by | Feb 28, 2024 | Uncategorized
Local and international activists discuss Voice of the Martyrs escalating the country’s religious freedom status to “restricted nation.”
The Voice of the Martyrs (VOM) has newly classified India as a “restricted nation” in its latest global prayer guide—a change from its earlier “hostile area” categorization—as persecution against Christians is “now driven by India’s national government,” says VOM.
VOM’s “hostile area” category identifies nations or large areas of nations where the government may attempt to provide protection, but the Christian population remains persecuted by family, friends, neighbors, or political groups because of their witness. Indian believers have largely faced this type of violence, including last year’s Manipur attacks, which killed more than 100.
In contrast, “restricted nation” describes countries where government-sanctioned circumstances or anti-Christian laws lead to the harassment of Christians or the loss of their civil liberties. It can also include government policies or practices preventing Christians from obtaining Bibles or other Christian literature. (Christians in restricted nations often also experience persecution from family, community members, and/or political groups.)
Although Indian Christians largely face persecution that reflects VOM’s “hostile area” categorization, the government under Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been a key player in recent years in driving public opinion against non-Hindu Indians.
“The rise of Hindutva ideology—and the open and enthusiastic embrace of this ideology by Modi and other government leaders—has had the effect of making India’s national government an overt persecutor of the church rather than a protector of religious minorities and religious freedom,” …
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by | Feb 28, 2024 | Uncategorized
He was tortured for his faith but remained steadfast through the Cultural Revolution.
Westminster Abbey in London, the exclusive chapel of the British royal family, has served as the site for the coronation of generations of kings, royal weddings, funerals, and other significant events. Today it functions as the final resting place for many renowned British nobles, poets, generals, scientists, and writers, such as Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, and Charles Dickens.
Since 1998, ten statues of 20th-century Christian martyrs from around the globe have graced the Great West Door of the abbey, including Maximilian Kolbe, Martin Luther King Jr., and Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
Also among these revered figures, however, is a less widely known martyr from China: Wang Zhiming (王志明, 1907–1973), a Miao pastor from Wuding County, Yunnan Province, who was persecuted during the Chinese Cultural Revolution and executed after a violent denunciation rally in 1973.
The Miao people of China first encountered the gospel when Catholicism was introduced to the Guizhou and Sichuan provinces around 1798. One hundred years later (in 1906), Protestant missionaries Arthur Nicholls (葛秀峰) and William Theophilus Simpkin (师明庆) of the China Inland Mission (CIM) journeyed for several days from Kunming to reach the Miao tribes, who were still practicing slash-and-burn agriculture and hunting.
The foreign Protestant missionaries brought not only the Bible and the gospel but also health education measures, transforming the Miao people’s old customs of ghost worship and cohabitation with animals and treating epidemics such as plague and typhoid. Samuel Pollard (伯格里), a British Methodist missionary who had come to this area before Nicholls and Simpkin, created the Miao script, translated the Bible into the Miao language, and implemented social …
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by | Feb 27, 2024 | Uncategorized
An excerpt on doubt, despair, and restoration from Land of My Sojourn: The Landscape of a Faith Lost and Found.
Think about Mount Tabor for a moment. Remember the blinding light of Jesus’ glory and the stunning presence of Elijah and Moses, the weight of that moment and what it meant in the mind and heart of Peter, and what it confirmed about the dream that had taken up residence in his heart and his spiritual imagination. The brilliance of this dream—how incredibly close it felt on Mount Tabor—creates the unbearable cognitive dissonance with the reality of Jesus, arrested, mocked, beaten, scorned, flayed, and executed. Dead in a tomb.
These visions didn’t fit together: the bleach-white light of the Transfiguration, the ashen linen that now wrapped Jesus’ dead body, and the stony blackness of the tomb as the stone rolled shut against it. Peter had expected Elijah: fire from heaven, a land cleansed of evil. What he’d gotten instead—I don’t think he had a name for it. I don’t know him.
But maybe Peter didn’t know Elijah either.
Sometimes our expectations are the source of our pain.
Peter looked at Elijah and saw a conquering hero. But he was only paying attention to part of the story.
When Elijah humiliated the prophets of Baal, the crowd of onlookers fell to the ground and cried out, “The Lord—he is God!” (1 Kings 18:39). They then slaughtered the prophets, cleansing the land of their oppression. Elijah then prayed for rain, and it came. Ahab fled to Jezreel, unable to deny what he’d seen with his own eyes. Mission accomplished.
And yet it wasn’t. Jezebel responded to all Ahab told her by promising to kill Elijah, and the menace of humiliation and death overwhelmed him. He fled to the desert, collapsed under a broom tree, and …
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by | Feb 27, 2024 | Uncategorized
Trustees found Wiebe Boer’s alleged conduct “concerning” and “inconsistent with the high standard and character” the college expects of its leadership.
The president of Calvin University has resigned after admitting he engaged in inappropriate communication with a member of the campus community.
In a statement Monday, the Calvin Board of Trustees said it had received a report alleging President Wiebe Boer “engaged in unwelcome and inappropriate communication and attention toward a non-student member of the campus community.”
“The report did not include allegations of sexually explicit communication or physical contact, but the alleged conduct is concerning and inappropriate,” the trustees said in their statement.
University officials said they then hired an outside expert to review the allegations. That review included speaking with Boer, a former oil executive and son of Christian Reformed Church missionaries who became Calvin’s president in 2022.
“After being notified of the report, Dr. Boer denied some of the allegations but did admit to sending communications that were inappropriate and inconsistent with the high standard of conduct and character expected of the President of Calvin University,” the board said in its statement. “Dr. Boer subsequently offered his resignation, which the Board accepted.”
No further details about Boer’s conduct or the complaint were given.
Gregory Elzinga, Calvin’s vice president of advancement, has been named interim president. The board’s statement described him as already being involved in the day-to-day management of the school and “well situated to provide effective continuity of leadership while the Board conducts a thorough search for the University’s next permanent President.”
School officials plan to hold a campus meeting for students with Elzinga …
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by | Feb 26, 2024 | Uncategorized
Senior minister Mark Booker asks the historic evangelical congregation to commit to work of repair after “break of trust.”
Park Street Church voted to affirm senior minister Mark Booker on Sunday by a vote of 350 to 173, with 20 abstaining.
The prominent evangelical church in Boston has been roiled by controversy as ministers, elders, staff, and lay leaders disagreed over a series of decisions—as well as the process of making decisions—at the 220-year-old congregationalist church. Ultimately the entire congregation was thrown into the dispute. The conflict became public when a group of more than 75 members petitioned for a special meeting to review the firing of an associate minister who said he had “serious concerns” about Booker’s spiritual leadership, citing “patterns at variance with the biblical qualifications.”
The conflict raised questions about checks and balances and the durability of congregationalism amid escalating disagreements about leadership. Congregationalism is the preferred polity of many evangelicals, including those in Baptist, nondenominational, and Stone-Campbell churches.
Park Street’s regularly scheduled congregational meeting on Sunday was cast as a referendum on the leadership of the church. Critics proposed a set of amendments to the bylaws that they said would add much-needed limits on church leaders’ power and nominated an alternative slate of elder candidates.
Booker, who was called to lead the church in 2020, proposed a nonbinding vote to affirm his continued leadership at Park Street. The elders approved the ballot measure, adding it to the agenda, as CT reported last week.
“It is clear there has been a break of trust at the elder, minister, and staff level,” Booker told the congregation during the fractious six-hour meeting on Sunday. “This break …
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