Pray For Religious Climate Jan 01

India is in bondage to a complex web of beliefs, rituals, and philosophies. 80% are Hindus, worshipping numerous gods and goddesses. Other religions include Islam (13%) and Christianity (2%). Nearly 600,000 villages are without a Christian church.

Pray for spiritual breakthrough in India, that the truth of the Gospel would shine through and that those who see the light have courage and boldness to step out and find real freedom in Christ. Pray for believers to have stability in their lives, resources to earn a living, strength against persecution and to become mature in their faith and equipped to share it with others.

Pray For Saoner Jan 01

On Sunday, 19th of April there was an attack on a church about 40kms away from Nagpur. The name of the village is Saoner. The church is in the center of the village. A fanatic Hindu organization first made a police complaint saying that forcible conversion is taking place. Ten minutes later they attacked the church wielding swords and guns as well as knives, sticks and stones. They verbally and physically abused the women and children. They vandalized the churches instruments and a school bus. They pointed the gun towards the pastor and threatened that he would be killed if they continued having church. The attackers brought a TV camera and showed it on the news just to please their leaders and bring terror to the minorities. As elections are going on they want to use this to consolidate Hinduhood. They also aim to get political party ticket to contest election. This 150 year old church has only 60 members. There was no conversion going on at all. To get famous, to get Political ticket and to prove their patriotism and to satisfy their nationalistic pride they do these evil things.

We were involved in bringing the Minority commission and bringing the Buddhists, Muslims, OBC and Christians together to bring peace, protection and demand arrests for about 25-30 from this organization. Brahmans planned and were behind this attack. OBCs were used to carry the attack. All OBC secular leaders realized that Brahmans used OBC to attack Christians, Tribals , Muslims and Buddhists. There is a need to educate the OBCs so that they will understand that we are brothers and that they should not be dictated by Brahmans. 75-80% of the population are OBCs. We need to regularly invest our time to build bridges and develop relationships with OBC so that prejudice, deception and ignorance may be wiped out. Nearly 200 leaders came together including Minority ministers, Member of Legislative assembly and Members of Parliament and 20 non-Christian organizations as well as the Muslim Welfare Society.

Our primary focus is to see peace restored, the church continued, OBC withdrawn from RSS work and our attackers become a minority. We would like that those who conspire to divide the community put behind bars. There are regular attacks in Gujarat, Orissa, Karnataka, and Madya Pradesh. Sometimes it looks as if they want to experiment. A sad example was that people who attacked the churches got Parliament election ticket and were considered heroes. Hindu organization will back them financially. Although they will claim in the papers that they are not involved they will put money into Court guarantees etc.