A NOBLE CAUSE FOR TRUMP – AT 10:53 A.M. ET:   President Trump has been ridiculed and called a bigot for giving special attention to Christian refugees from the Mideast.  He is nothing of the kind.  The bigotry is in the nations receiving special vigilance, nations that routinely abuse their Christian populations.  From Fox: 

In the past year, the persecution of Christians has not only increased, but it has also spread to more corners of the globe – with incidents occurring on every continent, according to a new report.

The advocacy group Open Doors USA recently released the latest edition of its annual World Watch List, which ranks countries based on the treatment of their Christian populations. The group said the increase in incidents considered persecution was alarming and only getting worse.

"It is appalling that Open Doors has to report that persecution has increased again in 2016 and we are still at the worst levels of persecution in modern times," David Curry, president and CEO of Open Doors USA, said to Fox News. "The spread of persecution has gotten worse, now hitting nearly every continent in the world. There were 23 Christians killed in Mexico specifically because of their faith.”

The report comes on the heels of another study by the Center for Studies on New Religions that showed nearly 90,000 Christians were killed for their faith in 2016 and that as many as 600 million were prevented from practicing their faith through intimidation, forced conversions, bodily harm or even death.

“These numbers underscore what we already know," Robert Nicholson of the Philos Project, an advocacy group for Christianity in the Middle East, told Fox News at the time of the report’s release. "There are many places on Earth where being a Christian is the most dangerous thing you can be. Those who think of Christianity as a religion of the powerful need to see that in many places it’s a religion of the powerless. And the powerless deserve to be protected.”

COMMENT:  Absolutely.  And it's good to see some Christian organizations finally getting into action on this.  President Trump, in his immigration order, gave special emphasis to rescuing Christians from Mideast countries.  That isn't religious preference or discrimination.  It's citing a crisis, and responding to it.  We've done it before, as when we made Soviet Jewry a special cause in our dealings with Moscow, resulting in the freeing of Jews who wanted to leave the Soviet Union.  That wasn't religious preference, it was addressing a humanitarian crisis.

February 2,  2017