Conservative Culture

Sunday School and no license. Sounds like real trouble. Wonder when the libs in America will want to enact this law. How many churches in America still teach pc heresy and need state help to correct the problem? From BosNewsLife.

Russia Closing Down Methodist Church

Sunday, 13 April 2008

By BosNewsLife News Center in Budapest

MOSCOW/BUDAPEST (BosNewsLife)– Members of a United Methodist congregation in Russia were without a church Sunday, April 13, after authorities closed it for running a Sunday School without government permission, the latest in a series of police raids targeting Christian education, Christians said.

The congregation in the western city of Smolensk was closed down by a local court March 24, on charges of  “educational activity in a Sunday school without a corresponding license,” the church’s Pastor Aleksandr Vtorov said in a statement released by the news service of religious rights group Forum 18.

Investigation into the congregation and the school, attended by some four children, started after a complaint from local Russian Orthodox bishop Ignati Punin.

The complaint originally focused on a planned missionary college, but later the Sunday School became the target of a police investigation.

CONGREGATION LIQUIDATION

In published remarks, C. Vladimir Ryakhovsky of the Moscow-based Slavic Centre for Law and Justice said he fears the Methodist congregation’s liquidation increases the threat to other religious education.

“Almost every religious organization has a Sunday School…”I don’t know of one that has a separate education license. Do they intend to liquidate them all?” Elsewhere in Russia, adult religious education without a license has already led to raids and enforced closures. Forum 18 said. Human right group

I can only read the headlines of the Chineese News Service: “Church goes to Camp”.

Nice. Do you really believe that the church in China will be the only one around the world that will be persecuted? As the overall population of America grows dramtically unchurch that those who seek to be different from the pc churches (state churches?) will not also become persecuted in America? Read the whole article here.

China Court Reconsidering Labor Camp Sentence For Frail Christian

Monday, 14 April 2008 (13 hours ago)

By BosNewsLife Asia Service

BEIJING, CHINA (BosNewsLife)– A Chinese court will reconsider whether a Uygur House Church Christian is to remain in a labor camp in China’s northwestern region of Xinjiang, amid worries about his health, his supporters and family said Monday, April 14.

Wusiman Yiming’s appeal was to be held Wednesday, April 16, at Kashi People’s Court by judges from Xinjiang’s Hetian city. Only legal representatives will be allowed to attend the trial, because of what China sees as the “sensitivity” of the case, Christians said.

Wusiman Yiming, a devoted Christian, was detained in September by the State Security Bureau of Southern Xinjiang Hetian City,  a main law enforcement agency, on charges of “divulging state secrets,” explained advocacy group China Aid Association (CAA) in a statement to BosNewsLife.

The Christian was reportedly sentenced in November to two years re-education by the Re-education Labor Committee of Hetian City,” his home city. Beijing attorney Zhang Kai was hired by the family to file an appeal, which was finally approved last month.