After our move to our latest house we lost our cable TV connection which has meant that have been without TV news for about a year now. Thus most of our information about the outside world has come from the Internet. Obviously not every bit of the Internet, but a few mainline trusted sources and one or two random sites that we like. One of the benefits of this situation is that you receive a multiplicity of views of the world that you might otherwise not be exposed to.
This week I came across two pieces of news regarding relationships between Christians and Hindus in India.
Now India is massive, and the relationship between these faiths is incredibly complex. I was saddened to hear that the persecution of Christians and specifically Indian Christian Evangelists is on the increase in Orissa. This report is from the Indian agency Gospel for Asia:
New details about the severe persecution that Christians faced over the Christmas holiday in Orissa, India, continue to pour in from Gospel for Asia field correspondents. Many of the victims, which include GFA native missionaries and other believers, are still enduring opposition from anti-Christian extremists.
The latest incident occurred on January 5 when a group of radicals smashed a plaque that hung on a Jesus Well in their village. The well was recently built by a GFA-related church where native missionary Puru Nilay is pastor.
“We want the well, but we do not want Jesus,” the extremists told the believers while the well was being constructed. They also sternly commanded Puru not to place the Christian plaque on the well.
Wanting to give glory to the Lord, Puru and the believers did attach the plaque to the Jesus Well. Then last Saturday, the extremists completely destroyed it. Following the vandalism, they threatened Puru, telling him to stop ministering in their village. The radicals did not damage the well, just the plaque.
Beaten and Humiliated for the Gospel
In another area of Orissa, all of the GFA missionaries were persecuted and many have been forced to go into hiding. Matish Junni, the missionary who extremists beat and shaved his head, is serving in this district.
On December 23, Matish and his family boarded a bus to spend the Christmas and New Year holidays with a church in a nearby village where he serves as pastor. A member of an extremist group followed them onto the bus. When they pulled into a remote village the radicals told the bus driver to stop and then kicked Matish out of the bus and onto the ground.
Immediately, a group of 30 extremists surrounded Matish and began severely beating him. Although Matish’s wife and children stood by weeping loudly and calling for help, no one came to their rescue. As the beating continued, Matish’s eyes, nose and ears started bleeding, and he fell unconscious.
Then the mob dragged Matish to a local barber shop and forced the barber to completely shave his head. They also applied a red powder to his head and dressed him in their traditional religious garb. Parading Matish around the village, the extremists took him to their temples and tried to force him to bow down to their gods.
“I serve the living God, and I will not bow down to anyone except Him,” Matish told the mob. Upon hearing this, they began beating him in front of his family again. Then finally, one of the radicals told the mob to stop. Before leaving, they stole all of Matish’s belongings and told him never to minister in their area again.
The rest of the article is here.
The second report comes from an American Christian website Stand Firm. They report from an Interfaith meeting in Los Angeles where Christians and Hindu’s met together, and the bishop of Los Angeles issued a statement which was reported as follows:
During the service, the Rt. Rev. J. Jon Bruno, bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles, issued a statement of apology to the Hindu religious community for centuries-old acts of religious discrimination by Christians, including attempts to convert them.
“I believe that the world cannot afford for us to repeat the errors of our past, in which we sought to dominate rather than to serve,” Bruno said in a statement read by the Rt. Rev. Chester Talton. “In this spirit, and in order to take another step in building trust between our two great religious traditions, I offer a sincere apology to the Hindu religious community.”
The bishop also said he was committed to renouncing “proselytising” of Hindus. Bruno had been scheduled to read the statement himself, but a death of a close family friend prevented him from attending the service.
I’ve no doubt that the Bishop had good intentions in issuing the above apology. Our world is one in which tensions between faiths is on the increase. But is such a statement in this context likely to make things better? I doubt it. If and when it gets reported back in Orissa, all it will do is give the fundamentalists another stick with which to beat the Christians.
And where was the denunciation of the recent violence against the church? Sadly lacking. The truth is that any and all believers of whatever faith have the right, and indeed one might say the duty, to share that faith with others – sensitively, respectfully, lovingly, in a culturally appropriate manner of course. For Christians in India not to share their faith with the Hindus around them would imply either that that faith was not worth sharing, or that the Hindu’s were not worth sharing it with; both positions are anathema to the teaching of Christ.
Christians are doubly obligated to love their neighbour as themselves and to make disciples of all nations. The first injunction of Jesus I am sure the bishop would agree with. Sadly his words, and this service, deny the second.
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