Almost every week, we receive emails or telephone calls asking why we mention Roman Catholics in our Persecution and Prayer Alerts and in our monthly newsletter. In many cases (but not all), the person asking is well-intentioned and polite. Many come from Roman Catholic backgrounds and now attend Protestant churches. Many express concerns that we might be straying from our founder, Richard Wurmbrand's vision for our mission. Actually, nothing could be further from the truth.

Since the founding of our mission in the late 1960's, the question of which denominations we support and which we do not, is one that we have been repeatedly asked. As mentioned before, these inquiries are often well-intentioned. Some are concerned when they notice that we typically do not emphasize the denominational background of those we work with. Some believe that VOMC should not provide aid or raise a voice on behalf of Christians of certain denominations, while others suspect that we discriminate against other denominations.

From the founding of the mission in 1969, The Voice of the Martyrs has been committed to being both evangelical and non-denominational. This is reflected in our commitment, for example, to our staff holding to an evangelical theology. We are also committed to ministering to persecuted Christians regardless of denominational affiliation and to unity in the essential beliefs of the historical Christian faith and freedom to differ in nonessentials.

Of course, groups such as the Mormons, Jehovah Witnesses' and other pseudo-Christian heresies are not the focus of our ministry. We are not a human rights organization that actively works on behalf of all religious groups (although we uphold the principle that religious liberty is a God-given right that must be extended to all, even - perhaps, even especially - to those whom we disagree with).

Our focus of ministry is on those who are mistreated because their persecutors consider them Christians and, therefore, they suffer imprisonment, torture, discrimination and even death. Militant Muslims, Hindus and Communists do not make the denominational distinctions that we are so prone to make. They care very little whether the church they burn down is Catholic, Orthodox, Lutheran or Pentecostal. They do not ask for the believers to pull out their catechisms before they slap chains on their wrists, thereby guaranteeing that they imprison only "real" Christians. We may not agree, as evangelical Protestants, with all of the doctrinal beliefs of some of these denominations. Having said that, however, we do not believe that it is in our mandate to go beyond the boundaries of historically accepted creeds such as the Nicene Creed in defining (in the broadest sense) what Christian belief is. Were we a church or a church planting mission, this would be an entirely different matter.

We realize that the approach that we have adopted as a mission leaves us open to criticism and accusations of compromising the faith. We readily admit that it is a difficult position to maintain at times. But every day we are reminded of one unavoidable truth: the persecutors care very little for denominational distinctiveness when they go about their evil deeds. Should we, therefore, be more selective than they, in our acts of mercy and compassion?