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.  

Posted by Sarah Pulliam Bailey at July 26, 2011 4:52PM

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."

Posted by Jeremy Weber at July 14, 2011 5:42PM | Comments (7)

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.

Posted by David Neff at July 12, 2011 2:29PM | Comments (20)

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.”

In the South Kordofan capital of Kadugli, political leaders in this oil-rich city expect to join with South Sudan on July 9.

Bashir’s forces also recently attacked in Kadugli. "My office was burned down and the cyber cafe...also [the] cathedral was burned, the Church of Christ was burned as well," Bishop Andulu Elnail, with the Episcopal Church of Sudan, told CBN News in an online article posted June 18.

"My house was fired and my chaplain escaped through a window. He was arrested later and tortured. …[M]y people are scattered. My staff are scattered all over and it really is very terrible."

Meanwhile, other aid workers in southern Sudan are asking for help following attacks there by other militias allied with Khartoum, including theLord’s Resistance Army (LRA).

“The government in north Sudan will not change,” Nhial told CT.“The American government cannot stop war in Sudan by words only. They need action. I’m saying this because more than two million people were lost during the war and the number is going up. We need help, and we need help today. We are dying. We are crying to the world that we need help.”

Nhial asked the Western church for prayer as independence day approaches. “On July 9, we are going to be a nation, and we need prayers,” he said. “We need to be covered by prayers. We need Christians all over the word to pray for us and rescue us. We are begging them.”

* * *

Here are highlights of CT's interview with Smith, author of the new book, “Passport through Darkness: A True Story of Danger and Second Chances”:

Q: How has the recent surge of violence in Abyei and elsewhere affected your ministry?

A: Abyei is less than an hour away from our New Life Ministry orphanage. Our children are so terrorized because the Arabs are flying these huge [Russian-made aircraft] to bomb Abyei. They don’t have to do this but they do it specifically to terrorize our village—they circle all the way around our village before they go back around to drop their next round. Our 550 orphans--they’ve all been traumatized. They’ve all watched their mothers be raped and their parents brutally murdered before we got them in. [Now] they hear the planes coming. They haven’t bombed our village yet, but our kids, every time they circle around, have no way of knowing.

Q: You recently blogged about another attack by the Lord’s Resistance Army in a different region.

A: Equitoria is where the blog that you read took place. This region is in the south about 700 miles away from Abyei. … Traditionally what [the northern government has] done is hire the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) to come back across the border from Uganda. The reason they do this is because they cannot effectively get down there. The LRA is happy to do it because they take child soldiers into their evil regimes.

Q: Didn’t they earlier capture 300 orphans from the village were you were considering building your Hope for Sudan orphanage?

A: Yes. That’s in the village of Moti in Eastern Equitoria. When we’re selecting a location where to minister next, one of our criteria is to go where women and children are most vulnerable with the least amount of protection. That almost always ends up being these war zones or lawless lands where this sort of thing takes place. Just two to three days before my team landed there, it had been raided by the LRA. They captured more than 300 children and most of them were orphans.

Q: What is the situation there like now?

A: Romano Nero is the indigenous director for the Hope for Sudan Orphanage. He just sent me some pictures from a slaughter that took place last week—dead bodies on the side of the road. We took in five of the orphansthat had just been left there. They witnessed their mothers’ brutal rapes and slaughter. Their mothers were hacked up and left on the side of the road. Romano happened to be coming through. We have five of the orphans now in our home. We took them all, although we’re not equipped at that orphanage to take newborns and one of them was a newborn, so he’s having that one placed with a local family. We now have almost 50 orphans here with the new ones we’ve taken in.

Q: You’ve said there is a lot of confusion over who is responsible for the fighting.

A: The northern government hires the LRA down south to do their dirty work. … In the Nuba Mountains though, it is the Government of Sudan. The GOS rounded [children] up, trained them as soldiers—forced them to become child soldiers—and then drove them back down into the Nuba Mountains. Two weeks ago they set them loose to kill their own people in the Nuba Mountains.The reports we’ve been getting is that the children first started fighting in chaos but eventually they looked at themselves, they looked at their people, and they looked at the Arabs who’d brought them in, andthey turned the guns on the Arabs. That’s the report I’ve been given from the SPLA.

Q: What do you want to see the U.S.do in response?

A: China is there. Without China pumping the oil and funding the GOS, much of this could not happen. China is our number one trade partner, and although when we negotiate our trade agreement with China the issue of Sudan is on that list—it’s way down on the list.

Posted by Tim Morgan at July 7, 2011 11:53PM | Comments (4)