c. 1996 Religion News Service
WASHINGTON (RNS)-Michael Horowitz has maneuvered around Washington political circles for nearly 15 years. A former Reagan administration official and current senior fellow at the conservative Hudson Institute think tank, Horowitz has worked on issues ranging from welfare policy to federalism to tort reform.
His latest political crusade, however, is raising eyebrows worldwide.
Horowitz, who describes himself as”rootedly Jewish,”has become an ardent advocate on behalf of persecuted evangelicals and Catholics. In a relentless campaign, he has been lobbying both U.S. government officials and national Christian leaders to take concrete new steps to help end the persecution of Christians around the world.”I have a guiding principle which moves me: I’m only allowed to sit out one Holocaust per lifetime, and I’m not sitting this one out,”says the 57-year-old former general counsel at the Office of Management and Budget.
Horowitz kicked off his public campaign with a July editorial in the Wall Street Journal titled”New Intolerance Between Crescent and Cross.”In the editorial, he described a”growing and large-scale persecution of evangelicals and Christian converts”at the hands of various fundamentalist Muslim governments.
Since then, Horowitz has been aggressively pursuing two objectives: to engage more U.S. Christians in the fight against repression by Islamist, communist and nationalist movements; and to convince public policy makers to”stop ignoring the plight”of persecuted Christians.
Prominent human rights groups agree that persecution of Christians is a serious problem in many countries. For example, according to a report released in late December by Human Rights Watch/Asia,”The Chinese government is subjecting unauthorized Catholic and Protestant groups to intensifying harassment and persecution.” Amnesty International has documented the cases of thousands of Christians in Sudan who have disappeared, been flogged, imprisoned or murdered in the past two years during the”Islamization drive”of the National Islamic Front government.
Horowitz believes there is significantly more the U.S. government could do to intervene in such situations. He is working with several Christian groups to hammer out a set of specific policy demands to present to the Clinton administration, including:
-a major speech by the president expressing U.S. concern about religious persecution;
-the appointment of a”high-level, high visibility”presidential adviser on religious persecution issues;
-instructions for the State Department’s annual human rights report to devote more attention to the persecution of evangelicals;
-calls for the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) to be more sensitive to the claims of refugees seeking religious asylum;
-the suspension of foreign aid to countries where Christians are oppressed. “We’re trying to craft a tough-minded agenda with achievable goals that will generate systematic change,”says Horowitz.
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Recently, State Department officials have attempted to reiterate the Clinton administration’s concern about religious persecution. In November, about 60 religious-liberty activists were invited to the State Department for an off-the-record meeting with high-ranking officials from the Human Rights Bureau and the National Security Council to discuss diplomatic efforts to end persecution.
Horowitz did not attend the meeting-he dismissed it as”useless”because he did not believe it would result in concrete changes. But some observers suggested his efforts prompted the session.
In addition to political work, Horowitz has played a key role in helping to organize a meeting on religious persecution next Tuesday (Jan. 23) for top Christian leaders. Church officials, conservative Christian political activists and mission representatives have been invited to the private Washington gathering.
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A former Marine, Horowitz served at the Office of Management and Budget from 1981 until 1985 and subsequently practiced law in Washington. In 1994, he joined the Washington office of the Hudson Institute, where Dan Quayle is among the several former Reagan and Bush administration officials on the board of trustees.
Horowitz was first drawn into this battle during the Reagan administration when his legal help was sought on behalf of Ethiopian evangelicals seeking religious asylum. But the legal work soon turned deeply personal as he developed close relationships with several Ethiopian evangelicals. Horowitz and his wife have sponsored more than a dozen Ethiopian Christian refugees in the past 10 years.
He is currently working on the immigration case of prominent Ethiopian evangelist Metafria Getaneh, who was imprisoned because of his religious activities. Horowitz says Getaneh has become a close friend to his entire family. During Getaneh’s asylum proceedings, a State Department official informed the INS that religious persecution is no longer”deemed a significant or systemic problem of any general relevance”in Ethiopia-an assertion that Horowitz and Ethiopian evangelicals vehemently deny.
Horowitz says his frustration over the State Department’s handling of the case prompted his public campaign. The State Department declined to comment on an ongoing case, but a spokesman asserted that all religious persecution claims are taken”very seriously.” Beyond political frustrations, Horowitz says he feels so deeply about persecuted Christians because the situation resonates with his own background.
Raised an Orthodox Jew, Horowitz still practices the Jewish faith, although he concedes that it has been”difficult … to maintain all the demands of Orthodoxy.”He says the”formative influences”in his life were his grandparents, who emigrated to the United States after suffering persecution in Europe prior to World War II.
As a result of his work with Ethiopian refugees, Horowitz says he has concluded that”short of `final solutions,’ evangelicals have become the Jews of the 21st century in much of the world.” According to Horowitz, there are three factors that”eerily parallel”the situation of European Jews in the late 19th century and early 20th century:
-“Evangelicals are the perfect scapegoats … who pose powerful threats to anti-democratic regimes”;
-“Western elites are indifferent about their fates”;
-and”the Western Christian community has maintained tongue-tied silence”about the ongoing persecution.
Horowitz quickly admits the analogy can”seem overdrawn”to many.”I’m not talking about concentration camps-although in Sudan, we’re almost there,”he emphasizes.”What I’m talking about is the Europe my grandparents grew up in where the local duke or priest would conduct Easter Sunday pogroms. That’s the kind of thing Christians in much of the world are confronting.” Despite the nuances Horowitz attempts to draw, some Jewish leaders are uncomfortable with his language.”God only knows that there continues to be religious persecution around the world, and Christians … are objects of that discrimination,”says Abraham Foxman, National Director of the Anti-Defamation League.”At the same time, I fail to understand-and I’m somewhat offended by-why he goes to such lengths to make these comparisons.” Horowitz asserts that he shares Jewish concerns that the Holocaust not be cheapened. But he maintains that comparing the current situation for Christians to the time leading up to concentration camps in Europe is appropriate.
Some Christian groups are uncomfortable with Horowitz’s claim of”tongue-tied silence”among Western Christians.”Certainly Michael is right that the laity in the pews are not particularly energized on this issue because they’ve never experienced persecution firsthand nor do they know others who have,”acknowledges Richard Cizik, policy analyst for the National Association of Evangelicals.
However, Cizik adds,”Many of us in evangelical leadership have attempted to push politicians, bureaucrats and our own apathetic constituency to do what is right on this issue.” Cizik is among those working with Horowitz to develop new political strategies.
This fall, Horowitz wrote to the heads of 150 missionary agencies urging them to take a strong public stance as well.”I said, `You are the people who are helping to create this faith out there, how do you walk away from your people?'”recounts Horowitz.
Some Christian mission agencies and humanitarian groups responded that while they have been involved in quiet diplomatic efforts on individual cases, they remain reluctant to join a public campaign. Such groups are nervous that a high-profile offensive-coupled with Horowitz’s intense style-may result in expatriate workers being deported or in backlashes against the local Christian communities.
But many longtime religious-liberty activists have embraced Horowitz’s assistance.”It’s quite significant to have someone of Michael Horowitz’s stature to lift the issue to a higher level of interest and action,”says the Rev. Keith Roderick, secretary general of the Coalition for the Defense of Human Rights Under Islamization, an Illinois-based umbrella group for Christian groups in Muslim countries.”What some may view as an aggressive pressure campaign is perhaps only urgent wisdom confronting indifference.”(STORY CAN END HERE. OPTIONAL TRIM TO END)
Another veteran activist, Steve Snyder, president of International Christian Concern, agrees.”As a Jew, (Horowitz) has reached the ears of segments of the population that we who have been campaigning on behalf of persecuted Christians have not been able to reach,”Snyder says.”God has used diverse tools over the course of history.” Horowitz recognizes that he is indeed an unlikely”tool”in this campaign. He believes his outsider status has given him unique access to speak to Christian and political leaders. But he acknowledges that at times, his work has been tinged with”poignant ironies.” He says fellow Jews ask if he is abandoning his Jewish heritage to identify”with historic oppressors rather than friends.”And at the other end, he says, many in the evangelical community believe-erroneously-that he is”just one step away from Jews for Jesus.” Still, Horowitz remains passionately committed:”If and when we can succeed in this, it will be the greatest single achievement of my lifetime, I know that.”
MJP END LAWTON
