We don’t need to give Christians preference. But we should recognize that Middle Eastern Christians, along with Yazidis, Mandeans and others, are facing an ethnic cleansing, and that confronting this should be a global human rights priority. As we celebrate the holidays, let’s speak up for those for whom faith is a matter not of casual worship but of fear, rape and murder.

As we celebrate the holidays, let’s remember that this is one of those savage epochs when some families must choose between their faith and their lives. It is an echo of when Nero burned Christians alive, or when self-described Christians unleashed pogroms against Jews.

Partly because of allergies about religion, the international response has been utterly ineffective. Liberals are sometimes reluctant to champion Christians who are persecuted for their faith. And conservatives are too quick to champion only Christians, neglecting other religious minorities — such as the Yazidis — who suffer even worse fates. One result of this “God gulf” is that the Western response to atrocities against religious oppression is pathetically inadequate.

The Islamic State in October released a video that is a stomach-wrenching glimpse of the worst kind of religious repression. Three Syrian Christian men, one a doctor, are made to kneel in the desert in orange jumpsuits and state their religion. Behind each is an executioner who then uses a handgun to fire a bullet into the back of each Christian’s head.

Some Christian leaders in America want President Obama to declare that a genocide is underway against Christians in the Middle East. I don’t think I’d call it a genocide, but it is absolutely the religious version of an ethnic cleansing.

In 1910, Christians made up 14 percent of the population of the Middle East. Today they are about 4 percent, the result of emigration, lower birthrates — and religious repression that threatens the viability of Christianity in much of the region where it was born.

The United States bears some responsibility, for in Iraq our invasion in 2003 led to a drastic worsening of this ethnic cleansing. The number of Christians in Iraq has fallen by half since 2003, and a religious minority called the Mandeans says that almost 90 percent of its members have been killed or have fled Iraq, according to an indispensable report of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom.

The most repressed group in the Middle East may be the Yazidis, an ancient group with their own monotheistic religion. In August 2014, the Islamic State invaded Yazidi areas, immediately killing some 5,000 people, mostly men. About 3,000 women and girls were kidnapped and, in many cases, turned into sex slaves. One was just 9 years old and handed over to an ISIS fighter to be raped; no one knows what happened to her.

Laila Khoudeida, a Yazidi woman who came to the United States in 1999 and is now a social worker in Nebraska, spends her evenings offering long-distance counseling to Yazidi women and girls who have escaped their captors. She told me of Hedya, who was 16 when ISIS fighters seized her family.

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