But a good story isn't necessarily a true one. While it's clear that there are countries where it's tough to be a practicing Catholic or Protestant, claims like Abe Rosenthal's round assertion that Christians are "now the most widely persecuted believers in the world" seem more than slightly exaggerated. Christian persecution's failure to catch on as a public concern may have something to do with the weakness of some of the claims.

While you can't judge the message by the messenger, the same crowd - Nina Shea of the human-rights group Freedom House, Michael Horowitz of the conservative Hudson Institute, Focus on the Family's Dr. James Dobson - seems to show up whenever the "vast and unreported" persecution of Christians comes up for discussion.

And the fact-checking leaves much to be desired. Proponents bruit a statistic of "150,000 martyrs per year," but that number seems to come out of a polemicists' daisy chain - with Focus on the Family quoting a statistic compiled by International Bulletin of Missionary Research, which is then picked up by the Puebla Program on Religious Freedom, etc.

There's also a small issue of what constitutes religious persecution. Indonesia is currently trying a Jesuit priest for harboring political activists. The story gives a disturbing view (as if there's any other kind) of basic rights in Indonesia, but whether does calling it religious persecution clarify or confuse the issue?

Finally, there's a question about whether Christians are really being singled out for special treatment. Egypt is one of the countries on the New York proscribed list, and is often denounced for its treatment of Coptic Christians. But while Copts often suffer abuse from individuals in Egypt, there is no evidence of systematic governmental abuse. In fact, while Copts complain about general governmental neglect, Egypt's government doesn't interfere with freedom of worship, and its department of antiquities has recently undertaken some multimillion-dollar church renovations.

Egypt does, however, have a hair-raising record on treatment of Muslims. As its war on Islamic terrorism heats up, the country seems to be accelerating its rate of summary arrests, jailhouse torture and disappearing of men and women identified as Islamic extremists. Understandable, maybe, from a police force desperate to keep busloads of German tourists from exploding, but not a good standard for freedom of worship.

Similar claims could be made about China - where the treatment of Christians is no worse than that of Tibetan Buddhists - or about Saudi Arabia - where, as a State Department report dryly notes, "freedom of religion does not exist." In just about every case where Christians are denied religious freedoms, it's not because they're Christians, but because they're religious (and disturbingly, Christians can still be found at the top of the social ladder in quite a few multi-religious societies: You'll find Christians throughout the Middle East, but none of them live in refugee camps).

None of this negates the seriousness of the claims. Religious abuse is well-documented around the world, and it deserves attention. But all religious believers are persecuted somewhere. To pretend Christians in particular are being thrown to the lions again serves no good purpose, and several bad ones. At the local level, it is encouraging the absurd and wasteful trend of city governments' dabbling in foreign policy. At the national level it prevents us from engaging a seemingly more flexible regime in Iran - indeed, it encourages an hysterical, poll-watching foreign policy that can only do damage. And at the highest level of all, focusing exclusively on the concerns of one religious group, as we're doing now, is very un-Christian.