Becket Adams at The Washington Examiner is calling out The Huffington Post for a “particularly gross hit on Mike Pence.” The vice president spoke on Thursday to the first-ever World Summit in Defense of Persecuted Christians, an event that the liberal media generally avoided and finds uninteresting. But the HuffPost ran an article by reporter Antonia Blumberg with the headline “Pence Tells Room Full Of Christians In D.C. Their Faith Is The Most Persecuted.” Adams wrote: "This is not accurate, and there's more to the story."
Pence said Thursday, "[T]hose of you gathered here today are emblematic of millions across the world. You've persevered through the crucible of persecution. You refused to be conformed to this world. You have chosen instead to be counted with those outside the city gate for your faith. And by your life, you bear witness to the truth that brings us together here at this summit."
"The reality is, across the wider world, the Christian faith is under siege. Throughout the world, no people of faith today face greater hostility or hatred than the followers of Christ," he added, speaking to an audience that included Christians from all around the world. "And nowhere is this onslaught against our faith more evident than in the very ancient land where Christianity was born."
The event is aimed specifically at addressing the plight of Christians who are being persecuted overseas. Pence's speech was addressed to both the afflicted abroad, as well as victims who came all the way to the nation's capital to bear witness.
Astonishingly enough, this is how the Huffington Post covered his speech: "Pence reiterated a common belief among conservative Christians in the U.S. that they are among the most persecuted people of faith in the world."
Though the article conceded there's "an element of truth" to Pence's claim that Christians in the Middle East "have experienced high levels of violence and harassment," it downplayed these figures to point out other world religions also experience persecution.
And missing also from the report is the fact that Pence said exactly this in his address.
"[R]est assured, in the Middle East and North Africa, anywhere terror strikes, America stands with those who are targeted and tormented for their belief, whether they're Christian, Yazidi, Druzes, Shia, Sunni, or any other creed," the vice president said.
He added, "to be clear, adherents of other religions across the world have not been spared. And we will speak for them and pray for them as well. For as history attests, persecution of one faith is ultimately the persecution of all faiths."
Ask nearly any American Christian about persecution, and they would never compare their own plight to Coptic Christians having their church bombed on Palm Sunday. Pence called out ISIS for Christian "genocide," but neither ISIS nor genocide was anywhere in Blumberg's copy as she lectured about "hate crime" counts in America.
The HuffPost turned this into American Christians overdoing their own victimization, even as Team Trump is accused of the worst forms of bigotry.
The current U.S. administration has been accused of anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial, while simultaneously trying to justify policies like the proposed travel ban that disproportionately target Muslims.
But many conservative Christians in the U.S., like Pence, sincerely believe that Christianity is under assault in America. President Donald Trump’s recent executive order on religious liberty aimed to hand increased political power over to churches, which according to him have been “targeted, bullied [and] silenced.”
Religious liberty is "under assault in America," as most of the secular press puts the concept of religious liberty in scare quotes as a "right to discriminate." Christians are now being fined and shamed for refusing to honor same-sex wedding ceremonies, and Catholic nuns are being forced to pay for contraceptive coverage under Obamacare. This is not akin to ISIS terrorism, but that doesn't mean it's unserious.
Blumberg concluded with an inaccurate summary: "It is true that same-sex couples can now legally get married across the country, and conservative Christians may be taken to court for denying goods and services to people whose identities they disagree with. But this does not count them, as Pence suggested, among those who face real threats to their lives and livelihoods around the globe."
