DHAKA, Bangladesh (RNS)—Amid a spike in violence against religious minorities in Bangladesh, a national council of Buddhists, Hindus and Christians is renewing a campaign for the Muslim-majority South Asian nation to remove Islam as the state religion.

In mid-July, student-led protests demanding reform of the country’s job quota system turned violent, culminating in the collapse of former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s government on Aug. 5.

After Hasina’s resignation, the anger aimed at her government poured onto religious minorities, especially Hindus and members of Hasina’s party, the secular Awami League, which is backed by much of the Hindu community.

The attacks on Hindu houses of worship, homes and businesses, as well as Awami League politicians, have resulted in the deaths of at least 650 people since the violence began, the United Nations Human Rights Commission reported.

The Bangladesh Hindu Buddhist Christian Unity Council, a human rights organization, argues enshrining Islam as the state religion has been detrimental to the country’s religious minorities and aspirations of greater democratic rule.

“According to the communalist and fundamentalist forces, Islam does not coexist with other religious faiths and beliefs and also contradicts democracy, in which they have no belief,” said Monindra Kumar Nath, the council’s joint general secretary.

Dream of a discrimination-free state

The council said earlier this month there were 1,045 cases of human rights violations against religious minorities between June and August. Council members, including Nath, have received death threats for their activism.

Nath called the reestablishment of “a discrimination-free state” a dream “dreamt by the recent student movement,” and one the Bangladesh Hindu Buddhist Christian Unity Council will keep fighting for.

The interethnic and interreligious forum was established by Maj. Gen. C.R. Dutta Bir Uttam, a veteran of Bangladesh’s guerrilla war for independence from Pakistan that began in the 1970s and was fought by people of different faiths, including Muslims, Christians, Buddhists and Hindus.

After the war in 1972, architects of the Bangladeshi Constitution included secularism alongside nationalism, socialism and democracy as the country’s four founding principles.

But a few years later, the first president, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman—known as the “father of the nation” and Hasina’s actual father—was overthrown and a military ruler, Ziaur Rahman, replaced secularism with “absolute trust and faith in the Almighty Allah.”

His successor Hussain Muhammad Ershad, another military officer, officially made Islam the state religion with a change to the constitution.

Activists since have demanded the removal of the mention of a state religion, but despite Ershad’s fall in 1990, successive governments have kept the status quo—including those led by the Awami League.

In 2011, a constitutional reform restored the original four founding principles, including secularism, but Hasina and others’ conception of secularism included a state Islam that would also guarantee religious freedom.

But religious minority leaders say they face discrimination and many hurdles to practice their faith freely.

Christian Solidarity Worldwide’s Asia team further explained, “the Bangladesh Hindu Buddhist and Christian Unity Council has called for the elimination of discrimination on the basis of freedom of religion or belief contained in the Constitution of the People’s Republic of Bangladesh.”

The council has urged the Chief Adviser of the interim government Muhammad Yunus that Bangladesh should repeal Article 2A— which defines the state religion as Islam—because it contradicts Article 12 that establishes the principles of secularism by eliminating communalism; the abuse of religion for political gains; discrimination or persecution of a particular religion; and asserts that political status is not favorable to any one religion.

Last September, the Bangladesh Hindu Buddhist Christian Unity Council launched a hunger strike to hold Awami League to its election promises.

These included proposing legislation that would allow Hindus to reclaim confiscated property, the creation of a national minority commission, protection for religious minorities and the reinstatement of employment quotas that would distribute government jobs more equally across faiths.

The Bangladesh Youth Unity Council, a student-led organization, wants the international community to remind the interim government about its international obligation to protect its citizens, irrespective of religion and ethnic identity.

“Whoever comes to power should establish a minorities commission and a ministry for religious and ethnic minorities,” said the youth council’s secretary, who requested anonymity out of concern for his safety. “They should give land rights to everyone and there should be a special tribunal to protect religious minorities.”

Communications laws, such as the Digital Security Act, are used to single out members of minority faiths, especially Hindus, for “offending the religious sentiments” of the Muslim majority. Courts have also imposed stricter penalties on religious minorities accused of posting offensive content on Facebook.

The youth secretary added, after Hasina fled earlier this month, the movement to remove Islam as the state religion in Bangladesh is at square one.

“The mob rule on the streets right now have made it clear that they don’t want religious minorities in Bangladesh,” he said. “They want only one single religion, which is Islam.”

The international community, including the United Nations and the U.S. State Department, has called for the protection of minorities in Bangladesh.

“We have made it clear that our goal is to ensure that the recent violence in Bangladesh is de-escalated. We are firmly against any racially driven attacks or incitement to such violence,” said Farhan Haq, the deputy spokesperson for United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, in an Aug. 8 statement.

Not a simple fix

Michael Kugelman, director of the South Asia Institute at the Wilson Center in Washington, said removing Islam as a state religion would significantly improve the interim government’s relationship with India, which has called on Bangladesh to protect its religious minorities in hopes of preventing Hindu refugees from coming across the border.

But Kugelman cautioned dropping Islam’s favored status is not a simple fix and he does not foresee it happening.

“Simply removing Islam as a state religion would not mean that influential religious and particularly Islamist actors would go away,” he added. “On the contrary, they would become more emboldened.”

The interim government’s prime minister, Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus, recently showed support for minorities by visiting Dhakeshwari Temple, a prominent state-owned Hindu site in Dhaka considered the country’s national temple.

Yunus urged Bangladeshis to be patient before assessing his government’s performance, according to local media.

“In our democratic aspirations, we should not be seen as Muslims, Hindus, or Buddhists, but as human beings,” Yunus said, according to The Daily Star, the largest English daily newspaper in Bangladesh.

“Our rights should be ensured. The root of all problems lies in the decay of institutional arrangements. That is why such issues arise. Institutional arrangements need to be fixed.

But, CSW’s Asia team pointed out, “religious minorities in the country face regular discrimination, harassment and targeted attacks from Islamists groups.

“During the tenure of Sheikh Hasina the widespread impact of these groups were to some extent kept under control. With her exit, there is now certainly a vacuum that could be exploited by such groups to gain more control of the civic space.”

Whether the interim government will prioritize repealing the provision of the constitution yet is unknown, CSW’s representatives noted.

But if a repeal is sought under the current interim government, the options could be to form a constitution assembly, call for elections or hold a referendum on the matter.

CSW’s Asia team stated the interim government’s current plan is “to attend to urgent priorities such as boosting the economy, ensuring law and order is brought under control and addressing the climate and food crises that impact vulnerable groups.

“Dr. Yunus has also promised to safeguard the security of religious minorities and ethnic groups,” the Asia team said.

With additional reporting by Calli Keener of the Baptist Standard.

WASHINGTON (RNS)—A new Pew Research Center study revealed people around the globe favor leaders who stand up for their constituents with religious beliefs, even if the beliefs are not their own.

This survey was conducted between January and May of this year and reflects the data from nationally representative surveys of more than 53,000 respondents in 35 countries.

Residents of Indonesia, Bangladesh and the Philippines stood out as those who most desire national leaders who stand up for people with religious beliefs. Indonesia had the highest percentage of adults (90 percent) who say it is very/somewhat important.

Indonesians and Filipinos also placed at the top of countries where respondents wanted their leader to have strong religious beliefs of their own, along with Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa.

Indonesians and Bangladeshis were the most likely to say they want their leaders to share their beliefs. Both countries are majority Muslim.

Swedish adults were the least likely to say it’s vital to have a prime minister with strong religious beliefs, with just 6 percent sharing that view.

In every country, the religiously unaffiliated were the least likely to say that leaders should stand up for people with religious beliefs.

Young and old generally agree

While that may be expected, the survey presented a wrinkle: Though there is often an age gap when it comes to religiosity, younger and older adults largely agreed in Pew’s survey that their president or prime minister should stand up for religious citizens and have a faith of their own.

The exception, said Jonathan Evans, senior researcher at Pew Research Center, is Latin America, where adults under 39 “are consistently less likely to say that each of these traits is important.”

Evans said Pew found the United States stood out among wealthier nations in the findings: 64 percent of U.S. respondents said it is important to have a leader who stands up for religious beliefs, a larger percentage than other industrialized nations. Only 42 percent of respondents in Germany and 25 percent of respondents in France agree.

In the United States, two-thirds of respondents say it is important to have a leader at the national level who stands up for people with religious beliefs. Less than half of respondents believed it is essential for their leader to have strong religious beliefs or have religious beliefs that are the same as their own.

This finding has implications as the U.S. election approaches. Vice President Kamala Harris identifies as a Christian and grew up with a Hindu mother, while her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Timothy Walz, is a Lutheran who grew up in a Catholic home.

Former President Donald Trump identifies as a Christian and has drawn support from evangelical Christian voters. His vice presidential pick, U.S. Sen. JD Vance, is an adult convert to Catholicism.

NASHVILLE (BP)—A new Taliban law restricting the rights of women even further has led to calls for prayer from Arabic church leaders as well as Afghans who have fled in recent years.

“These women are victims,” said Raid Al Safadi, pastor of Arabic Baptist Church of San Antonio. “Islamic law and Sharia law deal with them as slaves, something that is owned and not as a human being.”

The “Law on the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice” was adopted recently in Afghanistan. Among other things, it mandates women wear clothing that covers their entire bodies, including their faces. It also bans their voices being heard in public and adds more restrictions to moving about without being accompanied by a male relative.

“This makes me very sad,” Al Safadi said. “They have no rights, no freedom to express themselves or have a personality. They are not allowed the choice of how to live.”

Twenty years after its removal by U.S. troops, the Taliban returned to power in August 2021 as America’s military withdrew. That soon brought a return to the previous draconian laws as part of Taliban rule with the few Christians remaining forced to operate under extreme secrecy.

“It is a mess, and a lot of Afghanis came to America. One of our guys, though, told me through tears how much he praised God. His family was here, and there is a chance for his daughters to go to school in America,” Al Safadi said.

‘The Taliban has taken everything’

Another Afghan refugee who asked to remain anonymous told BP the news left him feeling “completely hopeless.”

“The Taliban has taken everything,” he said. “They cannot see people happy. I am very sad and worry about my own family. I am praying to God to show me a way to protect them from Satan.

“As a Christian, prayer is everything for me to share my sadness, and happiness, with God. Prayer has its own power and mine is that God establishes his kingdom in Afghanistan for his people.”

The new law also requires men to grow beards, bans drivers from playing music and restricts media from publishing images of people.

Al Safadi, who is from Jordan, tells of his own experiences in returning to remote villages that have a Christian presence because individuals have seen healings and been visited by Jesus in their dreams.

“It opens people’s eyes to something bigger than Islam,” he said. “I received many calls from those wanting to know more about Jesus.

“We can reach Afghanistan by reaching Afghani people in America. They are a big field and ready. Share the gospel with them to help them understand Christianity. When they become Christians, it becomes a great opportunity to become a ministry in Afghanistan for the future.”

There is a reason for the Taliban to want to limit exposure to technology. Al Safadi told how sites like YouTube can be crucial not only for Afghans to learn English, but also to be exposed to and learn about Christ.

“We need to work to empower and make disciples of Afghani people in America so we can send them all over the world,” he said. “They are in America, but their dream is to return to Afghanistan. When they become disciples, they can do something.”

OAXACO, Mexico (BP)—The last Protestants in an indigenous Mexican community dominated by Roman Catholics were forced from their homes Aug. 6 and their lone church set ablaze, Christian Solidarity Worldwide reported Aug. 22.

Members of the Protestant Interdenominational Christian Church and their supporters were expected to protest in the main square of Mexico City and in the city of Oaxaca, CSW said.

Demonstrators called out serious religious freedom violations in the community of San Isidro Arenal in San Juan Lalana Municipality, Oaxaca State.

In Oaxaca, members of the Protestant Interdenominational Christian Church have been subjected to discrimination, violence and arbitrary detention since November 2023.

They also face imminent forced displacement from their homes due to their religious beliefs, CSW said. Previous protests were held in Oaxaca Aug. 19.

“We stand with those who are raising their voices today across Mexico in support of freedom of religion or belief for all,” CSW’s Head of Advocacy Anna Lee Stangl stated.

“It is imperative that the governments of the San Juan Lalana Municipality and Oaxaca State, and at the federal level, take urgent action to uphold the Mexican Constitution and ensure that freedom of religion or belief is a right enjoyed by all, regardless of where they live or their ethno-linguistic identity.”

Oaxaca is just 2 miles from Hidalgo, where Baptist worshipers in several indigenous villages have endured similar persecution, driven from their homes and churches unless they observe Catholic customs and rites, or convert to Catholicism.

Persecution escalated recently

In Oaxaca, persecution escalated Aug. 6 when a large mob of 300 men dispossessed the last remaining religious minority families their lands and livestock, destroyed their crops and burned their church, CSW said.

On Aug. 16, when pastors Moisés Sarmiento Alavés and Esdrás Ojeda Jiménez and two other men went to the community to attend a legal proceeding announced by the Oaxaca State Prosecutor’s Office, the proceedings never occurred and the men were attacked by a mob.

“They were stripped, beaten, arbitrarily detained for over six hours, and forced to sign a document which they did not have the opportunity to read,” CSW reported. “The four men were ultimately freed by the police later that same day.”

Porfirio Flores, an attorney and representative of the Fellowship of Pastors, told CSW that “greater attention must be paid to the issue of religious freedom in Oaxaca. A fundamental change is needed regarding the problems arising from civil and religious charges within internal normative systems, while respecting the secular state.”

The persecution of Protestants in indigenous Catholic communities stems from a 1993 community accord mandating Roman Catholicism as the only religion permitted in San Isidro Arenal, a system allowed under the Law on Uses and Customs. However, religious freedom is guaranteed in Mexico’s constitution.

“The volatile situation in San Isidro Arenal is yet another example of how the government’s failure to intervene at the early stages of cases of religious intolerance and its neglect of education around freedom of religion or belief has led local authorities to believe that they can enforce religious adherence and practice and commit criminal acts against those who believe differently with impunity,” Stangl said.

“Concrete steps must be taken now to protect the members of the religious minority in San Isidro Arenal, and those who are responsible for crimes committed against them must be held to account for their actions.”

(RNS)—On Aug. 20, the Ukrainian Parliament passed a long-anticipated bill that will ban the activities of churches deemed to be affiliated with the Russian Orthodox Church or supporting the Russian invasion.

The legislation, expected to be signed into law soon by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, explicitly bans religious institutions subordinate to leaders based in Russia.

Even some supporters of Ukraine see it as an overstep in the name of national security, a violation of religious freedom and a potential risk to continued foreign military aid.

The clear target of the law is the Ukrainian Orthodox Church with its historical ties to Moscow.

The church declared itself independent of the Moscow Patriarchate three months after the full-scale Russian invasion in 2022, but many still suspect at least some of the church leadership has loyalties to Russia.

“The government in Kyiv wants to see the conduits of Russian influence in Ukrainian society totally minimized,” said Andreja Bogdanovski, an author, scholar and analyst of Orthodox Christianity.

Ahead of the vote, Zelenskyy said the law would “guarantee that there will be no manipulation of the Ukrainian Church from Moscow.”

“This draft law must work and must add to Ukraine the unity of the cathedral, our real spiritual unity,” he added.

Recent Ukrainian Church history

Historically, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church has been the largest faith group in Ukraine. However, the country’s Orthodox Christians found themselves split in 2019 when a newer religious body—the Orthodox Church of Ukraine—was recognized as canonical and fully independent of Moscow under the blessing of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople.

The OCU, which now represents the majority of Orthodox Christians in Ukraine, formed in part from parishes resisting Russian control during Ukraine’s independence movements at the beginning and end of the 20th century.

In the wake of Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea and support of separatist militias in the Donbas region, the OCU was bolstered by Ukrainian clergymen who felt that Ukrainian Orthodox Christians needed a religious body divorced from Moscow’s Patriarch Kirill.

Kirill long has been a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin and has justified Russia’s aggression in spiritual terms.

The law, once signed, would equip the Ukrainian government to set up a commission to investigate religious institutions across the country. The commission then would have nine months to provide a list of those deemed subordinate to Russian institutions.

Ukraine’s largest organization of religious bodies, the Ukrainian Council of Churches and Religious Organizations, which represents Christian, Jewish and Muslim groups, endorsed the draft law in an Aug. 17 statement, praising the effort “to make it impossible for such organizations to operate in our country.”

Those that sever their ties to Russia during that period will be allowed to continue to function.

What constitutes a tie and an appropriate level of separation have not yet been specified. These details are what in part delayed the legislation’s approval for more than a year and a half after Zelenskyy first endorsed its draft.

Iryna Herashchenko, the first deputy chairwoman of the Ukrainian Parliament, hailed the bill’s passing as a “historic vote.”

Parliament “has passed a bill banning the aggressor country’s branch in Ukraine. 265 MPs voted FOR! This is a matter of national security, not religion,” she announced on X.

Voices of dissent

Despite the broad support inside Ukraine, the bill has been criticized by some Orthodox leaders, including those from populaces that support Ukraine against Russian aggression.

Bulgaria’s newly elected Patriarch Daniil sent a letter of support to Metropolitan Onufriy, the primate of the UOC. The Bulgarian church does not recognize the OCU as canonical, but the church and government have expressed support for Ukraine in the war.

“You have resisted and continue, with God’s help, to resist all attempts to create disunity, preserving the unity, integrity, and canonicity of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church,” Patriarch Daniill wrote.

Onufriy also received letters of support from the heads of the Antiochian and Georgian Orthodox churches. Both jurisdictions have issued statements shy of condemning Patriarch Kirill’s role in Russian aggression.

But the bill also has been blasted on religious freedom grounds by many observers and is expected to be challenged as Ukraine moves closer to joining the European Union.

“It’s very hard diplomatically to reconcile this law with Ukraine’s European ambitions,” said Samuel Noble, a scholar of Orthodox Christianity at Aga Khan University in London.

“This is the kind of thing that will wind up being brought to Strasbourg, that is, the European Court of Human Rights.”

“It’s not normally the kind of thing that one does in a country aspiring to join the European Union. On the other hand, Ukraine is not in a normal situation,” he added.

Smilen Markov, a Bulgarian scholar of Orthodox Christianity, put it more bluntly: “The Ukrainian state is violating religious freedom. It declares a religious community pro-Russian, which is legally problematic, divisive and ruinous.”

Regina Elsner, the chair of Eastern churches and ecumenism at the University of Muenster’s Ecumenical Institute, posted on Twitter that the legislation’s approval is “deeply disturbing.”

“This law opens a door to serious violations of religious freedom and new fragmentation within Ukraine,” she said. “The amendments of the last months did not improve anything. Hate and violence against UOC believers get public approval. Sad.”

Since the outbreak of full-scale war, Ukraine has jailed more than 100 UOC priests over charges of espionage and anti-Ukrainian speech, including posting opinions on social media and speaking from the pulpit.

The Russian Orthodox Church in particular has sought to use such religious freedom concerns to garner sympathy for the UOC and cast doubt on Western aid to Ukraine, which has been crucial for the Ukrainian defense.

“The Ukrainian Orthodox Church is being subjected to reprisals for its refusal to join the organization of schismatics and self-ordained peoples, created as a political project aimed at destroying the common spiritual heritage of Russian and Ukrainian peoples,” said Vladimir Lagoida, a spokesman for the Russian Orthodox Church, on Telegram.

“There is no doubt that the persecution of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church will sooner or later receive a fair assessment, just as the godless regimes of the past received it, destroying the human right to faith and to belong to their Church.”

The UOC has ceased to commemorate Patriarch Kirill in prayers and has said it is not bound by the decisions of the Holy Synod of the Moscow Patriarchate.

“In Orthodox Church logic, that’s effectively a declaration of independence,” Noble said. “Even from the Russians’ perspective, officially on paper, the UOC is autonomous in all things, except for Onufriy’s seat on the Synod of the Moscow Patriarchate, which he has more or less disowned.”

Still, many Ukrainians remain deeply suspicious of the UOC. In 2021, 18 percent of religious Ukrainians identified as members of the UOC, but months after Russia’s full-scale invasion, that dropped to just 4 percent, according to the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology.

The same poll found OCU membership increased from 34 percent to 54 percent. In addition, hundreds of Orthodox congregations have switched allegiance from the UOC to the OCU, according to church records, but few monks, traditionally seen as sources of authority in the church, have followed.

“Of course, it is true that the hierarchy of the UOC is partly pro-Russian,” Markov noted. “The allegations about ties with Moscow are often factually correct.

“However, these perpetrations are personal, and they should be proved case by case,” he added. “They cannot be blamed on a religious community of millions of Ukrainians.”

NAIROBI, Kenya (RNS)—In a crackdown, Rwanda has shut down more than 5,600 places of worship over failure to meet the conditions required for operation.

Churches, mosques, caves and tents affected by the shutdown were found to have fallen short of the standard requirements set by 2018 laws, according to officials conducting the two-week process that started July 29.

The law requires clerics to have theology degrees and faith organizations to register with the government and have clear statements indicating their doctrine.

The statements should be deposited with the Rwanda Governance Board, the government agency that registers houses of worship and other civil society organizations. Houses of worship also must pass safety and hygiene codes.

“I think what was introduced—not today but five years ago—is good for the church. The government gave us five years to comply and kept giving us reminders. That ended last year in September,” Anglican Archbishop Laurent Mbanda of Rwanda told Religion News.

“I think this was enough time to comply. We need to look at this from a positive side.”

The Rwanda Governance Board introduced the rules and standards to tame what officials viewed as an unregulated proliferation of churches.

Mbanda said the rules were good for the improvement of congregations and the people’s worship environment.

“We are talking about aeration, sound control … toilets for men and women,” Mbanda said. “I think there is nothing out of the ordinary about these.”

Justifying the crack-drown

Most affected by the shutdowns were small Pentecostal churches and some mosques, reportedly operating on riverbanks and in caves. Many of these had no address, and according to some claims, were prone to indoctrinating their followers and exploiting congregants.

“I think most people agree with this. There has to be training of clergy, order and sanity in the churches’ operation, so that religion serves its purpose,” Innocent Halerimana Maganya, a Congolese Catholic priest at Tangaza University in Nairobi, told RNS.

“In the current state of affairs, it is the poor who are suffering exploitation.”

Rwanda—an East African country with 12 million people—is largely Christian. According to the 2022 census, about 48 percent of its citizens are Protestants. But, the Roman Catholic Church forms the largest single denomination, with 40 percent of the population identifying as such.

The country, approximately the size of Maryland, had 15,000 churches in 2019, according to official figures. Only 700 were legally registered at the time.

After the 1994 genocide, which killed an estimated 800,000 people—mostly members of the Tutsi ethnic group and some moderate Hutus—the country’s churches widely were accused of complicity in the violence.

Some of the churches were sites of massacre where fleeing civilians had sought refuge. Priests and pastors faced accusations of killing or aiding the murders.

Later, some of the clerics faced charges of crimes against humanity at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in the city of Arusha, in neighboring Tanzania.

Paul Kagame, now Rwanda’s president, and then the general hailed for stopping the killings, has frequently raised concerns over the proliferation of churches.

In August last year, Kagame threatened to arrest Catholic pilgrims visiting sites in the country, accusing them of worshipping poverty. He voiced a concern that many young people were spending more time praying at prayer sites than working to end their impoverishment.

“No one must worship poverty. Do not ever do that again. … If I ever hear about this again, that people traveled to go and worship poverty, I will bring trucks and round them up and imprison them, and only release them when the poverty mentality has left them,” Kagame, a Catholic, was quoted in the press as saying recently.

Some critics fear the government is infringing on people’s freedom of worship, but clerics and officials say it is about the safety and protection of worshippers.

“Rwanda has freedom of worship,” said Mbanda.

“I think we are starting churches where they should not be. Sometimes we are having church structures that a god cannot live in, let alone a person.”

The archbishop also highlighted the rise of unlicensed preachers, cautioning that some were taking their followers to dangerous caves, rivers and forests for prayers and retreats.

At the same time, Rwanda’s approach to regulating religious groups is influencing action across the East African region.

In Kenya, a task force was formed to investigate the recent Shakahola starvation massacre in the coastal region.

The task force has recommended the formation of a Religious Affairs Commission, renewed registration of all religious organizations, and the establishment of educational standards for religious leaders, among other actions.

DELHI (RNS)—In June, Bindu Sodhi, a 32-year-old tribal woman from a small village in the densely forested state of Chhattisgarh, in central India, was killed by her neighbors.

Sodhi was tilling her ancestral land with her family when irate villagers—armed with bows and arrows, axes and knives—attacked her with stones and killed her on the spot. The villagers stoutly warned her family not to set foot in the village unless they gave up their Christian faith.

Local police shrugged off Sodhi’s killing as a land dispute, despite the fact that over the last four years Hindu extremists and even some of Sodhi’s close relatives had been pressuring her to renounce her Christian beliefs.

Attacks on Christians—who constitute only 2.3 percent of India’s 1.4 billion people—have risen sharply over the last few years. The main perpetrators of these crimes are extremists who believe Hinduism, India’s most prevalent faith, is synonymous with Indian identity and citizenship.

Last year, the United Christian Forum, a human rights group based in New Delhi, recorded 733 incidents of violence against Christians, with an average of 61 incidents every month. This year, 361 incidents targeting Christians already have been recorded by the UCF.

“There is a surge in violence against Christians,” said AC Michael, the group’s national convener. “Anti-conversion laws are being weaponized to target us and strip us of our rights.”

On July 20, UCF leaders met with Kiren Rijiju, minister for minority affairs in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Cabinet, to discuss the increase in attacks, but the meeting yielded few promises, according to Michael Williams, UCF’s national president.

“There’s a complete breakdown of faith in the Modi government,” said Williams. “The government is doing little to curb police and mob brutality against Christians accused under anti-conversion laws and the undue violation of our rights.”

History of targeting Christians

Targeting of Christians has been going on in India since the 1990s. The gruesome murder of Australian Christian missionary Graham Staines, along with his two minor sons, by Hindu extremists in 1999 brought the world’s attention to the violence being meted out against the community.

With the rise of Modi, head of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, the scale and magnitude of these threats have increased significantly.

Sweeping anti-conversion laws have been enacted across 11 Indian states by the BJP government, whose supporters allege Christians and Muslims scheme to lure Hindus into their faiths through deceit or marriage.

The anti-conversion legislation mandates only an affected person can register a complaint. However, the police often arrest Christians based on complaints from self-described Hindu nationalists claiming prior knowledge of “forced conversions.” In that way, the laws have enabled harassment, discrimination and vigilante violence against minorities.

Recent persecution

A report published by the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom in March 2023 noted India’s state-level anti-conversion laws violate international human rights law’s protections for the right to freedom of religion or belief.

The charge of forced conversion, say Christian leaders, is now being used to target ordinary Christians. They cite attacks on church properties and institutions in which vandals paint over church walls with inflammatory slogans, harass pastors and shut down prayer meetings. In rural areas, they prevent Christians from accessing common facilities such as wells and burial grounds.

In extreme cases, the attacks have ended in murder, rape, molestation and illegal detentions.

In early July, nearly two dozen Hindu radicals wearing saffron scarves stormed a prayer meeting in Uttarakhand state after accusing a pastor and his wife of carrying out conversions, brutally attacking the worshippers and hurling verbal abuses at them.

“They dragged me by my hair and beat up my relatives,” said Deeksha, the pastor’s wife. “We were just praying at home and causing no trouble to anyone in the neighborhood.”

In Manipur, where more than 200 people have been killed in ethno-religious violence since last year, congregations have closed down and pastors have been silenced.

Elsewhere, schools, hospitals and institutions run by Christian missionaries are targeted regularly by right-wing Hindu nationalist groups. Religious extremists also have raided private gatherings, including birthday and farewell parties on the pretext of forced conversions.

Law enforcement agencies often side with the perpetrators of violence rather than the victims, which emboldens the extremists to carry out more attacks.

Living with fear

“We are living in an atmosphere of constant fear,” said a priest and peace activist from Varanasi who asked to remain anonymous. “Members of small and independent churches are uncertain about what to do or who to turn to for help.”

Modi has not visited Manipur even once since the outbreak of violence last year, even though he’s made more than 160 visits to other states across the country.

On July 12, nearly a month after Modi was elected as prime minister for the third consecutive term, Christian leaders, led by the president of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India, Archbishop Andrews Thazhath, visited the prime minister to express their concerns over the harassment and exclusion of Christians, as well as the gross misuse of anti-conversion laws.

“The prime minister said he will look into our problems,” said Robinson Rodrigues, public relations officer for the Catholic Bishops’ Conference. “There is no point in being in denial, because the records and newspaper reports are there for all to see.”

Christian leaders who have lost faith in the Modi government said they hope India’s judiciary will help broker peace and deter the religious fundamentalists.

“Christians today are just political baggage in India, where the Hindu nationalism project is being used to polarize society and reap political dividends.” said Vijayesh Lal, secretary general of the Evangelical Fellowship of India. “Our only hope is the higher judiciary.”

But while the courts largely have protected the Christian community and presented Christian legal interests with significant wins, they sometimes have safeguarded majoritarian interests, fueling fear among minorities.

Earlier this month, a judge on the Allahabad High Court remarked in response to a bail application: “If this process (conversion) is allowed to be carried out, the majority population of this country would be in the minority one day, and such religious congregations should be stopped where conversion is taking place and changing the religion of citizens of India.”

Still, many civil society leaders aren’t caving to the multiplying threats and intimidations.

“Since Stan Swamy’s death, we’ve been organizing many advocacy programs,” said AC Michael, referring to a Jesuit priest and tribal rights activist who died in 2021 in state custody for his work helping religious minorities.

“Catholic leaders have become much more vocal now and civil society is supporting us against all odds.”

International advocacy organization Christian Solidarity Worldwide’s sources have confirmed the former president of the Kachin Baptist Convention, Rev. Dr. Hkalam Samson, was released from prison in Myanmar, previously known as Burma, on July 23.

CSW’s report of Samson’s release followed an email to the Baptist Standard from Ah Le Lakang, general secretary of the Kachin Baptist Churches USA, notifying of his release.

Samson, a human rights advocate, was initially arrested at Mandalay International Airport on December 5, 2022, as he was attempting to travel to Bangkok. On April 7, 2023, he was sentenced to six years in prison on charges of unlawful association, defaming the state and terrorism.

Samson was released from Myitkyina Prison earlier this year on April 17 as part of a national amnesty in celebration of Myanmar’s New Year. However, later that same day he was escorted back to the prison grounds and placed in a house as a “guest.”

CSW’s CEO Scot Bower said: “CSW welcomes the release of Rev. Dr. Samson, who should never have been imprisoned in the first place. He is a non-violent Christian pastor and an internationally respected human rights advocate, and we urge the Myanmar military to ensure that he and his family are permitted to enjoy his freedom in peace and without fear of further legal prosecution.”

Samson served as president of the Kachin Baptist Convention from 2018 to 2022, and previously for two terms as general secretary of the convention from 2010 to 2018. In 2019, he travelled to Washington, D. C., to participate in the International Religious Freedom Ministerial Conference, where he was among religious leaders from around the world who met with the United States president in the White House.

Human rights conditions in Myanmar, particularly for religious minorities, have been under scrutiny from the U.N. Human Rights Council for years.

A Palestinian Baptist reported three Christians in Gaza have been injured in recent days, and the people were “terrified” but still reluctant to evacuate after the Israeli Defense Forces issued a warning.

Hanna Massad, former pastor of Gaza Baptist Church and founding president of Christian Mission to Gaza, sent an “urgent prayer request” email July 7.

“The people in the churches in Gaza are terrified and scared,” Massad wrote. “The IDF issued a warning around 5 p.m. Gaza time, urging everyone in the area to evacuate. This typically indicates that the area may be targeted soon.

“Despite the warning, the people in the churches have chosen to stay. The explosions are very close, and the noise is extremely loud,” Massad wrote.

The Times of Israel reported the IDF on Sunday called for the evacuation of the Tuffah, Daraj and Old City neighborhoods of Gaza City. In an updated announcement Monday, the IDF urged civilians in the Sabra, Rimal, Tel al-Hawa and Daraj to evacuate and move to a designated “humanitarian zone.”

The Palestinian Ministry of Health reported an Israeli assault Saturday on central Gaza killed at least 16 people and injured 50 others at a United Nations Relief and Work Agency school sheltering displaced people.

According to Al JaZeera, the Ministry of Health on Monday reported Israeli attacks across Gaza resulted in at least 40 deaths in one day, bringing the total number of fatalities in Gaza to 38,193 since Oct. 7, 2023, with 87,903 wounded.

In an email to supporters of his ministry, Massad wrote, “Please pray for continued protection for all, for God to raise peacemakers in the region to take action, and for this nightmare to end.”

When a group from Crosspoint Church in McKinney recently traveled with Proclaim Cuba to minister in that Caribbean country, they took with them water filters provided by Texans on Mission.

“I wanted to personally thank you for the donation of the filters,” Curt Neal, a member of the team, wrote to Mitch Chapman, director of Texans on Mission Water Impact. “You can only imagine the excitement from our Cuban pastors as we turned dark murky water into clear and very drinkable water, which I personally demonstrated.”

The team took about 20 bucket filters and 10 tap filters to churches in central Cuba, the project report said. “We gave several bucket filters to these rural churches. The tap filters were given to the churches that had running tap water.”

The water is “notoriously undrinkable throughout Cuba and especially in rural areas,” the report said. The filters are expected to improve the water for more than 250 people.

Andrew Wischmeyer, director of development for Proclaim Cuba, said the water problems are related to “drought, an aging infrastructure, bacteria in the cisterns.”

One of the pastors expressed his thanks for the filters in a video, saying, “The water filters will be a blessing for all of us, and in our churches, they are very, very useful.”

He spoke of the darkness of the tap water and how, when his own grandchildren came to America, a hospital discovered lead in their blood. A team tested their water supply in North Carolina, which proved to be free of lead. It was determined they had contracted the lead in Cuba.

“Our pipes are very old, so there’s a lot of heavy metals in it and a lot of people keep getting sick in their kidneys because of the poor quality of water,” the pastor said. Despite efforts by the government to improve the water, it remains “very dirty with very poor quality.”

Neal said the “filters supplied are capable of supplying 100,000 gallons of clean drinking water when properly maintained.”

 “We all know clean water is vital to sustain our physical lives,” Wischmeyer said. “When we offer clean water in Cuban communities through the Sawyer filters, provided by Texans on Mission, it opens the door for the churches to share about the hope of ‘living water’ offered by Christ, which sustains our spiritual lives and gives hope to all of us in this life and the life to come. Keep the water flowing.”

SÃO PAULO (RNS)—A bill aiming to punish abortion after 22 weeks at a similar penalty to homicide has spurred controversy in Brazil, with numerous constituencies demonstrating against it—including Christians.

Last week, two Christian groups released statements opposing the bill, echoing criticism voiced by progressives and feminists.

The bill was introduced by an Assembly of God theologian and far-right Congressman, Sóstenes Cavalcante, a strong ally of former President Jair Bolsonaro and a representative of the powerful Christian bloc in Congress, which has hundreds of members.

The proposal includes a penalty of up to 20 years in prison for women who undergo abortion after 22 weeks of pregnancy—a sentence comparable to the one applied in cases of homicide. And it would be applicable even in cases of rape, anencephaly defects and when the mother’s life is at risk—conditions currently legal, with no time limit, in Brazil.

Currently, illegal abortion is punishable with prison sentences of up to three years for the mother, up to four years for the health care professional who performs the procedure and up to 10 years for a person who carries out an abortion without the mother’s consent.

Cavalcante introduced his bill on the same day the Supreme Court ruled unconstitutional a Federal Medical Council’s recent resolution that prohibited doctors from inducing cardiac arrest on fetuses of more than 22 weeks. The congressman acknowledged his proposal was a reaction to the court’s decision.

Opponents have been calling it the Rape Bill or the Child Pregnancy Bill—including the Women of Faith’s Front, a coalition of Christian women of various denominations, bishops, pastors, theologians, missionaries and community leaders.

In a manifesto against the bill initially signed by 155 women, they argued it’s unacceptable “that women are incarcerated for interrupting pregnancy.”

“We say no to the Rape and Rapist Bill because we have as a reference the gospel of freedom and justice for women and men, children, and the vulnerable in society,” the document said. “We will not remain under the yoke of slavery to a disastrous religious discourse.”

In 2022, almost 75,000 cases of rape were reported in Brazil, and 60 percent of the victims were girls under 13, with most cases happening at home.

Each year of the past decade, 20,000 Brazilian girls under 14 became mothers. The statement from the Women of Faith’s Front noted 252,786 girls were forced to give birth between 2010 and 2019. Among them, 179,679 were Black, and 8,099 were Indigenous.

Activists and experts say most raped girls only discover they’re pregnant after several weeks, due to the emotional trauma and shame involved. If Cavalcante’s proposal is approved, activists argue these girls would be the most impacted group.

The Women of Faith’s Front argued the bill is about hatred against women under the guise of protecting unborn children.

“We denounce the patriarchal alliances between religion and political parties that negotiate our rights in exchange for votes. We denounce priests, pastors and bishops who abuse girls, boys, and women on a daily basis in churches and then coerce them into silence,” the document stated.

Lutheran Pastor Romi Bencke, one of the organizers of the Women of Faith’s Front, told Religion News Service the bill gave them the platform to speak up during a time when far-right evangelicals have been the dominant faith voice in the country.

Too far this time

“I think that the violence of rape impacts the population, and Sóstenes Cavalcante’s bill tried to downplay it. People just couldn’t accept it. They went too far this time,” she said.

Another group that expressed its opposition to the bill was the Priests of the Path, which includes 461 Roman Catholic bishops, priests and permanent deacons.

In a declaration released on June 19, the group said it’s not “in favor of abortion,” but is “against replacing public policies with punitive laws against victims of rape and abuse, accusing them of a crime followed by a sentence greater than that of rapists,” the document said.

Rape sentences are generally up to 10 years, with five additional years if the victim is under 18. Congressman Cavalcante was confronted by several critics about the fact his bill would penalize the victim of rape more than the rapist, leading him to promise to include in the bill a bigger sentence for rapists.

“Being against abortion, however, cannot be confused with the desire to see the woman who practices it behind bars. This ‘social revenge’ has the serious consequence of penalizing poor women who cannot even use the public health system,” according to the Priests of the Path’s statement.

The statement went on to note “the criminalization of women does not reduce the number of abortions. It just prevents them from being done safely.”

The Priests of the Path letter gained attention among Brazilian Catholics, especially after the presidency of the Bishops’ Conference released a statement in support of the bill.

Father Manoel Godoy, one of the members of the Priests of the Path, told RNS he thinks the Bishops’ Conference made a mistake in supporting the bill.

“That was a trap set up by the far-right, and the presidency of the Bishops’ Conference didn’t notice it,” he said.

Godoy alluded to a declaration given to the press by Sóstenes Cavalcante in which he said he was testing President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s commitment to evangelicals. Since the presidential campaign in 2022, Lula has declared on several occasions that he’s against abortion.

“Cavalcante wanted to politically harm Lula, leading him to veto it. But he was wrong about it. Lula will veto it with popular support,” Godoy affirmed.

A survey on the Chamber of Deputies’ website of more than 1 million voters shows 88 percent of them oppose the bill.

“A 12-year-old girl is not ready to be a mother. She can’t carry for nine months in her womb the memory of a rape. Nobody in their right mind can support such an idea,” Godoy said. “That is a kind of torture.”

Only in the past decade has abortion become a central element in Brazilian politics, with more evangelical leaders elected to office. According to research carried out in 2020 by Datafolha Institute, 31 percent of Brazilians are evangelical, and 50 percent are Catholic—representing a 50 percent growth of evangelicals in a decade. With that increasing social strength, new ideas have gained importance.

“The moral agenda generates great engagement in society,” Baptist Pastor Ed René Kivitz told RNS.

Kivitz led a meeting between Christian leaders and the Human Rights Minister Silvio Almeida on June 21. The pastors who attended the meeting were critical of the bill and were supported by Almeida.

“It’s important that the Brazilian society understands that the evangelical church is not a monolithic bloc, but a plural and diverse sector,” Kivitz affirmed.

Bencke said the opposition to abortion has been a historically Catholic matter, and most Protestant churches had not been as concerned about it, she said, adding it’s a mostly ignored subject in the Bible.

“But [since] around 2010 there has been an influx of new topics in the evangelical agenda, many of them coming from churches and politicians from the United States,” she said.

Godoy said the opposition to abortion in the Brazilian Catholic Church also has been growing over the past decade thanks to the pro-life movement.

“It’s really a right-wing movement infiltrated among Catholics. They say a girl should carry a baby for nine months after being raped because they’re men. They don’t know how it would be painful,” he argued.

Godoy pointed out even St. Thomas Aquinas didn’t believe “life begins with conception.”

“He thought that a soul was only infused in the fetus after a few weeks. That demonstrates that the current ideas concerning abortion have not been eternal in the church,” Godoy reasoned.

Political motives

According to lawyer Naiana Zaiden, a professor at the Goiás Federal Institute who has researched the bills introduced by evangelical congressmen over the years, proposals like these are conceived to increase their creators’ visibility.

“We’ll have elections this year. Many people who didn’t know Sóstenes Cavalcante have now heard of him for the first time. He’ll certainly give support to a group of candidates, and it’s part of the construction of his political career,” she told RNS.

Zaiden doesn’t think the bill will pass, but she fears it may be used by evangelical congressmen to bargain for the approval of other bills or for other political targets.

“I’ve seen numerous proposals that were surprising. I thought: ‘How can someone introduce a bill like that in Congress?’ But then I’d discover they were used by evangelicals as a form of putting political pressure on somebody and gaining positions or power,” she concluded.

The bill was approved to be analyzed in the so-called urgency regime, when it’s moved directly to be voted on by the assembly and doesn’t need to be approved by distinct Chamber of Deputies’ commissions.

With all the public rejection it has suffered, however, the president of the chamber, Congressman Arthur Lira, announced it only will be discussed in August.

WASHINGTON (BP)—Millions continue to suffer religious persecution globally, with wars and civil conflicts exacerbating already existing ills in Europe, Asia, the Middle East and Africa, the U.S. State Department documented in its 2023 Report on International Religious Freedom.

The report on 199 countries and territories attempts to present a nonbiased overview of persecution by governments, extremists and members of society, relying on information from government officials, religious groups, nongovernmental organizations, journalists, human rights monitors, academia, media and others.

Concurrently, the report notes advances in religious freedom and the United States’ commitment to continue advancing the freedom U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken deemed “an essential part of what it means to be human: the ability … to decide on our own what we believe or don’t believe without fear of repression.”

“Today, governments around the world continue to target individuals, shutter places of worship, forcibly displace communities, and imprison people because of their religious beliefs,” Blinken said in releasing the report on June 26.

“In every region, people continue to face religious-based violence, religious-based discrimination, both from governments and their fellow citizens. They may be shut out of schools, denied jobs, harassed, beaten, or worse.”

Escalations of religious persecution amid wartime and civil conflicts were noted in several reports including Israel, the West Bank and Gaza; Ethiopia, Haiti, Niger, Russia, Ukraine, Sudan, Mali and other countries.

“Since Hamas’s horrific terrorist attack on Israel on October 7 and the subsequent conflict in Gaza, both antisemitism and Islamophobia have increased significantly across the globe,” Blinken said.

“Here in the United States, reports of hate crimes and other incidents targeting both Muslims and Jews have gone up dramatically.”

Among wartime escalations noted:

• In Russia-occupied territories of Ukraine, all religious groups except the Ukraine Orthodox Church were required to undergo “state religious expert evaluations” and register with Russia-led occupation authorities. Most religious groups recognized under Ukrainian law were unable to register because of Russian laws applied to occupied areas discouraging registration.
• In Russia, there were widespread reports Russia’s armed forces and other Russian authorities in Ukraine engaged in numerous abuses of religious freedom, including detaining religious leaders and shelling religious institutions and cultural heritage sites. Nongovernmental organizations reported as many as 630 religious properties in Ukraine damaged, destroyed or occupied by Russian forces between the beginning of the war and April 2023.
• In the West Bank and Gaza, in conflicts before Hamas’ Oct. 7 invasion of Israel, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in the Occupied Palestinian Territories reported 237 Palestinians and 30 Israelis were killed, among other aggressions between Jan. 1 and Oct. 7.
• In Sudan, after fighting broke out between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, religious freedom protections remained unimplemented, with both warring factions committing targeted assaults and indiscriminate shelling on churches, mosques and religious communities.
• In Haiti, gang violence and general insecurity greatly hampered religious freedom. Gangs kidnapped religious leaders and congregants for ransom, demanded higher “protection” payments from church leaders, and targeted Catholic leaders because of a historical perception that Catholic churches are financially wealthy.

Among threats to religious freedom, Blinken noted blasphemy laws in Pakistan, the use of antisemitic tropes and anti-Muslim rhetoric by government officials in Hungary, and government penalties against religious leaders who criticize the Hungarian government.

He also noted laws in nine European nations banning religious clothing in public spaces; and in India, anti-conversion laws, hate speech, and the destruction of homes and places of worship in minority faith communities.

Blinken said the United States has dedicated more than $100 million to building religious freedom globally since 2021.

“We’ve provided legal assistance to people who are facing religious persecution. We’ve trained thousands of human rights defenders who are helping to document abuses,” Blinken said. “We’ve also continued hundreds of millions of dollars in humanitarian aid to support those fleeing religious oppression.”