“And it's no secret that the Arab Spring revolutions have not done any favors for the roughly 25 million embattled Christians in the region (a precise head count is hard to come by). In the wake of Mubarak's fall, hard-line Islamists in Egypt rioted against Christians and vandalized churches. In Syria, Bashar al-Assad has hardly been a poster child for religious freedom, but approximately 2.3 million Christians there view him as a protector whose wobbling regime is the only thing standing between them and hordes of Salafists who aren't so interested in keeping up the appearance of a modern, secular state. And a half-million of those Christians are Iraqi refugees who fled the bloody fight between contending Muslim factions in their homeland and have no desire to relive that experience....But then, scholars of evangelicalism have long observed that cultivating a persecution complex -- even one that is mostly a self-perpetuating fiction -- is not a bad way to maintain authority and stoke followers' sense of divine purpose. The trouble is that this mindset may make evangelicals look less like their oppressed brethren and more like the very despots they hate.”

How do you reconcile these statements?

You concede the fact that with the dictators gone its open season on Christians in the middle-east but then essentially accuse evangelicals of sensationalism and propaganda. If evangelicals are guilty of those things then you, Mrs. Worthen, are more and much more so.

I don't believe any evangelical (of which I am one) would support dictators, but the attacks on and oppression of Christians in the middle-east is truly (as you've documented) real, awful and on the rise in the Arab-Spring countries.

As for feeling discriminated against here in the U.S.: try telling people that you are an evangelical for one week, especially in a blue state and you might understand that feeling better.

Muslims focus a lot more on the occupation of Palestine than they do the occupation of Tibet. Jews care more about anti-Semitism than anti-Hinduism. Christians are going to worry more about Christian persecution in the Middle East than atheists are. All of this is due to the fact that humans naturally care more about people who they identify as members of their group than people who are not members of said group.

It's not that hard to figure out, really. Evangelicals in the US give a lot more coverage to suffering Christians in the Middle East because they identify with them. It's the same reason why Al Jazeera gives far more coverage to perceived anti-Islam sentiment in the US than any American outlet does--AJ's viewers are mostly Muslims, and Muslims identify with other Muslims. Every group that you can think of will give undue weight to stories concerning the "persecution" of that group, be it religious or racial.

Also, the MENA region is really the only place where Christians are still persecuted (there is a lot of anti-Semitism/anti-Christian sentiment in other Muslim countries, like the Maldives, but so few non-Muslims live there that it isn't an issue) so of course reports of Christian persecution--real or perceived--are going to be centered there.

...it is the plight of Palestinian Christians that has many evangelicals lobbying for Palestinian rights in Israel.

"Given many evangelicals' commitment to baptizing the Founding Fathers and praising the cross as a "statue of liberty," "

I could not contain myself when I read this statement. Nothing could be further from the truth.

As proof, go to a southern state ( or any conservative christian community ) and wear a t-shirt that says "I'm an atheist" on the front of it and "I don't believe in god" on the back and see how much 'liberty' you get.

As someone who is lived in the Middle East for nearly 20 years, worked with Christians across the region, known Muslims who have become Christians and had to flee their countries after being declared apostate in an Islamic court of law so that their children can legally be taken from them, been imprisoned, beaten, and known the fear of those fleeing church bombings and targeted oppression in Iraq, I was quite disappointed in the article.

There really is a story to the headline “Brothers’ Keepers”. Sadly though, Ms. Worthen chose to make the thrust of the story a rant against American Christians’ values and beliefs rather than really delve into the difficult issue facing American Christians as they see dictators’ empires crumble leaving in its vacuum a Pandora’s box of what a post-dictator society will look like. A writer who can set their own biases to the side, such as Nicholas Kristof at the New York Times, would be a much better writer to address this perplexing issue of how American and Middle Eastern Christians view the possible results of Arab Spring.

A better question would be, 'Why are American liberals so enamored with Islamist uprisings?"

The article is drowned in artificial melodrama, banalities and persistence naivety.

Molly, is perhaps sure to get maturity in not so distance future by watching how the so called quest for middle east democracies bear violent fruits.

Unfortunately, she is oblivious that Tenets of Islam are heavily loaded against concept of divorce between statecraft and role of religion, individual freedom, peaceful coexistence.

She is also unaware of the fact that across the Muslim world, role of military, aggressive suppression keeps in check highly violence prone tendencies and attended conflicts.

Middle East countries for long have been ruled by authoritarian and hybrid regimes headed by army backed dictators and monarchs.

There must have been some peculiar reasons holding back all these great men, who have never tried to promote democracies in these countries.

Perhaps they know that the democratic ethos and mechanism are non existent in the region or are too feeble to make any difference.

Spirit of negotiation, give and take, accepting others terms and conditions, giving an inch is considered as great loss of honor.

There has been no moderate Muslim Thinker, Social worker, Politician or ruler who could effectively confront Osama Bin Laden and his cohort in waging a violent war.

May be the idol of Molly, great Charlie Hill influenced or perhaps wrote that illiterate speech of Ronald Reagen eulogizing great Islamic Concept of Jihad and mournfully lamented its much desired existence in Christian ethos.

If he did, Charlie Hill is particularly responsible for lunatic ideals to use Jihad to fight Russians in Afghanistan and its later exponential growth.

Given the promises of Jesus concerning misrepresentation, slander, and hard core persecution against Christians, I don't feel any need to reply to the broad brush strokes of this article other than to say I'm glad I don't depend upon public opinion for anything important. Let the heathen rage against the Highest and His people and His ways.

That you would be so blatantly self-centered to equate the puerile intellectual mockery faced by Christians in "blue" states with the very seslisiteler real torture and death faced in other countries only makes the point of this article all the more obvious.