Real persecution.

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It is a recurring bleat of the conservative Christian that they are being "persecuted" by nasty liberals in the Church or by our increasingly secularised society.  Then you hear of suicide bombers blowing up Coptic Churches in Egypt and threats to Coptic communities in Europe http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-12108677

I declare a slight interest here: when I was Priest in Charge of Kirkcaldy there was a Coptic congregation there. http://new.copticscotland.org/  They had bought the old Inverteil parish Church from the Kirk and used it for their worship.  Their community was drawn from East Central Scotland (Dundee and Edinburgh) and they enriched the local ecumenical scene greatly by their presence.  The difference between their experience of persecution and the persecution allegedly faced by the likes of (Lord) George Carey, Michael Scott-Joynt and those Anglicans not in favour of wifie priests is stark: the purple shirted "victims" sit in the House of Lords, can write letters to the Times and get yelping space in the Torygraph.  In Egypt, the Copts get blown up.  The whingers in purple might like to reflect on this before their next public girn.

A section from the Coptic Prayer of the Veil (roughly equivalent to the Anglican General Thanksgiving) may be worth our using as we pray for truly persecuted Christians:

"All envy, all temptation, all the influence of Satan, the intrigue of wicked people, the rising up of enemies, hidden and manifest, take away for us, and from all thy people and from this thy holy place.  But as for those things which are useful and good, provide us with them.  For thou art the holy one, who gave us the authority to trample on serpents and scorpions and every power of the enemy."

(As translated by Richard Marsh in "Prayers from the East" SPCK 2004)