts of the Bush administration to frame the current crisis as a nondenominational war between "terrorists" and "the civilized world," that outlook hasn't prevailed. Since the attack, the belief that the war is one of religion has gained currency in churches across the country (while Falwell's ideas conspicuously have not). Many of those, like Snyder, active in the movement to stop the persecution of Christians have concluded that Christianity itself is under attack. After Osama bin Laden stated that he was "at war with Christians and Jews," and after the Taliban foreign minister characterized the U.S. military response against Afghanistan as "a Christian crusade ... under the flag of the Cross," it is not difficult to understand why.

But while the Christian solidarity supporters don't express many moral qualms about using military force, they're surprisingly ambivalent about the administration's general strategy. The reason: In its war against terrorism, the White House has extended the hand of friendship to precisely the countries the movement has opposed--notably Sudan, Pakistan, and Uzbekistan. The evolving tension between Bush and this key element of his constituency promises to shape the prosecution of the war on terrorism.

The Bush administration assumed power with a well-formed perspective on foreign policy that's been dubbed "realist" by its proponents (who include Vice President Dick Cheney, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, and the president himself). Realist foreign policy is premised on the belief that the world is a nasty place; that it is morally and strategically misguided to try to "police" the world; that military muscle should be used solely to further America's national security interests; and that doing so will sometimes entail exercising power in ways that are themselves nasty and brutal. The Reagan administration's efforts to aid the Nicaraguan contras are a defining example.

Not surprisingly, the Bush administration was openly disdainful of what it considered to be the soft humanitarianism of the Clinton administration, and the left-leaning human rights groups that seemed to drive its foreign policy. During the campaign and afterward, Bush disparaged Clinton's willingness to lend American military might to stopping bloodshed and famine in places like Haiti, Kosovo, and Somalia. "If we don't stop extending our troops all around the world in nation-building missions," Bush warned during the campaign, "then we're going to have a serious problem coming down the road."

The terrorist attacks presented Bush with an opportunity to put his doctrine into practice. This was a direct strike on the U.S., not some marginal conflict like Kosovo. The administration quickly allied itself with some of the world's most dangerous regimes, including Sudan and Syria, which the State Department classifies as "state sponsors of terrorism." (Sudan made the list for, among other things, providing a safe haven to Osama bin Laden. While operating in Sudan from 1993 to 1996, bin Laden subsidized the ruling Islamic government and, with their protection, built a vast terrorist network.) The idea behind Bush's hardline approach was best characterized by journalist Robert Kaplan in The Washington Post: "Foreign policy must return to what it traditionally has been: the diplomatic aspect of national security rather than a branch of Holocaust studies."

Put another way, the U.S. is back to a Cold War foreign policy that willingly engages unsavory regimes to advance national security interests. For the moment, the country is behind this effort. But this nearly universal support may not last. The growing Christian solidarity movement presents a challenge no Republican administration in memory has had to face: a human rights force on the right openly critical of the morality of the administration's foreign policy. As the war progresses, the Christian solidarity movement is likely to join with administration critics on the left, making Bush's fight against terrorism more complicated, but perhaps more effective.

Onward Christian Soldiers

On a crisp Sunday morning in late September, Pastor Chris Robinson is delivering a sermon intended to help his congregation at Grace Bible Church put the events of September 11 in perspective. The church is located in the tiny burg of Marshall, tucked among the rolling hills of northwest Virginia's horse country in the heart of the nation's most active Christian solidarity community. Robinson's congregation of 200 consists mostly of young families who have been active in the Christian solidarity movement for years. Recently, members returned from relief missions to isolated communities of Christians in Burma and Sudan.

To members of Grace Bible Church, the attack carried special resonance because it brought home an issue that until now had been, quite literally, a foreign concern. "There are Christians being persecuted all over the world today," Robinson told his congregation. "Now that is true in our own country." One by one, churchgoers rose to testify to this issue. Many offered prayers for fellow Christians who'd perished in the World Trade Center and the...