Eighteen leaders of a prominent Chinese underground church have been formally arrested, an advocate for a Christian NGO has confirmed, meaning they will now face trial and potential prison sentences of up to three years.

This development follows a significant crackdown on Chinese Christians, the largest of its kind since 2018, which saw nearly 30 pastors and staff from Zion Church – an unofficial ‘house church’ – detained nationwide in mid-October.

Among those currently held in detention centres in the southern city of Beihai is the church’s founder, Pastor Jin Mingri.

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Source: https://www.independent.co.uk/asia/china/chinese-christians-zion-church-arrest-b2868082.html?fbclid=IwY2xjawOKw-FleHRuA2FlbQIxMQBzcnRjBmFwcF9pZBAyMjIwMzkxNzg4MjAwODkyAAEezCUpT078vw-MwXoGPTizSvPZmU–yk1Qodfsi33ij1uYwdfDF1chWZMXflQ_aem_uF8pMozzohVzT_SSQ2z03Q

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A Christian charity worker in Malta could face jail time after he claimed that his faith enabled him to turn away from a homosexual lifestyle he no longer wanted.

Matthew Grech, 33, faces potential fines and imprisonment for allegedly falling afoul of his country’s ban on “conversion practices” when he explained to a local media outlet last year how he left homosexuality behind because he came to believe it was wrong.

“I was invited by this new emerging platform in Malta called PMnews to share my story and to discuss sexuality in general,” Grech told Fox News Digital, noting that he was “surprised” when police later called him early on a Sunday morning and ultimately served him with a prosecution order summoning him to court on Feb. 3.

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Source: https://www.foxnews.com/world/christian-charity-worker-faces-potential-jail-time-fine-speaking-leaving-lgbt-lifestyle

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Britain has become less religious — and less white — in the decade since the last census, figures from the 2021 census released Tuesday by the Office for National Statistics revealed.

Some 46.2% of the population of England and Wales described themselves as Christian on the day of the 2021 census, down from 59.3% a decade earlier. The Muslim population grew from 4.9% to 6.5% of the total, while 1.7% identified as Hindu, up from 1.5%.

More than 1 in 3 people — 37% — said they had no religion, up from 25% in 2011.

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Source: https://apnews.com/article/europe-religion-england-wales-secularism-93b894a1e7e26ddaf244d35921a172e0

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The post Census: Christians a minority in England; non-religious grow first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

(Natural News) A Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed by an Ann Arbor, Mich., law firm has turned up evidence of a widespread Islamic propaganda campaign being waged against public school teachers in the state and elsewhere.

As reported by The Gateway Pundit, the Thomas More Law Center (TMLC) became concerned about Christian-bashing Islamic materials being force-fed to teachers after being notified of a mandatory two-day training course presented by a Muslim consultant hired by Michigan’s Novi Community Schools District.

The law center “filed a FOIA request for documents related to this two-day Islamic training workshop and discovered that the teachers were being told lies about Islamic terrorism, jihad, and Sharia law,” TGP reported.

What’s more, teachers were being told by a Muslim consultant for Culture Links LLC, Huda Essa, a hijab-clad Arab woman from Dearborn, that white males are more dangerous than Islamic jihadists and terrorists.

“We found that the teachers were subjected to two days of Islamic propaganda, where Islam was glorified, Christianity disparaged, and America bashed—all funded by Novi taxpayers,” said Richard Thompson, TMLC’s president and chief counsel.

“This type of infiltration amounts to an Islamic Trojan horse within our public school systems,” he continued. “No other religion gets this kind of special treatment in our schools.”

The notion that “white males” present a bigger “terrorist threat” in the U.S. comes from mass shootings over the past several years, the majority of which have indeed been committed by young, white men. However, the vast majority of those attacks were not considered acts of domestic terrorism, so to characterize them that was is factually incorrect. (Related: Astonishing bias: 452 Islamic terror attacks in 31 countries just THIS YEAR (so far) and zero coverage from the media.)

The lie has been repeated by Muslim members of Congress as well such as Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.).

As for the Muslim curriculum uncovered by TMLC, the legal group noted that over the past five years, the school district in question has not presented similar teacher-training seminars that focused on Christianity, Judaism, or any other religion — just Islam.

This is all part of the Left’s efforts to destroy American culture

The center noted further in a press release: 

Most disappointing was the fact that of the more than 400 teachers attending the workshop, not one teacher challenged Essa’s denigration of Christianity or attacks on America.

The legal organization reviewed scores of internal school documents as well as audio recordings of Essa’s presentation, uncovering a raft of falsehoods and errors of omission the center believes were intended to deceive course participants.

For instance, she provided “no truthful information” regarding Sharia law and jihad, which are considered some of the most important tenets of the Islamic religion. All references to terrorism were depicted as having nothing at all to do with Islam, and white Christian males were depicted as being more threatening and dangerous than Muslim extremists.

TMLC officials also found that the materials Essa presented were not celebratory of “patriotic Americans who believe in our nation’s exceptionalism,” according to the press release.

What’s more, she’s been spreading her “trash American first” propaganda to a growing list of American colleges and universities. Her client list includes professional educator associations throughout her home state of Michigan but also schools in California, Texas, Florida, Georgia, and others.

The materials are presented under the guise of ‘spreading diversity,’ but again, the curriculum is distinctly anti-American and focused only on spreading an often false view of Islam. She also believes that the Koran, the Muslim holy book, is superior to the Christian Bible, according to the law center’s review of her materials.

It’s not hard to see what the Left is attempting to do with the spread of counter-cultural materials: Destroy American traditions, undermine our founding, and — eventually — replace our republican form of government with an enslaving tyranny.

Source: https://www.dcclothesline.com/2019/08/27/legal-firm-uncovers-taxpayer-funded-islamic-propaganda-that-bashes-christianity-is-being-forced-on-teachers-students/

The post Legal firm uncovers taxpayer-funded Islamic propaganda that bashes Christianity is being forced on teachers, students first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

 The Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, was mentioned in the report for denigrating Christians. Photograph: Reuters

Pervasive persecution of Christians, sometimes amounting to genocide, is ongoing in parts of the Middle East, and has prompted an exodus in the past two decades, according to a report commissioned by the British foreign secretary, Jeremy Hunt.

Millions of Christians in the region have been uprooted from their homes, and many have been killed, kidnapped, imprisoned and discriminated against, the report finds. It also highlights discrimination across south-east Asia, sub-Saharan Africa and in east Asia – often driven by state authoritarianism.

“The inconvenient truth,” the report finds, is “that the overwhelming majority (80%) of persecuted religious believers are Christians”.

Some of the report’s findings will make difficult reading for leaders across the Middle East who are accused of either tolerating or instigating persecution. The Justice and Development (AK) party of the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, for instance, is highlighted for denigrating Christians.

Hunt described the interim report – published on Thursday, based on a review led by the bishop of Truro, the Rt Rev Philip Mounstephen – as “truly sobering”, especially since it came as “the world was seeing religious hatred laid bare in the appalling attacks at Easter on churches across Sri Lanka, and the devastating attack on two mosques in Christchurch”.

Hunt, an Anglican, has made the issue of Christian persecution one of the major themes of his foreign secretaryship. “I think we have shied away from talking about Christian persecution because we are a Christian country and we have a colonial past, so sometimes there’s a nervousness there,” he said. “But we have to recognise – and that’s what the bishop’s report points out very starkly – that Christians are the most persecuted religious group.”

He added: “What we have forgotten in this atmosphere of political correctness is actually the Christians that are being persecuted are some of the poorest people on the planet. In the Middle East the population of Christians used to be about 20%; now it’s 5%.”

“We’ve all been asleep on the watch when it comes to the persecution of Christians. I think not just the bishop of Truro’s report but obviously what happened in Sri Lanka on Easter Sunday has woken everyone up with an enormous shock.”

The interim report is designed to set out the scale of the persecution and a final report in the summer will set out how the British Foreign Office can do more to raise awareness of the issue.

The report shows that a century ago Christians comprised 20% of the population in the Middle East and north Africa, but since then the proportion has fallen to less than 4%, or roughly 15 million people.

In the Middle East and north Africa, the report says, “forms of persecution ranging from routine discrimination in education, employment and social life up to genocidal attacks against Christian communities have led to a significant exodus of Christian believers from this region since the turn of the century.

“In countries such as Algeria, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Syria and Saudi Arabia the situation of Christians and other minorities has reached an alarming stage. In Saudi Arabia there are strict limitations on all forms of expression of Christianity including public acts of worship. There have been regular crackdowns on private Christian services. The Arab-Israeli conflict has caused the majority of Palestinian Christians to leave their homeland. The population of Palestinian Christians has dropped from 15% to 2%.”

Palestinian Christians attend an Orthodox Easter service in Gaza. Photograph: APAImages/Rex/Shutterstock

The report identifies three drivers of persecution: political failure creating a fertile ground for religious extremism; a turn to religious conservatism in countries such as Algeria and Turkey; and institutional weaknesses around justice, the rule of law and policing, leaving the system open to exploitation by extremists.

The report says: “The rise of hate speech against Christians in state media and by religious leaders, especially in countries like Iran and Saudi Arabia, has compromised the safety of Christians and created social intolerance.”

In findings that may pose difficulties for the UK as it seeks to build relations across the Middle East, the report states: “In some cases the state, extremist groups, families and communities participate collectively in persecution and discriminatory behaviour. In countries such as Iran, Algeria and Qatar, the state is the main actor, where as in Syria, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Libya and Egypt both state and non-state actors, especially religious extremist groups, are implicated.”

“In 2017 a total of 99 Egyptian Christians were killed by extremist groups, with 47 killed on Palm Sunday in Tanta and Alexandria. Egyptian Christians were continuously targeted by extremist groups during 2017 and 2018.

“Arrest, detention and imprisonment are common in Iran, Egypt and Saudi Arabia. For example in the course of six days before Christmas 2018, 114 Christians were arrested in Iran with court cases left pending as a form of intimidation. Though most cases in Iran involve converts, indigenous Christians such as Pastor Victor, an Assyrian Christian, with his wife, Shamiram Issavi, have also been targeted and imprisoned.”

It also highlights how states, and state-sponsored social media, sometimes incite hatred and publish propaganda against Christians, especially in Iran, Iraq and Turkey. “The governing AK party in Turkey depicts Christians as a ‘threat to the stability of the nation’. Turkish Christian citizens have often been stereotyped as not real Turks but as western collaborators.”

In Saudi Arabia, the report says, school textbooks “teach pupils religious hatred and intolerance towards non-Muslims, including Christians and Jews”.

The report says freedom of religious belief can also act as a means of helping those suffering gender discrimination, since there is clear evidence that female Christians suffer disproportionately.

Defending the claim of genocide, the report says: “The level and nature of persecution is arguably coming close to meeting the international definition of genocide, according to that adopted by the UN.”

The eradication of Christians and other minorities on pain of “the sword” or other violent means was revealed to be the specific and stated objective of extremist groups in Syria, Iraq, Egypt, north-east Nigeria and the Philippines. An intent to erase all evidence of the Christian presence was made plain by the removal of crosses, the destruction of church buildings and other church symbols.

“The killing and abduction of clergy represented a direct attack on the church’s structure and leadership. Where these and other incidents meet the tests of genocide, governments will be required to bring perpetrators to justice, aid victims and take preventative measures for the future. The main impact of such genocidal acts against Christians is exodus.”

Referring to the universal declaration of human rights, the report concludes: “The challenge that faces us at the beginning of the 21st century is not that we need to fight for a just legal system, it is rather that to our shame, we have abjectly failed to implement the best system that women and men have yet devised to protect universal freedoms.”

Source: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/may/02/persecution-driving-christians-out-of-middle-east-report

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Barbara Sukowa (left) and Heino Ferch (right) in the movie ‘Vision’

The Holy Roman Empire, the birthplace of Protestantism, the battlefields of Christian theology. The lands that make up modern Germany once had front row seats to some of the most significant developments both in the history of Europe and of Christianity.

Today, those Christian roots are hard to overlook. Public holidays based in Catholic and Protestant beliefs provided highly-anticipated vacation days that go beyond just Christmas and Easter. And while “Christian” political parties — Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union and the Bavarian Christian Socialist Union, for example — are considered traditional rather than religious, the parties’ names make it clear they were conceived on the basis of Christian values.

Yet the ubiquity of steeples, crosses and saints is deceptive: Churches are largely empty. With more and more Christians rejecting core tenets of the faith, including the existence of God, is it accurate for Germany to be considered a Christian nation?

DW looks at six facts and figures that shed light on the make-up of Catholic and Protestant identity and influence in Germany today.

Read more: How Martin Luther became the first Christian pop star

1. The majority of Germans identify as Christian

Roughly 48.4 million Germans identify as Christian, be they Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox or non-denominational. That’s nearly 60 percent of German society.

The Muslim population comprises approximately 5 percent (4.5 million) of the population; the Jewish community 0.1 percent (99,000).

Over 35 percent of the population belongs to another denomination or has registered as not belonging to any religious group.

2. Under 10 percent of Christians go to church regularly

The majority of Germany’s Christians are registered as either Catholic (23.6 million) or Protestant (21.9 million). The Protestant Church has its roots in Lutheranism and other denominations that rose out of the 16th-century religious reform movement. Despite the Protestant Church’s official name — the “Evangelical Church of Germany” (EKD) — it is not to be mistaken with the Evangelical movement in the United States.

What the numbers do not reveal is whether church members are practicing the Christian faith or simply preserving tradition. A look at attendance rates would support the notion that the majority of society is, in actuality, not religious.

According to the German Bishops’ Conference, only 10 percent of registered Catholics attend church on Sundays. Among Protestants, it’s 3 percent. Not only that, but churches are seeing fewer baptisms, brides and — where Protestants are concerned — burials: Between 2010 and 2015, church weddings declined by 8 percent among Catholics and 14 percent among Protestants.

During the same time period, an average of 167,000 Catholics and 180,000 Protestants officially left the church each year.

Read more: Anti-Christian crime causes increasing concern in Germany

3. Churches make billions despite falling numbers

In 2016, the Catholic Church and the Protestant Church collected a record-breaking €6.1 billion ($7.5 billion) and €5.5 billion ($6.8 billion) in church tax, respectively.

The right for churches to collect a de-facto membership fee in the form of a tax dates back to 1919, when the Weimar Republic introduced the measure to counter the financial aftermath of the separation of church and state.

The rate is currently set at 9 percent of one’s income for members above a minimum income threshold. The money helps keep parishes, church employees, daycares and other properties afloat.

And as the Finance Ministry handles the tax for them — neither church has the necessary infrastructure for such a massive undertaking — it also receives a neat 3 percent of the total, which added up to €348 million in 2016.

4. Land holdings also boost church wealth

Assessing the churches’ wealth is a tricky and tangled business due to their extensive land holdings and reparation payments they receive from the states.

The two churches own at least 830,000 hectares  (8,300 square kilometers or 3,200 square miles) of land, according to an estimation by church critic Carsten Frerk, whose number is often cited by German media.

The churches themselves have disclosed tens of thousands of buildings that they each hold in addition to at least 14,100 Protestant and 10,800 Catholic churches. When examining buildings related to the churches’ roles in healthcare, education and charitable work, the Catholic Church has at least 66,000 additional holdings and the Protestant Church a further 50,000. They also lease an undisclosed number of properties to home owners and businesses nationwide.

Moreover, they receive state funds to compensate for property losses dating back to the early 1800s when Napoleon upended the Holy Roman Empire. According to broadcaster Deutschlandfunk, this amounted to nearly €500 million in 2017 and comes from tax payers whether they belong to a church or not.

Chapels are easy to see, but harder to spot is where the churches own lands after centuries of property changing hands

5. Church widely represented in public matters

Another reason Catholic and Protestant interests are so visible in German society is the seats church representatives are granted on supervisory boards across a wide variety of organizations. There, the churches sit alongside other interest groups such as conservationists, union leaders and experts from a range of fields in the name of representing an important demographic.

By way of example, the two churches have a voice on public broadcasting councils, from the nationwide ARD and ZDF to the regional WDR, to the international Deutsche Welle, which is financed by the Foreign Ministry. Included in these councils’ oversight tasks is helping to select the director general.

Given the innumerable supervisory boards across Germany, it is next to impossible to know exactly how many of these seats are held by the churches.

It is also not uncommon for members of the German parliament to be involved in the Central Committee of Catholics (ZDK) or the synod of the German Evangelical Church (EKD). Nominated as private citizens and not as representatives of their parties, these individuals are among several hundred laity who help set each church’s agenda.

They are also expected to represent church interests in the public sphere — though how this interacts with their roles in public political office is unclear.

Read more: The main differences between Catholics and Protestants

6. Fewer Christians believe in core tenets of their faith

When asked by German pollster INSA in 2017 if they believed in the resurrection of Jesus Christ, only 52 percent of Catholics and 48 percent of Protestants said yes. When asked if they believed in life after death, only 40 percent of Catholics and 32 percent of Protestants said they did.

Additionally, the research institute Emnid asked Christians whether they believed in God. Roughly 24 percent of Protestants and 11 percent of Catholics said no, according to newspaper Tagesspiegel.

These surveys clearly point to a German society in which many people do not equate Christian identity with doctrinal belief. This, in turn, raises the question of the extent to which the Catholic and Protestant Churches use their influential positions in the German state and society to act in the interest of their combined 45 million members.

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Source: http://www.dw.com/en/6-facts-about-catholic-and-protestant-influence-in-germany/a-43081215

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