Speaker Boehner: Is the Obama Administration Doing All It Can to Protect Christians?

In a post at the speaker’s blog that is well worth reading, Speaker of the House John Boehner asks: Is the Obama Administration Doing Everything it Can To Protect Christians? The answer appears to be a resounding no.

For the past several years, Christians have suffered unprecedented levels of persecution and genocide at the hands of Muslim terrorists, with the grisly execution of dozens of Ethiopian Christians in Libya only the latest in a string of horrors that have been visited upon Christians around the world.

White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest claimed on Monday that the administration “is working hard to counter any extremist efforts to target anybody because of their religious affiliation. So we’ve taken steps regardless of an individual’s religious identity to try to protect anybody who is being targeted because of that religious identity.”

Here are “the steps” the Obama White House has taken to date for individuals “regardless of their religious identity.”

• Waited nearly a year to appoint an Ambassador At-Large for International Religious Freedom. President Obama finally nominated someone in July 2014 after the State Department post stood vacant for nine months.
• Has failed since 2013 to produce the annual Report to Congress on International Religious Freedom, as required by law.
• Has on more than one occasion condemned a radical Islamic terrorist attack targeting Christians without mentioning the victims’ religious identity.
• Offended many Christians when the president himself used this year’s National Prayer Breakfast to admonish those who may “get on our high horse” and forget “terrible deeds” committed during the Crusades – comments criticized by historians.

The Washington Examiner reported Monday that activists and elected officials are urging President Obama to fill a post that was created by Congress last year to promote religious freedom around the world.

More than 50 organizations, scholars, religious leaders and human rights advocates, along with 43 members of Congress, called on Obama Monday to fill the vacant post of special envoy for religious minorities in the Middle East and South Central Asia, which has stood vacant since it was created. …

On Easter, Pope Francis expressed deep concern that the international community is standing “mute and inert in the face of such unacceptable crimes.” At a Good Friday procession, he also decried the world’s “complicit silence” while Christians are being killed in an international jihad that spans the Middle East, Africa, the Arabian Peninsula, Europe and the United States.

Congress passed a bipartisan bill late last summer creating the envoy post, and the president signed it into law but has yet to appoint the special envoy. …

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The envoy, who would report to Secretary of State John Kerry, would represent the United States and amplify the importance of religious freedom for imperiled religious minorities in the Middle East and South Central Asia. The envoy’s duties would include promoting religious freedom, monitoring religious intolerance and denouncing rights violations.

When asked Monday about the president’s delay in naming the Special Envoy to Promote Religious Freedom of Religious Minorities, White House spokeswoman Bernadette Meehan said, “We don’t have any personnel announcements to make at this time.”

Increasingly, the Obama admin is signaling to persecuted #Christians around the world that they are on their own. http://t.co/rorWA7UDXI

— Speaker John Boehner (@SpeakerBoehner) April 22, 2015