WASHINGTON (ABP) — Launching a major effort to educate churches about the perils of taking tax dollars for social-service ministries, the Baptist Joint Committee and the Interfaith Alliance released a guide March 13 that will be distributed to 20,000 houses of worship.
One Christian was seriously injured and 35 more were hospitalized when about 100 Buddhist extremists assaulted the congregation of the Sanasum Sevana (New Life) Christian Center as they prayed on Sunday morning, February 18. The church is located in Nurwarawatte, near Hinguragoda, 220 kilometers northeast of the Sri Lankan capital, Colombo.
Responding to urgent pleas for help, Christian Aid has joined a campaign to raise $1.2 million to rescue Christians feared targeted for conversion or extermination by Muslim jihad warriors in Indonesia.
Sharply different perspectives on religious persecution in Indonesia have been laid before the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom.
Instead of convicting the Muslim murder suspects accused of killing 21 Christians in last year’s El-Kosheh massacre, a judge in southern Egypt has accused the local Coptic clergy of responsibility for the three-day rampage.
More Christians died for their faith in the twentieth century than at any other time in history, says Christian Solidarity International. Global reports indicate that over 150,000 Christians were martyred last year, chiefly outside of the United States. However, statistics are changing: persecution of Christians is on the increase in the United States. What’s happening to bring about this change?
A third New Year’s Eve attack against a Christian church in the Central Asian state of Tajikistan has been confirmed this past week by Korean Christians linked with Grace Sonmin Church in Dushanbe.
After eight days in jail, two Pakistani evangelists arrested in Jacobabad for distributing Christian literature and tapes of the documentary “Jesus” film were released on bail January 19.
Amid fears that Hindu extremists are persecuting Christians in greater numbers, Nepali church leaders launched the Forum for Human Concern in Nepal in January to safeguard religious freedom and garner international support for the release of four Christians jailed since October 29 on charges of proselytizing.
SANTA ANA (January 17, 2001) — A Colombian pastor and his family have fled for their lives after ultra-rightist forces killed three members of the pastor’s church, reports a church leader in Medellin.
A growing body of evidence confirms reports that Christians in Indonesia’s Maluku Islands have been forced to convert to Islam under threat of death, although Muslim clerics deny the claims.
A sizeable Christian community is among the Karen people group in Myanmar (formerly Burma) facing abuse at the hands of the country’s military regime, according to Newsroom-Online, an Internet news service based in London.
Members of the radical Hindu group the Bajrang Dal beat two Christian workers, David Massey and Simon Sakria, for more than two hours on January 4 for showing a “Jesus” film in Jehra, a remote village on the Rajasthan-Gujarat border in western India. Church leaders said the two Christians had gone to visit the house of a local pastor when they were attacked.
A prominent Indian church leader is warning of a possible bloodbath against Christians by Hindu fundamentalists.
Indonesia’s Christian and political leaders are convinced that the widespread Christmas Eve church bombings were meant to provoke all-out war between the Muslim and Christian communities in the country.
GARDEN GROVE, CA (December 23, 2000) – Two ministry leaders from Orange County, California, have thrown their support behind President Elect George W. Bush, who met with religious leaders Wednesday (December 20) to discuss ways faith-based groups can provide social services.
Authorities Urged to Determine Whether Cults are ‘Harmful to Society’ by Alex Buchan LONDON (Compass) — The Chinese government sponsored an International Symposium on Evil Cults in Beijing November 8-10 that urged local authorities not to inquire too closely into the beliefs of accused cults. Instead, authorities were encouraged to assess whether they are “harmful to society” — a catch-all criterion that some house church leaders fear could lead to their own movements being classed as cults. Nearly 60 academics from all over the world attended the Beijing Symposium, and it was full of predictable denunciation of the Chinese folk … Read more
Turkmenistan’s political police evicted a Protestant Christian pastor with his wife and two children from their home near Ashgabad on December 9, confiscating their personal deed of ownership and sealing the gate to prevent their return.
Maluku’s head of police admitted that authorities cannot dislodge the hundreds of Muslim jihad fighters scattered throughout eastern Indonesia’s Maluku province and who have escalated the inter-religious conflict as Christmas approaches. More than 100 Christians were reported killed in November fighting.
“It is disappointing that the suffering of the Christians due to the conflict in the Malukus has been insufficiently exposed in various reports on a national and international level,” stated the U.S. Consul General Robert Pollard.