Chinese authorities sentenced Shi Enhao, deputy chairman of the Chinese House Church Alliance and underground pastor, to two years in a labor camp early this week. Charges of holding “illegal meetings and illegal organizing of venues for religious meetings” were levied without trial, and Shi was denied access to a lawyer.

Government pressure on Shi to dissociate himself from the house church movement began in May, shortly after 19 house church leaders connected with Shi's organization submitted a petition to China’s National People’s Congress requesting an end to the persecution of Shouwang Church and an amendment to religious freedom legislation. Shi was arrested May 31 by police in the Jiangsu province and served a 12-day administrative detention sentence.

During this time, his home was raided by Suqian city police, who removed papers and books. On June 12, just after police were due to release Shi from his administrative sentence, he was reported missing again and on June 21 authorities confirmed Shi had been detained indefinitely under suspicion of “using superstition to undermine national law enforcement,” a criminal offense. 

Shi’s two-year labor camp sentence is part of the Chinese criminal justice program, which in many areas still operates under the Communist-era mantra laogai, or “reform through labor.” Such punishment is reserved for those guilty of criminal charges and is frequently administered by police without trial. 

News of Shi's sentencing arrives as the Domestic Security Protection Department of China ordered Pastor Shi’s church to stop its underground meetings and confiscated church property, including a significant portion of the organization’s operating budget.

Meanwhile, members of the Shouwang Church continue to gather on Sundays in the Zhongguancun district of Beijing—an insider said meetings will continue until December—even as authorities make more arrests and increase crackdowns on house churches across the nation. Sunday marked the 16th week worshipers at Shouwang have gathered outdoors in protest of an April ban on renting indoor space.  

Editor's note: The title of this post has been corrected, replacing the word "discipline" with "leave of absence," to more accurately reflect the SGM board's position toward Mahaney, explained here.

Earlier today, CT reported on C. J. Mahaney taking a leave of absence as president of Sovereign Grace Ministries (SGM), a church planting network, in order to address "various expressions of pride." In the latest development, SGM announced today that pastor Joshua Harris, who succeeded Mahaney as Covenant Life Church's senior pastor in 2004, has resigned from SGM's board.

A statement from SGM interim president Dave Harvey cited differences over whether God is disciplining all of SGM and how to move forward and evaluate the claims against Mahaney. But Harvey said Harris had agreed to keep attending board meetings when requested and give counsel.

Multiple bloggers reported that Harris stated in his Sunday sermon that "our denomination is being publicly spanked, we are being humiliated and being brought low."

Early this morning I turned to the New York Times (as I often do) and was shocked to see a laudatory piece about First Lady Betty Ford take a swipe at Christianity Today.

“The Christian Right was especially cruel,” to Ford, wrote Nixonland author Rick Perlstein. “In 1976, when a rabbi collapsed of a heart attack beside her at a ceremonial dinner, she courageously took the lectern to lead a prayer for his life. The rabbi ‘was pronounced dead at a nearby hospital a short time later,’ Christianity Today mocked in its next issue.”

Oh dear, where to begin?

First, in 1976 the Christian Right had not yet emerged. Attempts to organize a Christian political resistance began after the Supreme Court’s 1974 ruling in Bob Jones v. Simon. But nothing of size or influence emerged until 1979, when Jerry Falwell founded the Moral Majority.

Far more disturbing to this reader is the suggestion that Christianity Today mocked the First Lady’s prayer for a dying rabbi.

Note this: One of the hallmarks of evangelical piety is ex tempore prayer. Christianity Today reported the First Lady’s impromptu prayer verbatim. That was a sign of the magazine’s respect for the way she displayed a typically evangelical kind of spiritual initiative.

Indeed, the magazine's brief news item did finish by reporting the rabbi’s death “a short time later,” but there was no mockery in that. Reporting the essential facts of a story is what reporters do. The end of the story was the natural place to locate that fact.

Read for yourself this brief news item from the July 18, 1976 issue of CT:

IMPROMPTU PRAYER

Rabbi Maurice S. Sage, 59, president of the Jewish National Fund of America, was about to present a Bible to Betty Ford during a dinner fete last month when he collapsed. As Secret Service agents and others tried to revive him the First Lady stepped to the podium at New York’s Hilton Hotel and asked the stunned audience to stand and pray for Sage. “I’ll have to say it in my own words,” she said.

She prayed: “Dear Father in heaven, we ask thy blessing on this magnificent man, Rabbi Sage. We know you can take care of him. We know you can bring him back to us. We know you are our leader. You are our strength. You are what life is all about. Love and love of fellow man is what we all need and depend on. Please, dear God. “

Then she asked everyone to join together in silent prayer for the rabbi.

The program was concluded abruptly. Sage, apparently the victim of a heart attack, was pronounced dead at a nearby hospital a short time later.

That the prayer was not answered with a miraculous healing is a simple matter of realism, something all praying Christians know can happen. It says nothing about the spirit or the sincerity of the prayer.

* * *

Hat tip to Morgan Feddes for tracking down the original CT news item.

Southern Sudan's long-awaited day of political independence will arrive on Saturday, July 9. But the suffering of its people persists.

In the UK media, The Independent, reports, today:

The UN mission in Sudan stands accused of serious failures in its duty to protect civilians who have been killed in their hundreds during a month-long campaign of violence by the Khartoum government on its restive southern border. Eyewitnesses described to The Independent how they saw peacekeepers standing by while unarmed civilians were shot dead outside the gates of a UN base before being dragged away "like slaughtered sheep." They also said that local leaders have been handed over to government forces after seeking shelter with UN officials. The violence has driven tens of thousands of civilians into hiding in the Nuba Mountains, which are controlled by rebel fighters and where public anger at the UN has left peacekeepers afraid to leave their bases, according to officers from the mission's Egyptian contingent.

Two days ago (July 6), Kimberly Smith of Make Way Partners, which is active in southern Sudan with a variety of programs for trafficked, abandoned, or orphaned children, posted on her blog an account (and very graphic images) of recent violence and killing of children in southern Sudan.

During most of June, church and missions leaders spoke out for assistance. According to missionary Fran Boyle, tens of thousands of people are currently displaced in the South, fleeing the border city of Abyei, where the Government of Sudan has taken over. Boyle’s ministry, Connecting Lives International Mission (CLIM) is based in Western Aweil along the Darfur border.

In the Nuba Mountains, troops have attacked civilians specifically targeting churches and pastors. “They have burned the churches,” said Boyle. “Pastors have fled and the flock is scattered.” Pastor Santino Akook of CLIM sent photos of Darfurian refugees who had recently fled to Jorbich in the hope of finding survival supplies. The UN estimates that the recent violence and bombardment has displaced more than 60,000 people.

“The pastors are the most wanted because they are the leaders of the church and at the same time, the leaders of the community,” said Anglican Bishop Abraham Nhial, whose Episcopal Diocese of Western Aweil includes the city of Abyei.

“The whole city was destroyed by the Islamic Government in the North. It was put under fire,” said Nhial. “All my Christian and community people have been displaced.” Right now is the rainy season, and “they are today living on the streets and they have nothing to [use to] cover their heads—no tents or homes to stay in. There is no food or water oraccess to medical care,” said Nhial. “Some of them are still missing. Maybe they are somewhere in the bush.”

Boyle said that supply routes to Khartoum are now closed, preventing food and emergency supplies from reaching their ministry’s location where more than 360 new families arrived in May following renewed violence in Darfur. Joining them are new refugees from Khartoum, who are fleeing the northern capital in anticipation of southern Sudan’s declaration of independence.

While her team had food for June, Boyle said the cost is 50 percent more and “we are not sure if there will even be any food next month.” In a recent email to supporters Boyle wrote, “Please keep praying and give as you areable.”