April 18, 2002

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

RELIGIOUS FREEDOM AROUND THE WORLD AND MATERIALISM AND SECULARISM IN

EUROPE AND NORTH AMERICA ARE EQUAL THREATS TO THE GOSPEL OF JESUS CHRIST

WASHINGTON, D.C. (BWA) – “The current threats to religious freedom in parts of Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and certain parts of Europe are of equal concern to Baptists as are materialism and secularism in Western Europe and North America,” says Denton Lotz, General Secretary of the Baptist World Alliance, which represents more than 43 million baptized believers around the world.

“One could ask,” Lotz says, “with all the threats to religious freedom if materialism and the pagan-oriented life of the West are now the greatest threats.”

He said particularly the alienation of young people in western society has reached such dramatic proportion that articles have been written that question whether or not the Christian churches will continue to exist in Great Britain, Germany and Netherlands by the end of this century.

Modern media elite in the West are not only anti Christian, Lotz writes, but often hostile to the Christian faith and the fair opportunity to present the Christian faith is often loss in the media.

Lotz said the church must discover a new way beyond the establishment or the secular organ of state culture to present the Christian faith in this new century.

However, the concern for religious freedom around the world continues to occupy great prominence in the lives of Baptists everywhere.

Lotz reminds Baptists worldwide that one of the greatest contributions they have made to religious history is the initiation and the induction of the doctrine of separation of church and state and religious freedom.

As he studies several situations around the world, Lotz supports the thesis of Professor Samuel Huntington that civilization is based on religion and the class of civilizations today is basically a clash of world religions.

World religions are a conflict of religions. “This,” Lotz says, “is basically the same conflict that Baptists had in the 17th century with the Christian state churches in Europe.”

Today, Lotz writes, religious freedom is under threat worldwide because of the unity of world religions and their state governments. “There is no greater and beautiful compassion in the world than that which comes from religion,” Lotz says, “On the other hand there is no greater tragedy and evil than that which suppresses people in the name of the Lord and the state religion.”

In Eastern Europe Baptists and other religious minorities such as Pentecostals, Lutherans, Methodists, Salvation Army and other para-church groups find themselves under attack from the dominant Orthodox religion.

Lotz points out that under Communism religious groups had equal status but since the fall of that ideology and political system Orthodoxy, in many parts of Eastern Europe, is now identified as the state religion, something the Orthodox church is very comfortable with.

In other parts of Europe such as Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan, Muslim fundamentalism is the threat to religious freedom along with the state demand that a church must have 50 members in order to be legally registered. Many of the Baptist churches have groups of less than 50 and find themselves constantly fighting with the local authorities for the right to worship freely.

It is because of these concerns in Eastern Europe that Lotz and BWA President Billy Kim met recently with the Presidents of Ukraine and Poland and the chair of the Duma Committee on Religious Affairs of Moscow and pled with them to uphold the cause of separation of church and state.

In the Middle East the current conflict is particularly difficult for Baptists, most of whom are Palestinians. There are more than 6,000 Baptists in Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt and Israel.

Lotz has called for the Government of Israel to withdraw its troops from Palestine occupied areas and asked the believers in other parts of the Middle East to call upon the Palestinian authorities to condemn suicide bombers.

Lotz also calls on Baptists to pray. “It may seem too pietist to say that we will support our brothers and sisters by praying,” he says, “but prayer is a powerful weapon in the hands of God.”

While Baptists in Egypt and Jordan are in predominantly Muslim countries Baptists in Lebanon are mainly in the Christian sector and their conflict is with the Marionettes or Orthodox church which accuses Baptists of proselytism.

In several of the Middle Eastern countries, Lotz points out that religious freedom is guaranteed to those who are born into Christian families but conversion is in same cases against the law and those who convert are severely punished and ostracized from their families.

Yet, Lotz notes, their faith in Christ is strong and unshaken by the tremendous pressure.

In Asia, the largest number of Baptists is in India, a democratic country, which its laws describe as a secular country with religious freedom for all. However, there is a rising Hindu fundamentalism that was the scene of the awful death of the Australian missionary Graham Staines and his two sons three years ago in Orissa.

Indonesia is the world’s largest Islamic country. Although the Bandung agreement of 1944 clearly states that Indonesia is a secular state, in the past decade thousands of Christians have been killed and hundreds of churches burned to the ground. This is particularly true in the Ambon area and Baptists and other Christian believers continue to live in fear of attack.

Most of the damage to Christian churches and communities comes from a small group of Islamic fundamentalists who reject a secular state and want Islam to be the state religion.

The BWA has made a human rights visit to Indonesia and has talked with the Catholic Cardinal concerning religious freedom for all.

The situation in China, still a Communist country, is quite mixed. The new focus on materialism and the western-oriented economy has made access to western thought and western religion more equally attainable there.

Statistics show that in 1979 there was only one church in China that was opened; today there are 14,000 churches and 20,000 mission points.

While there is not complete religious freedom as in the West and many believers still remember the terrible suffering of the Christian church during the reign of the gang of four, there has been a great resurgence to the Christian faith. However, in many villages there is still a great restriction on freedom and many of the believers in the West continue to press the United States government for complete religious freedom in China where pastors and other Christian leaders are still in prison.

“With all of the restrictions the church in China,” Lotz says, “is growing by the power of the Spirit.”

In North Korea it is particularly difficult for the church. There are only two churches permitted in the capital Pyongyang, one Catholic and one Protestant.

After a visit there recently, Lotz says one has a feeling that there is very little freedom for religious worship outside of these two official churches. No one knows the number of underground churches or secret believers in North Korea.

Before World War II the strength of the Christian faith was in the North. Today, however, it is in the South where it is reported that 50% of South Koreans are Christians.

When one looks at religious liberty in Africa, one must first look at the tremendous growth of the Christian faith there.

Lotz says the fastest Christian growth today is in Africa where missiologists say there are 16,000 new Christians every day and six million new believers every year. South of the Sahara there are more than 400 million Christian believers.

For Baptists the largest concentration of believers is in Nigeria and this is also the place where religious conflict seems to be growing, particularly in the north among the Hausa people who have been traditionally Moslem.

With the institution of Sharia Islamic law, protests by the Christians there have been violent. In the year 2000 the Baptist Seminary in Kaduna was burned to the ground. Five students were killed with machetes and 19 Baptist churches burned.

However, in Nigeria there continues to be unprecedented religious freedom for Christian mission and evangelism.

This is not the case in North Africa or Islamic Africa, where there is often conflict and Sudan is the prime example. The southern part of Sudan is predominantly black Christians and the north more Arabic Moslem. There have been widespread reports of children from the south being kidnapped and sold into slavery never to return home again.

The Sudan Interior Church became a member of the Baptist World Alliance during the General Council meeting in 2001 in Prince Edward Island, Canada. “We must pray for the church there,” Lotz says, “as they struggle for their freedom of religious expression in the south and Khartoum in the north.”

In his assessment of religious freedom in other parts of the world, Lotz sees religious freedom in Latin America, North America, Western Europe, and the Caribbean with the exception of Cuba, one of the few Communist governments remaining in the world, Believers in Cuba are faced

with restrictions. The Cuban government does not allow new church building, radio or television. However, the number of Baptists in Cuba has doubled in the past five years.

Lotz concludes that the zeal of Christians in the west to defend religious freedom, human rights and justice worldwide is well placed. This provides valuable service, he says, to our brothers and sisters struggling in difficult places.

On the other hand Lotz says, “Are we open to the proposition that we in this so called first world or free world need the help of our brothers and sisters in persecuted countries to reclaim the evangelistic and the missiona ry zeal that we have lost.”

“Are our churches prepared for a new evangelism from our brothers and sisters from abroad to help all of us to rediscover what it means to be a follower of Jesus Christ in the 21st century?” Lotz asked.