CAIRO — Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi met for the first time with evangelical leaders from the United States who expressed their concerns about religious freedom and persecution of Christians in the majority Muslim nation.
The Nov. 1 meeting at the presidential palace in Cairo lasted nearly three hours. Topics included the persecution of Egyptian Christians by Islamic extremists, according to The Christian Post.
U.S. representatives included Family Research Council President and Baptist Pastor Tony Perkins, religious freedom advocate and informal Trump administration adviser Johnnie Moore, Jerusalem-based evangelical writer Joel Rosenberg, Egyptian-born Christian pastor and author Michael Youssef and former U.S. Congresswoman Michele Bachmann. Andrea Zaki, the leader of the Protestant community in Egypt, also was in attendance.
“We talked about education, we talked about the economy, we talked about housing, we talked about church law, the role of a Christian in Egypt, what are Christians’ civil rights, what is the government doing to improve the status of Christians and protect them,” Rosenberg told the Post.
The evangelical leaders expressed optimism for religious freedom in Egypt, a country that ranks as the 21st worst nation in the world when it comes to Christian persecution, according to Open Doors USA’s 2017 World Watch List. (TAB)
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