ICC Note:
As attacks on Christians and their places of worship continue to rise in India, Christians have announced that they will be holding a three day special prayer service this week in 100 places across the country. The focus of these prayers services will be to pray for an end to the attacks on churches and Christians communities across India. This announcement comes weeks after India’s Prime Minister vowed to protect religious minorities in India, but has so far failed to stop the attacks the Christian community is praying against.
3/2/2015 India (Times of India) – Christians will hold three-day special prayers from March 4 at 100 places across the country for an end to the “attacks” on churches and the “hate campaign” against the community, a group of clerics said here.
“We are going to pray in churches for three days from March 4 to 6,” pastor of the Jabalpur-based English Methodist Church pastor FJ Valsalen said on Sunday.
He said the prayers would be held in six districts of Madhya Pradesh — Indore, Jabalpur, Ujjain, Damoh, Gwalior and here.
One of the organizers insisted that the prayers were not held for publicity purpose.
“We are passing through turbulent time … Our churches are being attacked and false cases are being slapped on our ministers (clerics) and a smear campaign to defame us is being run. Forcible campaign ghar wapsi (re-conversion to Hinduism by right wing organizations) is underway to torment us,” a cleric alleged.
He said that during prayers “we are going to ask the God to forgive these people who are falsely persecuting us”.
Meanwhile in a related development, Rashtriya Isai Mahasabha (RIM) on Sunday handed over a memorandum to external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj here demanding an end to the attack on Christians nationwide.
“In the memorandum, we have demanded that the attack on Christians should be stopped and investigated immediately and hate speech and campaign against us should be checked,” RIM district vice-president B Alexander Vaughan said.
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