Envoy for Christians

Beheadings, enslavement, kidnappings and rape plague minority religious communities across the Middle East, and it is time for President Obama to fill a job created to address their plight, a group of prominent evangelicals, scholars and other religious leaders told the White House. In the seven months since Congress created a “special envoy for religious minorities in the Middle East and South Central Asia,” the extremefviolence against these groups has only escalated, the religious leaders, gathered by the Washington-based International Religious Freedom Roundtable, wrote to Obama on April 20. Nominate someone, they implored. “The Islamic State’s murderous reach has extended beyond Iraq and Syria,” the letter reads, asking Obama to “swiftly” find a candidate for the envoy job. “Doing so would signal to beleaguered communities in the Middle East, and beyond, that America stands with them.”