The tactic worked. By the time Jerome left the hut three days later, more than 200 people had gone to the computer lab at South Carolina’s Southern Wesleyan University and sent an e-mail letter to their congressman, demanding that America help put a stop to the systematic starvation, rape, torture and enslavement of millions of Sudanese Christians. And the interest of the local press had been piqued.

“They thought I was crazy, because it was so cold and windy — but it worked really well,” says Jerome, who cheerfully endured unseasonably cold 15-degree weather and windburn during his four days as a “slave.” Supportive friends brought him food each day, and stayed to pray and sing.

Jerome and his friends are among hundreds of college students around the country who have recently joined the fight against persecuted people of faith — especially in Sudan.

Last November, more then 200 students, most from Christian colleges, came to Washington, D.C., to learn more about religious persecution in Sudan during a two-day conference sponsored by The Center for Religious Freedom. The meetings became the catalyst for the grassroots movement called the National Campaign of Conscience for Sudan, now spreading across campuses all over the country. The students formed an executive committee, the first goal of which was to jumpstart what students hope will be a massive email and letter campaign to Congress.

Many students swung into action on Feb. 12, the birthday of America’s Great Emancipator — Abraham Lincoln. They held prayer vigils, sit-ins, and protest rallies, and wrote editorials in their local newspapers. In less than three weeks, students persuaded 3,500 people to send e-mail to their members of Congress, demanding that they take strong measures to stop Sudan’s religious genocide.

And it IS genocide. According to Freedom House, an organization that fights for human rights and liberty around the world, nearly 2 million Sudanese Christians have been murdered by the country’s militant Islamic regime since 1983. Its leaders bomb and raid undefended refugee camps, hospitals and feeding centers in Southern Sudan. The government’s refusal to allow donated food supplies to be delivered to the South’s Christian and animist population has bought more than 2.5 million people to the brink of starvation; tens of thousands have already died.

Those who don’t die from starvation face the horrors of life under radical Islam: Women and children are taken as slaves and concubines and forced to convert to Islam. Young Christian men are also forced to convert — and then forced into the Sudanese army. Even children are driven into what Sudan’s government calls “the Lord’s Resistance Army,” in which mere youngsters are forced to participate in the kidnapping, assault and murder of other children.

The horror is unimaginable — the kind most of us would prefer not to think about. But students with the National Campaign of Conscience for Sudan are hoping that through their efforts, Americans both on and off the university campus WILL begin thinking about — and acting on, these horrors.

Among them is Grace Chiu, a first-year Harvard graduate student. “It’s very easy for the average college student to be content with the comfortable life that we live here in the West,” Chiu says. But “Scripture tells us that we must speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves and defend the rights of the poor and needy.”

In order to help others do that, Chiu says, the Campaign is putting a big emphasis on educating students about persecution issues. It’s crucial, Chiu says, “that people know the issues of what they are standing up for. If they become too emotional and caught up in the glory of protesting,” she warns, “it’s very easy for them to loose focus” — and then the campaign will fizzle out.

Fizzling out, however, does not appear to be likely among the students who ARE educating themselves about the suffering of their brothers and sisters in Christ. They’re coming up with a phalanx of activities to put — and keep — persecution issues in the public eye.

For example, students at Cedarville College in Ohio are holding meetings in homes that formerly belonged to the Underground Railroad. Students from several Philadelphia schools, including St. Joseph's University, Messiah, Temple, Villanova and Eastern, are planning to bind their hands together with chains during a March prayer vigil in front of the Liberty Bell for enslaved Sudanese Christians.

At Wheaton College, students posted tutorials on letter-writing campaigns to Congress on all of the on-campus computer labs. Other schools are planning such attention-getting events as “slave auctions” to wake up their fellow students.

Their efforts are impressing long-time persecution resistance fighters. Michael Horowitz, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute in Washington, D.C. who has been deeply involved in efforts to help the suffering church, says the students with the Campaign are “utterly amazing. It was students who lit up the country’s conscience on apartheid and turned South Africa into a pariah regime,” Horowitz notes. “I hope these students will do the same for Sudan.”

Horowitz is grateful, as well, to Duane Litfin, president of Wheaton College, and Bob Andringa, president of the Coalition of Christian Colleges and Universities, who are, Horowitz says, doing so much to aid students in their efforts to help the persecuted church.

Assistance from the West is what is needed, not just for Sudanese Christians, but for persecuted people of faith throughout the developing world. In China, hundreds of house church pastors and priests have been arrested, tortured and sometimes killed. In India, nuns have been raped and Christian missionaries — including, recently, a family from Australia — are murdered.

It’s not just Christians who are suffering. In Tibet, hundreds of Buddhist monks and nuns have been imprisoned, tortured and even killed.

Harvard’s Grace Chiu has a last word of advice for those who want to join the battle to help the persecuted church around the world. What we need to remember, she says, is that “this is not a battle of flesh and blood. This is really a spiritual battle,” and Christians must undergird all their efforts with prayer. Chiu quoted Colossians 3:32: “Whatever your task, work heartily, as serving the Lord and not men.”

When it comes to rescuing those who worship the risen Savior, Chiu says, “We’re not doing this for the sake of ourselves, or the fact that we feel better because we’re doing our part to help other people. We’re doing this for the sake of the gospel — and nothing else.”