Last Saturday, hundreds of Christians gathered for a special event in Washington, D.C. to “rise up as one voice for the persecuted Church.”
The event, titled March for the Martyrs, was hosted by Gia Chacon, the founder of the non-profit organization, For The Martyrs. Up to 1,000 Christians from across the U.S. gathered at the National Mall on Saturday for a kick-off rally, followed by a prayer march to the White House, and the evening event “Night for the Martyrs” held at the JW Marriott hotel.
“I think now more than ever, it’s important that Christians across all denominations gather together as one unified voice,” Chacon said in a recent interview with The Christian Post. “It’s so important that we’re standing up now, as brothers and sisters in Christ in the United States, being a voice for our persecuted brothers and sisters.”
While she commended President Joe Biden for becoming “the first United States president to recognize the Armenian genocide,” she asserted that she would like to see “more action taken for Christian minorities in other countries to protect them from [current] religious persecution.”
Chacon explained that she wanted to hold the March of the Martyrs in Washington D.C. after seeing Open Doors USA’s findings of a 30 percent increase in Christian persecution last year. Chacon hoped that by hosting her event in the nation’s capital, her message regarding increasing global Christian persecution would both reach the Body of Christ as a whole and the Biden administration.
“We’re marching for the over 340 million Christians around the world who suffer for the name of Jesus,” she told attendees on Saturday. “We’re marching for the people who lay down their lives every single day to go to church, to own a Bible. To even say that they believe in Jesus, in some countries, is illegal.”
She cited another statistic from Open Doors USA that said there was a 60 percent increase in Christians martyred for their faith last year.
“If Christians continue to be persecuted for their faith, why does this issue have so much silence around it?” she asked. “Why does the world remain silent as Christians are targeted and executed for their faith in Christ?”
Chacon first hosted the March of the Martyrs in Long Beach, California, in September 2020 in response to the restrictions placed on houses of worship during the COVID-19 pandemic. Her goal, she said, is to make March of the Martyrs an annual event at the nation’s capital.
Saturday’s event featured various speakers, including social media personality Jacob Coyne, Allie Beth Stuckey, host of the podcast “Relatable,” and worship leader Sean Feucht.
