WASHINGTON — One-hundred percent of Christians in 21 countries around the world experience persecution for their faith in Christ as over 215 million Christians faced “high levels” of persecution in the last year, a leading human rights watchdog group reports. Continue reading “100% of Christians Face Persecution in These 21 Countries | re-blog CP World by Samuel Smith”
Tag: North Korea
Christian “martyr” deaths double in 2013 – reported by Open Doors (Reblog)
Reuters
8:12 am, January 8, 2014
* Syria tops “martyr count” with more than 2012 global total
* North Korea still most dangerous state for Christians
* Violence against Christians rising in Africa
By Tom Heneghan, Religion Editor (click on link for original article)
LONDON, Jan 8 (Reuters) – Reported cases of Christians killed for their faith around the world doubled in 2013 from the year before, with Syria accounting for more than the whole global total in 2012, according to an annual survey.
Open Doors, a non-denominational group supporting persecuted Christians worldwide, said on Wednesday it had documented 2,123 “martyr” killings, compared with 1,201 in 2012. There were 1,213 such deaths in Syria alone last year, it said.
“This is a very minimal count based on what has been reported in the media and we can confirm,” said Frans Veerman, head of research for Open Doors. Estimates by other Christian groups put the annual figure as high as 8,000.
The Open Doors report placed North Korea at the top of its list of 50 most dangerous countries for Christians, a position it has held since the annual survey began 12 years ago. Somalia, Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan were the next four in line.
The United States-based group reported increasing violence against Christians in Africa and said radical Muslims were the main source of persecution in 36 countries on its list.
“Islamist extremism is the worst persecutor of the worldwide church,” it said.
WAR AGAINST THE CHURCH
Christianity is the largest and most widely spread faith in the world, with 2.2 billion followers, or 32 percent of the world population, according to a survey by the U.S.-based Pew Forum on religion and Public Life.
It faces restrictions and hostility in 111 countries, ahead of the 90 countries limiting or harassing the second-largest faith, Islam, another Pew survey has reported.
Michel Varton, head of Open Doors France, told journalists in Strasbourg that failing states with civil wars or persistent internal tensions were often the most dangerous for Christians.
“In Syria, another war is thriving in the shadow of the civil war — the war against the church,” he said while presenting the Open Doors report there.
About 10 percent of Syrians are Christians. Many have become targets for Islamist rebels who see them as supporters of President Bashar al-Assad.
Nine of the 10 countries listed as dangerous for Christians are Muslim-majority states, many of them torn by conflicts with radical Islamists. Saudi Arabia is an exception but ranked sixth because of its total ban on practicing faiths other than Islam.
In the list of killings, Syria was followed by Nigeria with 612 cases last year after 791 in 2012. Pakistan was third with 88, up from 15 in 2012. Egypt ranked fourth with 83 deaths after 19 the previous year.
The report spoke of “horrific violence often directed at Christians” in the Central African Republic but said only nine deaths were confirmed last year because “most analysts still fail to recognise the religious dimension of the conflict.”
NORTH KOREA
The report had no figures for killings in North Korea but said Christians there faced “the highest imaginable pressure” and some 50,000 to 70,000 lived in political prison camps.
“The God-like worship of the rulers leaves no room for any other religion,” it said.
There was now “a strong drive to purge Christianity from Somalia,” the report added, and Islamist attacks on Iraqi Christians have been increasing in the semi-autonomous Kurdish north, formerly a relatively safe area for them.
Veerman, based near Utrecht in the Netherlands, said that killings were only the most extreme examples of persecutions. Christians also face attacks on churches and schools, discrimination, threats, sexual assaults and expulsion from countries.
Open Doors, which began in the 1950s smuggling Bibles into communist states and now works in more than 60 countries, estimated last year that about 100 million Christians around the world suffered persecution for their faith.
Bible drop: Christian group takes to sky to sneak Gospel into North Korea | Fox News
Bible drop: Christian group takes to sky to sneak Gospel into North Korea | Fox News.
On a rainy afternoon last Spring, American pastor Eric Foley and his wife stood in a muddy field near the North Korea border and prayed – their hands clasped to a 40-foot homemade balloon that would carry Bibles to the communist dictatorship’s underground Christians.
“I get choked up, every time, as I let go and watch it take off,” Foley told FoxNews.com.
The balloons, made from a large sheet of “farm plastic,” said Foley, are filled with hydrogen before the Bibles and “tracts” – testimonials written by other North Korean Christians – are attached at the bottom inside a sack or box. Timers are then used to release the materials in stages, dispersing them at high altitudes across North Korea. Foley and members of his Christian mission group, Seoul USA, use GPS technology to help direct where the Bibles land. Around 50,000 of them have dropped from the skies in the last year.
“They are the most persecuted believers on earth,” Foley said of North Korea’s estimated 100,000 Christians – 30,000 of whom are believed to be locked inside concentration camps, where they are overworked, starved, tortured, and killed. Other activist groups, like Open Doors USA, estimate that number to be even higher, reporting that the secretive nation has about 400,000 Christians.
In North Korea, the practice of Christianity is illegal. Owning a Bible is a crime, and any person caught with one is sent – along with three generations of his or her family – to prison. Foley said despite the risks, demand for Bibles is strong within North Korea. His group targets rural areas where they might be picked up discreetly, he said.
North Koreans are forced to embrace Juche ideology, which mixes Marxism with worship of the late “Great Leader” Kim Il Sung and his family – a warped version of Christianity, says Foley, because Kim took concepts from Christianity, like the Trinity and church hymns, to create a religion in which he is worshipped. Foley said that if North Koreans learned about Christ, they would realize “this is all a fraud.”
“It’s a distortion of Christianity,” Foley said. “And the best way to reach them [North Koreans] is through mindset and knowledge.”
Foley, who is in his late 40s, founded Colorado-based Seoul USA in 2003 with his wife, a South Korean who immigrated to the U.S. in 1984. The two, along with other members of their group, launched their first balloon — strapped with Bibles — from South Korea in 2006. Foley said the balloons are typically sent out overnight from a muddy field at a high altitude between May and October. He said the best conditions are during a “rain storm or really bad weather because of the currents.”
“We are constantly monitoring the wind conditions as we’re launching,” he said, “And the North Korean border is always within the sight line.”
The balloons also include tracts, or testimonies, written by other North Korean Christians — some of whom managed to flee to South Korea — about Christ.
“The North Koreans respond very well to story,” Foley explained, “Because all are required to memorize 100 stories” related to Kim’s ideology.
In addition to supplying religious materials by air, Foley’s group produces short-wave radio programs with North Korean defectors reading the Bible. He said about 20 percent of North Koreans own radios, which are illegal.
Foley and his group won the legal rights to conduct the balloon launches from South Korea, but officials there “don’t make it easy,” he said, noting that they often try to force hydrogen suppliers not to sell the group hydrogen.
“Every time we fill up one of these balloons, we hold it and we pray together in English, North Korean and South Korean,” Foley said. “We pray loudly and always with tears.”
9 Things You Should Know About Persecution of Christians in 2013 – Reblog Gospel Coalition
JOE CARTER | 12:05 AM CT (Original)
Christians are the single most widely persecuted religious group in the world today. As we pray for the persecuted church, here are nine things you should know about the plight of believers around the globe:
1. Christian churches around the world have set apart the month of November to remember and pray for the persecuted church, through the International Day of Prayer for the Persecuted Church (IDOP).
2. According to the U.S. Department of State, Christians in more than 60 countries face persecution from their governments or surrounding neighbors simply because of their belief in Christ.
3. With the exception of four official state-controlled churches in Pyongyang, Christians in North Korea face the risk of detention in the prison camps, severe torture and, in some cases, execution for practicing their religious beliefs. North Koreans suspected of having contact with South Korean or other foreign missionaries in China, and those caught in possession of a Bible, have been known to be executed.
4. In Syria, Christians are increasingly becoming the target of violent attacks. Catholic and Orthodox groups in Syria say the anti-government rebels have committed “awful acts” against Christians, including beheadings, rapes and murders of pregnant women. A special ‘Vulnerability Assessment of Syria’s Christians’ conducted by the World Watch unit of Open Doors International from June 2013 warned that Syrian Christians are the victims of “disproportionate violence and abuse.” They warned further that Christian women in Syria are particularly vulnerable to sexual abuse.
5. In August 2013, Egypt faced what has been called the worst anti-Christian violence in seven centuries: 38 churches were destroyed, 23 vandalized; 58 homes were burned and looted and 85 shops, 16 pharmacies and 3 hotels were demolished; 6 Christians were killed in the violence and 7 were kidnapped.
6. The bloodiest attack on Christians in Pakistan’s history occurred in September 2013. Two suicide bombers exploded shrapnel laden vests outside All Saints’ Church in the old city of Peshawar. Choir members and children attending Sunday school were among 81 people killed. The attack left 120 people wounded, with 10 of them in critical condition.
7. During an attack on a shopping mall in Nairobi in September, Islamic terrorists asked people for the name of Muhammad’s mother or to recite a verse from the Quran in order to identify non-Muslims. One of the terrorists announced, “We have come to kill you Christians and Kenyans because you have been killing our women and children in Somalia. Any Muslims can go.”
8. Four Christians in Iran will get 80 lashes each this month for drinking wine during a communion service. Ahmed Shaheed, UN special rapporteur on human rights in Iran, said that it is common practice for Christians to be punished for violating theocratic laws. In the UN report Shaheed wrote: ‘At least 20 Christians were in custody in July 2013. In addition, violations of the rights of Christians, particularly those belonging to evangelical Protestant groups, many of whom are converts, who proselytize to and serve Iranian Christians of Muslim background, continue to be reported.’
9. An average of 100 Christians around the world are killed each month for their faith. (Note: There are several sources that claim the numbers are as high as 100,000+ a year. In the absence of solid evidence for those numbers, though, I chose to go with the more empirically verifiable estimate.)
Morning Prayer: Psalm 25:17; Isaiah 40:28-31; 2 Timothy 4:10-11 ~ strengthen us
Morning Prayer:
+ In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen
Opening sentences
Lord Jesus – To whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, and we have believed and have come to know that You are the Holy One of God.
Morning readings
Psalm 25:17 ESV:
The troubles of my heart are enlarged; bring me out of my distresses.
Isaiah 40:28-31 ESV:
Have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable. He gives power to the faint, and to him who has no might he increases strength.
Even youths shall faint and be weary, and young men shall fall exhausted; but they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint.
2 Timothy 4:10-11 ESV:
For Demas, in love with this present world, has deserted me and gone to Thessalonica. Crescens has gone to Galatia, Titus to Dalmatia. Luke alone is with me. Get Mark and bring him with you, for he is very useful to me for ministry.
Reflection:
O Holy Christ, bless me with Your presence when my days are weary and my friends are few.
Intercessions:
Mighty and Everlasting God, Maker of heaven and earth, Comfortor of all… especially those who are in trouble and great distress this day – look with favor upon Your people. We think particularly of those who are suffering great persecution because of their faith in Your Son Jesus Christ:
+ For the victims and families of those affected by the killings and mayhem in the Westgate shopping center in Nairobi, Kenya… we pray to the Lord
+ For the victims and families affected by the suicide-bomber massacre at All Saints Church in Peshawar, Pakistan… we pray to the Lord
+ For the victims and families of Christians murdered and displaced in the Syrian civil war… we pray to the Lord
+ For the victims and families of Coptic Christians targeted for revenge in Egypt… we pray to the Lord
+ For the Christians around the world who are being murdered, raped, plundered, abducted, forcibly converted to Islam, or otherwise oppressed by Muslims… we pray to the Lord
+ For all of our brothers and sisters in Christ around the world who are imprisoned because of their faith… we think especially of those in North Korea and Iran… we pray to the Lord
Give power to the faint and strength to the weak… breathe life into those who are exhausted… speak a word of hope and encouragement to those who feel abandoned… and comfort all who are suffering great loss this day. We ask it in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Song Christ Be in My Waking
Blessing
May the peace of the Lord Christ go with you, wherever He may send you. May He guide you through the wilderness, protect you through the storm. May He bring you home rejoicing at the wonders He has shown you. May He bring you home rejoicing once again into our doors.
+ In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen
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Peanut Gallery: The Morning Prayer readings are from the Daily Office of the Northumbrian Community as available online here… and in the book form, Celtic Daily Prayer available on Amazon.com.
The website and prayer book are rich in prayer resources and I commend them to you. For our purpose here, I will limit my selections to the Morning Prayer resources.
The Peanut Gallery 