WASHINGTON – As the hype over secularists’ “War Against Christmas” reaches fever pitch, a Christmas battle of sorts will be fought today on Capitol Hill between Senators Santorum and Kennedy over the holiday’s meaning. The Pennsylvania Republican will frame Christmas in terms of worldwide religious freedom, part of a “Christmas Under Siege Around the World” conference highlighting Christian persecution in oppressive regimes. The Massachusetts Democrat, meanwhile, will headline an event defining “the true meaning of Christmas” as the need to raise the federal minimum wage.

Mr. Santorum, who founded and serves as co-sponsor of the Congressional Working Group on Religious Freedom, will be joined by several Christian leaders and religious-freedom activists at an event sponsored by Freedom House’s Center for Religious Freedom, to be held at the Capitol this afternoon. The conference will address increasing oppression of Christians in North Korea, China, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Egypt, Iran, Indonesia, Vietnam, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, India, Nigeria, and the countries of the former Soviet Union.

The director of the Center for Religious Freedom and the vice chairwoman of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, Nina Shea, said that part of the purpose of the conference was to call attention to the fact that Christian persecution is more prevalent now than at any point in the past two millennia. “There’s monumental levels of unspeakable suffering for faith by Christians,” Ms. Shea said. While “Christian persecution” is usually associated with Christianity’s first two centuries, it is more widespread now than ever, Ms. Shea said, because of the increasing numbers of Christians around the world who live in regimes hostile to their faith.

The persecution, Ms. Shea said yesterday, is happening in Vietnam, “where Vietnamese were beaten in order to recant their faith. In Iran, where a Christian convert was just stabbed to death and another is in prison for apostasy. In Saudi Arabia, where foreign workers who were Christian were subject to police raids and imprisonment this year. … These are the kinds of cases we’re going to be talking about tomorrow.”

Another USCIRF commissioner and the Roman Catholic archbishop of Denver, Charles Chaput, will also be participating in the conference, and will highlight recent acts of Christian persecution in Indonesia. In prepared remarks that Archbishop Chaput will deliver tomorrow obtained by The New York Sun, he will discuss the murders this fall of Christian children in Sulawesi, Indonesia.

In October, according to press accounts, three teenage schoolgirls – all cousins – were beheaded by six male assailants in black shirts and masks as they walked through a cocoa plantation on their way to a private Christian high school. Their heads were left outside a church. A fourth cousin survived, but was hospitalized after receiving deep machete wounds to her face and neck.

“Those murders were not isolated or random incidents,” Archbishop Chaput wrote. “They were part of a brutal, ongoing war by Islamic militants against the country’s Christian minority. Three more Christian girls and a Christian couple were shot in separate attacks in November.” Unlike many other Muslim countries, the archbishop wrote, Indonesia is a democracy with a constitutionally guaranteed freedom of religion – yet violence against its Christian minority has increased over the last decade.

Anti-Christian persecution and discrimination worldwide, the archbishop wrote, are “ugly” and “growing,” adding, “the mass media generally ignore or downplay its gravity.”

Focusing more of the press attention consumed by the “Christmas wars” on those being slain for their faith is an important benefit of conferences like today’s, the chairman of the North Korea Freedom Day and a leading North Korea freedom activist, Suzanne Scholte, said yesterday.

Little press attention was given to a recent USCIRF report documenting atrocities against North Korean Christians, even as the church in North Korea grows in the shadows, Ms. Scholte said. “I know, for example, that a lot of believers don’t have Bibles, but they’ve memorized whole passages and sections of the Bible because they’re afraid to have a Bible,” Ms. Scholte said.

“There are more martyrs today than there have been in the history of Christianity,” Ms. Scholte said. “We kind of take for granted the freedoms we have here.”

Mr. Santorum, in an e-mail to the Sun, said of today’s conference: “As millions of Christians around the world are prohibited in the coming weeks from celebrating or observing one of their most important holy days, that of Christmas, it is an appropriate time for us to remember their suffering and to work to advance religious freedom for all.”

His Senate colleague, Mr. Kennedy, however, will spend his holiday energies highlighting “the ‘true meaning of Christmas’ and the minimum wage,” and demanding that Republicans eliminate the “silent slavery of poverty” by rescinding their “tax breaks for the rich” and increasing the federal minimum wage.

At a press conference this morning in front of the Capitol Christmas tree, Mr. Kennedy, joined by Democratic members of Congress, will kick off a campaign to frame Republican budget cuts as antithetical to the spirit of Christmas that will continue through the rest of the congressional session, a spokeswoman for the senator, Laura Capps, said.

In response to a request for further comment on Mr. Kennedy’s campaign, Ms. Capps directed the Sun to statements made by Mr. Kennedy on the floor of the Senate Monday.

After criticizing proposed reductions in a variety of welfare programs including Medicaid, food stamps, and Head Start, Mr. Kennedy denounced Republicans by saying: “Are these actions consistent with the spirit of this holiday season?”

“Rather than debate whether the word ‘Christmas’ should appear in our stores and on our greeting cards,” Mr. Kennedy said, “shouldn’t we be living out the hope that came from the first Christmas and do more for our fellow citizens than greater tax breaks for the rich and greater hardship for the poor and everyone else?”

According to Mr. Kennedy’s speech, the senator’s Christmas gifts to America would include redistributing banks’ profits to college students to pay for their education, providing federal assistance for home-heating costs, and raising the minimum wage.