HYDERABAD, India, February 13, 2020 (Morning Star News) – Attacks and harassment of a house church in southern India have decimated the 40-member congregation and left the pastor injured and demoralized.

Pastor Eswara Rao Appalabattula on Jan. 27 pleaded with about a dozen local residents to stop building a wall meant to block people from attending worship services at his home in L.B. Patnam village, Andhra Pradesh. Led by a local Hindu extremist, the group attacked him, breaking his hand, he said.

“They wanted to build a wall right in front of the church and ban us from using the path,” Pastor Appalabattula told Morning Star News. “I pleaded with them to not do so. But the group of at least six neighbors, both male and female, punched me in my stomach several times and pushed me to the floor.”

They picked up a wooden pole and started beating his hands repeatedly with it, he said.

“I was lying there on the floor screaming for help,” he said. “My wife came running and begged them to stop beating me – it was traumatic.”

The attack topped a month of hostilities and years of opposition against the pastor and his wife, who are in their 60s, from Hindu villagers furious at the presence of a church in their community. On Jan. 5, a Hindu priest had led them to his home, where they threatened to kill his wife, Karuna Appalabattula, as she was doing chores outside, she said.

“I did not go to fight with them – but I was panicked,” Karuna Appalabattula told Morning Star News. “I did not know what to do. I asked them, ‘What is this you are doing? Why are you after us?’”

The Hindu priest picked up a large log of wood and came running toward her, she said.

“He kept screaming that he would kill me,” she said. “I was crying for help. But their priest abused me in extremely foul language. They called me names they would never use for a mother, wife, sister or any female member of their families. He called me a Christian prostitute and warned me that he would kill my husband.”

Trembling in fear, she and her husband locked themselves inside the house, she said.

Pastor Appalabattula said the Hindu villagers had stopped worshippers from coming to services throughout January.

“They would threaten and abuse them in foul language and not let them even park their motorbikes in the area,” he said. “Even before they stop at the church, they are chased and sent away.”

He informed a police official, who only told him to peacefully resolve the matter himself.

“He told me that these issues between religious groups may cause riots and advised me not to escalate the matter,” Pastor Appalabattula said. “We had kept quiet and were busy with the ministry, but the following Friday [Jan. 7] and the Sundays on Jan. 12, 19 and 26, the members of the church were stopped on the road and were threatened that they would be brutally attacked if they continued gathering in L.B. Patnam village.”

Throughout the month Hindu villagers shouted obscenities when passing their home, trying to provoke them into a fight, Karuna Appalabattula said.

“Not only were our lives but the lives of believers who come for prayers also in danger,” she said. “That entire month, they did not allow us to be at peace.”

On Jan. 27, they informed police that the Hindu villagers had begun digging a trench for construction of the wall. Officers arrived only after the ensuing attack, she said.

Police told her to order a motorized rickshaw taxi to take Pastor Appalabattula to the hospital, they said, adding that a church member who had also been beaten wanted to accompany them, but officers told him to flee for his life. At the village clinic, doctors said they did not have facilities adequate to treat him and suggested they go to the larger hospital in Vizag town.

“I telephoned some of the church members, but they were scared that they too may come under the attack,” Karuna Appalabattula said. “The doctors at the town hospital in Vizag informed us that his right hand has been fractured.”

Officers at the Cheedikada police station registered a First Information Report (FIR) against 11 villagers but not the Hindu extremist leader, Suresh Panchata, Pastor Appalabattula said. He said he reminded officers that he had complained to them several times since 2011 about Panchata, an upper-caste Hindu, and about telephone threats he had received the previous day.

Source: Christian Headlines

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Government officials within China have confiscated Bibles from churches in recent months and threatened fines as part of an intensified crackdown on Christianity and an effort to eradicate “illegal publications,” according to a new report.

The campaign has targeted illegal underground churches as well as legal Three-Self churches, which are registered with the government.

“If our Bibles are taken away, we have no more,” a pastor of a Three-Self church in Jiangxi province told Bitter Winter, the watchdog behind the report. “We are thinking of asking our congregation members to hide them in the mountains.”

In December, around 10 government officials raided a different Three-Self church in Jiangxi in search of “pirated Bibles” either not printed in the country or printed at illegal printers, Bitter Winter reported. The pastor told them the church owned only legal Bibles printed within the country, but the officials nevertheless seized 30 Bibles.

According to the persecution watchdog, similar raids have taken place “all over the country” as part of a nationwide campaign to “eradicate pornography and illegal publications.”

Source: Christian Headlines

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A federal judge rejected a request from a Maryland private Christian school to allow the school to continue participating in a school voucher program.

According to The Christian Post, U.S. District Court Judge Stephani Gallagher agreed with the state to deny a motion from Bethel Christian Academy in Savage, Maryland.

The school had asked to stay in Maryland’s Broadening Options and Opportunities for Students Today (BOOST) program. The school was removed from the program after the 2017-2018 school year.

Bethel Christian Academy had accepted BOOST program vouchers from low-income students for two years before a state advisory committee reviewed the school’s handbook and decided to pull the school from the program.

The handbook, which was updated in 2017, details the school’s religious beliefs. In its nondiscrimination policy for admissions, the handbook says the school does not discriminate for admission based on race, color, national and ethnic origin.

The policy does not include the words “sexual orientation” or “gender identity.”

Source: Christian Headlines

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Nick Hall is the visionary of the Together movement, author of Reset, and the founder of PULSE, a ministry at the center of the largest millennial-led prayer and outreach efforts in the world. He is the president and CEO of The Table Coalition and sits on the board of the National Association of Evangelicals. Follow him @NickHall. The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily represent those of BCNN1.

Somewhere around 2012, I came to an inconvenient conclusion: I didn’t love the Bible.

While this might seem normal for most of humanity, it was inconvenient for me, as I was a 30-year-old preacher and evangelist!

Don’t get me wrong, I was in the Bible often to prepare sermons, but I was rarely in it myself. Turning those crinkled pages felt more like a chore than a joy. Even in my times using Bible apps like YouVersion, I found myself drawn more to devotional content than to Scripture.

Two years later, I was in the back of a New York City cab, talking about the Bible with one of my heroes, Francis Chan. I admired him for his passion and conviction, and that day in the cab I felt stirred as he discussed this book that had so evidently marked his life. I found myself longing for God’s presence in the ways he described! That day, Francis shared a dream to see people around the world get in the Bible together.

“So many problems in the church today wouldn’t be there if people just read and fell in love with the Bible for themselves,” he said. “What would happen if we all used our influence to help people experience a Year of the Bible?”

The seeds of #YearOfTheBible were planted that day. The campaign launched this January, and already people have joined in from over 100 countries.

Most of us have been taught to love good communicators and good worship music, but we have never learned to love the Bible for ourselves. In America, there are countless Bibles sitting in hotel drawers and on the shelves in our homes, waiting for someone to be inspired by the power inside.

Imagine what would happen if people around the world looked to God’s Word once again — this is the vision of #YearOfTheBible.

In the days of King Josiah, the Hebrew Scriptures were lost for an entire generation in the temple. Then one day, the king discovered the Word of God. He gathered all the people and read the Scriptures aloud. He was so moved by God’s Word that he immediately renewed Israel’s covenant with God.

Source: Christian Headlines

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The Rev. Thomas J. Reese, a Jesuit priest, is a Senior Analyst at RNS. Previously he was a columnist at the National Catholic Reporter (2015-17) and an associate editor (1978-85) and editor in chief (1998-2005) at America magazine. He was also a senior fellow at the Woodstock Theological Center at Georgetown University (1985-98 & 2006-15) where he wrote Archbishop, A Flock of Shepherds, and Inside the Vatican. Earlier he worked as a lobbyist for tax reform. He has a doctorate in political science from the University of California Berkeley. He entered the Jesuits in 1962 and was ordained a priest in 1974 after receiving a M.Div from the Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley. The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily represent those of BCNN1.

It was disappointing but not a surprise that Pope Francis decided not to respond to the Amazon synod’s recommendation that the Catholic Church ordain mature, married men to make up for the huge shortage of priests in the Amazon region. Francis did not say yes to married priests, but neither did he really say no. Discussion of the matter will continue, whereas previous papacies said no to even discussing the topic.

Priests are in such short supply in Amazonia that the Eucharist and other sacraments are not readily available to most Catholics. Many villages see a priest only once or twice a year. The shortage has gone on for decades and the Amazonian bishops, who met in Rome in October, see no hope for a turnaround.

They also wanted to open the deaconate to women, who in many villages are already the religious leaders of their communities. Here the pope gave a definitive no.

Francis responded to the recommendations of the synod in a 20-page exhortation, “Querida Amazonia” or “Dear Amazon,” which was released Wednesday (Feb. 12).

It is clear that Francis was upset with the media, who focused on the ordination of married men almost to the exclusion of the other topics of the synod, such as the devastation of the environment and exploitation of the indigenous peoples of the Amazon.

He lamented that the indigenous peoples “were considered more an obstacle needing to be eliminated than as human beings with the same dignity as others and possessed of their own acquired rights.” He also insisted that concern for the environment must be linked to concern for indigenous peoples.

While I sympathize with the pope’s desire to emphasize the issues facing the environment and indigenous peoples, I find it disappointing that he recycles the old recommendations of praying for vocations and enlarging the role of the laity.

Don’t get me wrong. I am all for these solutions, but we have been praying for vocations for more than a century and we have been increasing the role of the laity since the Second Vatican Council ended in 1965. True, more can be done, but are we going to be a Eucharistic community or not?

Clearly, Pope Francis does not want to be the pope who gets rid of mandatory celibacy, which he strongly values. He may also fear that vocal opponents to ordaining married men would further divide the church if he allowed it, even though they are a small minority.

“Querida Amazonia” eloquently acknowledges the absence of the Eucharist and the sacrament of reconciliation in so many places in the Amazon, but rather than ordaining married men, he urges the ordination of more male deacons. By accident or by plan, this will create the cadre of candidates for priesthood if he ever allows for exceptions.

But Francis is not open to ordaining women to the diaconate. His arguments against women deacons were disappointing and patriarchal. He fears “clericalizing” women — as if that is not a bigger problem for male deacons. He calls for more recognition of women’s roles in the church — and I agree — but why not go all the way and ordain women?

Source: Religion News Service

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Jarrett Stevens is pastor of Soul City Church in Chicago and author of “Praying Through: Overcoming the Obstacles That Keep Us From God.” The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of BCNN1.

Years ago, Southern Baptist theologian Albert Mohler wrote an article warning Christians that Eastern meditation, which encourages participants to embrace silence and clear their minds, was “not a means to spiritual growth.” More than being just ineffective, he concluded, it was “dangerous” and “an empty promise.”

Coming from an evangelical upbringing, I can understand his concern. I’ve heard plenty of religious leaders make similar claims, casting meditation as some sort of boogeyman wooing Christians away from the faith with pagan practices. In the world in which I was raised, meditation was not on the list of approved spiritual practices. We prayed and read and sang and journaled. But meditation was not on the menu.

But a few years back, I began to explore the practices of silence and meditation — not due to some sort of spiritual curiosity, but out of spiritual exhaustion. Our church was only a few years old, but the process of launching it had taken quite a toll on my wife and me. We were simultaneously full-time parents of young kids and full-time pastors of a young church, and the combination had left us undone.

In an attempt to spiritually revive myself, I tried all the practices in the toolbox inherited from my childhood. None of them worked. In my search for something new, I stumbled on something ancient. And meditation has become an indispensable part of my spiritual life ever since.

Silence and meditation have been a part of most religious traditions — most notably, among Hindus and Buddhists — since their inceptions. For this reason, some Western Christians assume that these practices will somehow make them less Christian or open the door to harmful spiritual forces. What many don’t realize is that these practices have always been a part of our tradition, too.

The Bible uses the word “meditation” 23 times, the majority found in the book of Psalms. Ironically, one of my favorite verses has always been Psalm 46:10, in which God invites us to “Be still and know that I am God.” This passage has become the foundation of my meditative practice.

In the New Testament, we find Jesus practicing solitude and meditation as well. The Gospels regularly refer to him retreating to “quiet places.” Away from the noise. Away from the demands. Away to be alone and steep in silence with God.

These cues were picked up by many of our Christian forebears throughout the history of our faith as they integrated meditation into their own spiritual practice. Meditation and interior silence were central practices for the early Christians known as “desert fathers” and “desert mothers” who fled to the wilderness to form spiritual communities in the second century A.D.

Source: Religion News Service

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Chelsea Mitchell of Canton, Connecticut, deserves equal opportunities to compete and win in sports.

Opening more opportunities in education and athletics for girls like Chelsea was the very reason Congress passed a federal law known as Title IX back in 1972.

A gifted athlete and hard worker, Chelsea relishes the opportunities given to her. She competes in both track and soccer and has been recognized for her excellence in both. But running is Chelsea’s true passion. As a high school sophomore, she won three Connecticut Class S state championships in outdoor track and field.

“It was the best day of my life,” recalls the high school senior. But that moment would become bittersweet. Because, despite her natural talent, Chelsea knew that she would probably never win another state championship again. But this wasn’t because Chelsea was any less dedicated to her sport. No, Chelsea knew she could never win another championship because she would be competing against athletes with an unfair advantage.

Since 2017, the Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference has allowed male athletes who identify as girls to compete in women’s sports. And after the 2018 season, one male athlete transferred schools, moving into Chelsea’s competition class.

Chelsea was devastated when her mother told her the news. “It felt like all I had worked for had been ripped away from me. I knew that I would never have the feeling [of being a state champion] again.”

Now Chelsea faced a grueling prospect that would be difficult for many adults to handle — competing in races that she knew she couldn’t win. And yet, she didn’t give up. “She never quit trying or working hard,” said her mother, Christy Mitchell.

SOURCE: Christian Post, Maureen Collins

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