Turkmenistan Church Tense After Police Raid

Back in April, 10 officials from various Turmenistan government agencies raided a Bible study being held in a private home.

“Some ten officials from the local Religious Affairs Department, the police, secret police, Justice Ministry and Tax Ministry” raided the Bible class from the Greater Grace Protestant church on April 11, said Forum 18, a Norway-based human rights group.

Murad Aksakov of the local administration reportedly defended the raid saying they wanted to find out how many people attended the classes, who those people were, and “whether everything was in order” with the church’s documents. “We went there as guests, and I don’t see anything wrong with that since we have the right to check up on religious organizations,” he said in published remarks.

Pastor Vladimir Tolmachev reportedly said he was warned that the church was not allowed to teach its own members without permission from the government’s Religious Affairs Committee. Officials allegedly told Tolmachev he would receive an official warning.

Jesus in the Fetal Position

The BBC is airing its take on the Easter story. Part of that portrayal is having Jesus being crucified in the fetal position. The BBC says that it has found new historical evidence for this portrayal. Gary Davis at Associated Content has a great column on what the reaction of Christians should be.

This is far from the first time that Jesus Christ and Christianity have been attacked through the use of demeaning portrayals. Jesus has been shown to be a homosexual without conscience, a lover to Mary Magdalene, as well as a Chocolate Jesus, and virtually any negative image you can think of; why?

Why does Jesus Christ bring out such hatred? Jesus Christ brings out hatred from men for two reasons; first, He leaves no room in the Bible for any misunderstanding; He says that He is the one and only God. That means, by definition, He calls every other religion false; there is no room in the Christian Doctrine for any discussion or compromise. People like to say, in criticism of Christians, “They think they have all the answers”.

It gets worse for mankind. Jesus says in the Bible that there is no man or woman worthy of Heaven or, of even being called “good” without being covered by His Blood. What that comment does is call everyone a sinner and essentially says that even “good people” aren’t really “good”. It is not surprising then that Jesus Christ is hated and that people take great pleasure in trying to take away His Godly Character.

More on Sri Lanka

Here’s a warm welcome to our newest Blogroll member, Remember Ambassadors. They’ve got a great article with more info on the violence that’s happening in Sri Lanka.

About 70% of Sri Lanka’s 20 million people are Buddhist. In fact, Sri Lanka has the longest continuous history of Buddhism among all Buddhist nations. The other 30% is divided among a variety of religions, including Islam and Hinduism, with Christians comprising around 6% of the total population.

It appears that hostilities towards Christians is growing. In just the past couple of weeks, there have been a number of attacks against Christians and their church buildings. Though these may be unrelated incidents of persecution, it could be that this marks an escalation of violence against Christians in general!

China Cracking Down Ahead of Olympics

BP Sports is reporting that China seems to be in the midst of a crackdown on Christians before the Olympics.

“We seem to be seeing a crackdown ahead of the Olympics. Whether that’s to send a message to the church to lay low or whether it is to make sure that anybody who might cause international embarrassment is taken care of ahead of time, I don’t know,” Todd Nettleton, a spokesman for Voice of the Martyrs, told Baptist Press. “But we do see an increase in the level of arrests, the level of house church services being raided, that sort of activity.

“We also have seen a number of foreigners who are Christians who, when the time came to renew their visa they have been denied a new visa and told that they had to leave the country,” Nettleton added. “So it’s happening both amongst the house churches of native Chinese people as well as foreign Christians who are living and working in China. They’re finding that they’re no longer welcome.”

Sri Lanka Christians Facing Attacks

BosNewsLife is reporting that attacks on Christians in Sri Lanka have been on the rise lately.

Britain-based Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW), a major rights group, told BosNewsLife there this month saw a “dramatic” increase in attacks against Christians in the country, including Monday, March 3 when the Zion Mount Prayer House in Sri Lanka’s Mulaitivu District was set on fire. “The pastor, his wife, child and two other people were inside at the time, although it is believed they were able to escape.”

The previous day ten Bible School students in Lunuwila, Putlam District, were reportedly attacked by ten masked men on motorbikes.

The violence apparently occurred as the students of the Believers Church Bible College were walking from the railway station. “They were beaten, kicked and attacked with rods. More attackers arrived in a van and dragged one student into the vehicle, where he was beaten and kicked. Nine students were treated in hospital for injuries,” CSW said in a statement.

Exiled Chinese Pastor Has Guarded Hopes

The Rev. Bob Fu of the Chinese Aid Association says in the Ecumenical News International that while the relative freedom that Chinese Christians might experience the year of the Beijing Olympics could be short-lived, he has high hopes for the future.

Concerning religious harrassment in China in 2008, Fu noted, “It may decrease a little, in terms of cases of persecution, given the Olympic diplomacy and image-making gestures.” These efforts had trigged in him a desire that the statements about religious freedom of the Chinese leadership would be translated into genuine policy instead of being temporary diplomatic manoeuvres.

“I am very hopeful and optimistic for the future of the Christian faith in China. And I think eventually in the next two decades or so, China will become a world Christian hub for the 21st century,” Fu told ENI.

Losing Your Home For Christ

A great article on Cross Rhythms tells the story of a Bangladeshi Christian who lost his home to a fire.

He lost his house in a fire at around 8 in the evening of 8th January this year. “The house was burned because we have been worshipping in his house and leading Bible study every week. [So] his house was targeted,” said another Christian who reported the incident.

The article goes on to ponder the question of how those of us who hold Bible studies in our homes would react if this happened to us.

Ashraful is married with two sons and a daughter. He has two cows for his small business and both were lost in the fire.

What would it mean for us to lose our livelihood and be unable to support our family, because of our faith?

Most of us have experienced some isolation for our faith - people think we’re a bit odd. But how many of us experience direct opposition from our neighbours? How many of us actually know our neighbours that well?

At the time of the fire, Ashraful was in another village to attend a worship service. His mother-in-law was present that night, and suffered minor injuries in one hand. His daughter was also inside the house when it went up in flames; it was a miracle that she came out unscathed.

How would we feel if our faith put our loved ones at risk?

Following Christ is not a decision to take lightly. It’s not about making a decision to allow God to solve all of our problems without actually changing the way we live. In John 15:20, Jesus said, “If they persecuted me, they will persecute me also.” And Paul said in 2 Corinthians 12:10, “…for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.”

May God give us strength and faith to live up to these words.

Christian Loses Eye at Hands of Pakistani Muslims

In yet another story of Muslim mobs attacking Christians, Christian News Today is reporting that a Muslim gouged out the eye of a Christian Pakistani with a dagger after he refused to kneel down.

“We will take out eyes of every infidel who shall dare to look straight in our eyes,” the PCP quoted one of the Muslims as saying.

Khariat Masih, who advanced to release John from the mob’s clutches suffered injuries to his head, abdomen and legs after he was attacked with an axe.

The area Christian Councilor, Basharat Masih, rushed to defuse tension and to prevent attackers but he was brutally beaten with sticks. His mother Salima Bibi fell to save his son Basharat Masih from attackers but she was also dragged by hair in courtyard, said the story.

Later, Muslim mob broke out doors, which have been closed in fear of attack and dragged out children, men, women and elders. In gunfire, mob disgraced women and tortured men before their families, the story said.

The police came after attack and arrested Christians instead to registering any case against the Muslims. The police officials later started inquiry of incident in light of a property dispute between the two groups, the story maintained.

On the intervention of senior officials, John Masih, Khariat Masih, Basharat Masih, Salima Bibi, and three other were admitted in hospital. John Masih and Khariat Masih are said to be in critical condition.

Christian Students Attacked in Nigeria by Muslims

Muslim students in Nigeria are turning to deception and violence to get Christian students thrown out of public high schools, according to report in Christian News Today. A group of Muslim students accused a Christian student of writing a “blasphemous” article about Muhammad, and consequently went on a rampage.

One of the injured minors who suffered knife and machete wounds, Ahmadu Inuwa, said the accused Christian student, Ashiru Danlami, could not possibly have written the alleged English-language article as he could hardly speak in English, much less write in the language. Inuwa said school authorities had established this fact.

The Rev. Samaila Kogo of the Evangelical Church of West Africa (ECWA), from Sumaila, told Compass his investigations showed that Muslim students wrote and published the blasphemous article as a pretext for attacking Christian students. This strategy, he said, is used in schools across northern Nigeria to force Christian students out of schools.

The enfuriating part is that the school tried to expel the student, not because it believed he had written the article, but because the school knew about the Muslim students’ plans to attack the Christians if they continued attending the school.

“In spite of the suspension of Danlami from school, the plan to attack Christian students there went on, and this forced all these Christian students to flee from the school,” Rev. Kogo said. “It was at this point that the school authority and the police met and decided that the Christian students be called back to school with an assurance that nothing would happen to them.”

Nevertheless, only two of the 57 Christian students who had fled threats dared to return to the school, he said. Inuwa and Isiaku Dogo – final-year students with only a few months to graduate – felt they needed to be in class to prepare for finals. Muslim students assaulted them with knives and machetes.

Having injured the two Christian students, Christian sources said, the Muslim students went directly to the town’s police station, where they killed the Christian police officer and burned down the police station.

This is another case of a society that cows in fear of violent Muslims instead of standing up to them and demanding that they obey the laws of civility and common decency. Pray for our brothers and sisters in Christ in Nigeria that they will stand strong in their faith and defend the Gospel.

Against Separation of Church and State

Bobby Keith has a great article arguing against the separation of church and state. Here’s an excerpt:

The phrase “separation of church and state” was used by Jefferson in a letter that he wrote to the Baptists of Danbury, CT in 1802. This group of Baptists, a minority in the state, were being persecuted because they did not conform to the views of the Congregationalists, who were not only the religious majority in the state, but also held the elective offices in the state. The Baptists were afraid that their freedom to worship God in their own way was endangered.

In Jefferson’s response, he writes, “Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should “make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” thus building a wall of separation between Church & State.”

Read the whole article to see how he makes his case.