HYDERABAD, India, July 15, 2019 (Morning Star News) – Christians who worshipped privately in their homes in a village in eastern India were dragged to local leaders last month and forced to bow to a goddess idol, sources said.

The mob action on June 14 followed an announcement two days earlier by the heads of Mahuatoli village, Gumla District in Jharkhand state, that 12 Christian families would be banished if they did not return to the tribal Sarna religion, they said.

Threatened with death, most of the Christian families have fled the village.

“Threats have always been there in this area in Gumla District, but it had never escalated to this point that the Sarna extremists vowed to take lives,” said area pastor Boyen Munda. “They are not in a right state of mind now. The Hindu extremist forces have joined hands with them and have been inciting them against the believers.”

The mob of 20 villagers broke into the home of Jogiya Munda and pushed him and his widowed mother out of their house, the pastor said. Munda and his mother, who have been Christians for 17 years, were dragged to the village leaders and forced to sit and bow to the goddess idol, Pastor Munda said.

“They poured buckets of water on them [as a purification rite] and made them do a ritual which is believed to be a procedure to renounce Christ,” Pastor Munda said. “They fled to a safer place…

An Oklahoma state judge on Friday upheld the state’s ban on a common late-term abortion procedure, making it the first time a judge in the U.S. has reviewed such a law and not overturned it.  

Oklahoma County Judge Cindy Truong handed down her decision from the bench. 

The lawsuit was brought by the Center for Reproductive Rights and Tulsa Women’s Clinic, an abortion clinic. 

Truong upheld a 2015 law that bans dilation and evacuation (D&E) abortion, a procedure that involves the dilation of the cervix and the removal of the unborn baby by literally pulling it apart, limb by limb – pulling out an arm, a leg, the head, and so forth. Pro-life groups refer to the procedure as “dismemberment abortion.”

Oklahoma Attorney General Mike Hunter called Truong’s decision “a major victory for basic human decency in Oklahoma.” 

“Dismemberment abortions are barbaric, brutal and subject unborn children to more cruelty than we allow for death row inmates,” Hunter said. “It is unconscionable to think that we would allow this practice to continue. Judge Truong is to be commended for declaring this legislation constitutional.”

D&E abortions were described in excruciating detail in the movie Gosnell: The Trial of America’s Biggest Serial Killer.

The Center for Reproductive Rights said in a statement it was exploring its legal options….

A new study reveals that the number of “nones” – those who are not affiliated with any religion – continues to rise in the United States.

Eastern Illinois University professor Ryan P. Burge explained on Religion in Public that self-identified nones have risen from 22.2% of Americans in 2008 to 29.5% in 2018, making them the largest religious group in the country. Burge caveats the results, however, sharing that “it’s way more complicated than that.”

Earlier this year, a General Social Survey was released indicating the change in size of religious groups. Burge, who is also a Baptist pastor, tweeted a graph of the changes and the information went viral.

He decided to run the same numbers through a different survey, the Cooperative Congressional Election Study, which has a larger sample size and thus creates a smaller margin of error and shows state-wide changes.

What he found was consistent with the General Social Survey. Nones are still on the rise, but he also broke down each state to see changes in each of them, revealing that decreases in religion by state are much more modest.

Catholics lost three percentage points, but Burge points out that unless “those losses are sustained for another few survey cycles, then we can say with some certainty that Catholics are on the downward swing.” Mainline churches and evangelicals…

A 1,700-year-old letter written by one Christian to another has been unveiled by researchers from the University of Basil, which is calling it the oldest Christian letter outside of copies of the New Testament.

The letter from a man named Arrianus to someone named Paulus says Arrianus is “praying” for his brother. Arrianus discusses everyday matters, including local politics (“city council” business) and food (“fish liver sauce”). 

The letter, known as papyrus P.Bas. 2.43, originated in Egypt, according to a news release from the University of Basil. It was dated to the 230s AD. 

It ends with the unique closing, “I pray that you fare well in the Lord.” 

“The use of this abbreviation – known as a nomen sacrum in this context – leaves no doubt about the Christian beliefs of the letter writer,” said Sabine Huebner, professor of ancient history at the University of Basel. “It is an exclusively Christian formula that we are familiar with from New Testament manuscripts.” 

The name “Paulus” also is significant, Huebner said. 

“Paulus was an extremely rare name at that time and we may deduce that the parents mentioned in the letter were Christians and had named their son after the apostle as early as 200 AD,” Huebner said.

The letter is part of Huebner’s new monograph, Papyri and the Social World of the New…