Explainer

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

Attention

Creed

Education

Psychology

1 April 2025

6 min read

We miss so much when we only see what we are looking for

Explaining why we don't see the unseen - with the help of a gorilla.

Henna Cundill

Henna is a researcher with the Centre for Autism and Theology at the University of Aberdeen.

Manuel Bonadeo on Unsplash.

In a thriving Pentecostal Church on an English city street, a room full of worshippers are singing, clapping, dancing and throwing their hands in the air. The preacher cries “Come, Holy Spirit!” and there are cries of “Amen!” and “Yes Lord!” One person has tears on their cheeks.

A few doors down, a few dozen Anglicans also gather. Heads bent over their liturgy books, there is a hum of responses and an air of reverence. “Give us the joy of your saving help: and sustain us with your life-giving Spirit.” The altar candles flicker as the community settles itself into pews. The Holy Spirit is no less present to these worshippers, although they respond in a completely different way.

Both churches share one creed, in which they commit to their belief in God as the source of all things, seen and unseen. Whilst Pentecostal theologies tend to focus on the observable and unpredictable signs of the Spirit at work, many Anglicans would describe the Spirit in terms of an inner experience, perhaps one that is cognitive rather than physical. But either way, Christians share one belief – that God is present in the world, and we call that the Holy Spirit.

However, there are also hundreds of people who walk past both of these churches, week by week, who would never dream of setting foot inside. Many of them will think that anyone who believes in God is deluded or deceived. Such rationalist thinkers often have a strongly monist view of the world, in which everything, even mysterious things such as human consciousness and perception of non-physical entities, must have a physical or biological basis. As Ebenezer Scrooge says to the apparent ghost of Marley in Charles Dickens’ book, A Christmas Carol, “You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato. There's more gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are!”

It is almost impossible to convince someone who hasn’t had a first first-hand experience of God that anything like the Holy Spirit exists. Many nay-sayers, I suspect, quietly (or maybe not so quietly) believe that their unbelief is because they are more rational and maybe even more intelligent than those who get excited by such things. But there is another possible explanation for why some people apparently cannot, or will not, see the unseen.

The British education system is heavily orientated towards STEM. Even when more creative subjects such as literature find their way into the syllabus, they are often studied in a rather dry and analytical way. Notwithstanding the efforts of the occasional maverick teacher, I recall much time spent learning how to identify the iambic pentameter of Shakespeare, and little (if any) time learning to articulate how his sonnets made me feel. Such a system turns out good scientists, but it may be that in doing so it trains our young people out of being able to perceive a whole raft of things which are arguably just as important to human flourishing.

The world around us contains significantly more sensory input than our minds can process, so we simply don’t pay attention to most of it.

A “selective attention test” can quickly prove this point. I did one recently with a room full of psychology undergraduates, almost all of whom had identified as monists. “Since you guys are the brightest and the best,” I simpered “let’s do a little intelligence test. Apparently only five per cent of the general population get the answer right to this puzzle, but in this room, I expect the success rate will be a little higher…”

Having primed them by flattering their egos, I proceeded to show them a video called “The Monkey Business Illusion”, designed in 2009 by scientists Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons. During the short film, a group of people pass basket balls to each other, and viewers are asked to count how many times the players wearing white shirts pass the ball. It seems simple enough, and when the film ended, I asked the students how many counted the right number of passes. Almost every hand in the room went up. No surprises there.

Then I asked the more important question – who saw the gorilla? There was a smattering of laughter, and this time only about half of the hands went up. Meanwhile, the other half of my students were looking around at their peers, utterly confused…

But it was true. In “The Monkey Business Illusion”, a person in a 6ft gorilla costume walks right across the middle of the scene, weaving through the players in the game. However, because most viewers are intently focussed on watching the players in white, they simply don’t perceive it. You can try this for yourself - the video I’m talking about can be found easily on YouTube, and if you follow the search term “selective attention test” there are many others like it.

The material point is that the world around us contains significantly more sensory input than our minds can process, so we simply don’t pay attention to most of it. If you pause for a moment right now, you might notice that there is the hum of a heater in your room, or the noise of traffic outside, or the smell of an air freshener, or that a piece of your clothing that is too tight – things you were simply not aware of until I pointed them out. It’s common that we don’t perceive things until something else makes us think that they are important. If someone tells you that your house might have structural damage, you will suddenly start to notice every creak that comes from your walls and ceilings, even though those creaks have probably been happening for years.

As social beings, we can be easily conditioned into paying attention to certain things and ignoring others. If I tell a group of students that intelligent people are highly attentive to the players in white shirts, I increase the likelihood that they simply will not notice a gorilla.

There is good research to show that children, even in our modern and secular society, are inherently spiritual – most young kids believe in God, or gods, fairies and the existence of many things unseen. But this is not celebrated in our STEM focussed education system, wherein young minds are highly conditioned to let go of such “irrational” beliefs and trust in the full explanatory power of science. It is so effective that, by the time they get to my classroom at university, I’ve got little hope of persuading any of my monists that there was a 6ft gorilla without showing the video again and letting them see it for themselves.

But there are always some people who are willing to challenge the idea that Marley was just an undigested bit of beef. There are always some people who attend churches of one type or another, or practice other forms of spirituality and religion. Some pray, some meditate, and many take part in rituals. This trains them in what anthropologist Tanya Luhrmann calls “micro-processes of attending”, leaving them more ready to perceive spiritual things instead of screening them out of their conscious awareness. How they respond might depend on preferred tradition – dancing, liturgy, or a little bit of both. But all agree that there is something going on that is unseen and important.

Many STEM educated, highly rational and fully committed monists no doubt think that those who attend churches are deluded and deceived into perceiving unseen things are simply just not there. These nay-sayers have been taught, implicitly and explicitly, that it is more intelligent to believe in the all-explanatory power of science. But perhaps it is they who have been deluded and deceived? As the Monkey Business Illusion demonstrates, if you flatter someone’s intelligence enough, it becomes entirely possible to hide a 6ft gorilla in plain sight.

Watch the Monkey Business Illusion

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