Pray for Christians in India

Pray for Christians in India

Every week, the stories come. A Christian prayer group attacked while meeting in a private home. A local evangelist beaten by a mob and driven from his village. A Christian family forced to flee their home before the rage of an incited band of radicals. Church services disrupted, pastors beaten, church buildings burned down.

The stories usually share a common ending. Police and local authorities do little or nothing to protect the Christians or punish the perpetrators. Often times it is the Christians who are arrested for bringing charges against those who attacked them.

Most of the stories come from India where states such as Orissa, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat — stretching across the middle of the country — have anti-conversion laws that make it illegal for a Hindu to convert to any other religion. It was in Orissa that Australian Baptist missionary Graham Staines and his two sons were burned to death in their car as they slept and where missionary leaders with decades of service have been expelled.

Now the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), or World Hindu Council, wants a national anti-conversion law for all of India. On Aug. 25, Mohan Joshi, national secretary of the VHP, said, “The law should have provision to penalize foreign nationals and organizations engaged in conversion with a fine of 10 lakh rupees (or $22,750) and 10 years of imprisonment to effectively check conversion.”

Slightly more than a year ago, India was on the verge of adopting an anti-conversion law. The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), a close ally of the VHP, included an anti-conversion plank in its national platform. Only a surprising — or to some, miraculous — defeat of the BJP prevented the proposal from becoming law. Still India ended up on the list of nations about which the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom had special concerns. Last year, India was listed alongside North Korea, Iran, Burma, Sudan and China.

A year later, the notion of a national anti-conversion law is again front-page news. Why?

The answer is simple. Because of the “increasing number of conversions around the country,” to quote Joshi.

India’s more than 1 billion people are 80 percent Hindu. But the second most populous nation in the world has a Muslim population estimated at between 130–150 million. It is the second largest concentration of Muslims in the world and rivals the combined population of all countries in the Arab Middle East.

The Christian population numbers more than 24 million. Some such as the Thomas Christians trace their origins back to the time when the apostle Thomas preached the gospel in India where he was martyred, according to the best records. About 19 million Christians are considered evangelical, including about 2.5 million Baptists.

Though the numbers may sound impressive, the Christian population makes up less than 3 percent of India’s total population. But that is changing. Indian states such as Nagaland and Mizoram are strongly Christian. Nagaland is reportedly 80 percent Christian. These national Christians are strong witnesses and have home missionaries serving in several neighboring states.

According to the International Mission Board (IMB) of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), 4,000 new house churches were started in the state of Uttar Pradesh in the last two years. The IMB also reports the founding of 5,000 new churches in north India, locations unspecified, in the last 10 years.

Hindus and Muslims are both responsive to the Christian gospel, the IMB reports. One SBC representative wrote, “With the Muslim devotion to Allah and the Hindus pantheon of 300 million gods, we never hear, ‘Is there a god?’ We hear three questions: ‘Who is god in this place?’ ‘What power does he have?’ ‘How do I get him to help me?’

“For the Christian, that is a great opportunity. Our God is everywhere. He is all powerful. When His children ask for help — He helps.”

The IMB reported 180,000 baptisms from the South Asia region, including India, in 2003. There were dramatic increases in Bible studies and discipleship programs. Obviously God is at work in India.

The growth of Christianity, as well as the growth of Islam, has many Hindu leaders worried. So worried that they have abandoned the traditional toleration of Hinduism and turned to intolerance. They use brute force and intimidation to try and stop the spread of the gospel in villages and among various ethnic and caste groups.

Now the World Hindu Council would make conversion a crime punishable by prison. How fearful they must be of people’s choices once they hear the good news of God’s love made known through Jesus Christ.

Persecution did not stop the church in New Testament times. It will not stop the church in the 21st century. Indian Christians brave the wrath of radical Hindu nationalists every day to preach Jesus Christ. They are a worthy example to those of us in the West who live in security yet fail to witness for our Lord.

Pray for these brave men and women, these Indian Christians, and pray for the political circumstances in which they live. Every person should be free to worship God as conscience dictates without support or hindrance from government authorities. Religious freedom is a God-given right of every person and should not be limited by political power.