World Watch Monitor, July 26, 2018

Churches in China are becoming more careful over who they let in to their buildings, as government pressure increases, and a local source says the authorities are “trying to stir up larger more influential churches” to see how the people will react.

The government is especially wary of “high profile” churches that have access to international networks and is also closing some church venues.  More landlords are refusing to continue rental contracts with churches.

2 weeks ago, a Bible Reformed Church was forced to stop its meeting for a third time in a month following a police raid – some of the Christians were arrested for questioning.  The church was also fined 50,000 yuan (US $7,500).

While China has accumulated wealth and emerged as a major player on the world stage, the underlying dark spirits of atheistic Marxism have not disappeared.

Barnabas Fund, 11 July 2018

There has been a troubling incident where, once again, at the order of St Paul’s officials in London, a man was apparently arrested outside the Cathedral for simply reading aloud the King James Bible. This is almost the very translation of the Bible that Tyndale was martyred for almost 500 years ago. 

The man asked the policeman why he was being told to move on while other people were standing there talking, before adding he was a preacher and had been reading the King James Bible there for weeks.  The police officer told him, “I haven’t got a problem with what you are doing, but staff here have asked you to move off of the property.”  When the preacher continues to politely protest, the officer says, “Then I will arrest you for a breach of the peace.”

 In February 2017, a CPS lawyer told Bristol magistrates court, in relation to the arrest of a street preacher in Bristol, that publicly quoting from the King James Bible “in the context of modern British Society, must be considered to be abusive and is a criminal matter”.

 This disturbing trend against public preaching and Bible reading is evidence of the gradual erosion of Religious Freedom taking place in the UK.

Barnabas News, 10 July 2018

Anxious to avoid jeopardising the peace talks before the summit between President Trump and Chairman Kim Jong-un, South Korea clamped down on a twelve-year-long effort of Christians to send Bibles and Scriptural materials by balloon into North Korea.

GPS tracking had confirmed that thousands of Bible-filled flash drives, donated by US students, were successfully dropped into North Korean territory.

Koreans living in China have been carrying out missionary activity for the last 20 years, ministering to North Koreans visiting family in China or having escaped across the border.

The mission team teaches new Christians the Lord’s Prayer, the Apostles’ Creed as well as Bible verses, and sends them back into North Korea to share the Gospel – at risk of imprisonment.

Barnabas News, 10 July 2018

Christian business owners in a predominately Christian Iraqi neighbourhood must pay an extra fee to renew their business licences.

According to the local news site Ankawa Today, the tax is being “exclusively imposed by the Kurdish government on the people of Ankawa and not the other Kurdish towns” and is “clearly discriminatory against Christians”.

Christian residents and business owners claim they are also charged 10% tax when they sell their properties, compared with only 6% in other towns, and are facing discrimination including harassment by the KDP political police.

The news comes amid warnings this week that the number of Christians has fallen by two-thirds in Iraq due to violence during Saddam Hussein’s fall and the rise of Islamic State. It is estimated that there were 1.5 million Christians in Iraq before 2003, but fewer than 375,000 today.

BBC, 1 July 2018

When an imam in Nigeria saw hundreds of desperate, frightened families running into his village, he decided to risk his life to save theirs.  They were fleeing from a neighbouring village – a mainly Christian community.

About 300 suspected cattle herders, mostly Muslims,  had started shooting and burning down their homes.

The imam hid 262 men, women and children in his home and mosque.  The armed men stormed into the Muslim village chasing those who had fled the Christian village and demanded that the imam bring out those he was hiding.

But the defenceless imam refused to comply, refused to allow the armed men into the mosque, pleaded with them, and threw himself on the floor in front of them.  He began to cry and wail, asking them to leave, and to his amazement the herdsmen did go.

He later told the BBC that he wanted to help because more than 40 years ago, the Christians in the area had allowed the Muslims to build the mosque and had freely given over the land to the Muslim community.

World Watch Monitor, June 29, 2018

Christian groups have welcomed an announcement by a Buddhist chief state minister in north-east India that a 1978 law preventing conversions from one faith to another will soon be repealed.

Between the 1960s and 1980s some Christians in the state were subjected to torture, public beatings and detention, as their activity was resisted amid concerns of exploitation and the erosion of traditional cultures.

The 1978 act prohibits “conversion from one religious faith to any other”.  However since its enactment the proportion of Christians in the state has shot up as thousands of followers of tribal religions embraced Christianity.

Open Doors, 29 June 2018

The persecution of Rutilio began in 2008, when he met Jesus through a group of missionaries.

Although Colombian law promotes religious freedom, Christianity is penalised in many indigenous communities since it is seen as an attack on the ancestral and shamanic principles that govern these communities. 

Rutilio was forced to attend a trial where they tried to make him renounce his faith. After he refused to do so, he was made to do forced labour for the entire community.

Rutilio still lives in that indigenous community, continues to resist persecution, and is an example of peace and God’s love.  He has now won the respect of his community and leads a group of faithful indigenous Christians, resisting those who see Christ as a threat. 

CSW

When we look at the horrific situation in North Korea it can be hard to retain our optimism despite Kim Jong Un and Donald Trump’s planned meeting this month. The UN describes the human rights situation as ‘without parallel in the contemporary world’. At least 100,000 people are held in prison camps, regularly experiencing slave labour and torture. 

There is no open expression of religious faith, and if you’re caught with a Bible you could face execution, or a life sentence in a prison camp. Oppression and tyranny are a regular feature of daily life. 

So it’s our prayer that President Trump will raise these violations when the leaders meet; and that it will be clear that if there is ever peace in Korea, it will only be when the prison camps are closed, and when human dignity and freedom are respected.

Morning Star News, May 21, 2018

Christians in Nepal are alarmed after this month’s sudden series of arson and bomb attacks on four church buildings. 

Christian leaders in Nepal suspect a coordinated campaign by Hindu extremists.

Police have not made any arrests.  One church leader suspects officials have told police “to not carry out arrests in these cases”.  Another leader said it was obvious that these attacks “are performed by people who are in a network and are well connected to each other.”

Recently a social media movement against Christians “has gathered a lot of support from the Nepali masses.  Attacks … are well-planned and coordinated against the Christian community … the government is doing nothing about this.”

Christian leaders share the view that the rise in attacks against Christians is influenced by the recent rise of anti-Christian policies and hostilities in India.

At the same time, six Christians were arrested for evangelizing.  Evangelizing is prohibited under Nepal’s new constitution which establishes Nepal as a secular and democratic republic.  The constitution seems to protect Hinduism over and against other faiths however.

June 5, 2018 By World Watch Monitor

A Christian pastor and three members of his family have been kidnapped in Burkina Faso’s north-eastern province of Soum, two weeks after the kidnapping of another Christian leader and his wife.

The circumstances of the kidnapping are not yet known, but Islamist militants are known to be active in the region.

The kidnapping of the two Christian clerics have created an atmosphere of anxiety among Christian communities in the land-locked Sahel nation, seen as a model of tolerance in a troubled region.

The country’s 20 million inhabitants have long enjoyed peaceful co-existence.

Until recently, attacks carried out by Islamist militants only targeted military personnel and civil servants in the region, leaving civilians generally untroubled.