September 1 1997

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Their Blood Cries Out: The Untold Story of Persecution Against Christians in the Modern World, by Paul Marshall with Lela Gilbert (Word Publishing, 335 pp.; $12.99, paper);

In the Lion's Den: A Shocking Account of Persecution and Martyrdom of Christians Today and How We Should Respond, by Nina Shea (Broadman & Holman, 126 pp.; $9.99, paper). Reviewed by Diane Knippers, president of the Institute on Religion and Democracy.

Their Blood Cries Out and In the Lion's Den are wake-up calls, particularly to the American church, to speak out on behalf of brothers and sisters across the globe who are being persecuted for their faith. Paul Marshall's Their Blood Cries Out is the more comprehensive of the two. Marshall, who teaches political theory at the Institute for Christian Studies in Toronto, Canada, documents the story of the persecuted church with the precision of a scholar and the compassion and outrage of a fellow believer in Christ. His book is informative and convicting, disturbing and inspiring.

A great strength of Their Blood Cries Out is the way it sets the larger context of Christian persecution. Thus, for example, Marshall handily puts to rest the accusation that Christianity is a religion of white, male Europeans. He explains that three-fourths of world Christians are in the Third World, that Christianity is arguably the largest Third World religion, and that a majority of believers are women. "More people take part in Christian Sunday worship in China than do people in the entirety of Western Europe," Marshall notes. "The same is true of Nigeria, and probably true of India, Brazil, and even the world's largest Muslim country, Indonesia."

In the chapter entitled "The Advancing Jihad," Marshall describes the plight of Christians ...