Former Port Wentworth Police Officer Jacob Kersey seen in this undated photo. | Courtesy photo
Attorneys representing a former Georgia police officer who expressed his Christian beliefs on social media say he was forced out of his job because of religious discrimination.
Port Wentworth Police Officer Jacob Kersey resigned in January after being told by his supervisors he could be terminated for sharing his religious views on marriage.
Kersey, 19, was placed on paid administrative leave following his refusal to take down a Facebook post from two days earlier in which he paraphrased the Apostle Paul’s letter to the church at Ephesus.
“God designed marriage. Marriage refers to Christ and the church. That’s why there is no such thing as homosexual marriage,” he wrote.
According to attorneys with First Liberty Institute in Plano, Texas, Kersey was given a letter of notification that warned him he could be fired if he posted any more “offensive” content on social media.
After further meetings with leadership, attorneys say he realized that he faced a choice between compromising his deeply held religious beliefs or continuing as a police officer with the department. He resigned on Jan. 17.
Prior to his resignation, Kersey had been a police officer with Port Wentworth PD since May 2022.
In a letter sent Monday to Port Wentworth Mayor Gary Norton and Assistant Police Chief Major Bradwick Lee Sherrod, attorneys accused Port Wentworth of “unconstitutionally forcing Mr. Kersey out of his job because of his deeply held religious beliefs.”
“The Department’s actions send a message to Christians who hold traditional biblical beliefs about marriage that they are unwelcome as police officers or city employees,” the letter stated.
According to attorneys, in a meeting on Jan. 4 with Norton and Sherrod, Kersey was told that his post about his religious beliefs was the “same thing as saying the N-word and F— all those homosexuals.”
He was also told, according to the letter, that his free speech was “limited due to his position as … a police officer” and that Kersey “could not post things like that.”
After being placed on leave, attorneys say Kersey received a letter of notification from Sherrod explaining that while there was not “sufficient evidence” to terminate him, Kersey could be terminated “for any post on any of his private social media accounts or any other statement or action that could be perceived as offensive.”
Sherrod noted that Kersey’s posts and podcasts are “likely offensive” to certain communities and urged him to “take this situation as a learning lesson.”
Forced to choose between his private religious speech and the job he loved, attorneys say Kersey had no choice but to resign.
Stephanie Taub, senior counsel for First Liberty Institute, said not only does the city owe Kersey an apology, but they also need to create policies that protect the First Amendment rights of city employees.
“It is a blatant violation of state and federal civil rights laws to discriminate against someone for expressing their religious beliefs,” Taub said in a statement. “The city owes Jacob a public apology. And it needs to adopt policies that recognize the free speech and free exercise rights of its employees.
“Forcing Jacob to choose to either censor his private religious speech or remain employed as a police officer is simply unconstitutional.”
In early February, just days after Kersey resigned, Port Wentworth Police Chief Matt Libby announced his retirement in a brief letter.
Speaking with The Christian Post earlier this month, Kersey said he believes Libby was forced to resign.
“The police chief was forced to resign after my story made national headlines,” he inferred, “America wants to know why.”
In addition to demanding a public apology from the other members of the Port Wentworth police command staff, Kersey also wants to know when the city is going to address the story.
“What happened to me should never happen again — not in America and certainly not in Georgia,” he said.
Indian Catholic devotees offer the way of the cross prayers after an Ash Wednesday service at Saint Mary’s Basilica in Secunderabad, the twin city of Hyderabad, on March 5, 2014. | AFP via Getty Images/Noah Seelam
Christians faced harassment in more countries than any other religious group amid the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, according to a recent Pew Research study finding an increase in 45 countries where followers of Christ face social or government abuse or violence since 2012.
The data on restrictions to religion around the globe, released last November, was featured in a Jan. 27 report showing that Christians face harassment in over 155 countries in 2020, an increase from 110 in 2012. The organization’s definition of “harassment” can include a wide range of actions, including verbal abuse to physical violence and killings committed by governments, social groups or individuals. The study captured “cases where individuals or groups feel singled out or unable to express their religious belief or nonbelief.” The study rated 198 countries and territories by their levels of government restrictions on religion and social hostilities involving religion using the same 10-point indexes used in the previous studies.
Pew’s Government Restrictions Index (GRI) measures government laws, policies and actions that restrict religious beliefs and practices, while its Social Hostilities Index (SHI) measures acts of religious hostility by private individuals, organizations or groups in society. Researchers sifted through over a dozen publicly available data sources for the report, including the U.S. Department of State’s annual peports on international religious freedom and annual reports from the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.
Overall, physical harassment related to religion occurred in more than two-thirds of countries in 2020, the research shows. Muslims faced harassment in 145 countries, an increase from 109 in 2012. Jews, who make up 0.2% of the global population, face harassment in 94 countries, up from 71 in 2012.
The study found that Christian groups were “targeted by private individuals and organizations in nine countries” as Christians were often blamed for the rise of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“In Turkey, an Armenian Orthodox church’s door was set on fire, and news reports said the man told police that he acted because “they [Armenian Christians] brought the coronavirus” to Turkey,” the Nov. 27 Pew report states.
“In Egypt, conspiracy theories blamed the pandemic on the Coptic Orthodox Christian minority, which international Christian observers said exacerbated the discrimination the minority group already faced.”
In India, two Christians were beaten and killed while in police custody for violating COVID-19 curfews in Tamil Nadu, according to the U.S. State Department’s annual international religious freedom report.
The study also found a nine-fold increase in countries where non-religious people face harassment. Pew named the United States among 27 countries where “religiously unaffiliated people” were harassed in 2020.
“Restrictions on religion don’t just affect those who are religious. Religiously unaffiliated people also are harassed because of what they believe,” states the Jan. 27 report by research analysts Sarah Crawford and Virginia Villa, which focuses on harassment against the religious unaffiliated.
Pew study says religiously unaffiliated face harassment in the US | Screenshot/Pew Research
The report also found that the religiously unaffiliated faced harassment in 12 majority-Muslim nations and six majority-Christian countries.
Forms of government harassment for atheists, according to Pew, included atheist groups in Croatia — a majority-Catholic country — who alleged the presence of the cross and other Roman Catholic symbolism in public buildings like hospitals and courtrooms were unconstitutional.
And in countries like Pakistan, where Islam is the state-sanctioned religion, atheists are not given a “no religion” option for their identification cards, although the “government requires people to state their religious affiliation.”
Examples of social harassment cited by Pew included a political satirist in Lebanon who called atheism the “religion of donkeys” during a program on a TV channel backed by that nation’s Christian Free Patriotic Movement political party.
While the rise of the religious “nones” isn’t new, Pew predicts the trend could result in the number of Christians of all ages shrinking from 64% to as low as 35% of all Americans by 2070.
The Pew findings come as the global persecution watchdog organization Open Doors reported last year that over 360 million Christians experienced high levels of persecution and discrimination across the globe.
But even as more people shy away from identifying with any religion, many of those who report no religious affiliation still partake in a wide variety of religious and spiritual practices and beliefs.
According to a 202 Baylor University study, many “nones” still attend religious services, pray, meditate, believe in God or a higher power, have religious experiences, and believe in Heaven, Hell and miracles.
Throughout its history, but with renewed vigor in recent years, the atheistic communist Chinese regime has sought to crush or at the very least control Christianity within Chinese borders. Christianity is regarded by the communist leadership as a foreign threat to its control and well-being — one that Mao Zedong endeavored to eliminate altogether. Although Chinese Christians of all denominations have routinely been subject to harassment, torture, detentions, and executions inside China’s borders, the CCP has recently taken more brazenly to hounding those who have fled abroad.
Exodus
Pastor Pan Yongguangand 61 congregants belonging to the Shenzhen Holy Reformed Church fled China to the South Korean island of Jeju in 2019, seeking asylum. The CCP required that the SHRC and its members should join a registered church, one strictly regulated by the regime, or otherwise be disbanded and barred from assembling.
Registered churches are required to display images of Chinese dictator Xi Jinping and communist propaganda alongside or in lieu of religious images. Homilies are censored. Surveillance cameras installed on altars record all church happenings. Additionally, to ensure state atheism takes, people under the age of 18 are barred from participating in religious ceremonies.
Pastor Pan had no intention of registering.
Pressure mounted when the regime, responding to the 2019 pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong, sought to everywhere re-exert its dominance. Pastor Pan said that “quasi-martial law” was consequently imposed on Shenzhen and upon his parish. The SHRC mulled over what to do. The church put the matter to a vote, and the majority elected to leave.
Though they successfully made it to South Korea, it was made abundantly clear both by local authorities and U.S. officials that Pastor Pan’s congregation would be unable to stay. Less than 1% of asylum seekers were permitted to stay in 2019.
Bob Fu of the non-governmental Christian nonprofit China Aid warned, “If they get deported back to China by Korean officials, every member of this church will face extreme punishment.” Fu was not speaking hyperbolically.
Within months of the SHRC’s exodus, Pastor Wang Yi, the founder of one of China’s largest unregistered churches, was sentenced to nine years in prison, denied all political rights, and fined. Yi’s fate is commonplace for Christians in the region.
Spanish journalist Pablo M. Diez has elsewhere noted how Catholic Bishop James Su Zhimin, like others who refused to subordinate themselves to CCP religious regulators, was “disappeared” after “having spent most of his life deprived of his freedom.”
For fear of being returned by South Korea to China to suffer the kind of fate met by Zhimin, Yi, and Zen, the SHRC congregants migrated instead to Thailand, where they believe CCP agents are still stalking them.
Repercussions
Despite escaping China, Pastor Pan and his parish have nevertheless been subject to continued harassments, threats, and surveillance by the CCP. Those they left behind in China have also paid the price for their families’ Christianity, in the way of intimidation, interrogation, and other statist abuses, including the prohibition of a newborn child’s legal status.
The pastor, whom CCP agents have accused of “treason,” “collusion with foreign forces,” and “subversion of state power,” learned that his siblings and mother have been penalized as a result of his actions.
Another congregant’s relative in the mainland was told by communist officers, “Your descendants may suffer.”
The presumed objective of the CCP’s mistreatment of the expat Christians’ relatives is to coerce Pastor Pan and his parish back to China, where if not executed, they may be placed in reeducation camps and forced to renounce their faith.
China is home to tens of millions of Christians. Although the communist Chinese regime stated in 2018 that there were only 44 million Christians within its borders, this is regarded by many to be a gross undercount, as official figures only factor in members of registered Christian groups (in which the SHRC, house Christians, and the underground Catholic Church are not numbered).
A 2011 Pew Forum report indicated the number of Christians, including Protestants and Catholics, exceeded 67 million. The Economist similarly indicated in 2020 that official numbers aren’t reflective of the reality; that Chinese Christians and Muslims together outnumber the membership of the communist party (92 million).
A broader problem
The CCP does not only send its agents abroad to stalk Christians who have fled. Freedom House issued a report last year indicating that China “conducts the most sophisticated, global, and comprehensive campaign of transnational repression in the world.” It targets religious and ethnic minorities (e.g., Christians, Uyghurs, Tibetans, Falun Gong practitioners), political dissidents, human rights activists, and others.
For instance, over 1,500 ethnic Muslim Uyghurs have been detained in the Middle East and North Africa, many of whom have been extradited back to China. Thousands more have been targeted, hit with cyber attacks, or have had their families back in China threatened.
The CCP has also activated agents in the United States. Earlier this year, five CCP spies were charged with stalking, harassing, and spying on Chinese nationals in New York.
In October 2020, eight illegal agents of the CCP were charged for surveilling, locating, and intimidating targets of the communist regime. These agents intended to coerce their targets back to China, where “they would face certain imprisonment or worse following illegitimate trials.”
As reported earlier today, Atlantic contributor Daniel Panneton has published an op-ed in which he claimed that the rosary is now a symbol of extremism. The rosary, of course, is a string of beads or knots that are used by Catholics as they do a series of prayers.
In the article titled, “How the Rosary Became an Extremist Symbol,” Panneton claimed that “just as the AR-15 rifle has become a sacred object for Christian nationalists in general, the rosary has acquired a militaristic meaning for radical-traditional (or ‘rad trad’) Catholics.”
Panneton claimed that “on this extremist fringe, rosary beads have been woven into a conspiratorial politics and absolutist gun culture. These armed radical traditionalists have taken up a spiritual notion that the rosary can be a weapon in the fight against evil and turned it into something dangerously literal.”
The writer claimed that the “the rosary—in these hands—is anything but holy.”
This is just the latest shameless attack on Christianity and Catholicism by the radical left.
On Monday night FOX News host Rachel Campos-Duffy took on Panneton and the left. Campos-Duffy knows this is open communism.
Rachel Campos-Duffy: There is a long history of this. So the first thing that the Marxists, communists do is they attack religion they have to get rid of it. And by extension they want to get rid of family bond. It’s all because the family and religion are threats to the authoritarian state… Bishop Sheen said if you make it – outlaw believing in God then we should all stand up as criminals.
Jim Hoft is the founder and editor of The Gateway Pundit, one of the top conservative news outlets in America. Jim was awarded the Reed Irvine Accuracy in Media Award in 2013 and is the proud recipient of the Breitbart Award for Excellence in Online Journalism from the Americans for Prosperity Foundation in May 2016.
Paivi Rasanen must make God laugh. The 27-year member of Finland’s Parliament on trial for tweeting a Bible verse confounds so many pagan slogans.
She’s a mother of five children and grandmother of 10 who didn’t need abortion to simultaneously pull off two demanding careers: medicine and politics. An empathetic woman who eagerly shows pictures of grandbabies on her phone and expresses concern for strangers’ travel plans, Paivi (pie-EE-vee) also refuses to subjugate her reason to emotional manipulation.
She holds fast to Christian teachings about sex as reserved exclusively for lifelong marriage between one man and one woman, for which she’s been prosecuted and investigated now for three years and will be in court again this November. Her case could affect international law and is a foreboding example of where identity politics policies are quickly heading across the world.
“If we break the gender system and if we break the natural marriage system between one man and one woman, then we have dangerous consequences, especially to children,” Paivi told The Federalist in person this summer in Chicago.
This woman of science also firmly believes in supernatural revelation. In her pamphlet on Christian marriage that Finland’s top prosecutor is seeking to ban as “hate speech,” Paivi writes that “Jesus’s death and resurrection is the core of the entire Christian faith. On this the Bible stands or falls. If one does not believe it, there is nothing left of Christianity. And … if I believe this, it follows logically that I must believe everything else Christ teaches in the Bible through the Apostles and Prophets.”
Paivi speaking to a sold-out audience of Christians in Chicago, Illinois, this summer. (Joy Pullmann / The Federalist)
Persecution Spreads the Gospel
As it has often in history, persecution has created global opportunities for Paivi to spread Christian theology: about sex, its design for lasting human happiness, and Christianity’s warm welcome to those struggling with every kind of sin from the God “who hates nothing He has made.” The 2004 booklet “Male and Female He Created Them,” which prosecutors want to ban entirely and fine Paivi for writing, has gone from a few copies in a few conservative Lutheran churches to translated into half a dozen languages and read all over the world.
Rasanen’s 2004 booklet, printed from the online PDF and in its new second edition distributed worldwide.
Paivi and her husband Niilo (nee-loh) spoke this June in Budapest alongside megastar Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson and his wife. Paivi said she’s seen especially strong support from Eastern European countries because many there still remember the Communists interrogating people about the Bible, as Finnish police did to Paivi three times for a total of 13 hours.
The Rasanens flew to Chicago right after Budapest so Paivi could speak at the sold-out Christian “Issues, Etc.” conference on June 25. In pearls, a flowered dress, and silvered golden hair, the petite 62-year-old asked the American crowd to pray that her case would “allow for more chances to preach the gospel in public.”
Rasanen’s case is on appeal in Finland and may end up in the European Court of Human Rights, developing precedents that could affect the world. If she loses in court, Paivi told a Christian outlet last year, “It will also affect religious freedom in other Western countries. LGBT groups have a very good network across national borders. They will try to achieve the same in other countries in Europe.”
In Q&A after her talk, Paivi said Finnish Prosecutor General Raija Toiviainen is expected to push the case as far as possible because Toiviainen has said identity politics is her top priority. Paivi’s legal help from Alliance Defending Freedom International has told The Federalist they are also prepared to appeal her case as far as possible should she lose.
Image courtesy Issues, Etc.
Persecution Amplifies Word of God’s Mercy for Sinners
Toiviainen claims agreeing with the Bible that sodomy is a sin is a criminal expression of hatred toward homosexuals. Paivi and her legal team have pointed out that if the court interprets the law this way, it will effectively outlaw Christianity and free speech in Finland.
Rather than rejecting homosexuals, as she’s been accused in court, Paivi glows with happiness when relating that gay people have disclosed her “Bible trial” has brought them to faith. In speeches and court testimony, Paivi has emphasized she not only bears no animosity toward homosexuals or transsexuals, she earnestly desires them to join her Christian family by receiving the eternal life that Jesus Christ offers freely to every person.
Paivi has been dragged into European courts and smeared in the press for years as a spewer of “hate speech.” Yet while battling severe jet lag that her husband said often gives her migraines, Paivi expressed not even a flicker of animosity toward her persecutors in Chicago.
Instead, when The Federalist asked if her three-year-and-counting prosecution might be orchestrated by political enemies, she seemed stumped. She conferred with her husband and finally suggested she was simply an easy target as a well-known figure in Finland.
“In all my career I have been known as a Christian and as a biblical Christian who doesn’t accept abortion and homosexual acts and so on,” Paivi told The Federalist. “And that’s why I think that perhaps it is the reason why the prosecutor has targeted just me.”
Family Unites to Fight for Other Families
Acknowledging the Biblical directive that only men serve as pastors has never tied Paivi to the kitchen — although perhaps she’d like to retire there given the suffering her political career has inflicted. Niilo prodded Paivi into running for office nearly three decades ago to try to stop Finland from forcing doctors like her to perform abortions, they told The Federalist.
Niilo Rasanen is a pastor and theology professor at a Lutheran Bible college. Niilo’s widowed mother lived with the couple while their children were young, and Paivi’s parents moved nearby and “helped a lot,” Paivi said. That, with Niilo’s flexibility while earning his doctorate, allowed Paivi to enter public service without sacrificing their children’s needs, they said.
During the five years when Niilo was writing his dissertation, “he was always at home when the children came home” from school, Paivi noted. Paivi and Niilo occasionally pulled out their phones to translate Finnish words into English or check they were using the right words, but Finns learn at least two foreign languages in school, Swedish and English.
Niilo and Paivi Rasanen in Chicago, Illinois, in June 2022. (Joy Pullmann / The Federalist)
In response to a question from the Chicago audience, Paivi revealed threats against her family. When she campaigned against child pornography, she said, a convicted pedophile entered their front yard and threatened their children: “It was quite a difficult time because we had to keep safe our children and they were a little bit afraid many years after that.” The most violent of the recent threats include a rape threat against her son, she said.
These external threats may have helped strengthen family bonds. Paivi and Niilo’s faces light up when they talk about their now-grown children, whom the Rasanens say are a great joy and regularly text their parents Bible verses and prayers.
“The task is communal, we do it together,” Niilo said of their marriage and family. “It has been so busy and hard time in this politic area — very, very busy, very long days. If you are not doing it together, it will not work.”
“I think what has been a great power in our life is that we have felt that these callings and tasks that we have, that they are common,” Paivi added.
From Church Only at Christmas to Global Witness
Born in 1959, Paivi grew up in a remote area near Finland’s border with Sweden, in the village of Konnunsuo. Her father was the agricultural director for a prison there. He oversaw the prisoners raising vegetables and animals to feed and support themselves. Paivi remembers as a girl watching piglets being born.
Her parents went to church only at Christmas, she said, but she learned the Bible from Sunday School and at prison church services. Her family also hosted missionaries to the prison, and they explained Christianity to Paivi and her two younger siblings.
A skilled student, especially in mathematics, young Paivi read all the books in her tiny village library that was open only two hours per week, she said. An adult biography of Nobel Prize-winning Polish scientist Marie Curie particularly inspired Paivi: “I admired her. I thought that I would like to be like her, to do something great.”
At the University of Helsinki, she studied both mathematics and medicine for a half year, but it was too much. So Paivi decided to focus on medicine because “I wanted to work with people.”
Organizing up to 70 Christian students for five years of weekly door-to-door evangelism in university deepened her faith, Paivi told The Federalist: “It was a very important time for me because there were students from different faculties and I had to defend my views, and I had to know [the] Bible because they asked difficult questions.”
She met Niilo doing summer missionary work among immigrants in London, and they married in February 1985, a year after Paivi started working as a doctor. They welcomed their children in 1988, 1990, 1992, 1994, and 1996.
Because Paivi kept organizing debates and speakers about abortion among fellow medical students and doctors, the Christian Democrat political party asked her to run for office. The Christian Democrats are a small party that focuses on faith and family. From 2011 to 2015, Paivi served as Finland’s Minister of the Interior as part of a coalition government.
She Fights Like a Woman
Paivi has fought steadfastly not by disposition, but by compunction. She and Niilo chuckled quietly when noting that in university, she flatly refused all public speaking offers and leadership positions.
In person, the two Finns are true to type and their “Minnesota nice” American cousins: polite, soft-spoken, and deferential. In Chicago, Paivi and Niilo attempted for some 15 minutes to get the Uber app to work on their Finnish cell phones before they could be prevailed upon by this journalist to accept a ride.
She would have walked the mile to the conference, Paivi assured, as they had the day before, but that morning’s rain would bedraggle her hair and dress right before her speech. After a bit of emotional discomfort at allegedly imposing, followed by a quick, rain-unaffected arrival, Paivi laughed softly, expressed thanks, and commented that this would be a good anecdote for The Federalist profile.
Paivi Rasanen during audience Q&A in Chicago. Because English is a second language for Paivi, she was given the written questions in advance.
Although she’s a public figure who regularly appears on TV, including a variety show that dressed her in a bear costume to sing to her grandchildren (she showed photographic evidence), Paivi habitually asks for others’ thoughts rather than discussing her own. It’s yet another contradiction to women’s mag-celebrated attributes: expressing her femininity not only doesn’t abrade Paivi’s character, it complements it.
Paivi doesn’t assert herself as a “girl boss” who assumes masculine prosthetics, despite years of public leadership that could have taught her to do so. Her apparent emotional security in being the woman God made her bestows its own authority and charm.
Only Men and Women Fit Perfectly Together
That acceptance of one’s sex as a gift from God is also a foundation of the theological booklet that helped land Paivi in court indefinitely. Cultural Marxism foments a war between the sexes, but the Bible teaches that love means total self-giving: Husbands sacrifice everything to love their wives, and wives submit to their husbands as they do to God. The true war is not between the sexes, but against them, and in war clear chains of command are necessary to protect everyone.
The 1960s feminist war fomented between the sexes has now expanded into a war on sex itself. Now even recognizing the differences between men and women and the exclusive fertility of natural marriage is heading toward being criminalized across the West, and with it the Christianity that protects and celebrates these natural realities.
When she wrote the booklet, Paivi was already well-known as a Christian member of Parliament representing Hame, a rural Finnish province about an hour north of Helsinki. Pastor Juhana Pohjola, elected bishop of Finland’s non-state Lutheran church in 2021, had asked Rasanen to respond to proposals for government licensing of homosexual relationships. Here was a government endorsement of severing natural biological bonds between parents and children that raised both political and theological concerns.
Rasanen’s resulting 24-page booklet is a succinct summary of Christian sexual ethics. “People who submit themselves to God’s guidance in the Bible are repeatedly amazed at how the very Bible teachings hardest to understand contain God’s deep wisdoms,” Rasanen writes in the English translation.
“No choice of policies is ethically neutral,” she notes. “…In actuality, the acceptance of homosexual partnerships meant a more profound change in values than was willingly acknowledged at the time.” For example, she notes, in Finland, those proposing a homosexual partnerships act promised it would affect adults only. Yet immediately after the act passed, the proponents moved to make taxpayers pay for lesbians to be artificially inseminated and for homosexual couples to adopt children who could never know either a father or mother.
The act’s proponents also promised that Finland’s state church could maintain Christianity’s historic teachings if state recognition of homosexual couples passed. Paivi’s trial today, under a law passed seven years after the booklet was published, directly refutes that claim. It also highlights how impossible it is to reconcile the hard-won natural law framework that protects everyone equally with the identity politics that provides special rights to only government-favored groups.
Seeking an Internet Interdiction
Writing the booklet is one of three charges Toiviainen has filed against Paivi. It forms the sole count against Pohjola, the pastor who published the booklet. The two other counts against Paivi relate to her tweet of a Bible verse at the nominally Lutheran state church for sponsoring a homosexual pride parade and comments in a public radio debate she participated in years ago.
How can the #church ’s doctrinal foundation, the #bible, be compatible with the lifting up of shame and sin as a subject of #pride ?” #lgbt#helsinkipride2019 Finnish Christian MP under hate crime investigation for quoting scripture – Premier
How can the #church ’s doctrinal foundation, the #bible, be compatible with the lifting up of shame and sin as a subject of #pride ?" #lgbt#helsinkipride2019 Finnish Christian MP under hate crime investigation for quoting scripture – Premier https://t.co/0GEJ5tZEb6
In 2019, several Finns lodged complaints against Paivi’s tweet. Police investigated, interrogating Paivi about her beliefs three times. Although the police ultimately recommended against prosecuting Paivi, prosecutors sifted through her three-decade public record. They dug up the three alleged hate crimes and charged her.
The charges against Paivi fall under the legal category of “war crimes and crimes against humanity.” The prosecutors have asked for Paivi’s writings and audio clips to be completely banned from the internet and for her, Pohjola, and his church to be fined up to a third of their annual incomes, but courts could put Paivi in prison for up to six years if she’s found guilty. Pohjola could be imprisoned for up to two years.
During Paivi and Pohjola’s trial in early 2022, thousands of Finnish supporters gathered in Helsinki outside the court. Free speech supporters in other countries rallied at Finnish embassies. The American Family Research Council sent Pastor Andrew Brunson, whom Turkey detained for two years for preaching Christianity, to give Paivi a pledge of prayers from Christians around the world. U.S. members of Congress, international human rights groups, and coalitions of religious believers have also petitioned the Finnish government to stop prosecuting Rasanen and Pohjola’s human rights to free speech and religious exercise.
“It is important that we have the freedom of speech and freedom of religion,” Paivi told The Federalist in Chicago. “Freedom of speech because it is important for everyone. It is important for every minority and majority. For Christians, it is crucial because we have the commandments of Jesus to tell the good gospel to all people…”
“Also I think that it is important to respect in society also everyone’s right to speak and argue and oppose you,” she continued. “So this is [a] fundamental issue.”
Joy Pullmann is executive editor of The Federalist, a happy wife, and the mother of six children. Sign up here to get early access to her next ebook, “101 Strategies For Living Well Amid Inflation.” Her bestselling ebook is “Classic Books for Young Children.” Mrs. Pullmann identifies as native American and gender natural. She is also the author of “The Education Invasion: How Common Core Fights Parents for Control of American Kids,” from Encounter Books. In 2013-14 she won a Robert Novak journalism fellowship for in-depth reporting on Common Core national education mandates. Joy is a grateful graduate of the Hillsdale College honors and journalism programs.
A stranded Iranian Christian migrant holds the Bible as he prays at dawn in front of a fence reinforced by barbed wire and a wooden barricade at the Greek-Macedonian border near to the Greek village of Idomeni November 30, 2015. | REUTERS/Yannis Behrakis
The Iranian government is actively inciting “derogatory public opinion” against Christianity and other faiths by using Iranian media outlets to spread religious propaganda, according to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.
A new report from the bipartisan federal advisory committee says Iran’s government uses official media, government-linked media and social media to spread “falsehoods and misconceptions” about religious minorities to turn public opinion against these communities.
The report “Religious Propaganda in Iran” attributes the effort to a “systematic campaign to deny freedom of religion or belief to groups that do not conform to the government’s singular interpretation of Ja’afri Shi’a Islam.”
For instance, the government describes some Christians as belonging to an “Evangelical Zionist cult” and uses vague national security accusations to target Christian converts.
The phrase was referenced in the Nov. 3, 2021 ruling by Iran’s Supreme Court, declaring that promoting Christianity and establishing home churches are not crimes and do not amount to national security crimes.
The court’s opinion used the phrase “Evangelical Zionist cult” to refer to the Christian converts whose case it was addressing.
Under Iran’s legal system, a ruling by a Supreme Court branch is not necessarily binding on lower courts.
“This misinformation campaign restricts freedom of religion or belief for religious minorities in Iran,” USCIRF Commissioner Sharon Kleinbaum told The Christian Post.
According to USCIRF, Iranian state propaganda against Christian converts is often disguised as anti-Zionism, and Christian converts are regularly referred to as members of a “Zionist” network.
Officials say the reference to Zionism in this context does not refer to specific allegations of links between Christian converts in Iran and the state of Israel but rather “a broad conspiracy in which Evangelical Christians across the world promote political viewpoints that serve Zionist ideology.”
The report also cites what USCIRF called “Iran’s misinformation campaign against Christian converts,” which officials say seeks to differentiate Christian converts from Armenians and Assyrians as recognized religious minority groups.
Hojjat al-Islam Kashani, a Muslim cleric who serves as the secretary of the Islam-Christianity Dialog Association, told an Iranian media outlet, “What is being promoted today as Christianity is not traditional Christianity, but rather it is Evangelical and colonial Christianity.
“Evangelical Christianity is not a religion. It is a policy-oriented towards colonialism.”
According to the report, Kashani accused Evangelical Christian Iranians of pursuing a political agenda of expansion designed to undermine Iran’s government.
Those political aims of Evangelical Christians have “resulted in their alienation from other Christians, and that Iranian Armenians are opposed to Evangelical Christians,” Kashani said.
Iran’s history is replete with examples of outside intervention by colonial powers in its domestic affairs, so this comment appeals to the sense of injustice some Iranians may feel about foreign meddling in Iranian politics, Kleinbaum said.
“The impact on Iranian Christians is that they cannot rely on the government to uphold its obligations under international law to protect freedom of religion or belief, and are more likely to face discrimination from Iranians who internalize the government’s false messaging,” she added.
In addition to Christian converts, the USCIRF report identifies and reviews the significant themes Iran’s government deploys against Jews, Sunni Muslims, Gonabadi Sufis and Baha’is.
Besides providing data and analysis on religious freedom abroad, USCIRF also provides foreign policy recommendations to the president, secretary of state and U.S. Congress to fight religious persecution and promote freedom of religion and belief. Iran is one of 10 countries recognized by the U.S. State Department as a country of particular concern for tolerating and engaging in religious freedom abuses.
Just one year after Iran signed a historic nuclear deal with the U.S. and other Western nations in 2015, USCIRF reported that religious minorities in Iran, including Christians, continue experiencing severe human rights abuses.
The report found that religious freedom conditions “continued to deteriorate,” with Christians, Baha’is and the minority Sunni Muslims facing the most persecution in the form of harassment, arrests and imprisonment.
Open Doors USA, a watchdog group that monitors religious freedom abuses in over 60 countries, ranks Iran as the ninth-worst country regarding Christian persecution.
A court in Nepal has sentenced a pastor to two years in prison under the country’s harsh anti-conversion law for merely saying that prayers can heal COVID-19, according to reports. The District Court in Dolpa this week sentenced Pastor Keshab Raj Acharya to two years in prison and a fine of $165 (20,000 Rupees) for suggesting on social media that prayer could bring healing from the coronavirus, the U.S.-based persecution watchdog International Christian Concern said in a statement.
Pastor Acharya was first arrested on March 23 last year from his home in Pokhara, Gandaki Pradesh Province, on charges of spreading false information regarding COVID-19. Though he was released about a fortnight later, he was rearrested moments later on charges of “outraging religious feelings” and “proselytizing.” After more than three months in prison, he was released on July 3, 2020, after paying bail equal to about $2,500.
In a viral video published on the internet, Pastor Acharya prayed in front of his congregation, saying, “Hey, corona — you go and die. May all your deeds be destroyed by the power of the Lord Jesus. I rebuke you, corona, in the name of Lord Jesus Christ. By the power or the ruler of this Creation, I rebuke you. … By the power in the name of Lord Jesus Christ, corona, go away and die.”
William Stark, ICC’s regional manager for South Asia, said: “For more than a year, authorities in the Dolpa District have seemed bent on convicting Pastor Acharya of something and punishing him for simply being a Christian pastor. Since the new constitution was adopted in 2015, Nepalese Christians have been concerned that Article 26 and its enacting laws would be used to target their community.”
Stark added that “Nepal’s sweeping anti-conversion law must be repealed if religious freedom is truly a right to be enjoyed by the country’s citizens.”
After his release last July, Acharya had told Morning Star News that it was a “very difficult” time for him.
“I would think of my little children and my wife, and I would cry out to the Lord in prayer. I would look up at Him in hope that if it is in His will that I should be put through this, He would get me out of this,” he said at the time.
Acharya told the outlet he believed government officials and police worked together against him. “They were laying a thorough plan to make sure I would stay in the jail for a longer period.”
Senior Counsel Govinda Bandi, who was defending the pastor, told the U.K.-based Christian Solidarity Worldwide at the time that his repeated arrest was a “very worrying sign of the trajectory of religious freedom in this country.”
“The police are clearly acting outside the scope of the constitution and without any regard to the rules of criminal procedure,” Bandi said. “There seems to be a concerted effort to use the draconian provisions in the Penal Code to target him that will also threaten the wider minority community with penal sanctions for practicing their religion or belief. Furthermore, the whole allegation against him, is forged on unfounded and prejudiced allegations. This is without a doubt a targeted persecution and a travesty of our justice system.”
Christians have been under attack since before the promulgation of the country’s new constitution in September 2015. Low-intensity blasts occurred in two churches in east Nepal around the time. Pamphlets promoting Hindu nationalism were found at each of the churches and a nationalist group, Hindu Morcha Nepal, issued a press statement calling for Christian leaders to leave the country and for Christian converts to return to Hinduism. The constitution establishes Nepal as a secular country but also effectively bans evangelism, as it states that no one is allowed to make an attempt to convert people of other religions to his or her own. It also calls for the protection of Hinduism, the majority religion.
Article 26 (3) of the constitution states: “No person shall behave, act or make others act to disturb public law and order situation or convert a person of one religion to another or disturb the religion of other people…such an act shall be punished by law.”
Hindu nationalist groups in Nepal allege that Hinduism is under threat as more people could be converted into Christianity. They have been calling for the exclusion of the term “secularism” — which in the South Asian context means equal treatment of all religions by the State — from the charter of Nepal, which was a Hindu monarchy until 2006.
Persecution watchdog Open Doors USA ranks Nepal at No. 34 on its World Watch List of 50 countries where it is most difficult to be a Christian.
Photo Image courtesy International Lutheran Council
Meet the man who appears to be the first in the post-Soviet Union West to be brought up on criminal charges for publishing long-held Christian beliefs. Juhana Pohjola wouldn’t be cast to play his own part if Hollywood made a movie about a bishop put on trial for his faith. The Finnish pastor has inherited a place in the church of Martin Luther, but it appears none of Luther’s pugnacity or vitriol. In person, Pohjola, 49, is forthright but unassuming, and gentle. Stereotypically, the Finn is thin and tall. He often pauses while speaking to carefully consider his next words. He listens attentively to others with far less impressive resumes.
In more than two decades as a pastor, Pohjola has ministered to congregations as small as 30. He has spent his life building a network of faithful churches across Finland, many of which started with a few people gathered for prayer, Bible study, hymn-singing—and communion, if they can get a pastor. In an in-person interview with The Federalist, Pohjola urged fellow Christian leaders to be willing to seek out “one lost sheep” instead of crowds and acclaim.
This is the man who appears to be the first in the post-Soviet Union West to be brought up on criminal charges for preaching the Christian message as it has been established for thousands of years. Also charged in the case that goes to trial on January 24 is Pohjola’s fellow Lutheran and a Finnish member of Parliament, Paivi Rasanen. Rasanen’s alleged crimes in a country that claims to guarantee freedom of speech and religion include tweeting a picture of a Bible verse. Potential penalties if they are convicted include fines and up to two years in prison.
Finnish Authorities: The Bible Is Hate Speech
Rasanen and Pohjola are being charged with “hate speech” for respectively writing and publishing a 24-page 2004 booklet that explains basic Christian theology about sex and marriage, which reserves sex exclusively for within marriage, which can only consist of one man and one woman, for life. The Finnish prosecutor claims centuries-old Christian teachings about sex “incite hatred” and violate legal preferences for government-privileged identity groups.
Writer Rod Dreher pointed out the witch hunt nature of this prosecution: “Räsänen wrote that pamphlet seven years before LGBT was added to the national hate-speech law as a protected class. She was investigated once before for the pamphlet, and cleared — but now she’s going to undergo another interrogation.”
Rasanen and Pohjola both have adamantly affirmed“the divinely given dignity, value, and human rights of all, including all who identify with the LGBTQ community.” Christian theology teaches that all human beings are precious, as all are made in God’s image and offered eternal life through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
In advance of the trial, Rasanen and Pohjola have been interrogated by police for hours about their theology. Pohjola told me in the interrogation police treated Christian beliefs as thought crimes. In a statement, Rasanen noted that the police publicly admitted their interpretation of Finland’s law would make publishing the Bible a hate crime.
“It is impossible for me to think that the classical Christian views and the doctrine of the majority of denominations would become illegal. The question here is about the core of Christian faith; how a person gets saved into unity with God and into everlasting life though the redemptive sacrifice of Jesus. Therefore, it is crucial to also talk about the nature of sin,” Rasanen told Dreher. “As we are living in a democratic country, we must be able to disagree and express our disagreement. We have to be able to cope with speech that we feel insults our feelings. Many questions are so debatable and contradictory that we have to have the possibility of discussing. Otherwise, the development is towards a totalitarian system, with only one correct view.”
Major International Implications
Humans rights lawyer Paul Coleman, who spoke to The Federalist from his Alliance Defending Freedom International office in Vienna, Austria, says Pohjola and Rasanen’s cases are a “canary in the coalmine” for freedom of speech across the West. ADF International is providing legal support for Pohjola and Rasanen’s cases.
“Although all European countries have these hate speech laws, and these hate speech laws are increasingly being used against citizens for things that they say, this is the first time we’ve really seen Christians face criminal prosecution for explaining their biblical views,” Coleman said. “…It’s unprecedented. We’ve not seen attacks on free speech on this level in Europe, and that’s why they are extremely important cases, not just for the people of Finland and Paivi Rasanen and the bishop themselves, but for all of Europe. If this is upheld in one jurisdiction, we will no doubt see it in other jurisdictions as well.”
Such “hate speech” laws exist in every European country and Western countries such as Canada and Australia, and descend from Soviet influence. Coleman called them “sleeper laws,” saying that in other countries “they could be used any time just like they are in Finland. People need to mobilize against these laws and overturn them.”
Legally privileging certain sexual behavior has thus broken western countries’ promises of equality before the law for all citizens, as well as enabling government discrimination against citizens who exercise their free speech and religious liberty, as in the Baronnelle Stutzman and Jack Phillips cases in the United States.
“Establishing standards of identity” also lets government meddle in theological controversies that are none of its business, said the Rev. Dr. Jonathan Shaw, who directs church relations for the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod (LCMS) and has known Pohjola for decades. Pohjola’s church is an international partner of the LCMS.
From a natural law and historic Western perspective, “the government isn’t supposed to get into people’s brains and tell them what’s right and wrong to believe and say,” Shaw noted in a phone interview. “That’s not their realm. Their realm is in externals, things like protect people in their bodies, go to war when necessary, and punish criminals… This is really what’s at stake [in the Pohjola case]. Government has lost its moorings and doesn’t know its purpose.”
From Part-Time Pastor to Bishop
After theological study in Finland and the United States, Pohjola’s first congregation in Helsinki started with about 30 members, he says. It was only able to support him part-time at first. He remembered his wife accompanying the congregation’s hymn-singing on a piano while their firstborn daughter, a baby at the time, laid on a blanket on the floor nearby.
Finland’s state church began openly disobeying Christian theology concerning sex differences amid the global sexual revolution of the 1960s. So, Christians alienated by the state church’s embrace of anti-Christian cultural demands sought faithful pastors like Pohjola, who are known as “confessional” for adhering to historic Christian confessions. The resulting growth of his tiny congregation gradually led to establishing a seminary, then dozens of mission churches, which grew as the theologically unfaithful state church shrank. In 2013, 25 of these new confessional congregations formed the Evangelical Lutheran Diocese of Finland. Today, that diocese oversees 45 congregations and missions and is training 64 pastors.
That growth has been accompanied by suffering, including persecution first from Pohjola’s own church.
First Persecuted By His Own Church
In 2009, Pohjola was awarded the theological journal Gottesdienst’s Sabre of Boldness Award, which is granted “for conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity on behalf of the Holy Church of Christ, while engaged in the confession of His Pure Gospel in the face of hostile forces, and at the greatest personal risk.” The award honored Pohjola, with other faithful Finnish pastors, for standing firm as Finland’s state church sought civil charges against them for refusing to disobey the Bible’s commands that only men be sent to lead spiritual warfare as pastors.
Like Luther before him, Pohjola was expelled by his own church body in 2014 for adhering to God’s word on this matter. The notice of his discharge declared Pohjola was “obviously unfit to be a pastor.” At the time, he responded with grief but also by saying that he must obey God rather than men, lamenting: “Instead of the Church being purged with God’s Word, she is being purged from God’s Word.”
In the interview last week, Pohjola said being defrocked from “his baptismal church” grieves him to this day. On his mother’s side, Pohjola said, his family includes Lutheran pastors in that church going back to the 17th century Reformation. But he could not disobey God’s commands to retain his social status or employment.
Division or Unity? Yes
Pohjola’s separation from Finland’s state church also had the consequence of uniting him and his flock with other confessional Christians across the globe. The International Lutheran Council is a global network of theologically unified churches, and like the confessional churches in Finland, that network is growing.
Mathew Block, the ILC’s communications manager, noted that the heightened contradictions between increasingly unnatural pagan practices and historic Christian teachings are causing a global “confessional realignment.” It’s forcing people to make a real decision about where they stand rather than allowing them to inhabit the increasingly nonexistent, indecisive middle. This is affecting churches all over the world. While it means divisions in some areas, it also is leading to unity in others. For example, despite other important theological differences, all the world’s largest Christian bodies agree with the doctrines for which the Finnish government is persecuting Pohjola. That allows them to speak in chorus to government leaders.
Already many dozens of top religious leaders across the world have formally raised their concerns with Rasanen and Pohjola’s prosecution to the Finnish government and the United Nations. Several U.S. members of Congress have also asked U.S. agencies to take action against Finland for these human rights abuses.
“I encourage Roman Catholic ecclesiastical leaders and all those who care for souls to speak up and join hands and lock arms with us as we talk about the absolute necessity of our historic Christian values of one man, one woman, marriage, and the freedom to be able to believe it, to say it, to publish books about it, and find practical ways through hospitality, education, and other social engagement to make society strong that way,” Shaw said. “All churches—one could even say all religions but in particular the Roman Catholic faith—this reflects their historic commitments as well.”
The Shepherd Faces Wolf Attacks for the Sheep
In August 2021, the international Lutheran church recognized Pohjola’s steadfast leadership amid persecution by supporting his election to bishop of Finland’s confessional diocese. The ILC hosted Pohjola’s November 2021 speaking tour in the United States, and is raising funds across the world to raise awareness of his case.
“Our mission has been that, if the shepherd sees that one sheep is missing, he knows,” Pohjola said of the churches he oversees. He noted that many people coming to faithful Finnish churches are seeking love and connection from a church family as the secular world becomes increasingly isolated and family-less, in no small part because of pagan sexual behavior and beliefs.
“People don’t go to church for social capital now. This is a serious life and they want to be serious with God. So, churches have to build communities that stand on solid Lutheran, biblical doctrine,” Pohjola says.
While he may not share Luther’s temperament, Pohjola’s response to his own persecution by church and civil authorities does mirror Luther’s simplicity four centuries ago: “Here I stand. I can do no other.” He adds a pastoral message to Christians watching governments turn on them today.
“We have to learn from the past, Christians who have suffered under persecution, and be prepared,” Pohjola said. “But it’s not something to be worried about, because Christ remains faithful to His church and wherever he is leading us, He will come with us. He will provide everything that is needed for the future of His Christians and His church.”
Barronelle Stutzman, owner of Arlene’s Flowers in Richland, Washington, speaks as supporters rally around her in November 2016. | (Photo: ADF/Screengrab)
A Christian florist has agreed to pay $5,000 to end a years long legal battle centered on her refusal to provide floral arrangements for a same-sex wedding ceremony. She has also announced that she will retire so that her flower shop can be run by her employees.
Barronelle Stutzman of Arlene’s Flowers in Richland, Washington, was sued by Rob Ingersoll, a man she had done business with in the past, because she refused to provide a floral arrangement for his same-sex wedding in 2013. Stutzman was represented by the conservative legal nonprofit Alliance Defending Freedom, while Ingersoll was represented by the progressive group the American Civil Liberties Union. ACLU argued that Stutzman’s refusal was a violation of state discrimination law. The florist suffered legal defeats in lower courts before her appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court was rejected earlier this year.
A settlement has been reached in the legal case that allows Stutzman to avoid having to pay crippling fines and legal fees. As part of the agreement, Stutzman will pay the same-sex couple $5,000 while the ADF will, in return, withdraw a petition to the Supreme Court for reconsideration.
During a Zoom call organized by ADF Thursday afternoon, the 77-year-old great grandmother announced retirement and plans to sell Arlene’s Flowers to her employees. She also intends to support others dealing with religious liberty legal battles.
“I’ve never had to compromise my conscience or go against my faith. I’ve met so many, many kind and wonderful people, who’ve generously offered me their prayers and encouragement and support,” she stated in a statement posted online after the Zoom call.
“There is a great deal of division at work in our country today, but God has shown me again and again that His love is stronger than the anger and the pain so many are feeling. And He’s given me countless opportunities to share His love with others along the way.”
In 2013, Stutzman refused to make flowers for the wedding of Ingersoll and Curt Freed because of her belief that the Bible describes marriage as exclusively between one man and one woman. In response, Stutzman was sued by the same-sex couple, with a county court issuing a fine of $1,000 and deeming her liable for thousands of dollars in legal fees. Stutzman appealed the ruling, and the Washington Supreme Court ruled in February 2017 that she violated state antidiscrimination law barring discrimination based on sexual orientation when she refused to make the floral arrangement.
In June 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court vacated the ruling against Stutzman and sent the case back to the state supreme court for further consideration.
The Supreme Court cited its 7-2 ruling in Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission. The justices ruled that baker Jack Phillips was mistreated by the Colorado commission when he was punished for refusing to design a cake for a same-sex wedding in 2012. Same-sex marriage was not legal in Colorado at that time. However, Washington’s high court reaffirmed its earlier ruling against Stutzman in June 2019, stating that her conduct “constitutes sexual orientation discrimination.”
In July, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the case, with conservative Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch believing the nation’s high court should have accepted the appeal.
“After Curt and I were turned away from our local flower shop, we cancelled the plans for our dream wedding because we were afraid it would happen again,”said Ingersoll in a July statement.
“We had a small ceremony at home instead. We hope this decision sends a message to other LGBTQ people that no one should have to experience the hurt that we did.”
ADF General Counsel Kristen Waggoner said that the settlement should not be seen as a “surrender of Barronelle’s beliefs.”
“Over the last eight years, Barronelle stood for the First Amendment freedoms of all Americans, even those who disagree with her about a deeply personal and important issue like marriage,” Waggoner said. “And in so doing, she’s inspired millions of others in their own public and personal battles to live their faith without government interference.”
Waggoner further stated that Stutzman “laid the groundwork” for the Supreme Court to take on similar religious freedom cases.
Stutzman specifically mentioned her support for Christian web designer Lorie Smith and her company, 303 Creative. Smith pushed back on a Colorado law that she felt would require her to make services available to gay couples seeking help in creating wedding websites although same-sex weddings contradict the teachings of her faith.
This summer, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit ruled against Smith. Smith has appealed her case to the Supreme Court for consideration.
“The Supreme Court needs to affirm the right of all Americans to speak and live consistent with their conscience,” Waggoner argued.
This aerial photo taken on October 29, 2021, show smokes and fires from Thantlang, in Chin State, where more than 160 buildings have been destroyed caused by shelling from Junta military troops, according to local media. | STR/AFP via Getty Images
The U.S. State Department released a statement Sunday condemning the “gross violations of human rights” after Burmese security forces fired heavy artillery into a town in the predominantly Christian Chin state, setting at least 100 homes and two churches on fire. The attack was in retaliation after a Chin militia shot and killed a Burmese soldier who was breaking into houses and looting properties, according to a report.
In its statement, the State Department said the Burmese military must be held accountable:
The United States is gravely concerned by reports of gross violations of human rights that Burmese security forces have perpetuated in Chin State, including reports that forces have set fire to and destroyed more than 100 residences as well as Christian churches. We condemn such brutal actions by the Burmese regime against people, their homes, and places of worship, which lays bare the regime’s complete disregard for the lives and welfare of the people of Burma. These abhorrent attacks underscore the urgent need for the international community to hold the Burmese military accountable and take action to prevent gross violations and abuses of human rights, including by preventing the transfer of arms to the military.
We are also deeply concerned over the Burmese security forces’ intensification of military operations in various parts of the country, including in Chin State and the Sagaing Region. We call on the regime to immediately cease the violence, release all those unjustly detained, and restore Burma’s path to inclusive democracy.
We will continue to promote accountability for the horrific violence that has been and continues to be perpetrated by the regime against the people of Burma. We will continue to support the people of Burma and all those working toward a restoration of Burma’s democratic path and a peaceful resolution to the crisis.
Nearly 10,000 residents of the town of Thantlang fled the area as the fire raged on, the U.S.-based persecution watchdog International Christian Concern reported.
The Southeast Asian country’s military, locally known as Tatmadaw, started attacking Friday morning after the militia, Chinland Defense Force, killed a Tatmadaw soldier while he was looting properties.
The presence of the Buddhist nationalist military makes civilians and militias in conflict-ridden states nervous. The military has been accused of vandalizing places of worship and civilians’ homes, raping girls and women, abducting civilians to be used for forced labor and shooting civilians to death.
ICC quoted the India-based Chin Human Rights Organization as saying that several religious buildings, including Church on the Rock, Presbyterian Church, and a building attached to the Thantlang Baptist Church, the largest congregation in town, have also caught fire.
“The first rockets to be fired into the town landed at the entrances to the Thantlang Baptist Church,” ICC said.
Earlier this month, the military, which staged a coup on Feb. 1, attacked Rialti village near the Chin state’s capital of Hakha, Radio Free Asia reported at the time.
“We see this as a war crime because wherever they go, they focus on wherever there are large numbers of people — it’s a deliberate violation of religious freedom,” Salai Za Op Lin, CHRO’s deputy executive director, said at the time.
Op Lin noted that other Christian communities in Chin state had also been targeted since the military coup in February. “Now that the military has started a real operation in Chin state, we can expect a lot of such abuses and acts, and we urge the international community to keep a close eye on this.”
Last month, a beloved youth pastor, Cung Biak Hum of Thantlang Centennial Baptist Church, was shot dead as he tried to help one of his congregants save their burning home after it was set ablaze by the military during an attack on civilians in Chin state.
Information on his Facebook page showed that he was married with two sons and was pursuing a master’s of divinity degree at MIT Yangon.
United Nations Special Rapporteur on Myanmar, Tom Andrews, highlighted the pastor’s murder in a tweet at the time, calling on the international community to “pay closer attention” to the “living hell” civilians have been experiencing there since a Feb. 1 coup brought back full military rule following years of quasi-democracy.
Myanmar’s ethnic minorities, including Christians, live in the various conflict zones across the country’s borders with Thailand, China and India. Hundreds of thousands of civilians, many of them Christians, have been displaced due to the escalation of conflicts in the zones since the coup.
Militias in those areas have been morally supporting pro-democracy protesters since the coup, which has led to the use of heavy weapons by the Burmese army. Thousands of civilians in the conflict zones have sought shelter in churches when their villages are under attack.
Christians make up just over 7% of the majority-Buddhist nation. Formerly known as Burma, the country is home to the world’s longest Civil War, which began in 1948. Myanmar is ranked No. 18 on Open Doors USA’s 2021 World Watch List of 50 countries where Christians face the most severe persecution. The persecution level in Myanmar is “very high” due to Buddhist nationalism. Burma is recognized by the U.S. State Department as a “country of particular concern” for egregious violations of religious liberty.
“The military is notorious for its relations with the ultranationalist ultra-Buddhist group the Ma Ba Tha,” ICC’s Southeast Asia Regional Manager, Gina Goh, said in a statement earlier this year. “The military together with Ma Ba Tha has targeted the Muslims in the country, but they also go after Christians. Once they get a hold of the power, they might resort to things they were doing before they passed the power to the civilian government. They kill. They rape minority Christians.”
Early Rain Covenant Church in China | Facebook/Early Rain Covenant Church
Police in China raided a small group of Christian worshipers from a heavily-persecuted house church in southwestern China’s Sichuan province and arrested almost everyone, including an infant less than 1 year old, nine children and 18 adults. Officers from Chenghua District Mengzhuiwang office forcibly entered the home of a church member, He Shan, where the small group of Early Rain Covenant Church was meeting for worship on Sunday, CBN News said.
“The police claimed to have received a call reporting an illegal gathering there,” the church wrote on its Facebook page, persecution watchdog International Christian Concern reported, identifying the gathering as the “Treading Water” small group and the preacher as Dai Zhichao. (SEE: “Chinese authorities paying citizens to spy on neighbors, report ‘illegal’ Christian activities” https://wordpress.com/post/whatdidyousay.org/57336)
Preacher Dai asked the officers to show proper documents but the police ignored him and forcibly entered brother He’s home. In the process, the preacher was injured on his arm, as were other men who tried to help. Dai’s phone was also confiscated, ICC said. A church member told ICC that many people were beaten by the police after being held in detention. “When the children were rowdy, the police officers threatened to hit them on their heads,” ICC said.
Police later released most of them, but Preacher Dai and brother He were put under administrative detention for 14 days. Brother He also received a fine of 1,000 RMB ($154).
Open Doors USA, which monitors persecution in over 60 countries, estimates that there are about 97 million Christians in China, a large percentage of whom worship in what China considers to be “illegal” and unregistered underground house churches.
Over two years ago, authorities shuttered the 5,000-member church ERCC, broke down the doors of church members’ and leaders’ homes, and arrested more than 100 people. Police continue to harass and track church members, according to a recent report from the U.S.-based group China Aid.
ERCC, led by Pastor Wang Yi, has not been able to gather in person since it was shut down in 2018 when its pastor and other leaders were arrested. Wang was later sentenced to nine years in prison on charges of subversion of power and illegal business operations.
Gina Goh, ICC’s regional manager for Southeast Asia, commented: “The latest raid against ERCC, though nothing novel, shows a worrying trend that house churches are frequently subjected to harassment like this in the name of ‘law enforcement,’ where legally flawed Revised Regulations on Religious Affairs have been employed by Beijing to crack down on house churches around the country.”
Goh added that the Chinese Communist Party’s constant fear of unregistered churches “is both pathetic and preposterous, as it underscores President Xi [Jinping]’s insecurity toward any critical mass. There is absolutely no regard for religious freedom.”
Goh previously said, “Beijing seeks to intimidate the leaders in hopes that the churches will dissolve due to fear. Their plot will not succeed, thanks to the resiliency of the Chinese house church. They survived the Cultural Revolution, and they will survive Xi’s era as well.”
Under the direction of President Xi, officials from the CCP have been enforcing strict controls on religion, according to a report released in March by China Aid. Authorities in China are also cracking down on Christianity by removing Bible apps and Christian WeChat public accounts as new highly restrictive administrative measures on religious staff went into effect this year.
China is ranked on Open Doors USA’s World Watch List as one of the worst countries in the world when it comes to the persecution of Christians. The U.S. State Department has also labeled China as a “country of particular concern” for “continuing to engage in particularly severe violations of religious freedom.”
A Michigan public high school principal is getting called out by a legal firm after telling one of the valedictorians that mentioning her Christian faith in her graduation speech is “not appropriate.”
According to First Liberty, one section of the speech Elizabeth Turner prepared for Hillsdale High School’s graduation ceremony next Thursday noted that “for me, my future hope is found in my relationship with Christ. By trusting in him and choosing to live a life dedicated to bringing his kingdom glory, I can be confident that I am living a life with purpose and meaning. My identity is found by what God says and who I want to become is laid out in scripture.”
The legal firm said the school’s principal, Amy Goldsmith, reacted by highlighting that paragraph, along with a second, and telling Turner that “you are representing the school in the speech, not using the podium as your public forum. We need to be mindful about the inclusion of religious aspects. These are your strong beliefs, but they are not appropriate for a speech in a school public setting. I know this will frustrate you, but we have to be mindful of it.”
Apparently Turner got in touch with First Liberty, because the law firm said it sent a letter to Goldsmith informing her that she’s “violating federal law, which permits private religious speech at school events, and demanding that she allow Elizabeth to reference her faith.”
First Liberty also said that student graduation speeches constitute private speech, not government speech, and private speech is not subject to the Establishment Clause. The law firm added that Turner’s statements “do not transform into government speech simply because they are delivered in a public setting or to a public audience.”
The letter concludes by requesting that Goldsmith “allow Elizabeth Turner to express her private religious beliefs at the graduation ceremony on June 6, 2021. Please confirm that you agree to our request by Friday, May 28, 2021 at 5PM.”
According to another document from First Liberty, Turner emailed Goldsmith regarding her requested changes and said “unfortunately I don’t think I would be able to deliver a genuine speech under those circumstances. I don’t agree that we should avoid the topic of tragedy and death because that is part of everyone’s future. I understand what you are saying, but for me, this is a time for my peers and I to elevate our lives and to choose how we want to live since we’re not promised tomorrow, and I don’t want to write a speech that won’t be meaningful just to check off the box. I believe it is celebratory to call people to a life of purpose and meaning and a call to action to live a life well. For me, my personal future relies on my faith, and I also want the freedom to be able to address that in my speech if the opportunity arises.”
Fox News reported that Goldsmith did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
A villager climbs up the steps toward a cross near a Catholic church on the outskirts of Taiyuan, North China’s Shanxi province, December 24, 2016. | REUTERS/Jason Lee
Religious persecution in China intensified in 2020, with thousands of Christians affected by church closures and other human rights abuses, according to a new report from ChinaAid. ChinaAid’s research on persecution in China last year documented nine church demolitions carried out by Chinese Communist Party authorities, affecting more than 5,000 members and attendees. Overall, CCP authorities persecuted 100% of house churches, the study found, with police summoning and questioning every church’s main leader.
Under the direction of Chinese President Xi Jinping, CCP officials also worked to more fully control “religion,” ordering Christians in both official, state-run churches as well as in house churches to fly the Chinese flag, and sing patriotic songs in services. Authorities also directed ministers and priests to “Sinicize” sermons, or alter them to conform to CCP ideology.
According to the report released this week, CCP authorities also invaded Christians’ homes, raided family gatherings, and interfered with parenting decisions. In numerous instances, authorities sued Christians for homeschooling their children or sending them to church-run schools.
“ChinaAid’s research for 2020 confirms that China’s persecution of Christians and of those professing any belief again exceeded incidents reported for the previous year,” the report says.
“As suppressed facts have emerged from dark, secret places, the fallout from the CCP’s persecution, like results from the unchecked Covid-19 pandemic, present a potent, putrid threat to challenge the outside world to pay attention.”
The group said it publishes its annual report to “not only increase awareness of religious persecution in China, but to promote religious freedom for all.”
ChinaAid’s findings come on the heels of the 2021 annual report from The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom that identified China as an egregious violator of human rights, specifically toward Christians and Uyghur Muslims. The report notes that CCP authorities continued their unprecedented use of advanced surveillance technologies to monitor and track religious minorities last year.
“Although the CCP has long repressed religious freedom, in recent years it has become increasingly hostile toward religion,” the report says.
The Commission recommended that the U.S. redesignate China as a “country of particular concern,” or CPC, for engaging in systematic, ongoing, and egregious violations of religious freedom. Previous reports reveal that schools in China have been teaching children that Christianity is an “evil cult,” while children are being taught to oppose religion, encouraged to question the beliefs of family members and report those closest to them to authorities.
USCIRF Commissioner Gary Bauer commented: “Communist China doesn’t only deny its citizens basic human rights, including the right to seek and worship God. It is also asserting itself as a new authoritarian model for developing nations around the world. It is actively engaged in undermining international human rights standards. It utilizes its growing military power to intimidate and threaten its neighbors.”
Open Doors ranks China at No. 17 on its World Watch List of 50 countries where Christians are most persecuted.
Boyd-MacMillan, director of Strategic Research at Christian charity Open Doors, recently told Express UK that the CCP is becoming increasingly concerned about the Christian population’s growth and is cracking down on religion as a result.
“We think the evidence as to why the Chinese Church is so targeted, is that the leaders are scared of the size of the Church and the growth of the Church,” Boyd-MacMillan said.
“And if it grows at the rate that it has done since 1980, and that’s about between 7 [percent] and 8 percent a year, then you’re looking at a group of people that will be 300 million strong, nearly by 2030. And, you know, the Chinese leadership, they really do long term planning, I mean, their economic plan goes to 2049, so this bothers them. Because I think if the Church continues to grow like that, then they’ll have to share power.”
Damaged furniture is seen in the foreground as people attend Sunday mass at the partially damaged St. Antoine Church on August 16, 2020, in Beirut, Lebanon. The explosion at Beirut’s port last week killed over 200 people, injured thousands, and upended countless lives. There has been little visible support from government agencies to help residents clear debris and help the displaced, although scores of volunteers from around Lebanon have descended on the city to help clean. | Getty Images/Chris McGrath
Lebanon, known as a haven for Christianity in the Middle East, is on the brink of financial collapse and teeters on the edge of failed-state status if its path is not quickly reversed, an expert roundtable hosted by a leading Middle Eastern Christians advocacy group warned.
“Lebanon is moving rapidly towards total state failure. Full collapse would take weeks to unfold but decades to repair,” former U.S. Ambassador Ed Gabriel, the president of the American Task Force on Lebanon, said during a media roundtable hosted by In Defense of Christians last Friday.
Richard Ghazal, a senior advisor for IDC, a nonpartisan Washington-based grassroots human rights organization, said Lebanon will not remain “the final remaining bastion of Christianity in the Middle East” if immediate action does not take place to reverse the country’s downfall.
The explosion in Lebanon’s capital city of Beirut on Aug. 4 led to over 200 deaths, thousands of injuries and the destruction of over 300,000 homes. The explosion worsened Lebanon’s financial and humanitarian crisis as the country with nearly a 40% Christian population was already in a state of decline.
The Lebanese prime minister resigned days after the deadly explosion and the protestors alleged the government was guilty of negligent handling of the explosives that triggered the blast. Before the fatal blast, nearly 1 million people in the Beirut area could not afford basic living essentials such as food, clothing and shelter. Around and 60% of citizens live below the poverty line due to political corruption and negligence, according to IDC.
Lebanon, a country with a population of around 6.8 million, shares borders with Israel and Syria.
Though it was once a financial capital in the Middle East, recent events, government corruption and the destabilization of its currency are causing international banks to flee as it is in a financial crisis. Foreign lenders such as HSBC and Wells Fargo are removing themselves from Lebanon’s central bank, while Bank of America and Deutsche Bank have reduced activities in Lebanon. The prevalence of Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah makes the country’s banks increasingly risky for international lenders.
Bishop Peter Karam, the patriarchal vicar and titular bishop of Acre of Phoenicia of the Maronites, said part of Lebanon’s financial crisis is due to the amount of corruption in the government. He compared the financial system’s mismanagement as a “Ponzi scheme.”
“We must admit the fact that there is a lot of corruption in Lebanon. A lot of corruption in Lebanon financially, politically, socially. … The collapse of the financial institutions in Lebanon is a very complex issue. …,” Karam said. “The financial sector in Lebanon was a model in the region for a lot of years. The country was known as the Switzerland of the Middle East. But now it’s just nonexistent because of mismanagement, corruption and political interference in the workings of the central bank and the financial sector.”
Ghazal said the whole world would feel the effects of Lebanon’s failure if it collapses.
“The Lebanese people cannot buy food or even the basic life essentials. So make no mistake about it, a total collapse in Lebanon will send economic humanitarian and even national security ripple effects around the region and then across the globe,” Ghazal explained.
Ghazal said the international community must respond to Lebanon’s worsening crisis through a United Nations-led summit to “re-chart its course going into the future” and restore its founding values of egalitarianism, accountability, the rule of law.‘
“We often hear the phrase, ‘eternal vigilance is the cost of freedom,’ well that’s never been more true than today in the case of Lebanon,” Ghazal said.
The panelists agreed that the international community must respond to Lebanon’s worsening crisis with a non-corrupt, reform-minded government. Stabilizing the currency will be a first step in the right direction, Gabriel, the former U.S. ambassador to Morocco, said. Gabriel recommended a “solid diplomatic effort” and an international conference led by the U.S. and France to provide humanitarian effort and stabilized armed forces.
Robert Nicholson, president of the Philos Project, a Christian advocacy group in the Near East, said the country’s geopolitical importance means its impending downfall would cause a ripple effect of ramifications across Israel, the U.S. and Europe.
“Lebanon is uniquely linked to the West,” Nicholson explained. “It’s part of the Arab world, but it’s just as much a part of the Western world. I sometimes think of Lebanon as kind of a ceasefire zone between these two worlds or civilizations or cultural-religious blocks.” He said Lebanon is on the “seam line between the Christian West and the Islamic [Near] East.”
“We talk a lot about, as Christians, the importance of this country to the [Christian] who live there. But Lebanon is just as important for the Muslims who live there and their co-religionists throughout the region,” Nicholson contended. “What happens in Lebanon affects the Christians, yes, and I am very concerned about that as a Christian. But it also affects many Muslims.”
A woman wears a protective mask as she passes a church on February 8, 2020, in Wuhan, Hubei province, China. The number of those who have died from the Wuhan coronavirus, known as 2019-nCoV, in China climbed to 724. | Getty Images
Though religious persecution in China and India is expected to increase in 2021, exposure to the Bible is increasing in North Korea, the world’s most repressive country, according to the annual Persecution Trends survey from Release International.
In its latest report, RI, an international Christian watchdog organization for persecuted Christians worldwide, said that persecution is “thriving” in China and will likely increase in the new year. RI cited the recent passage of tough new laws controlling religion, the shuttering of numerous churches, and the increasing number of registered churches forced to install CCTV cameras and put up posters proclaiming communist ideals and beliefs.
However, the Chinese Communist Party has “bought the silence of the international community” through increased dependence on trade, it said.
“The government of President Xi Jinping is increasing its ‘clean up’ of anything that does not advance the communist agenda. They appear to believe that they can achieve this by systematic opposition,” the group warned.
Corroborating other reports, RI said that China has been exploiting the COVID-19 pandemic to tighten restrictions on underground believers. Earlier this year, it was reported that amid the outbreak, impoverished Christian villagers in China were ordered to renounce their faith and replace displays of Jesus with portraits of Chairman Mao and President Xi or risk losing their welfare benefits.
“The Chinese government is trying every way to take advantage of the virus by increasing the crackdown against Christian churches,” said RI partner Bob Fu, of ChinaAid. “It has accelerated particular campaigns, such as the forced removal of crosses.”
The group also predicted that in India, intolerance toward Christians and other religious minorities will continue to grow during 2021, largely due to growing Hindu nationalism. RI noted that incidents targeting Indian Christians have risen steeply since 2014, when Narendra Modi of the Bharatiya Janata Party came to power. It cited statistics revealing Christians suffered 225 incidents of religiously motivated violence during the first 10 months of 2020, compared to 218 incidents in the same period in 2019. Many of these attacks were by vigilante mobs.
In September 2020, Hindu extremists incited mobs of up to 3,000 people to attack Christians in three villages in Chhattisgarh state.
Thomas Schirrmacher, the newly-appointed head of The World Evangelical Alliance, which represents over 600 million evangelical Christians worldwide, previously told The Christian Post that Hindu supremacism is the driver of much of the persecution in that country.
“Elections are won by the prime minister with this topic: ‘India is for the Hindus,’ and suddenly Muslims and Christians find themselves in a country that clearly wants to get rid of them,” he said. “They promote the idea that an Indian by nature is a Hindu. So if he is not a Hindu, he has been stolen, and must be re-converted.”
“This idea was not on the market 10 years ago, and has led to an increase in discrimination and killings of Indian Christians and other minorities,” he said, adding that Christians in Western countries must “speak up” for those persecuted for their faith.
The report was part of RI’s annual Persecution Trends Survey, which was published in the recent edition of Release International’s Voice magazine. In addition to China and India, RI predicted Malaysia, Iran, Pakistan, Egypt and Nigeria will also face increased persecution in the coming year. Interestingly, the group said that RI partners have been able to double their distribution of Bibles to Christians in North Korea throughout 2020, despite COVID restrictions. According to Open Doors USA, North Korea is ranked No. 1 on its list of countries where it’s most difficult for Christians to live.
“This has been the most creative year we have witnessed in the underground church to date,” the group said. A previous report found that the percentage of North Korean citizens who are exposed to the Bible is steadily increasing every year despite extreme persecution.
Before 2000, only 16 people claimed to have seen a Bible. After 2000, up to 559 North Korean defectors said they had “seen a Bible,” even though religious literature is banned in the isolated country.
Children play in front of a hotel damaged by mortar shelling, in Humera, Ethiopia, on November 22, 2020. Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, last year’s Nobel Peace Prize winner, announced military operations in Tigray on November 4, 2020, saying they came in response to attacks on federal army camps by the party, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF). Hundreds have died in nearly three weeks of hostilities that analysts worry could draw in the broader Horn of Africa region, though Abiy has kept a lid on the details, cutting phone and internet connections in Tigray and restricting reporting. | AFP via Getty Images/Eduardo Soteras
A Christian human rights group is concerned about a recently launched Ethiopian military offensive that is suspected of committing war crimes against civilians. Earlier this month, Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed ordered the military to attack forces tied to the Tigray Peoples’ Liberation Front in response to an attack on a base.
Mervyn Thomas, founder of CSW, a Christian nonprofit that advocates for religious freedom around the world, said there were “persistent reports of violations which may amount to atrocity crimes” that may “necessitate an immediate international response.” Thomas was also concerned about the presence of refugees and soldiers in the region from neighboring Eritrea which gained independence from Ethiopia in 1993 and is located east of the region.
“Pressure must be exerted to ensure an immediate ceasefire, the withdrawal of Eritrean troops, the opening of humanitarian corridors to assist refugees and civilians, and the immediate, independent verification and investigation of possible war crimes and crimes against humanity,” he stated.
Thomas also called on Ethiopia to “ensure protection for refugees in accordance with international law” and also “to fulfil its obligations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights, as well as under the Rome Statute, which describes the targeting of civilians, including through deliberate starvation.”
“We urge Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed to take immediate steps to de-escalate the conflict, ensuring full respect for the right to life and the fundamental freedoms of all Ethiopian citizens, regardless of ethnicity,” he added.
Last week, Babar Baloch of the United Nations Refugee Agency told the press at a briefing in Palais des Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, that over 33,000 Tigray residents had fled to the Sudan, located west of the region, as a result of the offensive.
“Refugees have told us they were going about their daily lives when fighting erupted suddenly. We have met teachers, nurses, office workers, farmers and students who were completely caught by surprise,”explained Baloch.
“Many fled with nothing except what they had with them and then had to walk for hours and cross a river to seek safety in Sudan.”
Baloch went on to note that there were also approximately 100,000 Eritrean refugees located in four camps in the region and that they were “very worried” about their safety.
“Eritrean refugees in Tigray were completely reliant on assistance, including food and water, before the conflict erupted, and there are major concerns that ongoing hostilities will drastically affect services in the camps,” continued Baloch.
“Rations were provided until the end of November, so it is increasingly critical for humanitarian workers to have access and for additional food to be distributed before refugees run out.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
In addition to being a reporter, Michael Gryboski has also had a novel released titled Memories of Lasting Shadows. For more information, click here.
Christians in Nigeria take part in funerals in April 2019. | Intersociety
The rise of violent extremist groups throughout Africa, as well as the constant attacks against Christian communities in the continent’s most populated country, has religious leaders fearful that “the next jihad” is underway as world leaders seem to be rushing to address the problem.
“I know one thing has never really changed: No one gives a damn about Africa except for their natural resources or if there is going to be a big party because there is a peace treaty being signed,” said Rabbi Abraham Cooper, director of the global social action agenda of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a leading Jewish human rights organization with over 400,000 family members.
“That’s just the truth and it’s a terrible truth. It might be one of the vestiges, frankly, of colonialism.”
W Publishing Group
Cooper teamed up with Rev. Johnnie Moore, a commissioner on the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom and president of the Congress of Christian Leaders, to author the new book The Next Jihad: Stop the Christian Genocide in Africa.
The book was written after the unlikely duo traveled together to Nigeria earlier this year to meet with dozens of Christian victims of terrorism from five different regions.
In recent years, Nigeria, the continent’s richest country, has dealt with the rise of Islamic terrorist groups in the northeast (Boko Haram and the Islamic State West Africa Province) and an increase of deadly attacks on farming communities carried out by militarized radicals from the Fulani herding community.
In the past few years, it’s been estimated that thousands of Christians have been killed while millions of Nigerians have been displaced from their communities. Some human rights groups have warned that attacks against Christian communities in Nigeria have reached the standard for genocide.
“[We want] to help people really feel the problem and understand it enough to do something about it,” Moore, an evangelical human rights advocate, told The Christian Post about the purpose of the book. “It was Rabbi Cooper who initiated the trip and encouraged me and us to go together to shine a light on what was happening there. It felt like deja vu to me because back in 2014, the Weisenthal Center was the first organization of any kind that recognized what ISIS was doing to Christians and Yazidis in Iraq was genocide.”
“Where my mind was when we were writing the book right after our trip, 10 days before the world started shutting down because of COVID, I thought this could be the next jihad,” Moore continued. “I since come to realize that it is the next jihad right now. It is not just Nigeria. It is the countries around Nigeria. It is a quickly escalating problem.”
Outside of Nigeria, the growing presence of Islamic extremist groups and increasing attacks have plagued other regions of Africa and caused mass displacement.
Those regions include the Sahel, where hundreds of thousands have been displaced amid escalating terror attacks in the last two years in Burkina Faso, as well as East Africa, where al-Shabab terrorists are attacking citizens in Somalia and Kenya. In southern Africa, over 300,000 people have been displaced in Mozambique amid a stark increase in radical Islamic extremist attacks in the northern part of the country in recent years.
While acknowledging that the spread of terrorism and violence in Africa after the fall of ISIS in Syria and Iraq is a continent-wide problem, much of the book’s focus is on Nigeria as both leaders see the country as being a continental leader when it comes to its size and influence.
USCIRF Commissioner Johnnie Moore (M) speaks during a meeting with Sudan Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok in Washington, D.C. on Dec. 5, 2019. He is flanked by USCIRF Vice Chair Gayle Manchin (R) and USCIRF’s director of international law and policy Elizabeth Cassidy (L). | USCIRF
“It has the 10th largest oil reserves in the world, it is the most populated country in Africa,” Moore explained. “It has the largest economy in Africa. It is surrounded by countries with terrorist insurgencies. If anything goes the wrong way, the Syrian crisis will feel like a distant memory compared to the catastrophe that the failure of West Africa could actually happen because of neglecting the situation in Nigeria.”
But in Nigeria and even among some U.S. diplomats, the debate on violence in Nigeria is complicated, especially when it comes to the rise of Fulani extremist attacks on predominantly Christian farming villages in the country’s Middle Belt.
On a regular basis, reports emerge of overnight attacks carried out on farming villages in which people are slaughtered, homes are burned and farmlands are confiscated.
“One of the important things to understand that it is not just Boko Haram and ISIS in West Africa now,” Moore said.
“But because the government now has neglected dealing with these people, you have militarized Fulani tribesman. We are very careful to make it clear that Fulani are the largest tribe in Africa — almost 20 million. Not every Fulani is a terrorist. But because the government hasn’t dealt with the terrorism in the northeast, you have terrorists among the Fulani who are now killing more people than Boko Haram ever had in the center part of the country, which happens to be where the Christians and the oil is.”
The Anambra-based International Society for Civil Liberties and Rule of Law estimates that at least 812 Christians were killed by Fulani radicals in the first half of 2020 by radical herdsmen.
While human rights advocates have accused the Nigerian government of not doing enough to protect its citizens from Fulani attacks, talk about how the international community should respond to the crisis has been “deflected” by a debate about what role religion is playing in the Fulani attacks, the authors explained.
While the Nigerian government has maintained that the conflict is less about religion and is just a continuation of a decades-old resource conflict between herders and farmers, Christian victims and advocates contend that there are strong religious overtones at play in the violence that should not be ignored, especially when attackers are screaming “Allahu Akbar” as they slaughter villagers and burn down houses.
In the book, Moore and Cooper recalled a meeting they had in February with U.S. Ambassador to Nigeria Mary Beth Leonard in which they discussed the religious aspects of the violence throughout the country.
“She denied that it was at all about religion and described the conflict as ‘fundamentally a resource issue,’” the book states. “Religion was, according to Ambassador Leonard, only relevant as it served as a potential accelerant to conflict. She left us with the impression that people like us, by speaking up for victims of religious persecution, were part of the problem. We found this to be hugely alarming.”
Cooper pointed out that while the Nigerian military has the capacity to stop the violence, the military has not been or willing or able to do so. The authors believe that the U.S. and United Kingdom governments should do more in their power to pressure the Nigerian government to protect its citizens.
Rabbi Abraham Cooper is the associate dean and director of the global social action agenda at the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, California. | Simon Wiesenthal Center
”The goal is to get these two governments to sort of get past the reflective and deflective discussions about whether it is just tribal and religion,” Cooper stated. “We don’t want to demonize Nigeria as a failed or lost state, it is not there yet. It is too big and too important to fail. We need American diplomats, U.K. diplomats and others to stop putting blinders on because they just don’t want to go there when it comes to religion. That is a huge mistake. You can’t treat cancer unless you can fully identify the nature and scope of that cancer.”
The book was released just weeks ahead of the U.S. presidential election last month.
“We believe that whoever is sitting in the Oval Office in January and whatever the number counts are in the House and Senate, the issue of Nigeria — and specifically the genocide that is underway there against Christians — will have to be an issue that is dealt with by the United States,” Cooper contended, “not only because of religious freedom and all the rest but also because of the terrorist players that are operating in the neighborhood and expanding their operations.”
Grace Community Church, the Los Angeles-area megachurch that re-opened in defiance of coronavirus-related lockdowns, is pushing back against what media are claiming is an “outbreak” originating at the church.
Multiple Los Angeles-area news outlets claimed last week that a COVID-19 “outbreak” is happening at the church, framing the story around the church’s defiance to lockdown orders.
The Los Angeles Times reported, “Coronavirus outbreak strikes L.A. megachurch that defied public health orders.”
Local news station KTLA-TV reported, “Coronavirus outbreak strikes defiant Sun Valley megachurch that held indoor services despite public health orders.”
According to attorneys for the church, the “outbreak” is actually just three confirmed COVID-19 cases.
Jenna Ellis, an attorney for Grace Community Church, called the stories “grossly misleading” meant to incite “fear-mongering” against the church.
“Three very mild positive tests among more than 7,000 people is hardly news. 0.04% is not an ‘outbreak.’ The LA Times and others’ grossly misleading and fear-mongering headlines aim to mischaracterize Grace Community Church as irresponsible and a superspreader,” Ellis said, the Daily Wire reported.
She added, “It has never been the Church’s position that it is only safe to hold services if no one ever tests positive, or for example, if no one ever gets the flu during flu season. Our position has been that LA County shutting down churches indefinitely amid a virus with a 99.98% survival rate,especially when state-preferred businesses are open and protests are held without restriction, is unconstitutional and harmful to the free exercise of religion.“
The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health confirmed to both the Los Angeles Times and KTLA that the “outbreak” was just three COVID-19 cases.
More from the LA Times:
Under the county health officer’s order, places of worship must report to the county Public Health Department when at least three coronavirus cases are identified among staff or worshipers within a span of 14 days so the agency can determine whether there is an outbreak.
Grace Community Church is locked in a heated legal battle with Los Angeles authorities.
The church continues to hold indoor worship services in defiance of a ruling by a Los Angeles Superior Court judge, which ordered the church to stop holding indoor services. The city has asked a judge to hold the church in contempt of court, according to the LA Times.
3 coronavirus cases confirmed at John MacArthur’s megachurch
Reported By Leonardo Blair, Christian Post Reporter | October 23, 2020
Pastor John MacArthur leads Grace Community Church in California in a video posted October 2020. | Screenshot: Grace Community Church
Public health officials in Los Angeles said Thursday that they have confirmed at least three cases of COVID-19 connected to Pastor John MacArthur’s Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, California.
Officials investigating the COVID-19 infections told the Los Angeles Times that they will be working closely with the church to limit the transmission of the virus but did not provide any other details.
Places of worship in L.A. County, where the church is located, are required to report to the county Public Health Department when there are at least three coronavirus cases within a span of two weeks so the agency can determine whether there is an outbreak, the Times reported.
The Christian Post reached out to MacArthur and his church for comment on Friday. In a statement shared with CP, Jenna Ellis, attorney for MacArthur and Grace Community Church, said:
“Three very mild positive tests among more than 7,000 people is hardly news: 0.0004 or 0.043% is not an ‘outbreak.’ … It has never been the church’s position that it is only safe to hold services if no one ever tests positive, or for example, if no one ever gets the flu during flu season. Our position has been that LA County shutting down churches indefinitely amid a virus with a 99.98% survival rate, especially when state-preferred businesses are open and protests are held without restriction, is unconstitutional and harmful to the free exercise of religion.”
It does not appear that the announcement has affected current operations at the church.
Owen Strachan, an associate professor of Christian theology and director of the center for public theology at the Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, revealed on Twitter Thursday that he delivered a presentation on transgenderism to the church’s men’s ministry on Wednesday night.
“I did not have ‘speak at Grace Community Church’ on my 2020 bingo card. Pure joy to speak on transgenderism last night for the men’s ministry. (Video coming.) Praise God for this faithful congregation, for Dr. MacArthur’s godly example and teaching, and for many friends in LA,” Strachan wrote.
The announcement of the coronavirus cases at Grace Community Church comes months after MacArthur and elders of the church decided to defy a second round of public health restrictions on indoor worship services and reopen in the summer. They contended that it was the church’s biblical duty to remain open and that they would not disobey “our Lord’s clear commands.”
MacArthur said last month that he wasn’t aware of any infections or hospitalizations due to the virus from an estimated 7,000 people who have attended his church amid the pandemic.
“We hear the other day that there is one death per 100,000 people from COVID in California at this present time, so the narrative doesn’t work. They can’t sell us this lie anymore that makes you shut down the church. We’ve had about 7,000 people in church the last couple of weeks. We don’t know of anybody sick. We’ve never had anybody in the hospital with COVID,” MacArthur said during a Q Session last month in which he urged pastors to open their churches because the supposed need for indefinite lockdowns is a “lie.”
He argued that while it’s “crystal clear that God has ordained government,” he will no longer aid and abet the “lie” of the ongoing lockdowns in response to COVID-19.
“Being a pastor means you’re a truth teller. That means you’re truth teller when it comes to the Bible. That means you protect your people from deception that comes from the world. That’s part of being a shepherd. You don’t want to aid and abet the lie. This is a lie and you can’t necessarily say that everybody that’s involved in it has an ulterior motive but the lie is dominating and you need to be a truth teller and you need to do your homework,” MacArthur said.
Twitter censored an inspirational post by former NFL quarterback Tim Tebow asking Christians to hold onto their faith during times of personal tribulation. The former Heisman Trophy winner tweeted a simple message Tuesday: Keep your faith intact, and remember that all of the Bible’s messengers struggled.
“This could be your time. That breakthrough could be tomorrow, or it could be next year. But, you have the opportunity to turn however you’re being tested into a testimony. So many heroes were wounded deeply before they were used greatly!” he wrote, alongside a video message.
“The following media includes potentially sensitive content,” read a warning from the social media giant that covered the video portion of his post.
The Western Journal reached out to Twitter for comment about why the video post was labeled with a warning but did not immediately receive a response. It’s difficult to discern what anyone could find “sensitive” about the content in Tebow’s video.
In the post, Tebow, breathing heavily after an apparent workout, called on Christians to turn to God during times of difficulty.
“Bible believers, when we look at the Bible, and we see a lot of the heroes, a lot of times they truly were wounded deeply before they were ever used greatly,” he said.
“So maybe you’re going through a time in your life where you feel like you’ve just been wounded greatly. It hasn’t been your year, hasn’t been your day — you just don’t feel like this is your time,” Tebow continued.
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“But this could be your time for learning. This could be your time for growing. This could be your time for adapting. This could be the time that is a test for you, but tomorrow it gets to turn into a testimony,” he said.
“Because you never know what God is doing with your life. You never know what he is preparing you for. So many times in the Bible, when we look at the heroes, there were times in their life where if they stopped, if they quit, if they said, ‘No, God, I’ve had enough,’ then they would have missed out on the most impactful, most influential times of their life,” the former Florida Gator said.
Tebow then appealed to those who might be struggling.
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“Maybe that is the next step for you. Maybe that is tomorrow. Maybe that is next week, maybe that is next year,” he said. “But when we quit, we will never know what we missed out on. We will never know what’s in store for us.
“Because maybe that breakthrough is coming tomorrow. Maybe it’s next year. Maybe you have a little bit more time going through a hard time in your life.
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“But I can tell you this: We get to trust an unknown future to a known God, because we know how much he loves us. We know what he did for us in sending his son. He gave his best for us. …
“When we remember that, then we can have trust in the character of our God, because we know how much he loves us. That’s how we get through the tough times.
Tebow concluded his video message by saying, “Right where you’re at, whatever you’re doing, whatever you’re going through, he loves you. You were enough for his son to die on the cross, that’s how much you’re loved. Hold onto that in your time of need.”
Johnathan has authored thousands of news articles throughout his career. He has also worked as an editor and producer in radio and television. He is a proud husband and father.
Christian / AP PhotoChinese communist authorities have ordered poor Christian villagers to remove Christian images from their homes and replace them with portraits of Chairman Mao and President Xi Jinping or risk losing their welfare benefits.
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has continued its program of “Sinicization” of religion by channeling religious fervor in the country toward the Party rather than God, the Christian Postreported this weekend.
In May, an official in the eastern province of Shandong raided the home of a local Christian and hung pictures of Mao Zedong and Xi Jinping on the wall in place of Christian images.
“These are the greatest gods. If you want to worship somebody, they are the ones,”the official told them.
This year, China’s “social credit system” was scheduled to become fully functional, assigning points to each individual based on how much the Communist Party approves of them and using their rating to control their behavior and access to certain benefits..
“There are fears that China’s new ‘social credit system’ – designed to reward good citizenship and punish bad – will be used to discriminate against Christians,” wrote the Catholic charity organization Aid to the Church in Need in a 2019 report.
The fears are tied to “cash rewards for those who inform on underground churches and other ‘unofficial’ places of worship,”indicating that the government might also reward the persecution of Christians with high “social credit” scores.
According to the religious liberty magazine Bitter Winter, the CCP is now using state welfare benefits as leverage to coerce people into worshiping the Party rather than Jesus. In April, for instance, party officials visited the homes of Christians in Linfen, in the northern province of Shanxi, ordering those who receive welfare payments from the government to remove crosses, Christian symbols, and images in their homes and replace them with portraits of China’s communist leaders. The officials threatened the Christians that non-compliance with the order would result in suspension of their welfare subsidies.
“All impoverished households in the town were told to display Mao Zedong images,” a local house church preacher said. “The government is trying to eliminate our belief and wants to become God instead of Jesus.”
Officials have often made good on their threats, ruthlessly suspending benefits to Christians who fail to give up their devotions. Communist authorities cancelled the government subsidies of one elderly Christian woman from Shangqiu city in Henan after they found an image of a cross posted on the door of her home.
“They tore it down immediately,” she said. “Afterward, both my minimum living allowance and poverty alleviation subsidy were canceled. I am being driven to a dead end. I have diabetes and need injections regularly.”
Something similar occurred in in Xinyu city in the southeastern province of Jiangxi, when officials canceled the minimum living subsidy and a monthly disability allowance of 100 RMB (about $14) to a disabled Christian who disobeyed government orders and continued to attend worship services.
Another Christian living in Jiangxi’s Poyang county — a woman in her 80s — reportedly stopped receiving government aid after she said “Thank God” after receiving her monthly 200 RMB (about $28) subsidy in mid-January.
“They expected me to praise the kindness of the Communist Party instead,” she said.
In another case, local officials entered the home of a member of a state-sponsored Three-Self church and tore down all Christian images, including a calendar with an image of Jesus, and posted a portrait of Mao Zedong instead.
“Impoverished religious households can’t receive money from the state for nothing — they must obey the Communist Party for the money they receive,” the official declared.
The number of Christians in the birthplace of their faith, the greater Middle East, continues to plummet months after the Islamic State, which waged a genocidal campaign against Christians, lost its “caliphate” in Iraq and Syria, Breitbart News learned from various experts, including an archbishop.
“Unfortunately, it can be stated that the Islamic State group’s anti-Christian campaign was very successful in Iraq, and to a certain extent, successful in Syria,”John Hajjar, the co-chair of the American Mideast Coalition for Democracy (AMCD) and co-director of the Middle East Christian Committee (MECHRIC), told Breitbart News.
“I think we have no more hope,”Archbishop Vicken Aykazian, the diocesan legate in America’s capital and ecumenical director for the Eastern Diocese of the Armenian Orthodox Church of America, also told Breitbart News, referring to the future of Christianity in its Middle East cradle. “Middle East Christians have no nation that protects them openly.”
The number of Christians in Middle East-North Africa (MENA), as a component of the overall Muslim-majority population, has dropped substantially — from about ten percent in 1900 to between two and four percent now.
There are different estimates for the overall number of Christians that vary from about 12 million in the Middle East alone to about 20 million in MENA, Breitbart News learned from the experts and data from U.S. government and independentsources.
“The future for Christians right now is terrible — a Middle East without Christians. We are going to have churches without Christians as museums for tourists. There will be no Christians left,” the archbishop warned, echoing other analysts who have constantly cautioned that Christianity is on the verge of extinction in the Middle East.
“The number of Christians in the Middle East has already dropped extensively,” he further declared, accusing church leaders of inflating the actual numbers of Christ followers in the region to minimize the fact that Christianity is on the brink of extinction.
The bishop urged U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration to do even more to help Middle East Christians.
Contradicting assertions by the Trump administration, the Church leader said, “People are not coming back. I can assure you that nobody will go back.”
The Trump administration has disbursed billions in funding to help victims of ISIS genocide, namely Christians and Yazidis, but the bishop told Breitbart News it is “not enough.”
“Trump is going to be a hero for the Christians in the Middle East if he takes more action,” he said.
Addressing President Trump, Archbishop Aykazian added, “Please help the Christians. They need your help and once you move one of your fingers the entire Arabic world will thank you. If he does such a thing, it is going to change everything. If he doesn’t, they will suffer.”
“The ball is in Trump’s court,”he further said.
In Iraq, which experts say has experienced the most dramatic drop in Christians due to jihadis and Iran-allied groups, Aykazian told Breitbart News that number has decreased from 1.6 million to less than 100,000, marking a drop of more than 90 percent.
“A similar situation is taking place in Syria’s Aleppo where there has also been a drop of more than 90 percent in Christians, from 360,000 to about 25,000 now,”he said, noting, “The church leaders don’t want to say those statements because they fear their followers will be disillusioned.”
ISIS’s genocide campaign targeted religious minorities in Iraq and Syria, primarily Christians and Yazidis, killing tens of thousands of them and taking some hostages as sex slaves.
“They [Christians] realized just how insecure they are,” Nina Shea, a religious freedom expert at the Hudson Institute, told Breitbart News. “Their own governments fail to protect them, and ISIS gained popular support within some neighboring major Sunni areas, like Mosul.”
Archbishop Aykazian said Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi “so far has been the best leader in the Middle East for defending Christians.”he said, adding, “The biggest Christian majorities are in Egypt.”
Shea pointed out, “Egypt retains ten million Coptic Christians. That is the only place where I see a certain future for them [Christians].”
“In a generation, Egypt may be the only remaining country with a robust Christian community that traces its roots to the earliest Christian church,”Shea added. “Elsewhere in the Middle East, only remnants of these ancient communities may survive.”
Nevertheless, Shea and the bishop acknowledged that, even in Egypt, Christians are confronting the spread of Sunni extremism and anti-Christian bigotry. The ongoing war against Islamic terrorism continues to kill, wound, and push Christians out of their historical homelands in the greater Middle East, even in Egypt.
“More recently, after the Arab Spring and with the rise of ISIS, tens of thousands of Christians were killed in Iraq and Syria,” Hajjar said. “Close to 1 million Christians in the region have gone into exile.”
“Following multiple terrorist attacks in Egypt against the Copts, many Christian Egyptians also emigrated from their country,” Hajjar continued. “We can estimate that more than 25-30 percent of Christians in the Middle East have been affected by the recent wars and conflicts.”
The experts also attributed the ongoing demise of Christianity in the Middle East to certain governments’ disdain towards followers of Christianity and their refusal to protect them.
In Turkey, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has reportedly designated Christians as “enemies of the state.”In Iraq, the country that experienced the sharpest drop in the number of Christ followers in recent years, Baghdad-sanctioned Iran-allied Shiite militias have reportedly taken Christian lands and are harassing them.
Referring to the countries that have experienced the largest decline in Christians, Hajjar named Iraq, Syria, Iran, and Lebanon. Similar to Hajjar’s list, the bishop said, “Iraq is number one, Lebanon is number two, and Syria is number three.”
The experts conceded that the Trump administration had done more to help Middle East Christians than his predecessor, but they argued that Christians are far from protected and more can be done.
Pennsylvania Democrats, including the state’s governor, chastised a freshman Republican representative for an “offensive” and “Islamophobic” opening prayer at the state capitol in Harrisburg on Monday, during which she mentioned Jesus numerous times.
In her prayer, Rep. Stephanie Borowicz — an associate pastor’s wife representing a district in the center of the Keystone State — also thanked President Donald Trump specifically for “unequivocally” supporting Israel.
The lawmaker began the invocation, “Jesus, I thank you for this privilege Lord of letting me pray. I Jesus am your ambassador here today representing you, the King of kings, the Lord of lords. The great I am.”
Borowicz referenced the tradition of leaders praying for the country, including George Washington at Valley Forge, Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg, as well as the members of the Continental Congress in Philadelphia who “fasted and prayed for this nation to be founded on Your principles and Your words and Your truths.”
“God forgive us — Jesus — we’ve lost sight of you, we’ve forgotten you, God, in our country, and we’re asking you to forgive us,” she said.
Borowicz then paraphrased the Bible passage 2 Chronicles 7:14, saying, “If My people who are called by My name will humble themselves, and pray and seek Your face, and turn from their wicked ways, that you’ll heal our land.”
The verse has often been quoted by political and religious leaders, including Ronald Reagan who had his family Bible opened to it when he was sworn as the 40th president of the United States in 1981, CBN News reported. Mike Pence used the same Bible, opened to the same passage when he took the oath as vice president.
Borowicz further prayed, “thank you that we’re blessed because we stand by Israel,” a clear reference to the Bible’s Genesis 12:3.
The representative concluded her invocation: “I claim all these things in the powerful, mighty name of Jesus, the one who, at the name of Jesus, every knee will bow, and every tongue will confess, Jesus, that you are Lord, in Jesus’ name.”
Someone, apparently a representative, yelled out as Borowicz was finishing, prompting Republican House Speaker Mike Turzai, who had looked uncomfortable at various points throughout, to nudge her arm indicating it was time to wrap it up.
Borowicz’s prayer came before Pennsylvania’s first Muslim-American female representative, Movita Johnson-Harrell, was sworn in. Johnson-Harrell recently won a special election to fill a vacant seat for a Philadelphia district.
Pennsylvania Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf said on Tuesday that he apologized to Johnson-Harrell for Borowicz’s prayer, Fox News reported.
“I was horrified. I grew up in Pennsylvania,”Wolf said. “Pennsylvania was founded by William Penn on the basis of freedom of conscience. I have a strong spiritual sense. This is not a reflection of the religion I grew up in.”
Johnson-Harrell told reporters she thought pretty much the “entire invocation was offensive,”describing it as a weaponization of Jesus and the Israeli – Palestinian issue.
“It blatantly represented the Islamophobia that exists among some leaders — leaders that are supposed to represent the people,”she added in an interview with the Pennsylvania Capital Star.
Democratic Leader Frank Dermody called Borowicz’s invocation “beneath the dignity of this House,”The Associated Press reported.
Majority Leader Bryan Cutler did not find fault with his Republican colleague.
“I, for one, understand that everybody has sincerely held beliefs and I would never ask any one of us as an individual to go against that,” Cutler said.
Borowicz was unapologetic, according to state house reporter Andrew Bahl.
“That’s how I pray every day,” she said, adding, “Oh no, I don’t apologize ever for praying.”
Michael Geer, president of the Pennsylvania Family Institute, said that individuals offering the opening prayers “should be free to pray as their faith and conscience dictates.” He said he would hope their words would not be censored.
“A Christian praying out loud to Jesus and speaking his name should not be a surprise to anyone, nor viewed as offensive,” Geer said. “From the days of William Penn and Benjamin Franklin, prayer is at the centerpiece of Pennsylvania’s founding and flourishing, and we must never abandon it.”
Harrisburg-based conservative radio talk show host Marc Scaringi agreed.
“State Rep. Stephanie Borowicz’s prayer wasn’t offensive,”he contended. “It was a beautiful invocation for the blessings of Jesus Christ. What’s offensive is Governor’s Wolf’s apology — that he was ‘horrified’ by the prayer.
“Strangely, Wolf invoked Pennsylvania’s founder, William Penn, in rebuke of Borowicz and her prayer. Yet, Penn founded Pennsylvania to be a peaceful refuge for members of all religious beliefs — and yes, that includes Christians too! Pennsylvanians should be horrified by our Governor’s apparent rebuke of the blessing of Jesus Christ.”
Rep. Jason Dawkins, a Muslim lawmaker, opened Tuesday’s Pennsylvania House session by reading from the Quran, prompting applause in the chamber, Fox News reported.
Randy DeSoto is a graduate of West Point and Regent University School of Law. He is the author of the book “We Hold These Truths” and screenwriter of the political documentary “I Want Your Money.”
A Christian student at the University of California, Berkeley, is being pressured to resign her post in student government over her biblical beliefs.
When President Donald Trump recently redefined “gender” for federal purposes as the gender an individual is born with, it didn’t set well with students at Berkeley. A member of the student government quickly introduced a resolution condemning the president but student senator Isabella Chow (pictured) couldn’t support it. She didn’t vote no – instead, she abstained. For that, she was roundly condemned by her fellow students at a subsequent gathering.
In an interview with OneNewsNow, Chow expressed her support for freedom from discrimination and freedom from harassment for all people.
“But where it crosses the line for me is that I’m asked to promote LGBTQ identities and lifestyles – and it conflicts with my values and the values of the Christian community that I represent,” she shared.
And when she refused to support the resolution, it didn’t take long for the hammer to fall.
“My political party released a statement right after the vote disaffiliating with me – [and it] was shared widely,” said Chow. “This issue has just gone viral. People are calling me ‘homophobic,’ ‘transphobic,’ the ‘f-word’ and many other slurs that I just don’t want to repeat here.”
Most of the campus is demanding she resign her post in student government – but Chow is determined to stay the course.
“The issue that students here at Berkeley have with my statement is that they fundamentally cannot reconcile how I can say I love you and validate you as an individual, and yet disagree with how you choose to identify yourself and how you choose to live your life,” she explained.
Chow, who has a long year and a half in front of her before graduation, told Fox News that “backing down is not an option” – even though no one except her Christian supporters on campus will even talk to her anymore.
A teaching assistant at the University of Georgia made absurdly racist Facebook posts targeted toward white people and suggested dismantling “churches, schools, and families.” There is always a degree of left-wing lunacy that you can expect from America’s colleges, but professors and students seem to be getting crazier by the day.
Irami Osei-Frimpong, a Ph.D. student and teaching assistant at the University of Georgia, made several racist Facebook posts explicitly attacking Christians and white people, Campus Reform reported. In a public post, Osei-Frimpong suggested an idea to deal with “crappy” white people who push “voter suppression” and “voter ID laws.”
“We can talk about voter suppression. We can talk about ID laws,”Osei-Frimpong wrote. “But all of this begins and ends with the fact that we make crappy White people.” He went on to suggest “dismantling” churches, schools and families.
“So if we are serious, we have to dismantle the institutions that make crappy white people: their churches, their schools, their families.”
I’m not sure how Osei-Frimpong wants to “dismantle” families and churches, but I doubt it’s through peaceful means.
In another public Facebook post, the left-wing radical suggested putting an end to “respectability” and going “to war on the White electorate.”
“Democrats need to go to war on the White electorate,” Osei-Frimpong wrote. “Acknowledge that we are going to lose elections for at least the next few years, as we campaign to change the conventional wisdom of the electorate.”
“Respectability Democrats, Black and White, are worthless,” he added.
Osei-Frimpong is exactly the type of left-wing radical that conservative students on college campuses have to engage with every day. These left-wing radicals, who are often filled with hatred toward white people and Christians, are the ones who accuse others of “racism” and “fascism.”
Osei-Frimpong previously made comments in August about his white students, calling them “sociopaths” and comparing them to “autistic kids.”
“There is a way in which White people in the South learn manners as a series of behaviors the way autistic kids learn to read social cues for behaviors,” he said. “Except since these guys and gals aren’t autistic, I just feel like I’m around a bunch of sociopaths.”
Malachi Bailey is a writer from the Midwest with a background in history, education and philosophy. He has led multiple conservative groups and is dedicated to the principles of free speech, privacy and peace.
A longtime Canadian activist has been warning for years that Christians are the enemy of the State, and now an allegation of outright discrimination in Ontario is highlighting that ongoing antagonism.
Hoping to foster a child in their home, husband and wife Levi and Amanda denBok applied with Children’s Aid Services (CAS) but were informed via letter that their religious beliefs disqualified them, The Christian Post reported. The couple shared the rejection letter in a Facebook post, describing how they were asked by a CAS adopting agent what church they attend and if they believe the Bible is true.
In the interview, the husband and wife were asked: “Are you one of those churches that still believes the Bible is true?” The agent informed the couple that the Bible was written “thousands of years ago” and the world has since changed, the couple claims.
McVety
Dr. Charles McVety, who leads Canada Christian College as president, says the married couple’s beliefs don’t match the supposed “values” of the province of Ontario and its leaders. Yet it’s widely known, he says, that CAS favors same-sex couples as foster parents over religious couples. Such a discriminatory practice would be an eye-opening revelation, since the argument from same-sex couples has been excluding them from fostering children is discriminatory.
McVety has long warned OneNewsNow readers that Canada’s far-left leaders view Christianity and its followers as the enemy of progress.
“There is no neutral ground now. There is no hiding in the corner,”he warned as recently as August.
Asked how Canada got to the point that the government can reject Christians on the basis of their faith, McVety says an apathetic Church led by cowardly leaders is to blame.
The same is happening in the U.S., he warns.
According to Levi denBok’s account of the back-and-forth conversation with CAS, he and his wife caved to the agency over the issue of spanking in the home and even assured the case worker that if a foster child is homosexual, the denBoks would love the child regardless. Yet the agency still refused to place a children under their roof. The rejection letter reads:
We also want to let you know that the policies of our agency do not appear to fit with your values and beliefs and therefore, we will be unable to move forward with an approval for your family as a resource home.
“It wasn’t enough that we demonstrated that we would love any child that was placed in our home,”Levi denBok wrote in his Facebook message. “It wasn’t enough that we would provide a safe place for a child to learn and grow. We had to BELIEVE differently. That’s not conformity — that’s conversion.”
“The state is doubling down on its hostility against my beliefs, even though that’s what the Supreme Court said they couldn’t do,” says cake artist Jack Phillips, pictured Sept. 21 working on a custom cake in his Masterpiece Cakeshop in Lakewood, Colorado. (Photo: Rick Wilking/Reuters/Newscom)
The Colorado Civil Rights Commission is going after Christian baker Jack Phillips again, although the Masterpiece Cakeshop owner won a resounding 7-2 decision in June before the U.S. Supreme Court.
The state commission moved against Phillips after a lawyer asked him to design and bake a custom cake celebrating a gender transition, pink on the inside and blue on the outside.
Phillips, who calls himself a cake artist, said the requested cake’s message would violate his religious beliefs.
“The state is doubling down on its hostility against my beliefs, even though that’s what the Supreme Court said they couldn’t do,” Phillips said in a prepared statement released by his lawyers. “It seems I’m the only person in the state of Colorado who can’t live out my beliefs.”
The religious liberty group Alliance Defending Freedom, which has represented Phillips since he turned down a gay couple’s order six years ago for a cake celebrating their marriage, also represents him in a federal lawsuit filed late Tuesday to challenge the latest state action against him.
Shortly after its Supreme Court loss, the state Civil Rights Commission informed Phillips that it found probable cause to believe that Colorado law requires his bakery in Lakewood to create the requested gender-transition cake.
“I serve all customers,”Phillips said once again in his formal statement. “I simply decline to create custom cakes that express messages or celebrate events in violation of my deeply held beliefs.”
According to Alliance Defending Freedom, a lawyer identified as Autumn Scardinaasked Masterpiece Cakeshop to bake the gender-transition cake on June 26, 2017. That was the same day the Supreme Court agreed to hear Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, the case involving the wedding cake.
“We told him we’d sell him anything in the shop, but we could not create that cake because of the message it conveyed,” Phillips said of the lawyer’s request for the pink and blue cake.
Justice Anthony Kennedy, in an opinion joined by four conservative justices and two liberal justices, ruled nearly a year later, on June 4, that the Civil Rights Commission showed “hostility” toward Phillips and his faith in deciding he had violated state anti-discrimination law by declining to create the cake marking the same-sex marriage.
“It’s clear that the state of Colorado did not get the message from the Supreme Court, since it is still singling out Jack for punishment and showing hostility toward his religious beliefs,”Kristen Waggoner, senior vice president for Alliance Defending Freedom, said in a formal statement.
Scardina, the lawyer who requested the cake celebrating a gender transition, is not a defendant in Phillips’ lawsuit. The baker is suing the state commission’s members in their official capacities, as well as suing its director personally.
“In moving ahead on this new complaint, the government is yet again confirming that it applies its law in an arbitrary and unequal way, which the Supreme Court has already said that it cannot do,”Waggoner, who argued Phillips’ case Dec. 5 before the high court, said.
“Jack and other creative professionals should not be targeted by the government for living consistently with their religious beliefs,”she said.
As a policy, Phillips’ lawyers note, Masterpiece Cakeshop also does not make custom cakes that celebrate Halloween; that center on alcohol or drug abuse or sexual themes; or that convey disparaging messages, including those targeting lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender individuals or others in the LGBT movement.
Phillips said:
The Bible tells us God created us male and female, and I believe that. A gender-transition cake is not something I’ve ever made, and it’s not an event I could celebrate. There are plenty of messages I won’t convey on a cake. I’ve turned down requests to make anti-American cakes, cakes disparaging the LGBT community, as well as those glorifying drug and alcohol use, mistreatment of women, divorce, and more.
In the case Phillips won before the Supreme Court, his lawyers stress, the state of Colorado admitted that cake artists are free to decline to create custom cakes with a “specific design,” including wedding cakes with “a symbol of gay pride,” cakes that contain “pro-gay designs or inscriptions,” or cakes with images opposing same-sex marriage.
The state has not found probable cause when other bakers refused to create custom cakes, including those opposing same-sex weddings.
“The arbitrary basis on which the commission is applying the law makes it clear that they are simply targeting Jack because they don’t like his religious beliefs,” Waggoner said. “Jack shouldn’t have to fear government hostility when he opens his shop for business each day. We’re asking the court to put a stop to that.”
This report has been updated to include the name of the lawyer who requested the “gender transition” cake.
Remember when Obama took the National Prayer Breakfast as an opportunity to rage against Crusades and Inquisitions?
And if you think Obama had a point in suggesting the Crusades were evidence that Christianity was ‘mean to Muslims’ it’s possible you’ve forgotten a few of history’s actual details, seen here:
With Iran’s attitudes towards Christianity, no WONDER he liked Iran so much.
Strange, isn’t it, that these original arrests were during Obama’s super-amazing negotiations with Iran? And that those charges never came up?
Jeff King, the president of Washington, DC-based International Christian Concern, told The Jerusalem Post on Friday that each member of the congregation was sentenced to a year in prison.
“Getting information on the arrests of Christians is incredibly challenging given the heavily censored nature of Iran,” King said. “But based on the cases we have been tracking, this is the first time this year that we’ve seen a jail sentence being given based on the charge of ‘inclination to the land of Christianity.’ This could be interpreted as a reference to Israel, the birthplace of Christianity and also a country that Iran has adopted a very aggressive stance towards.”
While Christianity is legally recognized in the Islamic Republic, the US State Department has classified Iran as a “country of particular concern” under the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998 “for having engaged in or tolerated particularly severe violations of religious freedom.” […] “Iran does not discriminate against or persecute any recognized religious minority,” said Alireza Miryousefi, head of press for the Iranian Mission to the UN. “Including the large Christian community inside Iran, who are free to worship in the many churches that can be found across Iran. In fact, as is the case with Iranian Jews, Iranian Christians are constitutionally guaranteed parliamentary representation. Major cities such as Tehran and Isfahan are home to large Christian communities with centuries-old churches.”
Source: Jerusalem Post
Hey guys, should we believe Miryousefi?
Yeah. That’s what we thought, too.
What’s behind this?
Some suggest the sentancing is could be backlash for those sanctions that were reinstated.
Jeff King, president of the Washington D.C.-based International Christian Concern, told FoxNews.com: “Iran’s regime is under a great amount of pressure right now.
“Poor economic conditions combined with the harshness of their Islamic rule has led to massive unrest that has defined the country for months.
“There are many reports that this has contributed to the government’s ever-increasing dependence on hardline Islamic ayatollahs, who naturally see Christianity as a threat to their power. For this reason, it’s not surprising that we’re seeing an increase in Christian persecution.”
Source: FoxNews
Either way, it wouldn’t be the first time Obama praised an oppressive regime for their great ‘tolerance’.
Remember Indionesia, where he spent some of his childhood?
Speaking before thousands in the city that helped raise him, President Obama on Wednesday cited this country’s transition from dictatorship to democracy as a model in an Islamic world often governed by unelected autocracies.
He also praised Indonesia – the world’s most populous Muslim-majority nation – for a “spirit of tolerance that is written into your constitution, symbolized in your mosques and churches and temples, and embodied in your people,” a quality worthy for all the world to emulate.
Source: WashingtonPost
Jakarta’s Christian governor has been sentenced to two years in jail for blasphemy, a harsher-than-expected ruling critics fear will embolden hardline Islamist forces to challenge secularism in Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim-majority nation.
Source: Reuters
Turkish currency, the lira, hit a record low Monday after efforts by the country’s central bank to curb the drop by reducing the amount of foreign currency it holds in its reserves and their efforts to bolster the banking sector failed.
The currency has fallen nearly 30 percent this year already and is currently down 3.8 percent against the U.S. dollar, with $1 buying about 5.277 lira, according to The Wall Street Journal.
After months of decline, the lira fell 2.2 points on Sunday after policymakers in Turkey announced adjustments to the reserve policies of the central bank — CBRT — that were supposed to result in giving the banking sector $2.2 billion in liquidity.
The CBRT claimed it would do this by lowering the “upper limit for the FX maintenance facility within the reserve options mechanism” by 5 percentage points to 40 percent, per a statement on its website.
This helped temporarily, the Financial Times reported, but the lira continued to fall.
Recent actions by the CBRT have alarmed investors who are increasingly concerned by the amount of control Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan holds over monetary policy, The Wall Street Journal said.
The U.S. Trade Representative’s Office announced Friday that it would be looking into Turkey’s duty-free access to the U.S. market, which came after Turkey hit the U.S. with tariffs on U.S. goods in response to American tariffs on steel and aluminum.
U.S. President Donald Trump also hit Turkey with sanctions on Wednesday over the country’s bogus detainment of an American pastor.
“Pastor Brunson’s unjust detention and continued prosecution by Turkish officials is simply unacceptable,”Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said in a statement.
“President Trump has made it abundantly clear that the United States expects Turkey to release him immediately,”Mnuchin added.
Turkish Justice Minister Abdulhamit Gul and Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu were the targets of the sanctions because they played a large role in imprisoning Brunson and “serve as leaders of Turkish government organizations responsible for implementing Turkey’s serious human rights abuse,” the statement reads.
Improving relations with the U.S. and raising interest rates, two things Turkey has so far declined to do, would help stabilize the country’s currency, analysts told The Wall Street Journal.
Turkey’s inflation rate also hit a 14-year high in June, reaching 15.39 percent.
Pakistani Christians mourn at the funeral of one of the victims of Monday’s terror attack. (Photo: BANARAS KHAN/AFP/Getty Images)
Four Christians were murdered and a young girl injured in a terrorist attack in the Pakistani city of Quetta on Monday. Quetta is the capital of the Balochistan province in South Western Pakistan. The Islamic State terrorist group claimed responsibility for the attack.
All four were members of the same family. They had been meeting relatives in a Christian area of the city. Traveling in a ricksha, they had just left the house where they were staying when armed men on a motorcycle drove past and opened fire.
“It appears to have been a targeted attack,” provincial police official Moazzam Jah Ansari told Reuters, according to EuroNews. “It was an act of terrorism.”
Pakistan has long been struggling to contain Islamist terrorists. In particular, the Pakistani terror group Tehreek-e-Taliban cooperates with the Afghan Taliban on the other side of the border and is able to move men and resources from one country to the other. This flexibility makes it harder for Pakistan to combat terrorists effectively.
Religious minorities are frequently targeted in Pakistan. In particular, Shiites, Ahmadis and Christians often suffer terrorist attacks. Christians make up an estimated 2% of Pakistan’s population.
Watch the trailer of Clarion Project’s latest film, Faithkeepers, about the violent persecution of Christians and other religious minorities in the Middle East. The film features exclusive footage and testimonials of Christians, Baha’i, Yazidis, Jews, and other minority refugees, and a historical context of the persecution in the region. To host a screening of the film or find out what you can do to help stop the genocide,click here.
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke at the Christian Media Summit on Sunday and he spoke passionately in defense of religious freedom and of Christian minorities in the Muslim world.
Prime Minister Netanyahu’s entire speech is well worth listening to, but his comments about Iran’s persecution of Christians is particularly moving.
Iran is a threat to the entire world, but today I want to focus on Iran’s war against Christians. As you all know, Christians are brutally persecuted in the Islamic Republic. Pastors are jailed for no reason, no reason other than for being Christian leaders. Christians have been lashed. You hear this? Christians have been lashed for sipping wine during prayer services; Christians have been brutally tortured for doing nothing more than practicing their faith.
Now, some world leaders are willing to ignore this repression and seek to appease Iran, but I am not one of them.
I think that how a country treats religious minorities is a very good indicator of how it will treat its other citizens and its neighbors.
So today I have a simple request for the media outlets in this room: Dedicate this week to highlighting the plight of the countless Christians suffering under Iran; profile the brave Christian leaders jailed for practicing their faith; sit with the families of the school teachers jailed for years merely for converting to Christianity; call out the lie and the lies of President Rouhani, who promised in 2013 that all religions would, quote, feel justice in Iran, while so many Christians live there in constant terror.
(Netanyahu’s comments on Christian persecution begin at about 1:43 into the video.)
The Prime Minister is right, but the problem isn’t just in Iran, it’s all over the Muslim (and the communist) world.
In Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Libya, Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Afghanistan, and almost every other Muslim-majority world nation, Christians live in constant fear. They are harassed, beaten, tortured, raped, falsely accused, falsely arrested, falsely imprisoned, and murdered… simply for being a Christian. Sadly, world leaders continue to ignore a problem that they could have great influence in fixing. If the leaders of the Western World took a stand against Islamic persecution of Christians, by imposing economic sanctions, Muslim governments would be forced to protect their Christian minorities.
But it’s not just in the Muslim world, is it? No, in North Korea and China, Christians face heavy persecution as well. Practicing their faith leads to torture and execution in North Korea and to torture, imprisonment, and ostracization in China.
In the more “moderate” socialist left nations like Canada and the UK, Christians can be fined, and imprisoned for speaking out about their beliefs.
In fact, it seems that the entire world is growing ever-more hostile towards the faith and culture that produced the greatest age the world has ever seen. Christianity is truly under fire all across our planet today.
A Christian baker from Colorado received an unexpected blessing from the administration of President Donald Trump last week when the Justice Department filed a brief on his behalf to the Supreme Court, which is slated to hear his religious liberty case upon returning to the bench next month.
For Masterpiece Cakeshop owner Jack Phillips, the trouble started five years ago when he politely refused to bake a wedding cake for a gay couple. Although he only meant to protect his religious beliefs, he wound up triggering a chain reaction of undeserved backlash.
It included death threats from angry activists, character assassinations from the liberal media, a judgment of illegal discrimination from a Colorado civil rights commission and an affirmation of the commission’s ruling by a lower court.
The tide finally began to turn in Phillips’ favor in late June when the Supreme Court agreed to hear his appeal and decide whether he actually discriminated against the gay couple when he refused to bake their cake over his religious objections.
And just on Thursday, he won yet another “huge” victory when Trump’s DOJ filed an amicus brief defending his decision five years earlier to not bake the gay couple’s wedding cake. In the brief, acting Solicitor General Jeffrey B. Wall specifically argued that allowing the lower court’s ruling against Phillips to stand would create a violation of the First Amendment “where public accommodations law compels someone to create expression for a particular person or entity and to participate, literally or figuratively, in a ceremony or other expressive event.”
“When Phillips designs and creates a custom wedding cake for a specific couple and a specific wedding, he plays an active role in enabling that ritual, and he associates himself with the celebratory message conveyed,”he added. “Forcing Phillips to create expression for and participate in a ceremony that violates his sincerely held religious beliefs invades his First Amendment rights.”
This is good. Very good, in fact.
And according to The Washington Times, the DOJ’s surprising decision to file a brief in Phillips’ case “raises the possibility that the government will also ask for time to argue in front of the justices when the case goes for oral argument.”
That would be even better.
During the administration of former President Barack Hussein Obama, a man who loved sitting idly by as Christians were persecuted, the DOJ said nothing about Phillips, instead choosing to allow him to suffer the indignity of being persecuted for his Christian beliefs. But with Trump in the White House, it appears those days are finally behind us. Thank God.
It’s astounding to observe the lengths to which secularism will go to silence Jesus-followers. Last year, two street preachers in England were convicted of public order offenses after prosecutors claimed parts of the King James Version of the Bible were “abusive and…criminal.” On university campuses, Christian students and professors are berated and bullied. In the world of politics and the media, Christians are accused of bigotry and ignorance. In the entertainment industry, to be a biblical Christian is to be blacklisted. Just ask the Benham brothers, David and Jason, whose television show on HGTV was cancelled because of their biblical views on the sanctity of life and marriage. David Benham said, “This is the first time in our generation and in our parents’ generation that it’s actually going to cost us something to truly live out our biblical faith.”
But, of course, we are not people easily silenced, for we are committed to the example of Simon Peter, who, when told to be quiet, said, “We cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard” (Acts 4:20).
Speak the Word of God with boldness!
We don’t fight for victory, we fight from victory! Jesus has already won the victory at the cross and it’s our lives for Him that are going to transform the culture. David Benham
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American Family Association
American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
American Family Association
American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
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American Family Association
American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
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Asked how Canada got to the point that the government can reject Christians on the basis of their faith, McVety says 
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