President Joe Biden (or aides acting in his name) declared Easter Sunday to be “Transgender Day of Visibility.” While Biden is only the second Catholic president and says he attends mass, he appears to harbor a grudge against the Church, repeatedly targeting its practices and personnel. On March 31, Cardinal Wilton Gregory of Washington, D.C., described Biden as a “cafeteria Catholic.” Biden’s progressive base regularly demonizes and demeans evangelical Christians.
While Biden condemns Islamophobia and antisemitism, he remains strangely silent about anti-Christian hate crimes, even though, according to 2022 FBI hate crime statistics, episodes of bias attacks against Catholics and other Christians are higher than hate crimes against Muslims.
The Biden team’s anti-Christian track record extends into foreign policy. His evangelicalism for LGBT issues in foreign policy antagonizes Christian communities across Africa, where conservative societies tolerate homosexuality so long as no one shoves it in their face. Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s removal of Nigeria from the religious freedom watch list as the Nigerian government facilitates the murder of Christians mocked the State Department’s concern for religious freedom.
A comparison between the Nagorno-Karabakh crisis and the Gaza war shows just how deep-seated and dangerous Biden’s anti-Christian posture can be. For nearly a year, autocratic Azerbaijan illegally blockaded and starved the indigenous Christian community in Nagorno-Karabakh before invading the democratic, self-governing territory to ethnically cleanse it. During the siege, U.S. Agency for International Development provided no assistance, and the Pentagon turned a deaf ear to calls to air-drop supplies. The White House was silent when Azerbaijan subsequently dynamited the Nagorno-Karabakh parliament building in order to eradicate any symbol of democracy.
While Biden condemns Islamophobia and antisemitism, he remains strangely silent about anti-Christian hate crimes, even though, according to 2022 FBI hate crime statistics, episodes of bias attacks against Catholics and other Christians are higher than hate crimes against Muslims.
Compare that to the Gaza Strip. For 17 years, Hamas ruled Gaza with an iron fist. It is unrepentant in its embrace of terrorism and overt about its hatred of the U.S., yet the Biden administration organized repeated airdrops that, in theory, provided humanitarian relief but also reinforced Hamas control. Biden, Blinken, and USAID Administrator Samantha Power have never explained the discrepancy between their approach toward Nagorno-Karabakh and Gaza.
Alas, Hamas is the rule rather than the exception. While Biden bashes Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel is the only country in the Middle East with a growing Christian population. While Biden and Blinken treat Mahmoud Abbas, the Holocaust-denying octogenarian president of the Palestinian Authority, as a partner, under his watch, Christians have fled the West Bank under duress not from Israel but from Palestinian gunmen. Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus, is now an Islamist town.
Religious freedom is the best barometer of a country or territory’s health, freedom, and sincerity of reform. As Christians face repression, however, Biden remains silent.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo once said diplomats sought to expunge talk of his own Christian faith from his speeches, but that across the Middle East, openly acknowledging his religious convictions won him the confidence of foreign ministers, presidents, and kings. He is right: Faith matters.
Washington should not view Christian faith as an inconvenience to hide for the sake of diplomacy. When Islamists see an unwillingness by American leaders to defend religious freedom or an embarrassment about their own religious beliefs, they see the West as weak, decadent, and unserious, and they see a green light to further aggression.
Biden should realize that public animosity toward Christianity for the sake of progressive causes or diplomacy is not virtue signaling, but decidedly unvirtuous.
