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Creed

Freedom of Belief

8 May 2024

7 min read

Nicaragua in peril

Daniel Ortega's power grab fuels persecution.

Jane Cacouris

Jane Cacouris is a writer and consultant working in international development on environment, poverty and livelihood issues.

An balding man with a moustache turns to look at a camera.

President Daniel Ortega.

Nicaragua is the largest country in Central America with a varied and beautiful landscape; towering volcanoes, unique freshwater habitats - Lake Nicaragua is the region’s largest lake - and spectacular marine environments. It has huge potential for development according to the World Bank. But despite this, not only does Nicaragua remain one of the poorest countries in the region but it is caught in the grip of an increasingly totalitarian regime that, according to a recent all-party “Nicaragua Inquiry Report” by UK Parliamentarians, is taking consistent steps to silence democracy and close civic space. This includes human rights violations against religious leaders, particularly within the Catholic Church, as well attacks against political opposition, journalists, scholars and human rights defenders.

The Ortega dynasty

President Daniel Ortego returned to power after a break of seventeen years in 2006. Historically a Marxist revolutionary, on his return as President, Ortega threw out his left-wing ideals for more achievable policies. However, in 2012, his politics took a disconcertingly authoritarian turn when he pressured the Nicaraguan Supreme Court to authorise his bid for a second presidential term. And more recently, the Nicaraguan Government, which includes Ortego’s wife, Vice President Rosario Murillo, and several of their nine children in prominent positions, has escalated its campaign of persecution against Christians and the Catholic Church.

The harassment started in 2018 with a wave of protests across Nicaragua. University students and others took to the streets to demonstrate against the Government’s proposed social security reforms set to increase pressure on workers whilst providing fewer benefits. Ortega, seeing these protests as a threat, responded with violence using pro-government militia and security forces. According to the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), 355 people were killed and approximately 2,000 injured making it the deadliest and most violent protest since the Nicaraguan revolution in 1979. Following these protests, the Ortega regime then escalated its human rights violations raising concerns internationally. According to the UNHCR, since 2018, neighbouring Costa Rica has hosted over 300,000 Nicaraguans seeking asylum.

The intimidation and incarceration of clergymen under the Ortega regime in Nicaragua is particularly chilling. It sends a clear message of contempt for God’s priests.

Persecution of Christians in a Christian-majority country

The World Watch list is an annual report published by Open Doors, an NGO which supports Christians worldwide, and lists the fifty countries in which Christians face the ‘most extreme persecution’. The latest report shows Nicaragua has risen up the list, from number 50 last year to number 30 in 2024 rankings. Over 95% of the Nicaraguan population profess to be Christian, so this is perhaps a surprising development.

In 2022, according to the Nicaragua Inquiry, President Ortega was reported to have:

“ordered the arrest of, forced into exile, and verbally attacked priests and bishops, labelling them ‘criminals’ and ‘coup-plotters,’ and accusing them of inciting violence.”

Most publicly known about is the Bishop of Matagalpa, Rolando Álvarez, who was sentenced to 26 years in prison and later exiled to the Vatican and stripped of his Nicaraguan citizenship. At the end of 2023, the Government arrested and detained seventeen clergymen including Father Silvio Fonseca, an open critic of the Nicaraguan government’s intense persecution of the Catholic Church, and two Bishops who publicly offered prayers for Álvarez before they were arrested.

In Latin America, culturally there is a reverence for clergymen that differs to what we see in the West. I lived in Rio de Janeiro in Brazil for a number of years and worked with my husband (who is an ordained Anglican priest) in a favela (shantytown) routinely patrolled by armed gangs. When we first enquired about the safety of walking into the community on our own, a local resident assured us that we would be fine, saying “They will never shoot a pastor”. Perhaps that is why the intimidation and incarceration of clergymen under the Ortega regime in Nicaragua is particularly chilling. It sends a clear message of contempt for God’s priests that will strike to the very core of people of faith across the country.

Over the past year, according to the Inquiry, the Nicaraguan government has also systematically targeted and closed religious organisations that it views as opponents and banned Catholic traditions such as street processions during Holy Week. A journalist was recently sentenced to eight years in prison for reporting on an Easter procession. And perhaps most insidiously, the government has begun to routinely intimidate worshippers, with uniformed and plain clothes government agents visibly monitoring religious services to intimidate clergy and churchgoers.

Three centuries of religious persecution across the world

Religious persecution is etched firmly into the history of humanity through to the modern day. From Emperor Nero’s outlawing of Christians across the Roman Empire to the persecution of Muslims and Jews in the Crusades, to the Armenian genocide in Turkey following the First World War to attacks on the Rohingya in modern-day Myanmar.

Today religious freedom is a hallmark of a developed society, widely considered to be a basic human right. And indeed, the right to freedom of religion or belief is relevant to an array of SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals) aiming to reduce inequality and improve health, education, gender equality, access to justice and climate action. Religious inequalities and discrimination are key obstacles for progress in many of these areas.

According to UN’s Declaration of Human Rights, “Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion… either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.”

But in spite of this global commitment, and although 123 of the 193 Member States of the United Nations have served as Council members on the UN Human Rights Council (of which Nicaragua is currently a member state), religious freedom is under threat in many parts of the world today. And it takes many different forms. Some countries in the Middle East expressly forbid all religions except Islam whilst others, such as North Korea, do not permit any religion at all. The most recent annual report of the USCIRF lists 28 countries—home to well over 50 per cent of the world’s population—with Governments actively persecuting their citizens for their religious views.

But is it about religion or is it all about power?

In Nicaragua, the Catholic Church has power in numbers and therefore an influential voice. When Christians such as Bishop Álvarez, a vocal defender of civic freedoms, began to join other civil society actors in speaking out more critically against the Government, the persecution began. Catholic clergymen have long been targeted for speaking out against authoritarian regimes in other Latin American countries. For example, Archbishop Romero y Galdamez was assassinated in 1980 in San Salvador when he appealed to the military dictatorship to stop the brutal repression of the people.

But arguably, the Ortega regime’s crackdown on Christians isn’t only because of its fears of the Catholic Church’s power and influence in Nicaragua.

Having the capacity and choice to believe in God - to have faith - is a profound and powerful characteristic of being human. For Christians, faith in God and Jesus Christ comes first, before any political, social, or economic order. Humans who have a real and living faith in a higher power are defined by it, both individually in how they live out their lives and collectively in how they come alongside others who share the same faith. Perhaps that is why totalitarian regimes that lay claims on the whole person and want ultimate power and control over the collective, are so intent on destroying or co-opting religion.

Thankfully the international community is on alert. Ortega is being called out for his regime’s spiralling human rights record and persecution of Christians. But there is no room for apathy. In the book of Proverbs in the Bible, it says “Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves… Defend the rights of the poor and those in need.”

As the words of the poem, First They Came by Pastor Martin Niemöller presented at the start of the Nicaragua Inquiry Report movingly remind us,

First, they came for the Communists

And I did not speak out

Because I was not a Communist

Then they came for the Socialists

And I did not speak out

Because I was not a Socialist

Then they came for the trade unionists

And I did not speak out

Because I was not a trade unionist

Then they came for the Jews

And I did not speak out

Because I was not a Jew

Then they came for me

And there was no one left

To speak out for me

Article

Comment

Paganism

Sport

28 July 2024

8 min read

Paris 2024 and Christianity’s opening ceremony

A subversive Olympic opening relies on Christianity’s own beginnings.

Tim May

Tim is an associate vicar of King’s Cross Church (KXC), a London-based Anglican church.

A painting of the Last supper showing Christ and the disciples at a table.

da Vinci's Last Supper.

Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

The opening ceremony of the 2024 Paris Olympic Games, held on the River Seine, has unsurprisingly caused controversy. Such moments, where one nation through pageantry and spectacle performs itself to all others, never fail to draw comment. The 2024 ceremony has drawn various detractors, not least those claiming the ceremony was an “attack on Christianity.”

You might remember the masterful opening to the London 2012 games. Director Danny Boyle’s theatrical spectacle told a symbolic story of nationhood. By depicting the bucolic, the industrial, and the NHS, he considered the UK in both dark moments and at its brightest. With a great exhibition of British humour, James Bond appeared to parachute out of a helicopter with HRH Queen Elizabeth II, while Mr Bean entertained the whole wordlessly through sardonic single-finger piano playing.

Widely held to be a creative triumph, Boyle was preceded by the Beijing Olympics where its opening ceremony, CGI fireworks put to one side, wowed the world with unprecedented size and scale, reminding us that we live in an era of Chinese power.

Tokyo 2021, delayed by a year due to the Covid-19 pandemic, involved 1,800 drones filling the skies – a faultless demonstration of a technological age where Japanese engineering has been indispensable.

The sporting side of things was easily forgotten as we witnessed an emphatically kitsch depiction of French history and culture.

In 2024 Paris, the weather was perhaps the greatest focus of attention, which suited the British commentary perfectly. We Brits surely are the world experts in making light-entrainment out of describing rain. Soggy athletes sailed the Seine on a variety of uninspiring looking barges. Sanguine but soaked, the athletes dutifully waved and smiled; adorned not in gold, silver or bronze but flimsy ill-fitting plastic ponchos.

Overshadowing this athletes’ parade were the creations of theatre director Thomas Jolly, mastermind of the whole ceremony. Boldly deciding to choose the city as a stage, rather than make use of the conventional choice of a stadium, the sporting side of things was easily forgotten as we witnessed an emphatically kitsch depiction of French history and culture.

Although the weather somewhat thwarted proceedings, it was the content of the performance that drew criticism.

Far-right politicians decried Jolly’s offering as a violation of French nationhood. Conservative pundits focused their criticism on Jolly’s elevation of LGBTQIA+ culture.

Christian commentators have, with various degrees of rancour, condemned a strange scene where Leonardo da Vinci’s famous painting of the Last Supper was subverted by a pastiche of ostentatiously queer characters. At the centre of which was not Jesus Christ but a robust-looking figure resembling Lady Liberty.

Elon Musk spoke up in protest too, posting that it was ‘extremely disrespectful to Christians.’ Full-throttled cries of blasphemy resound, and probably for good reason. What we witnessed was Christ being usurped and replaced by the insurgency of self-expression and the currently sacred idea of diversity and inclusion.

Ahead of the ceremony, Jolly told British Vogue about the heart behind his creation: “there is room for everyone in Paris. Maybe it’s a little chaotic, it’s true, but that allows everyone to find a place for themselves.” The opening ceremony will be a success, Jolly says, “if everyone feels represented in it.”

I guess this isn’t the case for the thirty per cent of the world who would identify as Christian. That’s because every family and flavour of Christianity would recognise that Holy Communion, the central act of Christian Worship for 2000 years, the institution of which is depicted in da Vinci painting, was being publicly and globally vandalised.

When Christianity becomes moral wallpaper to an entire civilisation and its culture, it unsurprisingly becomes a target for satire.

How can we make sense of this moment? Is there anything more for the Christian to contribute other than indignation or outrage?

Whenever something like this occurs it reminds me of the central role Christianity has played in Western culture. The intelligibility of the ceremony’s controversial scene rests on the idea that da Vinci’s painting is a globally recognised symbol. Otherwise, we would have just been watching a really strange dinner party with no food. But with Da Vinci’s famous painting in our mind the subversive power of Jolly’s scene hits hard.

The view, popularised by the historian Tom Holland among others, would go as far as to suggest that Christianity’s effect on Western culture is so pervasive that even moments of protest and subversion, as we saw in the Paris ceremony, are cultural phenomena inherited from the Protestant Reformation. Regardless of how far you agree with Holland’s thesis, Jolly's subversion only makes sense because of the dominant role Christianity has played in shaping the western imagination, and that is a position of latent power that should cause pause for reflection.

I’ve read half a dozen articles from a certain sort of right-wing journalist who parrot thoughts like, “they wouldn’t do that with the Quran”. That might be right, but it fundamentally misses the point. Blasphemy, let’s say, in Iran, would certainly not involve the Last Supper.

The scene made sense only because of Christianity’s now diminishing position of power but it's a position of power, nonetheless. When you align Jesus Christ with the status quo, with the corridors of power, when Christianity becomes moral wallpaper to an entire civilisation and its culture, it unsurprisingly becomes a target for satire. Especially for anyone or any group that feels persecuted or marginalised. I’m not for a moment defending what Jolly did but trying to understand why it happened.

The last supper, the meal Jesus shared with his friends the night before his crucifixion, was the opening ceremony of Christianity.

The kind of cultural power Christianity has had in the West comes at the cost of clarity because Christianity was itself originally a counterculture. Crucifixion, a supreme act of imperial domination, became the foundation of Christian thought and ultimately its greatest symbol. The original Christian movement was seen itself to be blasphemous for contradictory reasons by both the Jewish and Roman religious leaders of the time.

The fundamental difference between Christianity and merely holding conservative values that should not be transgressed, is God. It was genuine belief in Jesus Christ as the long-awaited messiah of the Jewish people and the Saviour of the whole world - a belief that led his first bedraggled and bewildered disciples to live in such radical and counter-cultural ways that many were killed by the Roman Empire.

It is right for his followers today to speak up and say how wrong it is when the special and sacred things he did for them are yet again trampled on in public, but it's also worth remembering that’s how the story started - with Jesus’ body brutalised and broken. That somehow, in moments like this, we miss the power of Jesus when we simply defend him on grounds of “decency” and “respect.” Instead, if we return to the original events themselves, Jolly’s depiction, in its mockery and subversion, actually reveals the power of The Last Supper.

Da Vinci’s painting was not intended for a gallery but was originally painted on the wall of a fairly obscure monastery, transported to a gallery years later to become primarily art, it is more a foundational aid to the faithful to remember the original events Da Vinci is depicting.

The last supper, the meal Jesus shared with his friends the night before his crucifixion, was the opening ceremony of Christianity. Every time a Christian takes Holy Communion - the central act of Christian worship for over 2,000 years - they remember the opening ceremony where:

“Jesus took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to his disciples, saying, “Take and eat; this is my body.” Then he took a cup, and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them, saying, “Drink from it, all of you. This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins”

The most peculiar part of the opening ceremony of Christianity - more peculiar than any sight we saw last night - is the presence of Judas. The biblical accounts describe Jesus’ knowledge of Judas’ intentions to betray him to the Romans, and yet Judas is still welcome to the table. If there’s space for Judas, then there is space for all of us. The opening ceremony Christianity cannot be remembered without the presence of Judas the betrayer, and Peter the coward or Thomas the doubter. The great irony and the big mystery of the Christian Faith is that you can’t out-sin grace. You can mock it and subvert it, but Christ died for the ungodly.

Last night’s scene doesn’t come close to the original events. Not only was Jesus betrayed by his friends, he was then tortured, humiliated and executed publicly in just about the most excruciating way humans have devised. That was blasphemy of another level, but it was also victory because God was choosing to love inclusively beyond any human metric.

Tom Holland may be right that no part of western culture has escaped Christian influence, but I want more than a little downstream influence.

This means that there’s nothing more inclusive than the opening ceremony of Christianity and yet, at the same time, nothing more exclusive. It is not us who provide the food but God. In Jolly’s performance, the Last Supper scene was concluded by the French actor Philippe Katerine, emerging painted head to toe in blue. Whilst this bearded smurf caused baffled sniggers across the planet, Katherine was apparently representing Dionysius, The Greek god associated with wild drunken parties. The food on offer by Jolly is wild desire and self-expression. In Christianity the food is God himself, his body and his blood. God’s love is given not simply expressed, even to those who will betray him.

Moments like this will become harder for Christians to navigate. It feels like just as a wave of secular liberalism wants to finally vanquish the power position Christianity has painted for centuries, a new conservative vanguard of resistance is rising to protect or enrol it for its own means. From the mouth of Modi or in Trump’s tirades, a new religiously armed populism is raging. Tom Holland may be right that no part of western culture has escaped Christian influence, but I want more than a little downstream influence.

Take us back to the opening ceremony, to the foundation of Christian faith. Take us to the waterfall, where the torrent flows straight down from the mountain, and save us from the slow-moving sludge of the wide river downstream. Take me back to the opening ceremony of Christianity. To the table where God welcomes a Judas like me, to the meal where the master became a servant and washed his followers' feet. Take me back to eat food I could never afford and wine I could not create.