Today’s Headlines:

FORCED CHURCH CLOSURES IN INDONESIA RAISE PUBLIC CONCERN

HINDU COUNCIL IN INDIA CALLS FOR BAN ON RELIGIOUS CONVERSIONS

CHURCH GROWTH, PRINTING RESTRICTIONS CAUSE BIBLE SHORTAGE IN CHINA

RUSSIAN CHURCH LEADER FLEES RELIGIOUS HARASSMENT IN HOMELAND

CAMPAIGN TO BOOST FAMILIES OF SLAIN MISSIONARIES IN BANGLADESH

Today’s Top Stories:

FORCED CHURCH CLOSURES IN INDONESIA RAISE PUBLIC CONCERN

The closure of churches in Bandung, Indonesia, and surrounding areas in the past two years has caused concern among people of different faiths who consider the incidents a threat to religious harmony in the country. On the afternoon of Saturday, Sept. 3, about 1,500 people of various religions rallied in central Jakarta to pressure the government to prove its commitment to religious freedom, Antara reported. The demonstrators, including former Indonesian President Abdurrahman “Gus Dur” Wahid and former House of Representatives speaker Akbar Tandjung, also prayed together. “We are concerned about the forcible closure of Christian houses of worship which we consider a blow to brotherhood among people of different faiths here,” said rally participant Hendra Waskita. The latest forcible church closures occurred on Saturday when Muslim hardliners claimed that one church in Bandung and another in southern Jakarta lacked permits. The hardliners have also accused the church congregations of converting Muslims to Christianity. (WorldWide Religious News/The Jakarta Post)

HINDU COUNCIL IN INDIA CALLS FOR BAN ON ALL RELIGIOUS CONVERSIONS

The Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP or World Hindu Council) has called for a comprehensive law to ban religious conversions in India as part of a new campaign to “stem the increasing number of conversions around the country.” In a recent press conference, Mohan Joshi, national secretary of the VHP, said the existing anti-conversion laws in some states were not stringent enough to curb religious conversions.” The law should have provision to penalize foreign nationals and organizations engaged in conversion with a fine of 1 million rupees (US$22,750) and a 10-year prison term to effectively check conversion,” he said. Responding to the VHP’s demand for a nationwide anti-conversion law, John Dayal, secretary general of the All India Christian Council said, “Such laws are against the constitution, and they violate international covenants to which India is a signatory, including the United Nations charter.” Claiming that the VHP had reliable information about plans of the Seventh-day Adventists to “convert” 1 million Indians, Joshi said all foreign Christian missionaries should be expelled from the country. The VHP was founded in 1964 with the goal of reconverting “all those who have been knowingly or unknowingly proselytized to alien faiths and are now desirous of coming back to the Hindu fold.” (Compass)

CHURCH GROWTH, PRINTING RESTRICTIONS CAUSE BIBLE SHORTAGE IN CHINA

While the China Christian Council (CCC) has made “good progress” in publishing Bibles in China, continuing rapid church growth and restrictions on printing has resulted in an ongoing shortage of Bibles and other Christian literature in the country, reported Forum 18 News Service. The publishing of Bibles is restricted to the two state-recognized “patriotic” religious associations, the CCC and the Catholic Patriotic Association. During the last 20 years, the CCC, through the Amity Press based in Nanjing with overseas help from United Bible Societies, has printed more than 35 million copies of the Bible and New Testament. This means that in most Chinese cities the Bible is available at low-cost to the Protestant community. The CCC has a network of 70 urban distribution points and also operates a number of vans to take Scriptures into the rural areas, but the rapid growth of the church in rural areas means that there is always a shortfall in the availability of Bibles there. Poverty and poor transport combine to prevent new rural converts from easily obtaining Scriptures. The shortfall is made up by large numbers of Bibles “smuggled” in from such places as Hong Kong, and by those printed illegally within the country. (Assist News Service)

RUSSIAN CHURCH LEADER FLEES RELIGIOUS HARASSMENT IN HOMELAND

Rev. Igor Nikitin, president of the Association of Christian Churches in Russia and director of a Christian television network that covers much of the former Soviet Union, recently fled to the U.S. for about two weeks after what he calls “harassment” from various authorities. In an interview in New York Thursday, Sept. 1, he said evangelical Christians face mounting threats from authorities. “In the last two months there have been attacks on the Christian churches and terrible attacks on my situation,” he said. Nikitin and his family were forced to flee Russia when his lawyer found 38 fake documents containing his forged signature. “[As a result] the tax police were attacking us, and I received lots of threats from different people,” he said. The family only returned to Russia after the U.S. Congress and the Council of Europe passed a resolution against the persecution of evangelical churches in Russia. “I came back home, and we are in full strength working to protect the churches and trying to take care of them,” Nikitin said. (Assist News Service)

CAMPAIGN TO BOOST FAMILIES OF SLAIN MISSIONARIES IN BANGLADESH

Open Doors, an international Christian ministry is launching a prayer and writing campaign for the families of two workers of Christian Life Bangladesh, who were slain on July 27. For the last eight months, Tapan Kumar Roy, 27, and Liplal Mardi, 21, had been actively involved in community work in Dhopapara village and often showed the “Jesus” film at the invitation of local villagers. The two reportedly had been verbally threatened by an Islamic official and some villagers for showing the film. “The families of these murdered Christians need our prayers and letters of support,” said Open Doors USA President Carl Moeller. “Freedom of religion in Bangladesh is being eroded by Islamic fundamentalists. We need to stand up for our Christian brothers and sisters there.” (Open Doors USA)